# Describing the Differences



## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

I have, from time to time, found myself in a discussion about the very diverse forms of classical music, and discovered that we (the participants in the discussion) seem to be having a problem of terminology. I can certainly hear a difference between Renaissance and Baroque, and Baroque and Late Romantic music, for example, but how should we describe them? This has particularly been an issue when discussing more modern works. (And, necessarily, this discussion, while it might touch on similarities, must focus on the differences.) Any thoughts?


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

I know nothing about music, but I recall Baroque music as being characterized by having invariant rhythm, terraced dynamics, basso continuo, etc., and even I can detect such things in much of that music. Is this the sort of way of discussing the various historical periods of musical history that you are searching for?


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## pcnog11 (Nov 14, 2016)

JAS said:


> I have, from time to time, found myself in a discussion about the very diverse forms of classical music, and discovered that we (the participants in the discussion) seem to be having a problem of terminology. I can certainly hear a difference between Renaissance and Baroque, and Baroque and Late Romantic music, for example, but how should we describe them? This has particularly been an issue when discussing more modern works. (And, necessarily, this discussion, while it might touch on similarities, must focus on the differences.) Any thoughts?


There is a lot of music history expert in this forum. Also, there is a lot materials on the internet to educate us on music history. Here is a few examples:

http://www.naxos.com/education/brief_history.asp

http://www.gramophone.co.uk/feature/a-brief-history-of-classical-music

https://www.gentlemansgazette.com/history-of-classical-music/


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

I am particularly interested in how people who actually like modern classical music would describe the differences between that and earlier forms. When I use terms like harmony, tonality, and melody, I get told that those are not distinguishing features. Obviously there are distinguishing features, so what are they?


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

It's almost imposible to answer you question outside a very long essay -- or at least longer than a non-boring post. Or a precis of Music 101. The evolution of music is fascinating -- and fairly comprehensible if you have half an ear -- at least until the 20th century, when it went all over the place. But you practically need a text -- and they tend to err on the side of comprehensiveness, which is no help. Anyone know of short summary online?


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## yetti66 (Jan 30, 2017)

As one who actually likes modern music...I think that terms like harmony, tonality, and melody are distinguishing terms in a relative sense. Polytonal or atonal are relative terms...what is perfect tonality anyway. The same reference can be made for harmony and melody. I still do find it had to describe modern music through - now into a 3rd week of Schnittke attraction and I'm at a loss to properly define the alluring attributes.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

JAS said:


> I am particularly interested in how people who actually like modern classical music would describe the differences between that and earlier forms. When I use terms like harmony, tonality, and melody, I get told that those are not distinguishing features. Obviously there are distinguishing features, so what are they?


When discussing modern/contemporary I think its helpful to discuss the links the music has to the past and then to identify its category (minimalism, new complexity, electronic etc.). Words like rhythm, texture, density, orchestration, pitch etc. are some descriptive terms that are used. Harmony, tonality and melody might still apply too depending on what type of music is being described.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

I am just thinking this through from this perspective myself, so I won’t pretend that I have a good answer handy in my back pocket. That was, in part, why I thought it might be a good topic for discussion, hoping that others had already worked on at least some portion of it. 

I remember from my music appreciation class in college, oh so many years ago, that we had fairly well defined lists with characteristics of the periods from medieval through late-romantic. (In fact, I should try to dig out that text book if I still have it buried somewhere in the attic. It was, I seem to remember, called Listen, and it came with a box of LPs with representative selections. I was already interested in classical music by that time, but did not have a very wide exposure. It was, for example, the first time I heard anything by Monteverdi. A large part of the course was devoted to absolute versus programmatic music. I also vividly remember the sound of the piece that represented avante-garde, although not the composer or the name. It had a woman who was literally shrieking, some sort of bubbling, glurping sounds, and barking dogs ... yes, actual barking dogs, presumably recorded for use in the piece. How does one forget that?) 

I know that we talked about 12-tone, atonality and even chance music. Miminalism may have been mentioned, although I am not at all sure. Ten years later, it was quite a big thing, and I even once met Philip Glass, because my cousin was a dancer at the New York City Ballet, and they were doing a new piece for which he wrote the music. I was visiting, and my aunt took me in to see my cousin rehearsing. I think the extent of my interaction with Glass was a quick but polite exchange of hellos as he left or entered the room, and possibly a thank you as I was holding the door. I mention this mostly because I think it was an interesting example of the kind of challenge to fundamental principles that seems to be at the root of modernism. The choreography and the music had been prepared with no interaction at all between the respective parties. They were, in these rehearsals, just for the first time putting them together, for a performance that was very close at hand. I could see how rehearsals might require an adjustment in the choreography or the music for a new work, but it seemed, and still seems, bizarre to me that one could develop the choreography to a piece that had not been written or even explicitly defined in some way, and of which the choreographer had never heard so much as a single note.)

Is it, perhaps, part of the complication of my suggested subject the idea that earlier trends represent evolutionary movement, while modernism represents a fracturing of those earlier movements? A good deal of such discussions also tend to break down into words with personal and therefore not very meaningful descriptive value, like beautiful or spiritual. (I have had people assert strongly that a given work was beautiful or spiritual, only to find for myself when listening that it was little more than a chaotic barrage of notes that seemed to have been picked precisely for the purpose of maximum conflict, forming a kind of aural assault.) 

