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Piano music that sucks but that has crossed the "art" threshold

Pier said:
If that's how you appreciate music no offense but you have it all wrong.

Your analogy with the drawing doesn't work. A 6 year old would not make that piece of music because it requires emotional maturity. A better comparison would be a painting by Mark Rothko.
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The piece has emotional maturity of a 6 year old. Inspired by walking through Arabic quarter of Granada today, if you disagree, I can go up to 8.
 
PeterN said:
I invite you for a frozen pizza with ketchup one day. Add pineapple or not, is your choice.
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And frankly since when are you the arbiter of anything? The old saying applies friend: opinions are like assholes, everyone's got one. 😂
 
PeterN said:
The piece has emotional maturity of a 6 year old. Inspired by walking through Arabic quarter of Granada today, if you disagree, I can go up to 8.
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Granada is for sure a beautiful town. But even if a 6-year-old or 8-year-old arranged the same notes in the same order as are in this particular Glass piece, it wouldn't mean the same, and therefore would not be the same piece of music. Because Glass is choosing to compose it from a perspective that encompasses a vast knowledge of what has gone before.
 
I don't mind if composers like Einaudi (and the entire stable of soundalikes that Classic FM seems to have on tap) want to put out the crap they do. Nobody forces me to listen, and there seem to be people who get something from it - presumably those who would otherwise be pop fans, but now feel they are cultured.

What does grate slightly is when these composers start to buy their own hype. Classic FM are basically a hub for dumbing down Classical music, and marketing it as some kind of perpetual relaxation aid, and they literally push Einaudi as 'The greatest composer of all time.' Not an exaggeration - they use those words. (Particularly galling when I've also heard them say, "That was Liszt's only entry in our chart, proving that we can recognise great music from lesser composers"). Naturally such hype has drawn the attention of critics living in the real world of classical music, who write slightly bemused articles suggesting it has to be a joke. And Einaudi - clearly now believing everything Classic FM says about him - fires back that they just don't get his music. Like these guys who live and breathe music from every period - who critique performances of the Rite, of Beethoven, of Fernyhough - might not understand his three chords. I can half understand that kind of pretentiousness from experimental musicians, who make a racket that people actually don't get. But when you have a career based on rewriting the same piece of incredibly basic tonality 8000 times (having stolen it from Nyman to begin with), pretending that its simplicitiy is some new kind of genius seems mad.

I don't even really mind that. Let him enjoy his delusion. But unfortunately the effect is that millions of people - whose only window on classical music is Classic FM - believe this to be the pinnacle of culture, which has a knock on effect on what is in demand for concerts and recordings. So when I walk into HMV the Classical section is reduced down to Einaudi's entire catalogue, Max Richter's entire catalogue, 'Katherine Jenkins sings light pops marketed as opera,' and Lang Lang's Disney album.

So the sooner the fad goes away the better.
 
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Pingu said:
I don't mind if composers like Einaudi (and the entire stable of soundalikes that Classic FM seems to have on tap) want to put out the crap they do. Nobody forces me to listen, and there seem to be people who get something from it - presumably those who would otherwise be pop fans, but now feel they are cultured.

What does grate slightly is when these composers start to buy their own hype. Classic FM are basically a hub for dumbing down Classical music, and marketing it as some kind of perpetual relaxation aid, and they literally push Einaudi as 'The greatest composer of all time.' Not an exaggeration - they use those words. (Particularly galling when I've also heard them say, "That was Liszt's only entry in our chart, proving that we can recognise great music from lesser composers"). Naturally such hype has drawn the attention of critics living in the real world of classical music, who write slightly bemused articles suggesting it has to be a joke. And Einaudi - clearly now believing everything Classic FM says about him - fires back that they just don't get his music. Like these guys who live and breathe music from every period - who critique performances of the Rite, of Beethoven, of Fernyhough - might not understand his three chords. I can half understand that kind of pretentiousness from experimental musicians, who make a racket that people actually don't get. But when you have a career based on rewriting the same piece of incredibly basic tonality 8000 times (having stolen it from Nyman to begin with), pretending that its simplicitiy is some new kind of genius seems mad.

I don't even really mind that. Let him enjoy his delusion. But unfortunately the effect is that millions of people - whose only window on classical music is Classic FM, believe this to be the pinnacle of culture - which has a knock on effect on what is in demand for concerts and recordings. So when I walk into HMV the Classical section is reduced down to Einaudi's entire catalogue, Max Richter's entire catalogue, 'Katherine Jenkins sings light pops marketed as opera,' and Lang Lang's Disney album.

