# How has talk about classical music changed?



## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

It's 50 years since my interest in knowing about classical music, in addition to playing classical piano, began. I was taking courses in music history and harmony, and had decided to go into music professionally. Two things were important then in university music study: (1) Understanding classical music in terms of different *musical styles* -- by era, location, structure/process as well as by individual composers' styles; (2) knowing works of music as part of the *music literature*, of which we were expected to know a large number of works. Neither musical style nor music literature as areas of knowledge seem to be mentioned much these days. Has anyone else noticed this?


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## chu42 (Aug 14, 2018)

Not sure what you mean by that, because musical literature and style the way I understand them are still important discussion points today. 

Do you mean in forums such as these or in university music study? At the university I attend, these are essentially the main components of study.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I know nothing of academic music courses but do think the two things you mention more or less describe how ordinary listeners go about exploring and getting to know music.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

This is a reply to chu42:

Good point, I'll try to explain. I've been out of university music for many years. I am interested in your perspective and am glad your university music studies are oriented towards musical literature and style. 

My sense is that the climate of opinion on what's important in music has changed greatly, including in universities. It is more focused on popular music and world music, economics and business, technology, sociological perspectives including gender and race, psychology and health, and multidisciplinary arts. But this impression that I have picked up probably comes from several directions outside of university music: conversations, journalism and electronic media, funders, school, church and, yes internet forums of different types.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

That's right: today, most university students know nothing about fine arts, classical music especially. In my days at college, it was expected that a college graduate would be somewhat familiar with the most famous names and some of their works. All students, regardless of major, were required to take two semesters of Humanities where you were exposed to Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Stravinsky and more. Popular culture was not in the curriculum. Not anymore - now pop music IS the curriculum. A local college used to offer several sections of Understanding Western Music. Now it's Jimi Hendrix and his Legacy, Broadway Musicals, The Beatles, Michael Jackson, and maybe the most egregious: A History of Rap.

With music majors it's really sad. I play in several orchestras where younger players come in. Their knowledge of the classical repertoire is severely lacking. I sit next to players who have never heard any symphony of Beethoven or Brahms. They know nothing of Mahler, Prokofieff, Dvorak or Tchaikovsky. They can play like crazy, read well, and belt out complicated etudes better than I ever could or will. But their lack of music history, their unawareness of the repertoire is tragic. I know a bassoon teacher who tells his students that if they're serious about performing then it's time to put away the rock/hip hop/rap music and start listening to the standard repertoire with the great recordings of the past. How bad does it get? A couple of years back I was playing bassoon 2 on Scheherazade. The young, recent MA degreed bassoonist didn't have a clue how to play all the solos she had in that work. No feeling for style, nuance, nothing. It was awful. The conductor asked me to show her how they should be played. In another group we're doing Shostakovich 5th. I'm on contra - the 2nd player had never heard the work, ever. How is this possible? A music major, a performance major, from a big school and never bothered to listen to some of the landmarks of the repertoire. Very sad state of affairs. That's one reason I like piano majors - they at least know their Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, and other pillars of their repertoire.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

mbhaub said:


> With music majors it's really sad. I play in several orchestras where younger players come in. Their knowledge of the classical repertoire is severely lacking. I sit next to players who have never heard any symphony of Beethoven or Brahms. They know nothing of Mahler, Prokofieff, Dvorak or Tchaikovsky. They can play like crazy, read well, and belt out complicated etudes better than I ever could or will. But their lack of music history, their unawareness of the repertoire is tragic. I know a bassoon teacher who tells his students that if they're serious about performing then it's time to put away the rock/hip hop/rap music and start listening to the standard repertoire with the great recordings of the past. How bad does it get? A couple of years back I was playing bassoon 2 on Scheherazade. The young, recent MA degreed bassoonist didn't have a clue how to play all the solos she had in that work. No feeling for style, nuance, nothing. It was awful. The conductor asked me to show her how they should be played. In another group we're doing Shostakovich 5th. I'm on contra - the 2nd player had never heard the work, ever. How is this possible? A music major, a performance major, from a big school and never bothered to listen to some of the landmarks of the repertoire. Very sad state of affairs. That's one reason I like piano majors - they at least know their Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, and other pillars of their repertoire.


The complaint that performers don't know much about music except what's written for their instrument isn't new. A friend of mine, an enthusiastic music lover from Boston who doesn't perform music himself, was complaining forty years ago that he couldn't have conversations about music with instrumentalists. Your young bassoonist sounds like an extreme case of musical illiteracy, indeed incompetence. Not only she, but the school she attended and her teachers in particular, should be ashamed.


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> The complaint that performers don't know much about music except what's written for their instrument isn't new. A friend of mine, an enthusiastic music lover from Boston who doesn't perform music himself, was complaining forty years ago that he couldn't have conversations about music with instrumentalists. Your young bassoonist sounds like an extreme case of musical illiteracy, indeed incompetence. Not only she, but the school she attended and her teachers in particular, should be ashamed.


when you are aiming for a great solo career there's not much time left in the day to listen

imagine 5 hours+ out of your day - plus other music related study - theory etc - and your school/college work


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

PlaySalieri said:


> when you are aiming for a great solo career there's not much time left in the day to listen
> 
> imagine 5 hours+ out of your day - plus other music related study - theory etc - and your school/college work


There are surely plenty of musically literate performers, not to mention non-musicians busy with careers who find time to explore music. Broad musical literacy can only make you a better performer - clearly it would have helped that young bassoonist - so it's rarely a question of not having the time. People who care find the time.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

Posts 5, 6, and 8 are sadly all too accurate. Though I'd add that even piano majors nowadays aren't as literate as you'd hope (though, like mbhaub said, they do tend to be much better than performers of other instruments in this regard).

Now the question is... why is this the case? What is at the root of the problem? I have a few ideas about this myself but I'd like to hear the thoughts of others first.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

I hadn't realized it was that bad. When I remember listening to the Boston Pops in the '60s and lamenting, whenever they played any arrangements of popular songs or jazzy things (even Rhapsody in Blue) how completely, ludicrously, incapable they were of "swinging," and how completely that tide has turned today -- I hadn't realized that it was at the expense of general knowledge of the "standard" repertoire. That saddens me. :-(


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Enthusiast said:


> I know nothing of academic music courses but do think the two things you mention more or less describe how ordinary listeners go about exploring and getting to know music.


So there actually is common ground as to what music students study and what listeners go about learning! There has to be. To me, in classical music we are distracted by a lot of chatter about matters that are secondary, or tertiary, to the music itself. I think a listener who knows one piece of classical music, or one type of classical music, should be congratulated and encouraged to continue. As for trained musicians, we have turned people off. It's about the music itself, what we like, what's good in it, that we need to express. (Today I encountered the Piano Quintet (2005) by Steven Stucky which is terrific -- expressive, brilliant, colourful in turn.)


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> Now the question is... why is this the case? What is at the root of the problem? I have a few ideas about this myself but I'd like to hear the thoughts of others first.


There is in university music a thing called "curriculum creep" where more and more is added to the required course of study. And therefore a sense that spending time on anything that's not "for credit" threatens your main goal. Also, students often have to hold jobs during the academic year. Nevertheless, if you love certain pieces, and want to expand your knowledge of the kind of music you love -- those are powerful motivators! I also would like to know what others think.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

I don't think it's just (or even primarily) the fault of the universities themselves. I think that what you described is certainly an issue, but I think it's really symptomatic of a far larger and broader problem (that starts manifesting itself far earlier in education) about the climate and culture surrounding CM today.

Interestingly enough, I find that jazz musicians tend to be far more literate in the music of their genre than classical musicians. Perhaps I'm biased because I don't know as much about jazz, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> Interestingly enough, I find that jazz musicians tend to be far more literate in the music of their genre than classical musicians. Perhaps I'm biased because I don't know as much about jazz, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.


How could someone even walk on the bandstand to perform and improvise with other jazz musicians if they weren't familiar with dozens of standard tunes all jazz players know?

As for the bassoonist with the MA degree, the puzzling question is why she had no desire to listen to and absorb the standard classical repertoire? What was she listening to for 5 years at university?


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Roger Knox said:


> It's 50 years since my interest in knowing about classical music, in addition to playing classical piano, began. I was taking courses in music history and harmony, and had decided to go into music professionally. Two things were important then in university music study: (1) Understanding classical music in terms of different *musical styles* -- by era, location, structure/process as well as by individual composers' styles; (2) knowing works of music as part of the *music literature*, of which we were expected to know a large number of works. Neither musical style nor music literature as areas of knowledge seem to be mentioned much these days. Has anyone else noticed this?