I have a full set of Grove’s (which should be perfectly suitable for traditional forms, although a bit too old to be much use for more modern movements.) And I have various books that should at least touch on the subject. At the moment, I did not have sufficient time to explore them, and thought that others here might already have gone through the process and winnowed down a usefully concise summary for the purposes of conversation. In any case, I thought it might make for an interesting discussion topic, but perhaps not . . .


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

In music appreciation and music history courses I have taught I have found it best to introduce each musical era with the dominant aesthetic theories under which its music was composed and received. Otherwise one ends up with diffuse, boring, hard to remember laundry lists of style characteristics and historical facts instead of unified perspectives from which all the musical traits can be understood in relation to a few big ideas.

*Baroque Era*
The principal framework in which music of the Baroque Era was composed and understood was that of classical rhetoric. The role of the composer was likened to that of an orator, whose purpose in any musical movement was to move an audience to experience one central affect (i.e., emotional state). This principal was known as the Doctrine of the Affections, and it is reflected in the fact that movements of baroque sonatas, concertos, suites, fugues, and so on, are almost always built from a single theme or subject. This is in sharp distinction to the forms of the Classical and Romantic Eras, in which extreme contrasts of material and mood are routinely cultivated. And the connections to rhetorical theory are not confined to broad principles, but extend to technical issues large and small. For example, several important Baroque treatises explain the structure of movements by analogy to the structure of orations as described in classical treatises on rhetoric by Aristotle, Quintilianus, Cicero et alia. In addition, a large number of short musical figures were catalogued using Latin terms for figures of speech in rhetoric. Most important, rhetorical theory was used to justify or rationalize the countless violations of the laws of renaissance counterpoint that blew open the old modal system (in place since the middle ages) and eventually resulted in the modern tonal system that governed everything from Corelli through Brahms (and beyond). Essentially, the proper rhetorical inflection of a text could justify nearly any melodic or harmonic excess in the wild, experimental days of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. This explains those bizarre madrigals by Gesualdo, Rore, Marenzio and others, as well as the fanciful musical language of early operas.

Returning to the baroque penchant for monothematic movements: Making economy of material a central aesthetic value poses a unique set of compositional problems: How does one create a sense of internal contrast and variety sufficient to maintain interest when one is elaborating only a single theme? The answers included keeping the phrase structures fluid and unpredictable by varying the lengths of phrases and by contrasting complete statements of the main theme with passages in which a single motive or kernel from the theme is spun out (the term for this is Fortspinnung) in a sinuous line through sequencing (that is repeating the short idea on a number of different scale degrees). This kind of fluid, unpredictable phrasing is in sharp contrast to the predominantly regular, four-square patterns of classical melody. Themes were also routinely presented in both the major and the minor mode. An overall sense of motion was maintained by cycling through a series of closely related keys before returning to the home key at the end.

Anyway, I am not going to get beyond the Baroque Era in this post. I'm happy to answer any questions aesthetic or technical, or to explain how this stuff applies to specific works.


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

JAS said:


> I can certainly hear a difference between Renaissance and Baroque, and Baroque and Late Romantic music, for example, but how should we describe them?


By listening a lot, reading a lot and then trying to describe the differences you find important in your own words. I think you'll learn that differences that are important to one person, are less important to the other or vice versa. You'll also learn that there will be things that stand out in this or that music for you personally, are virtually overlooked (or regarded less important) by musicologists or other written sources.


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## jailhouse (Sep 2, 2016)

I coyld tell you, but im on my phone and typing a book isnt what im gunna do right now. Just check wikipedia, seriously it will help explain.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

I think I have failed in making clear my intentions. I was interested in what others saw as the differences. In particular, I was interested in what those who advocate more modern music see as the differences, since my usual attempts at describing differences are met with "no that is not a valid difference." Clearly they are different, and we are just in search of describing them. I was not necessarily seeking education. (I have been listening to 1,000 years of music since I was a young child, although admittedly mostly the last 500-600 years, and especially the last half or so of that, with diminishing interest in the newer forms. This is, at least, the great benefit of access to recordings.) I was not really looking for definitive answers to a simple question. I had hoped that it might be an interesting way of approaching the topic, and instigating a discussion made interesting precisely due to the inherent difficulties of putting abstract ideas into words. But given the responses, sincerely made as they may be, I see that I have not been successful, and the premise seems not to hold much interest for others, which is just what it is.


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

now you made it even more complicated 
:lol:


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Razumovskymas said:


> now you made it even more complicated


Think of it as a modern composition. The degree to which no one understands or likes it is a sign of my innovation and brilliance.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

jailhouse said:


> I coyld tell you, but im on my phone and typing a book isnt what im gunna do right now. Just check wikipedia, seriously it will help explain.


Link please?....................


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

JAS said:


> Think of it as a modern composition. The degree to which no one understands or likes it is a sign of my innovation and brilliance.


Ok, I will assume it's a masterpiece then.

That's my usual approach to works that I don't really understand but that I want to dedicate more time to.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

JAS said:


> Think of it as a modern composition. The degree to which no one understands or likes it is a sign of my innovation and brilliance.


As far as I can tell you got some reasonable answers here, but no answer would have satisfied you because you were not looking for answers to your question. You simply wanted to make a statement about modern music.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

tdc said:


> As far as I can tell you got some reasonable answers here, but no answer would have satisfied you because you were not looking for answers to your question. You simply wanted to make a statement about modern music.


As far as I can tell, you are making a lot of unfounded and unnecessarily defensive assumptions. My question was/is sincere, as I am interested in something that I do not understand. The discussion is necessarily somewhat abstract and includes subjective elements. In such a context, what would the idea of being "satisfied" even mean?


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