Has Materialism ruined Western music?

[Anonymous No.8771144]

I read something Zizek said about the parallels between Materialism and Bach's music. Are there any notable texts that claim this was a disaster?

[Anonymous No.8771153]

>>8771144
zizek is such a pseud, it's probably all bullshit

[Anonymous No.8771154]

>>8771144
Link to the Zizek text?
You've peaked my interest as well - though I'm not particularly knowledgeable on music.

[Anonymous No.8771186]

>>8771144
SLAYAAAAAAARRRRGHHHH

[Anonymous No.8771250]

>>8771154

https://www.reddit.com/r/zizek/comments/3gn8og/%C5%BEi%C5%BEek_and_bach/cu078hm/

[Anonymous No.8771264]

>>8771154
Piqued, you pseud.
>>8771250
Why not just head back there instead of playing the old game of looking for books to confirm your worldview?

[Anonymous No.8771273]

>>8771264
lol

[Anonymous No.8771276]

>>8771264

I found the thread in a google search, I don't post on reddit. Also, why would I not look for books that confirm my word view?

[Anonymous No.8771301]

>>8771276

because it's masturbatory and anti-intellectual. those aren't highly valued in spaces where bach and zizek are meaningfully discussed, so you might only be attracted to their flair, their reception, rather than the hard work of really appreciating them.

and also you don't seem to know even what materialism means in that space, so you'd better go back to Harvey's lectures on Marx before pursuing the crises of modernity in culture any further.

[Anonymous No.8771302]

>>8771144
I can only suppose he means Bach's masturbatory mathematical style, "look at how it all fits together, I'm fucking high IQ as fuck".

Unfortunate for Zizek in such case: it's still beautiful music.

[Anonymous No.8771308]

>>8771301
I think they're talking about the other meaning of materialism, the idea that observable reality is all that there is.

[Anonymous No.8771310]

>>8771250
> in his musical practice, [Bach] was a radical materialist (in the modern formalized-mathematized sense)
Kek.

Kek.

I wasn't even half wrong.

Zizek is a pseud (in the modern formalized-mathematized sense).

[Anonymous No.8771335]

>Around Bach’s time, a totally different paradigm started to emerge: that of a “well-tempered” scale, in which musical sounds are to be arranged following an order not grounded in any higher cosmic harmony, but which has an (ultimately arbitrary) rational structure.
No Shitzek, "Well tempered" simply means that the twelve notes per octave of the standard keyboard are tuned in such a way that it is possible to play music in most major or minor keys and it will not sound perceptibly out of tune. This doesn't exclude "higher cosmic harmony" whatsoever, whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean.

This is why you aren't taken seriously by professional academia Shitzek, not because you're le "Joker". This is why you will be tossed into the trashcan of history with the rest of the pseuds.

[Anonymous No.8771399]

>>8771335

I...think that's what he meant. Minus the assertion that it would not turn away from higher cosmic harmony. Note the quote marks.

[Anonymous No.8771420]

>>8771302
>it's still beautiful music
>it's still beautiful music
>it's still beautiful music

[Anonymous No.8771448]

>>8771308
no. what do you mean by the term? we will work together to better understanding

[Anonymous No.8771472]

>>8771250
>in his musical practice, he was a radical materialist (in the modern formalized-mathematized sense), exploring the immanent possibilities of the new musical formalism.
Slavoj please consider suicide.

[Anonymous No.8771475]

>>8771472
Not an argument

[Anonymous No.8771483]

>>8771144
>materialism and bach's music
cringed hard

[Anonymous No.8771487]

What the fuck am I reading

[Anonymous No.8771505]

>>8771144

>trying to link something as dull and useless as philosophy to something as beautiful and beloved as music

Funny guy.

[Anonymous No.8771509]

>>8771335

homie you're illiterate.

it's so weird how people prejudiced against difficult writing often can't read for shit.

screencap'd this colossal embarrassment bc i would be scrambling to delete it if we're you.

you're literally calling him out for arguing the exact opposite—the literal inversion which could only have been read into that bit of text precisely by not reading it or by being mentally challenged.

what an unbelievably oafish stooge you are. this is why i'm a stalinist: throwing sots like you into the reeducation camps would actually be good for them.

unreal. truly cosmic levels of stupidity. just read the sentence. that's all you had to do. but it was really too much for your peabrain. outstanding..

[Anonymous No.8771512]

>>8771302
>>8771310
>>8771472
>>8771483
>>8771420

The connection between Materialism and Gnosticism is a very frightening one. Materialism in the context of Gnosticism would basically mean directly worshiping the Demiurge.

Western Classical Music tradition is literally a campaign against the Human soul.

[Anonymous No.8771516]

>>8771512
PSEUD
S
E
U
D

[Anonymous No.8771531]

>>8771516
>>8771505
>>8771487
>>8771472
>>8771483
>>8771310
>>8771153


12 posters, 23 replies. we know it's you:>>8771335

and since you've wrought this piece of utter baffoonery, we know who the real pseudo is. to the gulag with you

[Anonymous No.8771544]

>>8771144
how is bachs work at all materialist? wasn't he most heavily influenced by pietism

[Anonymous No.8771549]

>>8771544

>how is bachs work at all materialist?

Have you heard it?

[Anonymous No.8771555]

>>8771335
holy shit that post. Somehow getting from the quoted text that a higher cosmic harmony is assumed to exist, somehow getting from it that the scale he talks about excludes it, and best of all, starting a sentence with "No..." and continuing to agree.

You're like half of a groundhog propelling itself in circles on the ground using its two remaining limbs.

[Anonymous No.8771558]

>>8771549
Yes, have you?

[Anonymous No.8771560]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnIDTOR9EkM

[Anonymous No.8771561]

>>8771544

contextually it may be pious, but his manipulation of tonality is informed by its internal logic, not by any transcendent ideology of faith or affect, the latter of which you get in folks like Wagner, and, as Zizek notes, Bach's own son.

[Anonymous No.8771569]

>>8771561
Please define what makes a work transcendent.

[Anonymous No.8771575]

>>8771569

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-Bjp9jptbM

Not (him) but this is a nice one.

[Anonymous No.8771576]

>>8771575
You gave an example, you didn't actually define anything m8

[Anonymous No.8771579]

>>8771576
boohoo

[Anonymous No.8771581]

Why do /lit/fags jerk themselves off over classical music? Everyone knows that the truly /lit/ music is jazz.

[Anonymous No.8771583]

>>8771569

didn't say the work was transcendent. i said that it would have been informed by transcendent ideologies. in this case it means external or extrinsic to the "text" of 12-tone harmony, formulated beyond the bounds of its own permutational logics—music composed to evoke a certain affect, scene, or feeling, rather than composed to exhibit the beauty inherent to musical structure. the difference between an opera's or an action movie's score, and, well, Bach's inventions and fugues.

[Anonymous No.8771584]

>>8771576

Transcendental things define themselves.

[Anonymous No.8771591]

>>8771569
>needing to ask this

You're never going to make it

[Anonymous No.8771593]

>>8771581
Ultimately it doesn't matter because everyone here is a pseud just jerking off for the (you)s

>>8771579
>>8771584
Still not putting forth an actual definion guys.

>>8771583
Bach did plenty of that though, just go read an essay about his use of rhetoric figures. To assume that Bach's music is only mathematically pleasing is a modern meme.

[Anonymous No.8771597]

>>8771593
boohoohoooooo

[Anonymous No.8771598]

>>8771544
>how is bachs work at all materialist?

The claim seems to be that ancient music theories revolved around pure math ratios, while Bach was around when the 'modern piano?' well tempered clavier, was invented, which grounded music theory into physical ratios based on taking into considerations the characteristics of the material, to create not mathematically pure ratios (pythagorean maybe), but physically pure ratios (length and tautness of string, maybe)

Maybe they are trying to relate this to the ancient music, (like can maybe be seen in indian style)(or like pan flute, ancient greek, or medieval peasants, or baroque) made music less directionless, more just floating eternally in space, harmonies playing with each other:

Whereas, the well tempered clavier, allowed maybe, a rationalist, always moving forward, building, constructing, allowed with the building blocks of the pitches relation, being slightly imperfect, compelling to be resolved:

Keep in mind I am completely, talking out myas, but this might be related. Personally I think this video is wrong, because I think the slight imperfection, allows a 'fuzzy quantum logic' which implies motions and motivation to be resolved, tensions and resolutions, which enhances the quantities and qualities of music potential:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NlI4No3s0M

[Anonymous No.8771601]

>>8771593

i wasn't arguing that, either.

you seem to be doing a lot to avoid making an argument.

[Anonymous No.8771607]

>>8771593

>definition

Think of it as a the polar opposite of Finnegans Wake I guess?

[Anonymous No.8771608]

>>8771581
Pseuds obsess over orchestral music for some reason. It's wonderful, don't get me wrong, but those "I only listen to classical everyone else has shit taste but me" kids make me embarrassed to admit I have a large amount of classical on my playlists.

Jazz is a good aesthetic for roaring 20's and other early 20th century lit. Stuff like future bass, house, drum and bass, and other electronic music is the best background noise for writing.

[Anonymous No.8771612]

Nice thread boys

(I say this with the utmost degree of contempt and sarcasm.)

[Anonymous No.8771616]

>>8771144
The problem lies in that Bach was so mathematically dazzling people often forget he's also intuitively a joy to listen to.

They get hung up on the finger pointing to the moon and forget to move past the formal structure of what's before them. A mathematical (i.e. purely formal) analysis of Bach will never get you to actually listening to Bach.