This seems to be about introductions to classic music, since of course higher-level study would always cover historical styles and famous works.

I don't know what's going on among the proles, but at Yale for instance Craig Wright is still doing his thing and I think his courses would sastisfy you.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_In 50 years … neither musical style nor music literature as areas of knowledge seem to be mentioned much these days. Has anyone else noticed this? _

I think the answers to these questions are easy to answer. There isn't much talk about musical "literature" or style because classical music forms haven't changed much since the electronic era of the 1950-1970s. The last great stylistic change was movement to period performance in the middle 1980s though it started much earlier. People talked about it en masse after Norrington recorded the Beethoven symphonies in 1985.

The last great change in musical "literature" was the movement to or toward or called minimalism that may or may not have been started by Ravel's Bolero or Steve Reich. Whichever, this movement wasn't very intellectual, in my opinion, and thus did not generate a lot of discussion. It also was unpopular with orchestral subscription fans and did not generate much interest in the rest of the musical public.

Since the demise of minimalism there have been periods and composers of post-everything: romantic, classic, modern, etc. The only discernible trend I can see in classical music is what I might call relevance. My favorite work of this century, Michael Daugherty's Trail of Tears Concerto, is something of a post-Survivor of Warsaw work that is supposed to detail the pain of suffering of native Americans relocated against their will and then marginalized on reservations, etc. The music itself is traditional and sounds French to me.

I read my local university's catalog of musical programs for the 2019-20 season recently. There were two separate incidents of new music themed on modernity; in one the music revolved around a guy or two that were attacked or murdered or something because of their homosexuality. I'd never heard of the music or the composer.

I suppose Beethoven was being contemporary and relevant when he dedicated the Eroica symphony first to Napoleon, thinking he would free people, then later changing it when he learned the little guy was just another despot. But I see and hear no Beethoven on the classical music horizon now.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

larold said:


> _But I see and hear no Beethoven on the classical music horizon now._


_

Why, do you think, is it the case?_


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Beethoven performances on the classical music horizon:
https://bachtrack.com/find-concerts/composer=beethoven
It's an opportunity to hear his music _live_.

There are 14 performances of Beethoven on Sept. 21 alone
and the average is between 8 and 10 concerts per day,
Including on week days. I would be reluctant ever to bet
against Beethoven being forgotten. I believe he's too 
fundamental to the music as is Bach and Mozart. They
anchor it because they were great masters and not
everyone has heard them live.


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## samm (Jul 4, 2011)

I'm kinda confused about this quote below.



mbhaub said:


> They can play like crazy, read well, and belt out complicated etudes better than I ever could or will. But their lack of music history, their unawareness of the repertoire is tragic.


But then:



mbhaub said:


> I know a bassoon teacher who tells his students that if they're serious about performing then it's time to put away the rock/hip hop/rap music and start listening to the standard repertoire with the great recordings of the past.


If they can play well and sight-read complicated etudes better than average and, presumably, also already have a position performing, why would they need to follow the advice of that bassoon teacher to 'get serious' about performing?

I find it highly unlikely that anyone would make it through long years of training on a classical instrument without being exposed to the repertoire.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

larold said:


> _ I read my local university's catalog of musical programs for the 2019-20 season recently. There were two separate incidents of new music themed on modernity; in one the music revolved around a guy or two that were attacked or murdered or something because of their homosexuality. I'd never heard of the music or the composer. _


_

My initial guess is that the two composers who were murdered were Marc Blitzstein and Claude Vivier. When you say "two separate incidents" do you mean "lecture-concerts" or something of the like?_


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

samm said:


> If they can play well and sight-read complicated etudes better than average and, presumably, also already have a position performing, why would they need to follow the advice of that bassoon teacher to 'get serious' about performing?
> 
> I find it highly unlikely that anyone would make it through long years of training on a classical instrument without being exposed to the repertoire.


The post refers to students not musicians who already have positions. If the students want to play in a professional orchestra or band my guess is that they will be competing for a very small number of available positions. They have to have all their ducks lined up, which means knowing the standard repertoire very well from attending concerts and listening to a variety of interpretations on CD, as well as having practised the orchestral excerpts for their instrument. In the post mbhaub describes students who didn't know how to play standard repertoire works Rimsky-Korsakov's _Scheherezade_ and Schostakovich's _Symphony No. 5_, and I'm inclined to believe him.


