What do you think?
Rate this book
Classical Music, Why Bother?
The famous quip I don't know much about art, but I know what I like sums up many people's ideas about how to judge a work of art; but there are inherent limitations if we rely on immediate impressions in judging what should be enduring products of our culture. While some might criticize this as a return to elitism, Joshua Fineberg argues that without some way of determining intrinsic value, there can be no movement forward for creators or their audience. He draws on contemporary thought about Design space and Universal Grammar to show how intrinsic values can be rediscovered. He then looks at the importance of multimedia in allowing multiple points of entry for the discovering of new works, finally showing how the composer can Design music for human beings--creating a kind of art that can preserve the research agenda of conceptual work without renouncing the understanding of human listeners and performers embodied by craft. Classical Why Bother? will intrigue all listeners of contemporary music, students of musical thought, and composers-but it will also interest students of contemporary aesthetics. It answers the age-old question How can we bring a new audience to contemporary art? - and challenges both the creators and their audience to broaden their ideas about what is valuable and lasting in today's culture.
- GenresMusic
180 pages, Paperback
First published June 16, 2006
2 people are currently reading
58 people want to read
About the author
Joshua Fineberg
13 books1 followerJoshua Fineberg is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University and Associate Director of the Harvard University Studio for Electroacoustic Composition. He is a well-known composer whose works have been performed around the world.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 2, 2018
Does art have any worth? Is art useful? Why care for classical music at all and its support when I can't appreciate it? Do people determine whether something is good and naturally go to it? Or do we rely on others? How has market logic affected our understanding of art? Must art have some deep political message, be socially conscious or provoke a reaction in order to be good, or important? Does technological advancement help the production of art, whether by implementations or interactivity?
These questions are tackled in the first five chapters or so on and then the author moves on to some parallels between language and music, and how to distinguish features essential to certain kinds of sounds, what it means to have a trained ear, etc. These chapters get a bit more specific but yet, this remains a throughoutly accessible and enjoyable book.
These questions are tackled in the first five chapters or so on and then the author moves on to some parallels between language and music, and how to distinguish features essential to certain kinds of sounds, what it means to have a trained ear, etc. These chapters get a bit more specific but yet, this remains a throughoutly accessible and enjoyable book.
September 27, 2013
Joshua Fineberg is an American composer who finished his studies in the late 1980s and came face to face with a lack of support for new music in his country. Concerts are expensive to put on and there’s little money around to do so, the repertoire at local symphony concerts is limited to the same old warhorses, and the general public is unaware that classical music continues to be written. Classical Music, Why Bother? is his dire assessment of this landscape and falls roughly into two halves. The first consists of a brief argument for the need to publicly fund contemporary music, no matter how perennially unpopular it might be. The second half is an introduction to one compositional approach, spectralism, that he believes offers good results and has a better chance of reaching the public than other styles.
Fineberg’s argument for the need to publicly fund classical music is often based on the idea that this kind of music is objectively superior to whatever the masses are listening to. Rock music only finds value when it aims to adopt something already explored by classical composers. He writes, “When high school students start broadening their record collections and searching for more adventurous artists they haven’t done before, they do so because they believe that great things are to be found out there, things with real value.” I strongly disagree: people expand their listening because they find music that resonates strongly with them personally, but which may not be worthwhile at all for other people. Younger generations of classical music fans are less likely to hold up classical music as a greater genre than other music they listen to, and they may even be turned off by rhetoric to that effect.
Sometimes Fineberg tones down this claim that classical music is objectively superior by making another kind of argument: it is simply good for the public to have access to a wide range of arts, and classical music is one scene among many that can be supported. However, he undermines this softer argument by his own intolerance of certain other art: at one point he makes a scathing attack on conceptual art. Hey buddy, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the modernist visual arts and performance art are doing pretty well and arguably have a larger following than contemporary classical music, so way to alienate an audience that might have been sympathetic to one’s quest for securing greater support for the arts.
Fineberg also shows an intolerance for other forms of musical modernism than the spectralism he has chosen, which again undermines the argument for the need to ensure a diversity of arts. He claims that serialism or new complexity fail to attract any listeners, news to me who loves this of kind music and knows quite a few others who do. He goes on to write, “Music cannot be an affair for the learned specialist; it must be at least potentially accessible to any human being ready to invest the requisite time and effort.” Well, why cannot some music appeal to some subgroup of people with an intellectual bent, if there are so many different kinds of art and each has its own niche? Besides, for so many fans of serialism the appeal of this music cames first and an understanding of what makes it ticks ("learned specializing") only later.