He represents such a crucial step in the dialectic of music that people will forget to leave him behind.

[Anonymous No.8771617]

>>8771598
just intonation is a meme, western music cannot exist with it because of the inherent flaws when tuning an instrument.
the tl;dr is either your thirds or in tune or your fifths are in tune or they're both a little bit out of tune as we tend to do nowadays.

Thankfully our ears correct a tone that is slightly out of tune so you barely even notice it. Think of it as hearing the difference between a G# and an Ab.

[Anonymous No.8771618]

>>8771516
Calling someone who quotes Icke a mere "pseud" is too generous. The term you are looking for is "retard"

[Anonymous No.8771621]

>>8771612

Interestingly, contempt and sarcasm are the only emotions G*rman composers defecated into their music.

[Anonymous No.8771628]

>>8771621
As opposed to the facetiousness and irony of french composers?

[Anonymous No.8771658]

>>8771561
his organ work seems to be affected greatly by the transcendental

[Anonymous No.8771668]

There's nothing "mathematical" about interval music, nothing "transcendental" about music which makes a conscious effort to be unstructured, and nothing particularly "materialistic" about structure.

[Anonymous No.8771672]

>>8771668
Reeeeeee, shitposter, you're undermining my agenda.

[Anonymous No.8771680]

>>8771668

what makes you say that?

[Anonymous No.8771685]

>>8771680
burden of proof

[Anonymous No.8771697]

>>8771680
>>8771685
btfo'd eternally lmao

[Anonymous No.8771705]

>>8771668

This is about the morbid obsession with structure and intervals.

[Anonymous No.8771718]

>>8771144

I'm sorry, but Bach's music had fuck-all to do with materialism. Bach was desperately Christian and devout, and music was an instrument to him to further devotion to the church. I'm sure that you could analyze parallels between Bach and any damn thing you wanted from the eighteenth century onward, but it's kind of a waste unless you study Bach's material and his life and analyze from that perspective.

[Anonymous No.8771727]

>>8771705
So this is about serialism?

[Anonymous No.8771734]

>>8771668

OK, this is officially a shitpost. Interval music is ALL ABOUT MATHEMATICS. Intervals ARE ratios in Hertz. Octave = 2/1, perfect fifth = 3/2, perfect fourth = 4/3, etc.

[Anonymous No.8771746]

>>8771616

Possibly relevant or not: Leonard Bernstein The Joy of Music" talks about your opinion in some detail, from the perspective of a performer attempting to interpret Bach and the choices that need to be made to do so.

[Anonymous No.8771747]

>>8771734
What isn't a ratio?

[Anonymous No.8771750]

>>8771746
Thank you anon, sounds like an interesting read

[Anonymous No.8771794]

>>8771598

OK, it's time to inject some actual psychoacoustics into this conversation.

The video glosses over too much in its effort to dumb down interval ratios for the general populace. It suggests that because the images are "imperfect" then the sounds underlying the images are equally "imperfect".

Now for some actual science. Humans have a pitch resolution of about 3.5 Hz or so. So if you're off by 2 Hz on a pure tone then a human will not be able to notice that error. Now the equal tempered scale differs from the just scale at most by 4.5 Hz or so. That's not perfect but it's pretty damn close to the point where humans cannot notice the difference directly. Humans can notice differences in sum and difference tones between equal and just scales. But there are good mathematical reasons why equal tempered scales work well where meantone scales do not. Go google "wolf fifth" for more information on this mathematical oddity.

tl:dr; anyone comparing the equal tempered scale to materialism or quantum physics or fuzzy logic is just jerking off and doesn't really understand the equal tempered scale.

[Anonymous No.8771857]

>>8771335
>No Shitzek, "Well tempered" simply means that the twelve notes per octave of the standard keyboard are tuned in such a way that it is possible to play music in most major or minor keys and it will not sound perceptibly out of tune.
No it doesn't. With temperament the concept of "out of tune" goes out the window. This idea that harmoniousness is of vital importance is also what Bach argued against p much with the Well Tempered Clavier.

[Anonymous No.8771866]

>>8771794
But I think the just intonation does not sound good, because it is too still, I think the slight imperfection of equal temperament, allows many positive characteristics of the tones expression, there is a restless and longing and implying for certain notes to others; that if every pitch was perfectly absolutely harmonic, there would lack that 'one note draws to another' instinct, and each note would seem sterily in a class of its own

Does wolf fifth, and other things, how much of these musical things have to do with the density and pressure and nature of air? If there were atmospheres on different planets, made of different gasses, with different gravity, and pressure, density, how different could sound, music, harmony be?

[Anonymous No.8771873]

>>8771544
You will often come up against a natural extension of what he was doing, the use of tritones, and that they were considered unholy unharmonious monstrosities and so he never really explored them in many High School and above explorations of Bach.

