# The Unique Hierarchical Nature of Classical Music Listening



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I think every classical listener, just by nature of the genre, will purchase and listen to "new" (as in unfamiliar) and different versions and performances of compositions they have heard before; in other words, "new old music."

For example, I have 3 cycles of Mahler symphonies, by Boulez, Abravanel, and Bernstein; so for me, Mahler symphonies are "old," since I am familiar with them, but each new performance/conductor I get is "new," so my latest Mahler purchase is "new old music."

This principle and particular use of the terms "new and "old" demonstrates a fundamental characteristic of classical music.

In classical, a _score_ is used as the "blueprint" or software to generate a performance. This performance can be recorded "live," as a performance, or recorded in a studio as a recording, both of which can be converted into a concrete "artifact" of the performance/recording, as a vinyl LP record, compact disc, or music file.

With popular music, this same procedure is _possible_ if the "song" or composition has been written-down as such; this applies to "old standards" like the Great American Songbooks of Gershwin, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Cole Porter, etc.

However, in popular music more emphasis is placed on the artist's performance or the particular issue of the "artifact," especially if the record or CD becomes a "hit;" then that particular performance becomes the "definitive artifact" and supercedes the "blueprint" of the song.

This is especially true of very popular artists, such as Elvis Presley; we consider his performance, captured as a master take recording, as the "definitive" version, by which all other "new" versions would pale by comparison. 

The song "Hound Dog" itself will probably not survive or be discussed as a "composition" unto itself apart from Elvis' iconoc performance of it; perhaps experts and historians will venerate Big Mama Thornton's recording of it, since she wrote & recorded it first, before inspiring Presley, but this is an exception.

In this way, we see a fundamental difference emerging; _popular music_ is usually more concerned with human gesture and performance factors, unique and identifiable voice quality, and performance gestures that many times overshadow the "constant" elements of the composition.

In classical music, the "composition" is considered to be "iconic" blueprint, a kind of "definitive prototype" or "Platonic ideal" which conveys, in written form, the musical information to the performers. The composition or song is the "DNA" which conveys its unique information, which remains as a "constant" throughout numerous versions of its realization.

Of course, in this day and age of recording and music reproduction, hardly any performance escapes being recorded and thus becoming an "artifact," so even in CM there are certain "hits" which fans consider to be definitive versions, but rarely does a CM performer "own" a composition, because to the CM fan, the composer is given special veneration, because of the _musical ideas conveyed._

Glenn Gould's Goldbergs come to mind, but this can be disputed, as _performances and recordings will always be superceded by classical music's hierarchy of the composer, as conveyor of ideas, being on top;_ rather than popular music's venerated artists at the top of their hierarchy. It's a different hierarchical structure. Still, Glenn Gould scored a "hit" with his 1955 recording, thus showing that even CM has been affected by mass-media.

So for the CM fan, the composer is given special veneration, because of the _musical ideas conveyed;_ a composer's work is like a biological strain of DNA which, like the Immaculate Conception or "virgin birth" is conveyed again and again, to be born anew in a slightly different, but essentially constant, form. This is "the old" becoming "new," in a never-ending cycle of rebirth and re-manifestation.

This is not to discount forms of popular music which are totally "artifact-oriented." Much popular music is created without a score, aurally/visually on computers, with no paper score whatsoever. The music is created by interaction with the recording process itself; no separation exists between the idea and its manifestation.


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