# What people think Classical music sounds like



## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

*Classical Era = Car commercials*











*Baroque Era = Fictional impressions or reimaginings*
















cont.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

*Renaissance = Anything with strong parallel tones*











ie. 0:51





ie. 1:16





cont.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

*Ancient music = As a rule, anything with the most unrealistic production value*











Those were my rought draft attempts. Did I do okay? What are yours?


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

What about contemporary music? :devil:


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

I always find this amusing:


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> What about contemporary music? :devil:


*Classic Contemporary = That whimsical golden-age sound where the narrator always talks to the protagonist and tells him to cheer up*

(Can't find the one I'm thinking of)










*Modern Contemporary = The sophisticated ingenuity and talents of Trans-Siberian Orchestra*


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Die Zwölftonmethode - für den einfachen Mann.


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

I always imagine the uninitiated think Classical all sounds like this. That is an AMAZING melody though, as BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist and I discussed one time :lol:


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

I don't know if the mainstream has associated that with Classical music, as intensely as they have the above music. Minuetto just sounds like easy wedding/party music for a band.

There was this famous waltz written in the 20th c that sounds like peoples' impression of Baroque music, but they took the recording down. "Council waltz" something.

Anyway, one more I forgot...

*Romantic Era = Type into YouTube "Most Beautiful Piano Melody" and all the obvious results come up*


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

When I first met my wife, and she found out what kind of music I like, she said that a lot of it sounded like a funeral. Certainly, Beethoven and Mahler identified parts of their symphonies along the lines of funeral marches, and Shostakovich is often preoccupied with death, even making it the topic of his _Symphony #14_ (not something you'd want to break out at a party!). Come to think of it, Mussorgsky gets pretty dark with _Night on Bald Mountain_ and so does St. Seans with _Dance Macabre_, not to mention Mussorgsky" _Death Songs_, Mahler's _Songs on the Death of Children_, Ravel's _Pavane for Dead Princess_, and Schubert's _Death and the Maiden_. And Bach's _Come Sweet Death_ *is* funeral music.

Back in the the 1980s when I was in high school and was just starting out with classical music, I remember these "punk/goth/death metal" kids. I didn't like their music, and I didn't really gravitate to their clique at all. They would dress in black and wear makeup to make themselves look dead. Now I wonder which one of us was really into the death-music.

My wife and some of my friends think it's kind of "macabre" that I like to take long walks through cemeteries, find it to be a peaceful experience while getting my exercise. As a student of history, there's lots of things you can learn about the past by reading the headstones. Case in point, I was visiting Texas and took some time in a rural town to visit and walk through the town cemetery. I saw that the headstones on the top of hill had names that indicate that the people were White Anglo-Saxon, and I noticed the stones were large with ornamentation. The stones at the bottom of the hill belonged presumably to African Americans and the stones were much smaller and more simple. The Mexican names were in the middle of the hill and somewhere in between the size and structure of those at the top and at the bottom. So there in that little rural cemetery one could see what was once the history of segregation and social structure in the deep south. Even in death you knew you're place. Hopefully, we've come some way since then.

Another wonderful cemetery to visit is Mount Auburn near Boston. Not only are some great and legendary people buried there such as Mary Baker Eddy, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and BF Skinner; but it also happens to hold the largest collection of trees native to Asia that is outside Asia; courtesy of the Old China Trade where wealthy New England families built the city of Boston by trading with China (and selling lots of opium there, too).

But maybe classical music and liking cemeteries puts me down as "weird" on both counts as those high school punk/goth/death-metal kids who I'm sure are now rasing families, working office jobs, and have long since outgrown the black clothes and death make-up.


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

The default sound I always associated with classical was the first movement of the Brandenburgs or Vivaldi's "Spring". That kind of polite, elegant music that paradoxically takes a lot more work to appreciate to than the dramatic stuff like Beethoven.


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## MatthewWeflen (Jan 24, 2019)

Yeah, I think most people think classical music sounds like either the opening to Vivaldi's Spring concerto, the first movement of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, or the beginning of Beethoven's 5th.

Which is not to say I don't like those pieces. They're popular for a reason. They're certainly among my own favorites. 

Less "known" but nearly as ubiquitous are the latter two themes from Rossini's William Tell Overture; Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture, Nutcracker and Peter & the Wolf; the ode to joy theme from Beethoven's 9th and Fur Elise; Blue Danube; and the opening (but nothing more) from Also Sprach Zarathustra.


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

What's especially fascinating are the tunes which are so ubiquitous that we don't even recognize them as classical. Think "Ava Maria" or the famous Chopin funeral march.


e) regarding contemporary music, i could have sworn i saw an interview where one of the musicians for old Warner Brothers cartoons said he used 12-tone for some of the "wacky" moments in the cartoon score which actually makes a lot of sense!


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)




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