So the sooner the fad goes away the better.
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I absolutely agree he stole it from Nyman! But to be scrupulously fair, Einaudi knows at least 4 chords.
 
rezoneight said:
Man says how little he's bothered then goes on to explain how bothered he is. This thread is freaking hilarious 😂
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When I was a young man, I was very impatient with and dismissive of what I perceived to be simplistic popular art. At some point in my advancing decrepitude, however, I found it more interesting and illuminating (and educational!) to accept that, actually, millions of people can't be wrong, so what am I failing to understand in this thing that makes it attractive to so many people?
 
SupremeFist said:
When I was a young man, I was very impatient with and dismissive of what I perceived to be simplistic popular art. At some point in my advancing decrepitude, however, I found it more interesting and illuminating (and educational!) to accept that, actually, millions of people can't be wrong, so what am I failing to understand in this thing that makes it attractive to so many people?
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As someone also in their advancing decrepitude I know that I like what I like and frankly what others think is irrelevant. I've got many moods that are met by many types of music and I'm glad they're out there. Maybe Einaudi only knows 2 chords instead of 4 but if that brings people more into the fold then good on Einaudi. Some people will stop there, some will look further. In the end its all good when we've all got easy access to just about any music ever written and recorded.
 
PeterN said:
What's your contribution to:

Piano music that sucks but which has crossed the "art" threshold.

(maybe I was too rude, I deleted my contribution. But the amount of garbage out there these days is astonishing - it's almost as if people have stopped composing as a creative process, but throw out 4 chords like pop music in 1963. Especially the 'art' piano music, its has fallen beyond basic standards).

I was thinking it's fair to say this out loud with examples, but I guess we just leave it here. Lets pretend its good.
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Satie. I just don't get it. Minimalist without being minimalistic. Romantic without using any of the actual developments associated with the period. Boring as all hell yet his music endures.

 
José Herring said:
Satie. I just don't get it. Minimalist without being minimalistic. Romantic without using any of the actual developments associated with the period. Boring as all hell yet his music endures.

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Well, yea, but ...mmm.....so, ok, boring, but he does venture into some jazz like chords there and does some small changes. There is a slight touch of creativity. It's not a fancy video on a 4 chord arp.

Apparently he understood to make it 3.30 minutes long also, which is a plus.

But lets conclude this by the jury. This example from Mr. Herring is: accepted. (=Piano music that sucks but that has crossed the "art" threshold)
 
José Herring said:
Satie. I just don't get it. Minimalist without being minimalistic. Romantic without using any of the actual developments associated with the period. Boring as all hell yet his music endures.

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I've played his Vexations twice now - once as part of a team of 10 pianists, so that I got to play it about 80 times, and once with just one other pianist, so I played 422 times. Funny thing is, afterwards, I couldn't remember a note of it. It's like it wipes itself out as you play.
 
Pingu said:
....and they literally push Einaudi as 'The greatest composer of all time.' Not an exaggeration - they use those words. (Particularly galling when I've also heard them say, "That was Liszt's only entry in our chart, proving that we can recognise great music from lesser composers").
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Einaudi a great composer and Liszt a lesser composer.
These must be a rare type of connoisseurs, far beyond our understanding.
Here's something from this lesser composer to entertain us simple folk:

 
PeterN said:
Well, yea, but ...mmm.....so, ok, boring, but he does venture into some jazz like chords there and does some small changes. There is a slight touch of creativity. It's not a fancy video on a 4 chord arp.

Apparently he understood to make it 3.30 minutes long also, which is a plus.

But lets conclude this by the jury. This example from Mr. Herring is: accepted. (=Piano music that sucks but that has crossed the "art" threshold)
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I mean, de gustibus and all that, but vast swathes of 20th-century music were heavily influenced by and unimaginable without Satie.
 
SupremeFist said:
I mean, de gustibus and all that, but vast swathes of 20th-century music were heavily influenced by and unimaginable without Satie.
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Yea. You might be right. I dont know the history and influence of Satie, but José Herring actually contributed to the original topic, without starting to moan about this all here, so he got an extra plus which influenced the jury. Most of his previous comments on VI are also flawless. That's why we accepted his bid.
 
PeterN said:
Yea. You might be right. I dont know the history and influence of Satie, but José Herring actually contributed to the original topic, without starting to moan about this all here, so he got an extra plus which influenced the jury. Most of his previous comments on VI are also flawless. That's why we accepted it.
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Oh yes, I entirely agree with your estimation of José's contributions in general and will just chalk this up to the kind of irrational blind spot we all have. ;)
 
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