Classical Music : Here's what Charles Ives' teacher said about Strauss and Debussy in 1909
Re: Here's what Charles Ives' teacher said about Strauss and Debussy in
I would've put that in the Alpensinfonie thread, but I don't think anybody reads what I post there, so here's a new thread, which also nobody will read.
- Interesting that the absolute music vs. program music debate was apparently still a BIG deal, at least in America, in 1909. It seems so alien now.
- Interesting to see how Debussy was perceived as the scary non-tonal composer before Schönberg came along. ("One longs in vain for a tonal point of departure... It may be that our grandchildren will not want tonality in our sense...") And Parker thinks Debussy is antipathetic to "a plain tune"! (I wonder what he thought when Debussy published "The Girl with the Flaxen Hair" and "Le plus que lent" about a year later.)
- There's a part of me that thinks Schönberg started writing atonal music so he'd sound different from Strauss. He accomplished that, I guess, and I probably enjoy Schönberg more than Strauss, but somehow I never feel totally convinced that the student ever actually surpassed the teacher. So maybe they were more right back at the beginning of the 20th century, when the conventional wisdom said Strauss was important enough to be the antipode to Debussy, than today, when he's kind of supposed to be an also-ran.
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- Interesting that the absolute music vs. program music debate was apparently still a BIG deal, at least in America, in 1909. It seems so alien now.
- Interesting to see how Debussy was perceived as the scary non-tonal composer before Schönberg came along. ("One longs in vain for a tonal point of departure... It may be that our grandchildren will not want tonality in our sense...") And Parker thinks Debussy is antipathetic to "a plain tune"! (I wonder what he thought when Debussy published "The Girl with the Flaxen Hair" and "Le plus que lent" about a year later.)
- There's a part of me that thinks Schönberg started writing atonal music so he'd sound different from Strauss. He accomplished that, I guess, and I probably enjoy Schönberg more than Strauss, but somehow I never feel totally convinced that the student ever actually surpassed the teacher. So maybe they were more right back at the beginning of the 20th century, when the conventional wisdom said Strauss was important enough to be the antipode to Debussy, than today, when he's kind of supposed to be an also-ran.
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Re: Here's what Charles Ives' teacher said about Strauss and Debussy in
Oh yeah one more thing:
Notice that from the mid 1890s to the mid 1910s, Debussy and Strauss both write, like, zero chamber music? Debussy's all symphonic and piano and songs with piano, and Strauss is all symphonic and songs with piano that nobody much cares about anyway.
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Notice that from the mid 1890s to the mid 1910s, Debussy and Strauss both write, like, zero chamber music? Debussy's all symphonic and piano and songs with piano, and Strauss is all symphonic and songs with piano that nobody much cares about anyway.
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Re: Here's what Charles Ives' teacher said about Strauss and Debussy in
You get too caught up in being clever for the sake of it, and what comes out is dull. P & M doesn't get too many outings.
stfu about fking avatars already.
stfu about fking avatars already.
Re: Here's what Charles Ives' teacher said about Strauss and Debussy in
I'm so dull you keep having opinions about me..
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Re: Here's what Charles Ives' teacher said about Strauss and Debussy in
You're looking well on it, Claude.
stfu about fking avatars already.
stfu about fking avatars already.
Here's what Charles Ives' teacher said about Strauss and Debussy in 1909
As a bonus, here's what his editor thought in 1913:
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