[Anonymous No.8771885]

>>8771794
>Humans have a pitch resolution of about 3.5 Hz or so. So if you're off by 2 Hz on a pure tone then a human will not be able to notice that error.
Beating is a real thing bro.

[Anonymous No.8771894]

>>8771616

Even Bernstein himself struggled to find joy in Bach. Bach is opaque to a lot of listeners. Most of his chorales are bloodless and academic things. Personally, I don't think anyone would ever listen to the Goldberg variations if it weren't for Glenn Gould humming along like Rain Man through them. And those most famous showpieces, like Toccata and Fugue in D minor? Well there's some confusion as to whether Bach actually wrote them. My taste is questionable but I tend to fall asleep to the Mass in B minor. And Toccata and Fugue in D minor is totally dripping with parallel fifths (a huge no-no to Bach) and so some people think Bach didn't even write it. I am not saying Bach was not a great composer. He definitely was. But I am also OK with people not getting Bach. He is dry, he is hard to play, he is hard to make accessible. You have to listen to Bach on his own terms, not yours. Compare that to Mozart or Beethoven, who states a theme once and then you never forget it.

[Anonymous No.8771895]

http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~mrubinst/tuning/tuning.html


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_temperament

[Anonymous No.8771897]

>>8771873
>the use of tritones
Oh god this meme again. People who spout this garbage realise the V-I cadence is based on a tritone resolving, right?
Aside from that Bach often got complaints from church-goers that his harmonic treatment was too complex and obfuscated. To suggest that he would avoid using a specific interval seems like madness.

[Anonymous No.8771903]

>>8771885

Go back and read the part about "sum and difference tones," schoolboy.

[Anonymous No.8771905]

>>8771894
>Most of his chorales are bloodless and academic things
Get. Out.

[Anonymous No.8771910]

>>8771866
>hat if every pitch was perfectly absolutely harmonic, there would lack that 'one note draws to another' instinct, and each note would seem sterily in a class of its own
No the other guy (who desu I don't value the opinion of so much from that post), but this is part of what Bach did in his move to equal temperament with the fugue and so on. However, what you say isn't true, that draw still exists, but you can't travel around as easily with it over different modes and keys and so forth.

[Anonymous No.8771912]

>>8771895
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqrrhkCqIL0

[Anonymous No.8771916]

>>8771903
You won't hear sum and difference tones over that small a range esp if it's meant to be imperceptible. You're being a wiki scholar bro.

[Anonymous No.8771930]

>>8771894
I agree entirely, Bach is by no means writing catchy little melodies for the kids to sing along to and compared to him Mozart and Beethoven are pop musicians (from an intentional if not technical point of view)

However my post was speaking to the tendency to over-academize Bach. I wouldn't play Bach and expect my twelve year old cousin to be in raptures of ecstasy, but I can absolutely find pleasure in putting Bach on as background music or even as something to drift off to while travelling.

Math is a large part of Bach but Math is intuitively beautiful once understood.

[Anonymous No.8771934]

>>8771930
>if not technical
Technique has constantly improved over time. Bach's sometimes hard to play but only because sometimes he literally demands the impossible.

[Anonymous No.8771936]

>>8771897

I agree with anon here. There's a lot of unsubstantiated bullshit about the tritone being from Satan. All that comes from an old medieval cliche "mi contra fa est diabolus in musica". That's just a rhyming mnemonic. It's like saying "i before e except after c." You're not going to hell if you write "niether," it's just a bit embarrassing.

[Anonymous No.8771939]

>>8771905

OK, name your favorite brilliant and soulful and uplifting Bach chorale. Take your time. I've written counterpoint for only a few dozen; presumbly you know something I don't.

[Anonymous No.8771943]

>>8771934
Sorry, that was poorly worded on my part

My point was that compared to Bach, Mozart and Beethoven are much more palatable even if they can sometimes be just as technical.

[Anonymous No.8771944]

I love all these Bachtists getting BTFO ITT

on the other hand, Zizek could have a serious talent in his music writing.

[Anonymous No.8771951]

>>8771944
now this is poor bait

[Anonymous No.8771953]

>>8771916

Not that I particularly care about your opinion, but yes, sum and difference tones (i.e. "beating") do make an audible difference when you move one of the upper tones by a few Hertz. This is one of the key principles that allow piano tuners to tune pianos.

[Anonymous No.8771955]

>>8771144
At my best Prince Myshkin from The Idiot

[Anonymous No.8771961]

>>8771939
Got me there senpai, I can't actually name one off the top of my head. We sang a chorale as part of the introduction week choir when I started studying at the conservatory, but I'd have to look up which one it was. I do remember nearly bursting into tears during performance though, it was that beautiful.