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## samm (Jul 4, 2011)

Roger Knox said:


> The post refers to students not musicians who already have positions. If the students want to play in a professional orchestra or band my guess is that they will be competing for a very small number of available positions. They have to have all their ducks lined up, which means knowing the standard repertoire very well from attending concerts and listening to a variety of interpretations on CD, as well as having practised the orchestral excerpts for their instrument. In the post mbhaub describes students who didn't know how to play standard repertoire works Rimsky-Korsakov's _Scheherezade_ and Schostakovich's _Symphony No. 5_, and I'm inclined to believe him.


Actually it clearly refers to people, students or post-grad students, already active in orchestral playing. Whose technical skills appear to be very competent, but who also, allegedly, know nothing of the repertoire for their instrument, which I find astonishing. A bassoonist who has come as far as an MA would have played very little in terms of music if they hadn't played existing repertoire. I find it odd. There's not much going in the way of pop or jazz or hip-hop bassoon.


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## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

mbhaub said:


> With music majors it's really sad. I play in several orchestras where younger players come in. Their knowledge of the classical repertoire is severely lacking. I sit next to players who have never heard any symphony of Beethoven or Brahms. They know nothing of Mahler, Prokofieff, Dvorak or Tchaikovsky. They can play like crazy, read well, and belt out complicated etudes better than I ever could or will. But their lack of music history, their unawareness of the repertoire is tragic. I know a bassoon teacher who tells his students that if they're serious about performing then it's time to put away the rock/hip hop/rap music and start listening to the standard repertoire with the great recordings of the past. How bad does it get? A couple of years back I was playing bassoon 2 on Scheherazade. The young, recent MA degreed bassoonist didn't have a clue how to play all the solos she had in that work. No feeling for style, nuance, nothing. It was awful. The conductor asked me to show her how they should be played. In another group we're doing Shostakovich 5th. I'm on contra - the 2nd player had never heard the work, ever. How is this possible? A music major, a performance major, from a big school and never bothered to listen to some of the landmarks of the repertoire. Very sad state of affairs. That's one reason I like piano majors - they at least know their Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, and other pillars of their repertoire.


I was going to ask what the heck have these students been playing to get that good at their instruments if not parts of the standard repertoire. So it's just been etudes and exercises the whole time? How can they develop enthusiasm for their instruments playing just those? How do they know what their instruments are capable of if they never play the music it is ultimately meant for? How can a bassoonist win a seat in any orchestra if she has no feeling for the solo parts she is supposed to play - how did she pass the audition, on technique alone?

This is astonishing. Or maybe not. My niece took violin lessons for years and has no real enthusiasm for classical music. She lives in a distant state so I have not heard much of her playing, one string quartet performance which she didn't look overjoyed to participate in. I was told she just took violin at school because they were offering Suzuki lessons and her mother thought there would be some psychological benefit from them. But I had no idea that serious musicians trying to get into the field would show a similar lack of knowledge and experience, even interest in, classical music.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_I see and hear no Beethoven on the classical music horizon now...Why, do you think, is it the case?_

I believe the people that would have been classical music composers 50 years ago or longer have gone into other art forms/media such as film and music theater. There has been a noticeable decline in most areas of art including literature, film and classical music in the last half-century but none as lengthy or bad as classical music. There hasn't been a composer of the stature of a Bach, Mozart or Beethoven since Shostakovich died … in a lifetime.

The art form that has held together the best, in my opinion, is musical theater. It has continued to foster new creative minds, great new hits fans have latched onto, it continues to create new fans, and it is doing as well as ever. Contrast that to classical music which hasn't had a bona fide "hit" in three (almost four) decades.

Film offers more to an artist than classical music. It is easy to make, offers the sight-sound-drama Wagner visualized and perfected, and a person can make a living making films or otherwise working in the industry.

Gone are the days when any classical music composer is going to sit around and be poor when s/he can make a living doing something else. There is no longer an aristocracy supporting classical music composers; they are on their own. Most go into university or conservatory staffs and become part of the mainstream, writing the same crappy music everyone else is writing.


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