Modern classical music and the brain
If you want to pick a fight with someone, just pick on their music. :-)
This article from our friends across the pond really hits several nails on the head(s). In it, they highlight why modern atonal compositions are so difficult to fully appreciate, much less enjoy, even for the well-trained; to the general concert-going public, they are a bothersome chore to endure. I’m convinced that feeding audiences a steady diet of “this is good for you, you must take it” has contributed to the steady decline in attendance within orchestra halls everywhere. Rather than expanding the art, we’re strangling it.
A friend of mine who holds season tickets for a major symphony pointed this out to me years ago, and although his assessment was much less scientific, it was just as accurate. In his words, atonal compositions lack “toe tap-ability”. He enjoyed stretching his brain with the “new stuff”, but what kept him coming back was the “masters”, tonal compositions whose performance resulted in the audience humming them as they left after the concert.
Modern movie music composers understand this, and helps to explain the success of movie music performances in concert halls. They nearly always pack the house.
There will always be room for music that presses – or even shatters – boundaries. Yet this may not be the best goal:
“We measured the predictability of tone sequences in music by Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern and found the successive pitches were less predictable than random tone sequences.”
“For listeners, this means that, every time you try to predict what happens next, you fail. The result is an overwhelming feeling of confusion, and the constant failures to anticipate what will happen next means that there is no pleasure from accurate prediction.”
You may want to read the bold portions again and give them some thought. Less predictable than random? It’s sobering.
Lest I be branded a classical music heretic, I have to say I do enjoy some modern pieces, and I can appreciate aspects of nearly all of them…even those I heartily dislike. That said, the linked article goes a long way toward explaining why “classics” – music that has staying power, regardless of genre – become classics: they are approachable to the listener’s (and performer’s) brain. It’s all in the brain waves… ;-)
When it’s all said and done, though, it’s all good…and variety just makes it better. So whatever you play, keep playing!
All the best,
Mark
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2 Comments to “Modern classical music and the brain”
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By ekwas, March 1, 2010 @ 6:32 pm
“the successive pitches were less predictable than random tone sequences.”
Either that’s a misquote or the speaker might be as incautious in their research premises as in their speech and thinking: how can anything be less predictable than random? Randomness is an absolute condition; even computer-generated random number sequences aren’t purely random, only as close to random as mathematicians, and software and hardware engineers can get.
How on earth could one measure data points that were less predictable than random?!
Such an incautious assessment offered for the work of very serious people casts doubt on the work of whomever said it.
By Mark, March 1, 2010 @ 7:31 pm
Excellent points, although I believe I can explain the comment “less predictable than random” fairly quickly.
If you think of it from a statistical perspective, predictability can be measured based upon how many times a succeeding tone can be guessed, or alternately, how close the sample of people studied get to the succeeding pitch. For example, if a C is the upcoming note in a composition, and a high percentage of subjects claim a C is next (or perhaps get within one step above/below), we can say that step was very predictable. Expanded over a section or an entire composition – then compared with the same number of random pitches – it is possible to determine if the composition is more or less predictable than ‘random’.
Your point about true randomness is 100% correct, of course, but the researchers’ work still seems valid to me. Good food for thought, at any rate.
Thanks for posting! Keep the thoughts coming, and keep playing!
All the best,
Mark