[Anonymous No.8771962]

>>8771930

That's a valid viewpoint. And I know a lot of people like to put on Bach as wallpaper. But for me personally, if Bach is playing during dinner then all I hear is I AM MATHEMATICS FORGET YOUR MEAL PAY ATTENTION TO ME DAMMIT. Your mileage may vary.

[Anonymous No.8771964]

>>8771930

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mZvdGAGlOo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVqbl95Ezv4

[Anonymous No.8771967]

>>8771962
Me thinks the problem is with you, not with Bach.

[Anonymous No.8771971]

>>8771897
>the V-I cadence
Perfect.

Bach's project itself shouldn't lend itself at all to that kind of analysis (the harmonies are almost incidental to the progression of different melodies/themes), it's something he sort of lays over the top afterwards. And in that sense you should expect vii0's and such, but they don't appear all that much. The V7's are also often passing notes.

[Anonymous No.8771976]

>>8771939
Mass in B, Matthews Passion, are absolute masterworks, that the writers of many soulful and uplifting chorales would likely prefer to have composed just one of those, rather than all of their works

[Anonymous No.8771980]

>>8771953
Beating isn't "sum and difference tones", it's the apparent change in volume when two dissonant tones are played together. You get that WUBWUBWUBWUB noise. Sum and difference tones are other tones you hear from a harmony that aren't really there.

I can school you all day, but this is real basic shit and I assume if you didn't learn from google you're not going to learn from me. Just spend some time learning it instead of posturing.

[Anonymous No.8771984]

>>8771961

Congratulations kohai, you have just learned that no one can name a favorite Bach chorale off the top of their head, because they are hard and academic little things. Now your choir may have found a way to put some blood into one and interpret it in a beautiful way. A talented musician can atone for a lot of compositional sins. Bach chorales are not inferior compositions. But they are pedagogical. They are not designed nor intended to speak to or from the heart. They are like completed sudoku or crossword puzzles: everything fits. If you can find beauty in them, more power to you. But the vast majority of people can't. Now this is a purely personal opinion: they are building blocks that you are supposed to take and to build into real music. They are "recipe ideas." Now you use that idea for all you can get from it.

[Anonymous No.8771988]

>>8771943
They're considerably more technical.

[Anonymous No.8771989]

>>8771971
>Bach's project itself shouldn't lend itself at all to that kind of analysis
While this is a position musicologists seem to take these days, I do not agree that you cannot make a harmonic analysis of Bach works. A lot of his writing is meant to be interpretated polyphonically, I agree on that, but sometimes he explicitly makes a harmonic gesture, for example when he out of nothing writes 3-4 more voices during the final cadence at the end of a fugue. That for me would be an obvious harmonic gesture, not a polyphonic one.

[Anonymous No.8771990]

>>8771967

You think I'm defective because I am unable to ignore Bach? By the way, the word is "methinks."

[Anonymous No.8771992]

>>8771984
>Now your choir may have found a way to put some blood into one and interpret it in a beautiful way.
Stopped reading after this.

[Anonymous No.8771993]

>>8771964
Good lord

Classical Guitar is Violin tier when done right

[Anonymous No.8771999]

>>8771990
No, because you cannot see the forest for the trees.

[Anonymous No.8772002]

>>8771976

Those aren't chorales, Hank. Mass in B is for a chorus plus orchestra; Matthews Passion is for a double choir and double orchestra. Go back to Wikipedia and try again.

[Anonymous No.8772007]

>>8771993
It's a top-tier instrument when there's worthwhile repertoire being played. More harmonic and polyphonic possibilities than bowed instruments while also having way more timbre options than a piano. A shame it's still so unknown to the large public.

[Anonymous No.8772010]

>>8772002
Wait, so is Bach sterile and boring to you or are just his chorales sterile and boring to you?

[Anonymous No.8772020]

>>8771980

Oh Christ, do I have to Google this shit for you? BEATING IS A DIFFERENCE TONE. https en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_(acoustics)#Mathematics_and_physics_of_beat_tones

[Anonymous No.8772024]

>>8771989
>I do not agree that you cannot make a harmonic analysis of Bach works.
It's not particularly, that's part of why we're talking in terms of ii-V-I cadences. This isn't how Bach has passed down his rules, it's what people who've come along later have worked out. In the case of the harmonic progressions, no that is very much still used in music education with Bach, but it doesn't work so well outside of a handful of works like the chorales. Us even talking about cadences is a testament to how common harmonic analysis is, but it's easier to learn than voice leading or similar apporaches so w/e.

[Anonymous No.8772038]

>>8772020
A difference in tone is not itself a sum or difference tone...

[Anonymous No.8772044]

>>8772024
Not sure what you're getting at mate, Bach never passed down "his rules" but I would bet all I own on it not differing much from what we now consider musical theory.
Harmonic analysis is just a way of looking at music and the fact that people continue to view Bach through that lens only attests that it is a method that works. I'd even say it works for the majority of his works, perhaps not to explain every little note, but you can get the broad gestures perfectly fine by doing that.