In the second half of the book, Fineberg presents the spectralist approach to writing music and why he feels it is so full of promise. I dig spectralism as well, and find this part of the book admirable in bringing it to the attention of the general public, though some may find it jarring coming after a first half on very general issues of aesthetics and public policy. Suddenly the reader is confronted with detailed descriptions of venerable spectralist pieces like Scelsi’s Anahit and Murail’s Gondwana. Though I find this kind of music very rich and moving, I don’t agree with Fineberg’s belief that this music is inevitably going to strike home with the public and win over a conservative audience to contemporary classical music: the "blue-haired old ladies" that hold great sway with local orchestras in the US are just as likely to protest at a spectralist work as a mid-century twelve-tone one.
A few years after the public of Classical Music, Why Bother?, Fineberg’s desperation that interest in contemporary classical music has dwindled to nothing seems unnecessary. A look at Youtube (or torrent seeders) is enough to show there is a decent-sized audience out there for even the most abstract modernism repertoire, it’s just that these young people are unlikely to attend concerts or pay for their recordings and new economic models are necessary to capitalize on that interest. Public funding must still be hard fought for, especially in Fineberg’s native land, but that ought to be done without alienating other artists, one’s natural allies. So much of Classical Music, Why Bother? is is misguided and counterproductive.
Fineberg’s argument for the need to publicly fund classical music is often based on the idea that this kind of music is objectively superior to whatever the masses are listening to. Rock music only finds value when it aims to adopt something already explored by classical composers. He writes, “When high school students start broadening their record collections and searching for more adventurous artists they haven’t done before, they do so because they believe that great things are to be found out there, things with real value.” I strongly disagree: people expand their listening because they find music that resonates strongly with them personally, but which may not be worthwhile at all for other people. Younger generations of classical music fans are less likely to hold up classical music as a greater genre than other music they listen to, and they may even be turned off by rhetoric to that effect.
Sometimes Fineberg tones down this claim that classical music is objectively superior by making another kind of argument: it is simply good for the public to have access to a wide range of arts, and classical music is one scene among many that can be supported. However, he undermines this softer argument by his own intolerance of certain other art: at one point he makes a scathing attack on conceptual art. Hey buddy, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the modernist visual arts and performance art are doing pretty well and arguably have a larger following than contemporary classical music, so way to alienate an audience that might have been sympathetic to one’s quest for securing greater support for the arts.
Fineberg also shows an intolerance for other forms of musical modernism than the spectralism he has chosen, which again undermines the argument for the need to ensure a diversity of arts. He claims that serialism or new complexity fail to attract any listeners, news to me who loves this of kind music and knows quite a few others who do. He goes on to write, “Music cannot be an affair for the learned specialist; it must be at least potentially accessible to any human being ready to invest the requisite time and effort.” Well, why cannot some music appeal to some subgroup of people with an intellectual bent, if there are so many different kinds of art and each has its own niche? Besides, for so many fans of serialism the appeal of this music cames first and an understanding of what makes it ticks ("learned specializing") only later.
In the second half of the book, Fineberg presents the spectralist approach to writing music and why he feels it is so full of promise. I dig spectralism as well, and find this part of the book admirable in bringing it to the attention of the general public, though some may find it jarring coming after a first half on very general issues of aesthetics and public policy. Suddenly the reader is confronted with detailed descriptions of venerable spectralist pieces like Scelsi’s Anahit and Murail’s Gondwana. Though I find this kind of music very rich and moving, I don’t agree with Fineberg’s belief that this music is inevitably going to strike home with the public and win over a conservative audience to contemporary classical music: the "blue-haired old ladies" that hold great sway with local orchestras in the US are just as likely to protest at a spectralist work as a mid-century twelve-tone one.
A few years after the public of Classical Music, Why Bother?, Fineberg’s desperation that interest in contemporary classical music has dwindled to nothing seems unnecessary. A look at Youtube (or torrent seeders) is enough to show there is a decent-sized audience out there for even the most abstract modernism repertoire, it’s just that these young people are unlikely to attend concerts or pay for their recordings and new economic models are necessary to capitalize on that interest. Public funding must still be hard fought for, especially in Fineberg’s native land, but that ought to be done without alienating other artists, one’s natural allies. So much of Classical Music, Why Bother? is is misguided and counterproductive.
October 17, 2011
The first few chapters in which the author spells out his thoughts on why we might be where were at left me wanting something with more teeth. I felt like he was being too timid. However, the last few chapters in which he offered concrete observations and specific ideas were well argued, incite-full, and inspiring. On the basis of the last three chapters alone I was motivated to engage some of the artists he wrote about, and realized how much I have yet to explore musically; As well as being forced to confront the real possibility being stuck listening to the "safe" top 40 playlists of contemporary marketing and programming. I recommend this book for anyone who finds the thought of listening to "Lady Gaga" all day long atrocious!
December 20, 2013
Excellent exposition of problems and perils facing non-commercially viable music of today. Fineberg writes both of sociological issues as well as aesthetics. Ideal for the general reader.
August 23, 2011
I enjoyed the clarity of this book and agree with the ideas therein. Maybe just a touch too much championing of his own chosen compositional camp, but I can forgive that.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews