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Comment by AnimalMuppet | Hacker News Reader

Yeah. They've got their very sophisticated musical theory that's tied to their very sophisticated philosophy, and it produces music that is absolute garbage.

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So you've heard Hindemith, Ligeti, Messiaen, and Xenakis? And all the other composers on this list?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donaueschingen_Festival#List_o...

So it's all garbage right? Metal is noise too I suppose, and Charles Mingus should have just played lounge music eh?

I'm not sure exactly what theories they're referring to here, but if you listen to an avant-garde musician like Stockhausen, you can still hear incredibly beautiful melodies and progressions and rhythms. They're just very different from the norm.

These melodies, progressions and rythms you hear are not there, especially with stockhausen, as he made that absence his main point. It's the same if you talk about seeing structures in old terrestrial tv noise patterns.

Even if the only person who can predict the melodies, progressions, and rhythm is the composer, doesn't that inherently make the composition less random than completely unpredictable and truly random TV noise?

In historical serial music there is certainly a leftover of human interaction with the compositional rule system, so in practice it resembles more to a chaotic attractor than complete noise, i agree. The core conceptual idea of serial music is however the inevitable disembodyment of historic human music into pure structural sound patterns beyond history and beyond (historic) emotions.

Even if they're purely structural, how does that make them non-rhythmic or non-melodic?

That seems very wrong just on the face of it. Stockhausen has written numerous papers about his theories of rhythm. And if you listen to his music there is undoubtedly a sense of rhythm, just not any conventional ones. There are also definitely melodies.

Serialism does not mean non-melodic. Procedural creation of music does not mean the melodies and rhythms "don't exist". If anything, they're more there than they are in traditional music.

   If anything, they're more there than 
   they are in traditional music.

Exactly. What makes modern classical music so disturbing to those socialised on pop music is the absence of endless repetition that is the true essence of pop.

   It's the same if you talk about seeing 
   structures in old terrestrial tv noise 
   patterns.

Noise has plenty of patterns and structure, but it doesn't get repeated. Similar with modern classical music.

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