[Anonymous No.8772047]

>>8771951
?

[Anonymous No.8772057]

>>8772044
>Harmonic analysis is just a way of looking at music and the fact that people continue to view Bach through that lens only attests that it is a method that works.
It's pedagogically useful. Like harmonic analysis is high school, something like voice leading would be done at university. Schenker goes on about it, but the harmonic analysis we do now is p much all this 18th C French dude I forget the name of.

Music theory of Bach's works goes way way beyond anything we're talking about too. There is no way to do a close analysis of his Fugue works with harmonic analysis either. Even just a general overview too really. It is useful for looking at what some general trends have been over time, like Bach to Beethoven/Mozart to Chopin, and seeing them gradually being freer in their use of harmonies.

[Anonymous No.8772061]

>>8771894
>don't think anyone would ever listen to the Goldberg variations if it weren't for Glenn Gould

Wrong. I hate Glenn Gould's versions because of this. Prefer the harpsichord anyway.

[Anonymous No.8772064]

>>8772010

As I said, I feel that his chorales are not terribly inspiring things, though they are clearly pedagogically useful. On the other hand, I'm listening to his Christmas Oratorio at the moment, and that fucking thing always gives me chills. I'm very partial to Bach and I have WTC on my keyboard, sometimes I try to sight read him to wake up. But I don't think all of Bach's music is equally inspiring. Take for example his Inventions. He wrote these, clearly and specifically, to learn to play in a "cantabile" style. They are clearly pedagogical. Bach was a teacher and wrote many pieces to teach keyboard technique. That does not detract from the vast power of his orchestral works. But I can tell the difference between "Bach's a genius, everything he wrote is genius" poseurs and the people who have actually worked on his repertory and found that there are some clunkers and other purely academic pieces in there.

[Anonymous No.8772086]

>>8772038

Dude, you are actually making my head hurt with your lack of information. A DIFFERENCE IN TONE IS A DIFFERENCE TONE. If you are trying to troll me with your absolute lack of practical knowledge on psychoacoustics, you have succeeded.

[Anonymous No.8772090]

>>8772061

Yeah, me too, but whenever I admit that in mixed company people look at me like I'm a freak.

[Anonymous No.8772092]

>>8772086
>A DIFFERENCE IN TONE IS A DIFFERENCE TONE.
No it isn't. Beating also isn't psychoacoustics, it's a physical phenomena.

[Anonymous No.8772097]

>>8772057
>but the harmonic analysis we do now is p much all this 18th C French dude I forget the name of.
Rameau?
I think we agree though. And in the end I think no analysis can truly capture what makes an artwork truly great. It just offers us ways to look at it.

[Anonymous No.8772098]

>>8771616
>the dialectic of music

This is like a unicorn. Dialectic progress is one of those ideas that sound good, but are nonsense.

[Anonymous No.8772102]

>>8772090
I wish I still had a bunch of pictures with one person looking impressed but everyone else looking disgusted.

Bach is often played in a very sterile way and Glenn Gould gets around that, but the humming is annoying. I don't find it noticeable all the time tho so I can deal.

[Anonymous No.8772104]

>>8772090
I know what you mean, but idc. Some people are blind, no sense in talking about what you see.

[Anonymous No.8772106]

>>8772098

Philosophy major detected

[Anonymous No.8772108]

>>8772106
Biology phd, but nice try.

[Anonymous No.8772113]

>>8772104

I feel like the random musical village idiot.. everyone is like "Glenn Gould is a musical genius, he understands the music better than we ever can" and I'm like "STFU rainman, I want to hear the piece and not you".

[Anonymous No.8772122]

>>8772097
>And in the end I think no analysis can truly capture what makes an artwork truly great. It just offers us ways to look at it
This is true. Rameau sounds about right, I've not looked at this stuff in years and years tho. All I was getting at is he did seem to avoid tritones, and he didn't really have to. I think where people get lost is this 666 stuff, but there's a host of other reasons why a tritone would have been viewed as bad, and that in turn would have been a part of why people wanted to get rid of them in music or didn't like dissonance on principle and so on.

Apart from that I think we're all reasonable here so yeah.

>>8772098
There's so much skill, talent and personality as well as context involved in writing music, and these have such a large impact on trends and such that a dialectic falls apart. You can talk about a handful of broad tendencies I guess, like romanticism leading into serialism and into minimalism and so on.

[Anonymous No.8772124]

>>8772113
Aside from the humming, I don't even feel he captures the piece at all. Too much projection, too much of Glenn fucking Gould.

