Richard Strauss Recordings

Going in the desert and return with some new truth sounds very biblical, doesn’t it? Likewise in music such new ’truth’ can easily turn into new dogma and serialism certainly was a very strict and even dogmatic system. It became a sort of smokescreen for a whole generation of mediocre composers to hide behind. As long as you rotated your notes with the required serial pedigree you were accepted by academia as a worthy disciple, no matter how boring or ugly your music would sound. Anyone not committing to these lazy dogma’s was not taken seriously and ’cancelled’ as we would probably call it today. Thankfully strictly serial composers are mostly forgotten, while those who resisted the peer pressure and stubbornly developped their own musical language (while even adopting serial devices) are now the ones acknowledged as the true ’originals’.

Adorno put Schoenberg and Stravinsky against each other in an essay on modern music. In his dogmatic view Schoenberg represented the absolute musical truth, while Stravinsky was accused of going commercial by adopting neo classicism. After the powerful ’earthliness’ of Rite of Spring, etc. this stylistic change was felt as a betrayal. In his mind Stravinsky copped out and adopted the ’wrong’ conciousness. I’m not sure if Adorno ever wasted any words on Strauss, but if he had he would probably have condemned him for not having a conscience at all.

There are  ONLY VERY FEW Strauss recordings by Celibidache, notably with the Munich Philharmonic and Radio Stuttgart. They are well,worth searching for. Especially Munich has an obvious connectivity.

Adorno so intelligent it was, as Ansermet was at the opposite end,  a very learned and intelligent man and even if i do not partake his catechism about tonality, a way more deeper thinker than Adorno ( i read his mammoth book) They have their clear agendas each one of them ...

And reality had not  wait for our agendas... And as i said FREEDOM come right at the same moment through Jazz first or composers as different as Charles Ives or Scriabin for example  who cannot be put against Schoenberg as mere  neo-classicism reaction .. Then came into the fore right after Jazz , all worlds music "classical" traditions...As in iranian/persian music and Indian classical music among all others.. The first mentor and friend of Philip Glass creating minimalism with other composers , studied american Indian drumming for example...

Adorno was very european centric , and did not understand what is coming in his times , which was FREEDOM , but not in dogmatic atonal dogma AGAINST tonality , ( after all any two  foes ressemble each other  way more than suggested by their apparent opposition, Atonality is only the reverse of tonality, two faces of the same coin)...  Adorno did not understood Jazz as music phenomenon and his analysis is not even wrong but being socially focused beside the musical essential meaningful emerging point... « Adorno’s essay “On Jazz” of 1936 sees jazz as a commodity in the culture industry and as merely a perverted form of symbolic revolt against social injustice.»

And my Biblical metaphor about exile in the desert is spot on, i take it inspired by Ansermet who despise Schoenberg atonality...But unlike Ansermet catechism it was not a return to tonality dogma which came after the war but because of new technologies the world "classical" musics from all world corners... The occidental domination centered in European christian values were already contested by musical traditions which appear as revelations for many of us...Personnally i admired mid eastern music and Iranian and Indian classicals especially... But even didgeridoo australian music can taught us something...

Sound is music by the power of the human brain/body/consciousness... But music in the larger possible meaning of the world , out of humanity, is at the core of mathemathics and then of the cosmos...Music is more than human leisure in esthetic or dogmatic truth... Music is medecine and cosmology and number theory...The greatest thinker in music right now is the creator of non commutative geometry : Alain Connes ...This is one of the deepest lecture in Science i ever heard.., it must be listened to many times.. But it is stunning..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z52ZAPrRbqE&t=487s

Going in the desert and return with some new truth sounds very biblical, doesn’t it? Likewise in music such new ’truth’ can easily turn into new dogma and serialism certainly was a very strict and even dogmatic system. It became a sort of smokescreen for a whole generation of mediocre composers to hide behind. As long as you rotated your notes with the required serial pedigree you were accepted by academia as a worthy disciple, no matter how boring or ugly your music would sound. Anyone not committing to these lazy dogma’s was not taken seriously and ’cancelled’ as we would probably call it today. Thankfully strictly serial composers are mostly forgotten, while those who resisted the peer pressure and stubbornly developped their own musical language (while even adopting serial devices) are now the ones acknowledged as the true ’originals’.

Adorno put Schoenberg and Stravinsky against each other in an essay on modern music. In his dogmatic view Schoenberg represented the absolute musical truth, while Stravinsky was accused of going commercial by adopting neo classicism. After the powerful ’earthliness’ of Rite of Spring, etc. this stylistic change was felt as a betrayal. In his mind Stravinsky copped out and adopted the ’wrong’ conciousness. I’m not sure if Adorno ever wasted any words on Strauss, but if he had he would probably have condemned him for not having a conscience at all.

Thanks for the link, I will have a look. The Adorno 'school' of dialectic thinking is as much a relic of the past as the compositional 'school' of serialism. And to be clear about my own position in this 'debate': I can 'appreciate' Schoenberg for his historic role of liberating western music from its diatonic straight jacket, but I rarely listen to his music. From the Viennese School I much prefer Berg en Weberg  But I 'love' Stravinsky's music, regardless of the stylistic period.

As for music's cosmic significance, allow me to quote one of the great iconoclasts of American 20th century music: 'information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not beauty, beauty is not love, love is not music, music is the best'.

Thanks for your interesting post and i like the last sentence a lot...

As for Stravinski, i prefer with the mother of young Stravinski if the anecdote is true Scriabin music .. 😊

Stravinski is the most gifted composer i can think about in the two wars period, i appreciated it for sure but in casual listening...He did not change my life... Scriabin at first listening played by Sofronitsky did in two minutes poem , i realized listening to him that i never understood music in all his depth , as  Bach, Josquin Des Prez or Bruckner did among few others...

For each one of us, life perspective are different... i feel greatly the Promethean impulse to free humanity in Scriabin as i felt it in Beethoven, and stay cold most of the times to the supreme total Stravinski mastery of all aspects of music stylistic... Nobody can claim that Stavinski is not a musical absolute genius to be clear... The part of Stravinski i prefer are his religious works...Because i like choral music too much...

My very best...

Thanks for the link, I will have a look. The Adorno ’school’ of dialectic thinking is as much a relic of the past as the compositional ’school’ of serialism. And to be clear about my own position in this ’debate’: I can ’appreciate’ Schoenberg for his historic role of liberating western music from its diatonic straight jacket, but I rarely listen to his music. From the Viennese School I much prefer Berg en Weberg But I ’love’ Stravinsky’s music, regardless of the stylistic period.

As for music’s cosmic significance, allow me to quote one of the great iconoclasts of American 20th century music: ’information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not beauty, beauty is not love, love is not music, music is the best’.