By Sopranos I mean Tony and Carmella and the rest of the crew in North Jersey.
I wonder if so many people disliked the Sopranos series finale for the same reasons they dislike Schoenberg/like Respighi (I'm not suggesting that the two are mutually exclusive--Schoenberg and Respighi).
Taking Pines of Rome (because it's still stuck in my head) as an example, despite the occasionally vagaries of the middle movements in particular, the piece closes with a tremendously noisy authentic cadence in B-flat major. The entire movement has been a long, dramatic crescendo over a pedal tone (for the most part). We continue to add instruments over the course of the movement and by the end, we have pipe organ and antiphonal brass blaring at us from all directions. What could be more final?
Most of Schoenberg's music is not so clear-cut. Cadences are difficult to locate; in many cases the traditional build-up to the finale is missing or obscured; and the absence of functional tonality obscures our path. Says Norman Lebrecht:
"In a new century, Schoenberg takes his place beside Picasso and Joyce as a creator who altered the perception of art from innocent pleasure to an amalgam of celestial vision and cerebral struggle. In our age of vapid simplicity and dysfunctional irony, the music of Arnold Schoenberg becomes a refuge for the thinking listener, a place of principle and courage, of crossword-level complexity and, when you crack the code, of the deepest sensual satisfaction."*
What could be more confusing? Isn't art about pleasure? Why should it make us think?**
We don't need to think too much about the Respighi. We know it's over. We know how to respond.*** With Schoenberg, it's not immediately clear. We need to put our brains into gear and interpret. To piggyback onto Dave Munger's discussion, what is the role of interpretation in defining art? Must it be something we interpret? Or can we appreciate its beauty/function/form instantaneously--without research, without thinking too hard?
*The entire article is available here: http://www.scena.org/columns/lebrecht/010708-NL-Schoenberg.html
**via Scott Speigelberg at Musical perceptions
***Click here to read an interesting post about responding to the gloomy finale of Tchaikovsky's sixth symphony.
I wonder if so many people disliked the Sopranos series finale for the same reasons they dislike Schoenberg/like Respighi (I'm not suggesting that the two are mutually exclusive--Schoenberg and Respighi).
Taking Pines of Rome (because it's still stuck in my head) as an example, despite the occasionally vagaries of the middle movements in particular, the piece closes with a tremendously noisy authentic cadence in B-flat major. The entire movement has been a long, dramatic crescendo over a pedal tone (for the most part). We continue to add instruments over the course of the movement and by the end, we have pipe organ and antiphonal brass blaring at us from all directions. What could be more final?
Most of Schoenberg's music is not so clear-cut. Cadences are difficult to locate; in many cases the traditional build-up to the finale is missing or obscured; and the absence of functional tonality obscures our path. Says Norman Lebrecht:
"In a new century, Schoenberg takes his place beside Picasso and Joyce as a creator who altered the perception of art from innocent pleasure to an amalgam of celestial vision and cerebral struggle. In our age of vapid simplicity and dysfunctional irony, the music of Arnold Schoenberg becomes a refuge for the thinking listener, a place of principle and courage, of crossword-level complexity and, when you crack the code, of the deepest sensual satisfaction."*
What could be more confusing? Isn't art about pleasure? Why should it make us think?**
We don't need to think too much about the Respighi. We know it's over. We know how to respond.*** With Schoenberg, it's not immediately clear. We need to put our brains into gear and interpret. To piggyback onto Dave Munger's discussion, what is the role of interpretation in defining art? Must it be something we interpret? Or can we appreciate its beauty/function/form instantaneously--without research, without thinking too hard?
*The entire article is available here: http://www.scena.org/columns/lebrecht/010708-NL-Schoenberg.html
**via Scott Speigelberg at Musical perceptions
***Click here to read an interesting post about responding to the gloomy finale of Tchaikovsky's sixth symphony.