This is one of my favorites:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4jWO0B3CpI

[Anonymous No.8772126]

>>8771618
>not yet realizing Icke's influence on the meta-culture

If I wanted discussion that was so out of tune with what's really going on the in world of memes today, I'd have gone to Reddit.

[Anonymous No.8772129]

>>8772122
>You can talk about a handful of broad tendencies I guess, like romanticism leading into serialism and into minimalism and so on.

I agree. What you descibe here is history, not dialetic.

[Anonymous No.8772140]

>>8771144

Materialism has ruined the West period.

[Anonymous No.8772158]

>>8772108
Fucking kek, you have no idea what you're talking about.

[Anonymous No.8772164]

>>8771984
>the vast majority of people can't
[citation needed], both for the statement and the implicit statement that there is other music for which this is false

[Anonymous No.8772167]

>>8772158
>kek

kys.

[Anonymous No.8772169]

>>8772061
>Prefer the harpsichord
M A D M A N

[Anonymous No.8772180]

How about George Steiner's notion that the tempi of popular music are reflective of the level of revolutionary spirit in contemporary society?

[Anonymous No.8772188]

>>8771512
Good thing I can liberate my soul by listening to Death Grips :^)

[Anonymous No.8772191]

>>8772180
I'm not a music scholar but making statements that could possible be empirically falsified sounds like a rookie mistake.

[Anonymous No.8772342]

>>8772124

That's nice, ty anon.

[Anonymous No.8772348]

>>8772164

Use your common sense. How many Bach pieces can you hum? One or two or three? Fine. Now how many Beethoven pieces, or Mozart pieces, or fucking Beatles pieces for that matter? Bach's strong point was never melody. Average Joes know and remember melody.

[Anonymous No.8772363]

>>8772180

How about the notion that Steiner is merely a pretentious poetry professor with no musical training whatsoever?

[Anonymous No.8772488]

>>8772348
glenn gould hummed them all, not that I think it's a good criterion

[Anonymous No.8772502]

>>8772098
di·a·lec·tic
ˌdīəˈlektik/
noun
the art of investigating or discussing the truth of opinions

i.e. Bach was a great contributor to the dialectical evolution of music

[Anonymous No.8772759]

>>8772113
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkhwK5YEksI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giilozdaWG0


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtVFbmi9meQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzI5eSA-Eck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jh8q6CfhjtI

Just some out of many of my favorite gould

[Anonymous No.8772766]

>>8771144
yadayadayada read Spengler

[Anonymous No.8772774]

>>8771558

>>8771549 btfo

[Anonymous No.8772826]

>>8772759

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVrUaiL2gz8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB76jxBq_gQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpcgNrzMIH4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv94m_S3QDo

[Anonymous No.8772880]

>>8772766
Where the hell does Spengler talk about Bach?

[Anonymous No.8772896]

>>8771144
Capitalism does a fair amount of shit to music, but the really good artists still pop up every once in a while.

>Bach
You're never going to need to hear another Bach. That's what Bach is for.
Ever hear Moondog?

[Anonymous No.8772903]

>>8771264
It could also have peaked his interest in that he'll never be more interested in this subject than he was immediately after reading that post.

[Anonymous No.8772924]

>>8772113
Gould was /lit/ af. Incidentally this clip is kind of related to OP's question.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crQ8YEUkUjg

[Anonymous No.8772957]

>>8772348
I authentically find Bach to have a stronger "pop-melody" appeal than Mozart and most of Beethoven. I don't like Mozart at all, and I only really like late, deaf Beethoven.

[Anonymous No.8772964]

>>8772348

And just to prove the point with a counterexample, here is Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwWL8Y-qsJg

[Anonymous No.8772968]

>>8772502

[Anonymous No.8772981]

>Materialism and Bach's music

Like saying a line is as long as a rock is heavy. Real stupid.

This is why nobody takes liberal arts seriously anymore.

[Anonymous No.8773014]

>>8772981
This post is why nobody takes /pol/ seriously when it comes to the arts

[Anonymous No.8773015]

>tfw the argument makes sense and you look below at all the STEMfags

Now please get off my board

[Anonymous No.8773118]

>>8771794
>tl:dr; anyone comparing the equal tempered scale to materialism or quantum physics or fuzzy logic is just jerking off and doesn't really understand the equal tempered scale.

nice stemwanking but thats not at all the argument zizek is making. go back to your excel sheets.

[Anonymous No.8773128]

>>all these illiterates trying to interpret a philosophical argument without being able to distinguish the materialism to which a marxist philosopher refers

anyone thinking it has to do with "the science" of music theory is retarded.

[Anonymous No.8773186]

>>8773128
Then what does it have to with then wise guy? Please enlighten us

[Anonymous No.8773481]

>>8773128
>>8773186

The standard of music now requires a +$5,000 instrument, and music cannot be appreciated or enjoyed now unless it is created by the boorgwaa-z

[Anonymous No.8773527]

>>8772140

[Anonymous No.8773561]

>>8772924

>this music...had absolutely no effect on either the musicians or the public of his own day

It barely has any effect on people today outside Academic astroturfing.

