An observation about "Modern" classical music.

I just happened on this thread during a break from work. Earlier, I had been listening to what might be called modern classical music, staring with Gorecki's Third Symphony (London Sinfonietta). Also on the CDP was Tavener's The Protecting Veil; Arvo Part's Fratres, (Tabula Rasa, Spiegal im Spiegal,ect); Peteris Vasks' Distant Light; and Christo Hatis' Awakening. IMHO, all of these modern classical works are exceeding beautiful, emotional, and reflect the spiritual side of the human condition. They all are tonally complex and have patterns that are unique to modern music. However, I would not be able to "hum" a tune from any of the works mentioned. What I find important is that each piece involves some experimentation with tone and structure.

Other modern music, Schoenberg for example, is intellectually stimulating, but more emotionally upsetting, especially his later works. I can't work or socialize with this type of music in the background. IMHO, atonal modern music, in particular, creates an emotional dissonance in the listener that is often not very pleasant and can be anxiety producing, unlike some of the older works (e.g., Bach, Mozart) or the modern music mentioned in the above paragraph. This might be another explanation for the delay in applause. That is, atonal modern music does not make you feel good, rather it can have the opposite effect. This is understandable, as the impetus for some post-modern music is to express the alienation of modern humans. In this case, applause of an audience has to be forced rather than spontaneous.

Eldartford,

We're in the world of different events and subjects. We're in the world of a different languages.

Music is also a language or sonic form of such. Every tact is a word and every group of such may be a "phrase" or "sentence" not neccessarily sonic exploration or an exersise. There's not only the Blue Danube or Nutcracker, there's an industry, machines, trains etc...

I personally like when I can distinguish "phrases" or "sentences" there; reprising in musical compositions is a big +. For example Phillip Johnston's music to the movie "Unknown" falls onto that category. Despite its being played by 6-piece band I wouldn't categorize it to a jazz since there's too much order rather than an improvisation or blasting solos of every musician.

Start understanding Prokofiev and Shostakovitz first and than try Alf or Gorecki...

Marakanetz... I like "Peter and the Wolf". Maybe that's a start :-) But that piece has lots of melodies that I can hum.

Your comparison of music to language does not advance your point of view. Languages are very structured, with a few irregular verbs, and the like. Speech that lacks structure is not a language. It's called "gibberish".

Eldartford: Not all but 99% of modern classical music is structured. The notes are the same notes as Beethoven, that is C is still C (middle C is 256 hz). The stops are still the same. They use the same time signatures. It is just that they no longer use the diatonic scale strictly. Serialism of Berg and Webern though it sounds atonal is not per se. It uses all twelve notes equally, atonal works do not. Mahler and to some extent Wagner were chromatic, that is they went outside the diatonic system (major and minor scales) quite frequently. Liszt would sometimes use 11 different notes in the first 12 notes of one of his pieces, that surely is very chromatic and not very diatonic. One very interesting piece is Schnittke's Violin Sonata No.2, extremely atonal and extremely dissonant, but unbelievably emotional ( saw Gidon Kremer perform it in Philly two years ago), about 2/3rd's of the way through, the piano accompaniment loudly played the C chord from the C major scale.... it was so indescribly out of place...it seemed atonal!

The problem is that as the composers use the 12 tone scale with no tonal center, the listeners fade completely. In other words, it seems that the composers have moved past what most listeners can follow which wasn't the case during classical and romantic periods. There is structure, but when listening to classical music it helps to anticipate. It's hard to anticipate if you can't follow the music, and the average listener isn't going to become a musicologist just to enjoy the music. Is that what you see?