My question to the BBC CrowdScience Radio programme was:
“Why do people still make atonal and Avant-garde music?” – The program took the name of: “What shapes our musical taste?” 2018
The program was produced by Cathy Edwards and I was interviewed by Marnie Chesterton. I was nervous and was hardly able to speak properly, though I had already written to Cathy most of my ideas:
I believe that at this point in Music History things should change and that a composer should not still have to be subject to Avant-garde (atonal) dictatorship. I believe that too much dissonance is bad for the brain and consequently the body, above all dissonance that doesn’t resolve into consonance as well as plain noise and furthermore even loud. This is scientifically proven. I’m astounded at how long this musical Era has lasted, over 70 years since the end of the War, and I am fully fed up with it since my school days starting from 1973 and later my 39 years as a teacher throughout which I had continuous spokes in my wheels and injustice towards my pupils. This is why I am resigning from the Conservatorio of Milan on the 31st of October (actually I have already resigned but will conclude the academic year). I believe everyone has the right to express themselves with their own thoughts and style. I believe in Musical Freedom BUT of Quality and possibly of Emotional/Spiritual Depth. Pop music is good too if it doesn’t drug your brain with too much useless repetition and loud, strong, repeated rhythm and hard noise…which is bad for the nervous system. One mustn’t forget that all MUSIC can become a drug anyway!
I am a fighter by nature, and at the same time, I am a very amiable and friendly person.
I am a composer and not an expert in scientific matters even regarding music. I just know that dissonant sounds are worse for the ear, brain, and the nervous system in many ways, while consonant sounds, or slightly dissonant sounds that resolve onto consonant sounds, make us feel better. From the ages of 12 to 19 in the 1960s I used to listen to Pop music and my favourite group was the Beatles whilst some of my friends preferred the Rolling Stones. I didn’t think about it then but sometime later I understood that there were more musical ideas and musical phrasing (meaning) in the Beatles and it was firmly based on Cultured/Classical harmony whilst other music was more basically rhythmic, more dissonant with less phrase development and furthermore played much louder. This has got worse in our times and young people have the danger of becoming deaf and neurotic if they are not careful. Loud, dissonant music, rhythm, and noise in discos is another reason for car crashes, not only because one has drunk too much. It’s the excitement derived from the sounds in themselves and their continuous repetition that mesmerizes.
Classical music is a drug too. Sounds are a drug in themselves, especially when they are repeated continuously, but it also depends on how they are used. Young people who listen to music endlessly on headphones or in discos basically get drugged by continuous loud frequencies and rhythmic repetitions. There is a lot of percussion which is loud dissonant sound and the only real consonant sounds come from the singer. In the last century Classical/Cultured music (apart from the 70 years of experimental music from Schoenberg onwards which involves practically only dissonant sounds) there have been composers like Prokofiev, Stravinsky, and Shostakovich who have maybe composed difficult music to understand for those who listen only to Mozart or Beethoven. However, the music of these composers developed from those before them and I believe that all Cultured/Classical music has derived or been influenced by Bach, the organiser of Classical Harmony in antithesis to Schoenberg, the founder, and organiser of Atonal harmony.
Classical Harmony is based on consonance, i.e. intervals of thirds, sixths, octaves, fifths, and fourths, of which thirds, fifths, and octaves or unisons are the basis of the Triad, whilst the remaining intervals are created by its inversions. The same is for the two dissonant intervals: the seventh is the inversion of the second and vice versa. We perceive intervals of a second and a seventh more dissonant but juxtaposed or followed by other intervals, these dissonances may soften. If only sequences of dissonant notes or chords are used, the ear and brain do not rest. Furthermore, it is a question of frequencies. It is more difficult for the human ear to perceive and appreciate two notes with close frequencies. They are perceived as more strident than other intervals, also when at different octaves. In Cultured/Classical music they generally resolve onto consonant intervals and then the brain relaxes a little, but it usually only relaxes on a Triad or derivation of it.
This is what I perceive and prefer, though others may perceive and prefer differently. Furthermore, I do not know enough about Ethnomusic or basically rhythmic and more primitive music, nor do I care for Minimalism since I find that repetition without the development of an idea is boring and not what I consider Cultured. Unfortunately, most Minimalist composers use their techniques as an end and not as a means to compose good music.
I’m looking forward to understanding what approach BBC CrowdScience will be taking to examine the question of the different ways of composing from a scientific point of view. However, I found this other link to a short article that has nothing to do with Science but History and Politics. http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199757824/obo-9780199757824-0131.xml One must know that Italians have always been very interested in Politics and have often affiliated it to their Arts and other branches of life. Since I entered the Conservatorio of Milan as a student in 1976 I can remember that everyone publicly expressed their political ideas which then were either Communist or Democristian and later Socialist. Some people were directly affiliated to parties in the hope of help for their careers. Now, this is less evident, I do not know as much as then, I am not interested, and I keep to myself. I have never expressed my ideas or been affiliated with any party and furthermore, I do not have a precise political point of view. I have never composed music with preconceptions of any kind. I just love to compose. My father used to hold me in his arms on Sundays (like a hot water bottle, he said) listening to Classical Music since I was just born, and my mother said I used to stop crying and listen if she played the piano. However, later on, I would cry if I listened to certain works which gave me big emotions like in Vivaldi’s Bassoon Concerto or Albinoni’s Adagio. That stopped later on. I was 4 years and 8 months old when I composed my first composition on my grandmother’s piano, and I didn’t know why. Before I started compositional studies at the age of 19, I had already composed 32 pieces for piano and kept them all by heart because I did not know how to read and write music. My composition teacher told me to play and record them which I did because in time I would have forgotten them, which proved to be true. I still compose, improvise and search for musical ideas at the piano and not abstractly at a table or computer (though I have very often orchestrated at the computer when there is no real compositional work to be done). These two approaches to composing have always existed in History. Bach and Brahms were considered conservative whilst others were more progressive. What is it that makes the composer’s mind choose to compose in one way or another?
After this introduction of myself Cathy Edwards and I corresponded for a while before the Interview:
Elizabeth: I am writing a serious Waltz at the moment, that is not like the ones written by Johann Strauss, but more complicated, dissonant, and asymmetric. I hope we will get to talk about the different types of dissonances.
Cathy: I think your original question is incredibly interesting, especially the question of whether people compose avant-garde music as an intellectual exercise rather than because it gives them deep joy to hear it performed. But to focus on that would probably work better as a music history programme rather than a science one. We can definitely still discuss the question of why composers write atonal music within the context of why people listen to it.
Cathy: A question – I wondered if you could tell me what you think of Hindemith? As we listened to one of his pieces when we visited the neuroscientist in Milan and I’m intrigued to know if you like his music or not! He was included in an atonal category of music in their study, though as I understand it his music is not strictly speaking atonal…
Elizabeth: The category is ‘boring’. I could play you a lot of music that is very little dissonant and partially atonal with some nice chords but with an infinite display of dissonant counterpoint. Never-ending boring pieces which don’t have good clear, themes and the music wanders. His best piece is Mathis der Maler. There are better-contrasting themes and a good intelligible form. I used to sort of like it when a student compared to the Avant-garde works but soon found it a little boring. It does have precise musical ideas compared to his other works. My teacher Bettinelli was somewhat of that kind and he encouraged me to listen to him. My Belsize string quartet is of the ‘boring’ category even though it won 1st prize in Washington. My husband and I call it “grey music”. For decades many composers didn’t know in which direction to think and how to compose for fear of not being modern enough. Fortunately, I unconsciously and in little time understood what Keller meant by “your harmony will become clearer” and then I told myself “to hell with everyone. I will compose for the drawer.”
Cathy: Would you be happy to revise your question to be “why do some people like to listen to atonal music?” I think this will help make the question more accessible since more people are music listeners than composers!
Elizabeth: The new question “why do some people like to listen to atonal music?” is fine with me. However, it’s completely the other way round to what I originally thought. Why do composers still write atonal music? I don’t know whether you know that a great many composers have gone back to writing tonal music or with a tonal centre because they are fed up with what has been composed in the last 70 years. Actually, some were just afraid to go against the predominating current and didn’t really have personal musical ideas. I know quite a few of these composers. I think it’s more interesting to know why there are still composers that really like to compose atonally, and furthermore, really dissonant music which for me hurts the ears, the brain, and the nervous system. And anyway, are we sure these people like to listen to atonal music when they sit back on a sofa and relax? I met a snobbish, rich lady once who told me that she thought Luigi Nono was a great composer and with such an air of knowledge!! She was not a musician (which doesn’t really mean anything because you don’t need to be a musician to understand the hidden meanings of music, but only the superficial technique) but I understood that she liked Nono because it was the right thing to say if you belonged to an intellectual circle. This sort of person would change completely idea if she was told that times had evolved, and she must change ideas if she wanted to remain in that kind of circle. As well as listeners, there have been loads of composers who have composed under restrictions, otherwise, you couldn’t have any work performed. I chose not to be performed because I remained free to compose as I felt. However, at a certain point, I was quite desperate with 11 works for orchestra and only three performed in minor concerts so I wrote to Klaus Heymann, the founder of Naxos, a three page long desperate letter (after which I thought “well now you’ve lost any chance whatsoever because you are always so impulsive!”), instead, he wrote back “if your music is good we will record it” and that is how my first two CDs were recorded.
I think it’s difficult to find a sincere person who actually likes to compose as they do. I have often seen a little light of embarrassment in their eyes. Do they actually like what they hear? I think it would be interesting to ask not only if they intellectually like what they compose at the time of composing, (whether it gives them an intellectual pleasure), but also if they are full of joy when they hear it performed, if the sounds they hear give them true pleasure or make them feel physically uncomfortable. My music is quite dissonant at times, even though basically tonal and I always make the dissonant chords resolve onto more consonant chords. There must always be a limit of dissonance somewhere to make a work a pleasure to hear, otherwise it’s only painful.
Cathy: Thanks so much as always for your compelling thoughts, and for sharing those articles with me. I loved reading the interview with you in the IAWM. I was really interested to hear more about your story, and your approach to music and composing. And also – your thoughts on Western and Eastern music, as that’s something we haven’t really talked about, but music from other cultures will be important to include in our programme. We’re talking to a neuroscientist of music who has worked with a community in Bolivia where they only have single line melodies in their music; their response to different harmonies is quite different from Western responses, as you can imagine.
Elizabeth: Yes, but History has come into it by pure chance. Gradually, composers started to compose more and more chromatically till they became atonal, Schoenberg invented Dodecaphony, Boulez Total Serialism, and so on, BUT these were NOT Artistic choices! They were intellectual choices with NO empathetic control over the musical ideas. Meanwhile, composers such as Walton, Katchaturian, Schostakovich, Britten, Copland, Barber, and there are many more, and those which have not been discovered yet, didn’t care about History, about what they SHOULD have done according to what was officially considered the progressive Historical development of MUSIC! They just wrote what they felt empathetic even if it wasn’t modern enough for others. They composed with feelings, with beautiful sound, with musical ideas and phrasing to say something that could reach the spirit and the sensibility of people because ART always starts to express human feelings and possibly to then take them to a transcendent level.
Elizabeth: What I think is important for your program is to understand why people liked and still like to compose this way and those who still listen to this music. What satisfies their brain? When they listen to their music and those of similar composers, do they actually enjoy and are spiritually moved by what they are listening to, and what kind of enjoyment? Most interesting would be a brain scan with two people and two different types of music. This is a Scientific question; to be resolved scientifically and it doesn’t belong to History. The last 70 years are an error in History, just as much as the Wars that take place and the Injustice in the world. Art deals with Empathy. Tonal music derives from the Overtones in Physics and they can be heard in Nature as well as through man-made instruments and compositions with Tonality or Tonal Centres. Art MUST communicate an Empathetic message, otherwise, it’s not ART.
Sorry if I’m so categorical and hard. I will not speak like this on the radio. It’s just that I get carried away when I write words AND it takes me a lot of time to create a written thought like the above, the words of which I couldn’t possibly find whilst I speak.
Cathy: I’ve been thinking about the phrasing of your question, and I think you’re right to stick with your original version about why composers write atonal music. The question about listeners’ enjoyment is bound up with that – first of all because composers are also listeners, and secondly because without an appreciative audience, presumably they would not be successful composers? So, we can talk about that…I think it’s a fascinating question and I’m looking forward to talking to both you and Gabriele Manca about it, and also Alice Mado Proverbio, the Milan psychologist.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3cswvwp
Elizabeth: Thank you very much for the link to the CrowdScience radio transmission about What Shapes our Musical Taste. I have been away in the mountains with a friend for a week so now that I am back, I have finally got down to listening to it. It was interesting because it went out to a broader public than I expected. Furthermore, I found the scientists you interviewed extremely interesting and I suddenly remembered that a few years ago I had had a Canadian Composition pupil for an Erasmus course for one year and he had told me all about when he had been part of the experiments at the McGill University in Montreal.
There would be so much more to say but I understand your timing restrictions and I wasn’t exactly loquacious; never have been really, famously at the respective MIT and Tanglewood concerts. Maybe I should not speak in front of microphones anymore unless I read.
