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Originally Posted by Savage Clone
I do find it hilarious that the guy on this board who is the most obsessed with pen-and-paper symphony music from a couple of hundred years ago is talking about what is or isn't hackneyed, tired or suffocated by "convention."
Don't take this as an attack either, noumenal. I don't mean it like that; it's just funny is all.
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Yeah, OK, I see how it's funny, sort of. But for the record, those works I mentioned are less than 100 years old.
Oh, and I'm not as anti-guitar as Glice. In fact, I wouldn't say I'm anti-guitar at all. In a lot of ways, it's not just one instrument. But, if it wasn't so prevalent, then people wouldn't get so tired of it, that's all.
As far as pen-and-paper symphony music goes....Well, I'm actually more obsessed with chamber music, but that's just being picky and lame. Anyway, the classical tradition NOW suffers from the same problems as all music--popular music inherited anxiety of influence. I mean, the post-mod plight.
The classical tradition managed just fine for over 300 years, perfecting the means to avoid cliche and convention--because it was a coherent practice, unlike 20th-century popular music. The idea that anything written between 1600 and 1945 is cliche or hackneyed is just plain silly. It's old news--something might have been cliche in 1809, but we usually don't remember that stuff and the bite is gone anyway, if you know what I mean. So, really, I don't get what
you mean. If someone wrote a symphony that sounded like 5th-rate Mozart today, then that would be cliche and tired, etc. But a real Mozart symphony from the late eighteenth century (39 is my favorite) isn't cliche at all. It's old, but we listen with un-innocent ears. I mean, I know it's 200-odd years old. If you want to point your pole at the classical world TODAY and catch some fine fresh cliche, then just motor over to the academic waters and try your luck. I won't name names, but I'm thinking of my alma mater. The cliche argument only really works for contemporary music--this is what I'm saying. It's a
now problem or issue. Music that was cliche a long time ago is certainly not what I'm obsessed with and it's not possible for it to be cliche today. This is something that bugs me.
The Velvet Underground proabaly sounded pretty un-cliche in 1967. If a band puts out a record today that sounds exactly like VU, we would snicker. But we listen to the original records as if we were in the late 60's. Just because it's cliche now, doesn't mean that it was cliche then. When I listen to Beethoven's 3rd, I put myself in the early 19th century. Same thing.