[Anonymous No.8773645]

How is Zizek so fucking bad?

[Anonymous No.8773822]

>>8773645
Because he's just so right.

[Anonymous No.8773926]

>>8773561
Well it was produced in the 50s or 60s when the concert-going audience was larger.

He also means Bach's music was neither popular nor influential during his lifetime, but other composers were ( Bach's sons WF, CPE and JC for instance). Now no composers affect the public.

[Anonymous No.8774557]

>>8773481
>the standard of music now requires it sounding good

[Anonymous No.8775520]

>>8773118

All right, I've taken the trouble to listen to Zizek lisping and sneering and cackling his way through a narcissistic, self-interested, and entirely information-free analysis of a handful of classical composers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOekX_Z9Qug

Bottom line: your hero is basically jumping as fast as he can through as many topics as he can, failing to logically connect them, and claiming knowledge about things he clearly knows nothing about ("the struggle for melody") ("Bach and his materialism") and then attempting to connect multiple composers with entirely disparate styles with Hegel's conception of work and capitalism. And everyone in the audience is supposed to ooh and aah and say wow, Zizek is capable of jumping from topic to topic and we're certainly all too stupid to understand the genius of his incoherent logical connections.

Well, you're right about one thing. I'm STEM all right. And one of the pleasant features of STEM training, unlike your soft-skills training that must give equal time to ideas now matter how logically retarded they are, is that we are permitted to claim that a pile of narcissistic horseshit is, prima facie, a pile of narcissistic horsehit. Of course, you are free to continue your clove-cigarette smoking argument that You Plebes Are Too Dumb To Comprehend The Brilliance of the Modern Incomprehensible Philosopher. Truth is, the only reason you give the guy ear time is because listening to him gives you (in your own beta mind) a kind of intellectual superiority of the obscure, much the way that people who listen to The Replacements or Dinosaur Jr disdain Katy Perry. My philosopher is superior not because he is correct; he is superior because he is Mine.

Enjoy living in an apartment for the rest of your life.

[Anonymous No.8775821]

>>8775520
How much philosophy have you read? Name all the authors if you can please

[Anonymous No.8775832]

>>8775520
Nice bait.

[Anonymous No.8775847]

>>8775520
>Bottom line: your hero is basically jumping as fast as he can through as many topics as he can, failing to logically connect them, and claiming knowledge about things he clearly knows nothing about ("the struggle for melody") ("Bach and his materialism") and then attempting to connect multiple composers with entirely disparate styles with Hegel's conception of work and capitalism. And everyone in the audience is supposed to ooh and aah and say wow, Zizek is capable of jumping from topic to topic and we're certainly all too stupid to understand the genius of his incoherent logical connections.

this is why i never bother with zizek anymore...i saw him doing some dumb routine like that with buddhism and marxism or something and it was just a bunch of disjointed shallow witticisms, i'm like this dude is for pseuds, fuck zizek

[Anonymous No.8775901]

>>8775847
>disregards a genius because of a public presentation and not his books.

Are you sure you belong to /lit/ and not /tv/?

[Anonymous No.8776041]

>>8775520
>failing to logically connect them
for you

[Anonymous No.8776053]

>>8775520
> I'm STEM all right. And one of the pleasant features of STEM training, unlike your soft-skills training that must give equal time to ideas now matter how logically retarded they are
I hope you're not a software engineer because that field is so non rigorous it's not even funny.

[Anonymous No.8776067]

Remember.

[Anonymous No.8776105]

>>8772348
>Use your common sense. How many Bach pieces can you hum?

Get your act together
Bach's melodies are all so engraved into western conciousness that many of your average Joes surely know a bunch of Bach's melodies once they are told that the melodies are Bach's
Some examples that everyone on the street recognizes
>Badinerie
>Air in G
>Toccata in D minor
>Jesu, Joy of Mans Desire
>Cello suite in G major
>Practically every note of the entire well-tempered clavier

[Anonymous No.8777115]

>>8776105
You don't know Bach's music, and Wikipedia will not teach them to you in the time it took you to write this intelligent-sounding but practically vapid response. WTC, book 2, fugue theme in F minor. Sing that memorable little ditty for me. What? You can't? Why not? Because one, you haven't actually studied Bach, and two, the F minor theme sounds like a fucking computer modem, that's why.

[Anonymous No.8777178]

>>8777115
recognize, not could sing

[Anonymous No.8777210]

>>8777115
>>I'm well into music
>>an F minor fugue "sounds like a fucking computer modem"
>on a separate note, it objectively just doesn't even sound like a computer modem at all
yup you're from reddit all right