Cathy: Thanks – it’s good to hear from you. I really liked the interview we did with you and your demonstrations on the piano. You should definitely continue to speak in front of a microphone! I expected it would be a slightly frustrating listen for you since it was for a broad audience and you already knew so much of what we said – as you say there was so much more to say, for example about certain dissonant combinations of notes that are very close together, firing neurons in our brain in such a way as to feel confusing or unpleasant; and the harmonics of the human voice being closely related both to Western musical harmony and our capacity for hearing… I really regret not being able to include these details! Maybe in a future programme…. It is a truly fascinating subject so thanks again for giving us a chance to explore it – and of course for inviting us to Milan too!
Elizabeth: The new question “why do some people like to listen to atonal music?” is fine with me. However, it’s completely the other way round to what I originally thought. Why do composers still write atonal music? I don’t know whether you know that a great many composers have gone back to writing tonal music or with a tonal centre because they are fed-up with what has been composed in the last 70 years. Actually, some were just afraid to go against the predominating current and didn’t really have personal musical ideas. I know quite a few of these composers. I think it’s more interesting to know why there are still composers that really like to compose atonally, and furthermore, really dissonant music which for me hurts the ears, the brain, and the nervous system. And anyway, are we sure these people like to listen to atonal music when they sit back on a sofa and relax? I met a snobbish, rich lady once who told me that she thought Luigi Nono was a great composer and with such an air of knowledge!! She was not a musician (which doesn’t really mean anything because you don’t need to be a musician to understand the hidden meanings of music, but only the superficial technique) but I understood that she liked Nono because it was the right thing to say if you belonged to an intellectual circle. This sort of person would change completely idea if she was told that times had evolved, and she must change ideas if she wanted to remain in that kind of circle. As well as listeners, there have been loads of composers who have composed under restrictions, otherwise, you couldn’t have any work performed. I chose not to be performed because I remained free to compose as I felt. However, at a certain point, I was quite desperate with 11 works for orchestra and only three performed in minor concerts so I wrote to Klaus Heymann, the founder of Naxos, a three page long desperate letter (after which I thought “well now you’ve lost any chance whatsoever because you are always so impulsive!”), instead, he wrote back “if your music is good we will record it” and that is how my first two CDs were recorded.
I think it’s difficult to find a sincere person who actually likes to compose as they do. I have often seen a little light of embarrassment in their eyes. Do they actually like what they hear? I think it would be interesting to ask not only if they intellectually like what they compose at the time of composing, (whether it gives them an intellectual pleasure), but also if they are full of joy when they hear it performed, if the sounds they hear give them true pleasure or make them feel physically uncomfortable. My music is quite dissonant at times, even though basically tonal and I always make the dissonant chords resolve onto more consonant chords. There must always be a limit of dissonance somewhere to make a work a pleasure to hear, otherwise, it’s only painful.
Cathy: Thanks so much as always for your compelling thoughts, and for sharing those articles with me. I loved reading the interview with you in the IAWM. I was really interested to hear more about your story, and your approach to music and composing. And also – your thoughts on Western and Eastern music, as that’s something we haven’t really talked about, but music from other cultures will be important to include in our programme. We’re talking to a neuroscientist of music who has worked with a community in Bolivia where they only have single-line melodies in their music; their response to different harmonies is quite different from Western responses, as you can imagine.
Elizabeth: Yes, but History has come into it by pure chance. Gradually, composers started to compose more and more chromatically till they became atonal, Schoenberg invented Dodecaphony, Boulez Total Serialism and so on, BUT these were NOT Artistic choices! They were intellectual choices with NO empathetic control over the musical ideas. Meanwhile, composers such as Walton, Katchaturian, Schostakovich, Britten, Copland, Barber and there are many more, and those which have not been discovered yet, didn’t care about History, about what they SHOULD have done according to what was officially considered the progressive Historical development of MUSIC! They just wrote what they felt empathetic even if it wasn’t modern enough for others. They composed with feelings, with beautiful sound, with musical ideas and phrasing to say something that could reach the spirit and the sensibility of people because ART always starts to express human feelings and possibly to then take them to a transcendent level.
Elizabeth: What I think is important for your program is to understand why people liked and still like to compose this way and those who still listen to this music. What satisfies
Elizabeth: Cows and other animals love tonal music, but I wonder if atonal music were played to them whether they would like it?
Lots of experiments have been done. Some neuro-scientists have analysed expecting mothers and unstable minds listening to Mozart or other Classical Music as a psychotherapeutic help. I do not think atonal music and even less Avant-garde music would be beneficial.
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