Max Roscoe, a self-described ‘aspiring philosopher king” who writes regularly for misogynistic garbage site Return of Kings, doesn’t like feminism. Or contemporary classical music.
So he’s decided to take down both of these allegedly awful things, by suggesting that they’re pretty much the same thing, if you think about it.
Modern culture tells us that short skrillex haircuts, defiling the body with metal shrapnel and inked graffiti, and massive, revolting body fat is “beautiful.” This message is so successful, that today, in the west, it is extremely difficult to find a female below the age of 25 who has not purposefully destroyed her physical beauty in multiple ways.
As this worship of ugliness has marginalized natural beauty, likewise, modern classical music teaches us that dissonant chords, out-of-key incongruous sounds, and loud, harsh noises are pleasant and desirable. Gone are the naturally pleasing chords and intonations which music theory teaches are good.
Damn you feminists with your blue hair and your 12-tone scales!
Also, feminists and modern classical music are both really, really repetitive.
Much as feminists do little more than repeat meaningless phrases like “Rapists cause rape” and “Still not asking for it” … instead of having a thoughtful discussion, modern classical music replaces creativity and musical complexity with repetition.
Roscoe reports with horror that he was FORCED to listen to one super-repetitive avant-garde piece this past weekend in which the same chord was played a whole bunch of times in succession. The horror!
It was like every other modern classical piece I have heard: an aural assault of dissonant noises, repetitive sounds, and unnatural rhythms….
In the piece … the same chord was repeated at least 50 times before another instrument joined in.
Golly. How could ANYONE think that playing the same chord over and over would ever sound good? Or that deliberate dissonance might make music sound … well, a heck of a lot more rocking?
Here’s one of the examples he offers as evidence of just how laughably awful contemporary classical music is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLckHHc25ww
Really, dude? Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians? That’s a bit like using the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds to prove that rock music is uncreative.
Roscoe fleshes out his argument with a segment trying and failing to show that dissonant chords are basically the musical equivalent of “deviant lifestyles.” It’s about as nonsensical as it sounds, and really just an excuse for Roscoe to rant ignorantly about trans folks, so I’m not even going to bother to quote it.
Add “music” to the long list of things that manospherans just don’t get.
But yeah, I can understand it’s a human reaction to try and frame subjective opinion as objective, especially when the things you like are unpopular and the things you hate are popular. When that morphs into demonizing the things you don’t like… well
Bwahaha!
I play the Cello.
I’ve played loads of Baroque and earlier music.
Often basso continuo. Which sometimes consists of an ostinate bass. Which means repeating the same sequence of notes over and over for the whole piece.
Oh, and dissonance? We’ve been started getting in on that since we started out on that whole polyphonic music thing…
…and the Deplorables would never listen to any music with “dissonant chords, out-of-key incongruous sounds, and loud, harsh noises” and find that “pleasant and desirable,” right?
http://youtu.be/HqezCR_XzaI
I don’t know which is creepier. That he has a beauty destruction checklist for women under 25 (with PUAs ya never know how low that number goes) or that he says one that does have any of these defilements is “extremely difficult to find”
*shudders*
I think today might be a Pachelbel’s Canon day for me.
My music degree wants to fly off the wall and smack this idiot through the internet.
I can’t wait to hear his opinion on Indian Classical music. /s
@kupo LOL! *looks for cassette of Rite of Spring*
One of the most peculiar things about the manosphere (and authoritarians in general) is how they embrace philistinism, while claiming to love art and beauty.
This guy doesn’t know very much about music – if he did, he’d know it was the very composers he says he loves (e.g. Wagner) who dissolved the Western tonal system.
@Fishy Goat
I have a CD in my desk that has 8 versions of Canon in D. 😀
Huh, I must admit, when I came to this site today I wasn’t expecting to see a PUA/MRA argument against contemporary classical music, of all things… Personally, I’ll note that while the common argument (up to and including this article) against contemporary classical music is that it’s inherently ugly, unemotional and uninspiring, the more contemporary stuff really does speak to me in ways that more, um, classical classical music does not; that is, I do find a lot of contemporary classical to be beautiful, emotionally resonant, and inspiring. Finding my way to contemporary classical is really what opened the door to classical music in general.
