I'm gonna retort by saying Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails (pretty much IS NIN) knows whats up. Listen to some of NIN's non-lyrical stuff and you'll see what I mean. He accomplishes what cIassical composers do but in an Industrial form. jealentus
I don't think he does, but whether or not your are moved by music is a personal thing. The problems I have with industrial music from this point of view (and indeed this is a problem I have with most popular music) are that there is no subtle variety of colour, tone, or dynamics; and yet there IS ceaseless repetition of short motives which go nowhere musically. That inspires no emotion in me, but certainly inspires a sense of tedium. These issues are very broad and pervasive, being influenced by ensemble choices, performance, and compositional choices. Electric instruments and drum sets are poorly suited to subtlety, and their inclusion in industrial music nullifies, for me, much of the effect of the music. Compositionally, popular music doesn't usually tell a musical story. That's an issue with the formal treatment of the motives. If you don't develop your motives, there will be no sense that the music is evolving, and no sense that the story is evolving. And it's an issue with performance, as well, which tends to be sound 'blocky' to my ear as a result of limited control of tone... caused partly because of the instruments themselves.
How can you cause an emotional response when you lock yourself into a drum beat and ignore rubato totally? How do you do it when your instrument must be loud and raunchy to be heard over that obsessive pulse? Well, you try to do it with harmony and sound effect. But for me, that doesn't work so well. The difference between the Barber example I posted and the NIN stuff I dug up on Youtube is that Barber's music does evolve. There is repetition, but it is going somewhere. There is rhythm, but it is not marked by an irritating drum beat. And there are constantly changing dynamics. These, for me, are vital factors to creating and sustaining a sense of depression. I can respect that you may have a different set of criteria, but from what I have heard of Reznor, I am not convinced in even the slightest way that what he writes is as convincing as Barber's Adagio with respect to capturing a devastating emotion.
It is possible to create a very beautiful effect with the popular music compositional fundamentals... the first two works by this young woman, for instance, are indeed very beautiful, but that is mostly because she has done an exceptional job with the development of her melodies and makes good formal decisions:
http://sessions.aol.ca/?id=903
If we compare this to Trent playing piano and singing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RGYBP1_D1U
Maybe it's just me, but his piece would have been a heck of a lot more effective without the stupid drum beat, and with a less robotic approach to piano playing.
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