With that in mind, I’ll also just take a moment to mention some of my favorite contemporary classical works (I’m assuming ‘contemporary’ here is being used as ’20th century and up’): Morton Feldman’s ‘Neither,’ Giacinto Scelsi’s ‘Aion,’ Arnold Schoenberg’s ‘Moses und Aron,’ Olivier Messiaen’s ‘Harawi.’ Anyone else?
I’m no fan of contemporary classical* and I’m with inklast about country music. I’d rather listen to either of those than be in a room with any of these “scholars” for any length of time.
How lucky for us all that there are other schools of thought as well as many musical genres to enjoy!
*I don’t think this is the fault of the genre; for some reason I had to endure a lot of John Cage played way too loudly in my visual arts/art history classes in the 90s. I’d hesitate to say it was a “thing” except I went to school off and on through the whole decade and on both U.S. coasts (VA and CA.)
Another “Pick 3 things you don’t like and explain why they are related” essay. They seem popular.
Haha, fucking contemporary classical with all its repetition.
Let’s go back to the non-repetitive music of the old days. You know, like the good ol’ Canon and Gigue for 3 violins and basso continuo .
*cellist spontaneously manifests from thin air, breaks a bow over my head*
Something tells me that these guys’ opinions on what good classical music is radiate from Wagner outwards. Basically anything that was acceptable to the Third Reich. Can’t possibly imagine why they’d think that. Probably less to do with the sound of the music than, say, other things.
@Alan:
@Nequam:
Poe wrote on both?
The notes for which they are noted are not notably musical notes?
There are lots of answers people have come up with… I tend to be in the ‘Carroll didn’t actually have an answer in mind, he was just trying to make as big a non sequitur as possible’ camp.
@Mike El niño busca su voz , music by George Crumb, words by Frederico Garcia Lorca
And I want to plug a former classmate of mine named Jocelyn Morlock. 🙂 https://jocelynmorlock.com/
bless you, Claire!
In college (in th’ early 70’s), I had a professor who complained he did not like Rod Stewart because he used a steel guitar which, to the professor’s tender ears, “sounds like country music”….
Conservapedia has, or had when I checked last, an apparently serious bit complaining about Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, because they appeared to think it was in some way related to cultural relativity.
I think that was their problem with it. It was sort of hard for me to tell, since I understand relativity about as well as these folks do, except I was pretty sure that was they were describing was…not it.
Of course, Conservapedia also has an article on the Invisible Hand of Marriage, which is like the invisible hand of the market, but with people getting richer because they’re married.
And an excellent set of case studies on why you should not marry a liberal.
And, my favorite, their attempt to crowd-source a translation of the Bible with all the liberal misinterpretations of the text edited out, leading to phrases like ‘free market parables’, and randomly changing pronouns to make them masculine, regardless of what the Hebrew says.
I reported on the Bible project to my rather devout father, who more or less screamed ‘what do you mean they’re writing their own version of the Bible? That’s not conservative! That’s radical!’
While you’re all being very erudite, my first thought was this (spoilers for the latest Star Trek):
https://youtu.be/PdtwX6oRDSo?t=1m13s
@Hambeast Too bad they didn’t limit their selection of John Cage to 4’33”. 😉
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3
Well, I for one cannot wait to hear his take on that newfangled “jazz” music.
I hate endless repetition! I hate it so much, I’m going to go listen to Correli’s La Follia, then Vivaldi’s, then Handel’s Sarabande in D minor, in that order.
@leftwingfox:
I love you THIIIIIIIIS much for reminding me of Simcity’s awesome soundtrack.
@BaronJenks:
LessWrongers reject the concept of future discounting. They don’t reject any other standard accountancy practises that I’m aware of, just that one.
(For non-accountants: future discounting is the principle that having a good thing right now is better than having it tomorrow, because you can start using it right away; and therefore that valuable things become increasingly less valuable as they’re put off further and further into the future. Everyone except LessWrongers considers this to be uncontroversial.)
The now-moribund Conservapedia rejected the physics concept of Relativity. It is not certain what they think would happen if someone travelling at 99% lightspeed switched on their headlights.
Speaking of repetitive music:
To be fair, it’s not easy to keep finding different angles on how to write the exact same blog post every week for several years. Every manosphere article is about how terrible women are, so of course they’re gonna run out of ideas if they keep churning these out. One could almost say they’re being… repetitive.
@Podkayne
Fundamentalists complaining about the theory of relativity . . . ah, that just takes me right back to high school, and that time I had to write an essay on why Einstein sucks for that very reason.