# Better Systems for Classifying Classical Music Eras



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Medieval, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, etc era system is garbage. Please propose new system. 

- Early
- Age of Harpsichord
- Pre-Beethovenian
- Beethovenian
- Shadow of Beethovenianism
- Pre-Wagnerian
- Golden Age of Supreme Music
- Post-Wagnerian
- The Great Decline
- The John Cage Era
- Post-Apocalyptic (to present)


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## MagneticGhost (Apr 7, 2013)

lol... I know you are a fan but methinks you are a little too Wagner-centric

Early
Middle 
Late
Later
Post-Late


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

:lol: :lol: 

Couchie's posts = The Best


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## Badinerie (May 3, 2008)

All one really needs is....

Side 1
Side 2
Side 3
Side 4 ect ad nauseam


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

Not as imaginative as Couchie's, but objectively true nonetheless. 

Pre Pre Pre- Beethovenian
Pre Pre-Beethovenian
Pre-Beethovenian
Beethovenian
Post-Beethovenian
Wagnerian post-Beethovenian
Post Post-Beethovenian
Post Post Post-Beethovenian
Contemporary Post-Beethovenian


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Sell naming rights to corporate sponsors to raise money for orchestras and composers.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Couchie's going soft. At one time his list would have read

- Wagner
- Whatever else


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## GioCar (Oct 30, 2013)

DiesIraeVIX said:


> Pre Pre Pre- Beethovenian
> Pre Pre-Beethovenian
> Pre-Beethovenian
> Beethovenian
> ...


:lol:

That Wagnerian there....in honor of the OP?


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

early = zzz
baroque = awake
classical = wow
romantic = gasp
modern = bizarre


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Up to Bach
Musical dark ages
After Schoenberg


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

B.C. = Before Campion
A.D. = After Dvorak

everything else is gravy


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## SimonNZ (Jul 12, 2012)

Time Immemorial
Bygone Times
Times Past
Days Of Yore
Olden Days
Days Gone By
Yesteryear
The Good old Days
Those Darn Kids


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## Bayreuth (Jan 20, 2015)

Couchie said:


> Medieval, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, etc era system is garbage. Please propose new system.
> 
> - Early
> - Age of Harpsichord
> ...


Hahahahahahahaha :lol::lol:
:tiphat:


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## Skilmarilion (Apr 6, 2013)

Couchie said:


> Medieval, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, etc era system is garbage. Please propose new system...
> 
> ...




Oh dude, and yet you still refuse to contribute to the _Stupid Thread Ideas_ thread.


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## Guest (Jan 22, 2015)

Today: 

"Dear God,

Give us back Stockhausen and you can have Alma Deutscher

Signed,

Fans Of Music"


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## The nose (Jan 14, 2014)

"Let's pray God" Era
"Cool, we can use more than one voice at the time" Era
"Music instruments are kind of cool too" Era
"Perhaps if we dont sing different texts all at the same time the listener can understand something" Era
"If you're not in Vienna you're not a musician" Era
"I want it bigger and louder" Era
"I'm more innovative than you" Era
"Bing Sklang Snarlf Toink" Era


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## Guest (Jan 22, 2015)

Skilmarilion said:


> Oh dude, and yet you still refuse to contribute to the _Stupid Thread Ideas_ thread.


Well, at least anyone who has contributed to TC for any amount of time has contributed to a stupid thread. You can't take that away from him!!

Anyway, thread duty:

Name of composer, name of piece, date.

Done.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

some guy said:


> Well, at least anyone who has contributed to TC for any amount of time has contributed to a stupid thread. You can't take that away from him!!
> 
> Anyway, thread duty:
> 
> ...


Name of composer, name of piece, date? Couchie already has a thread for that!

I reckon eras should be something like this.......

Pre-modern music (up to just before the premiere of Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun)
Romantic Spillover (up to around the deaths of Rachmaninov and Strauss and limited to the aesthetic associated with 19th century music)
The music which COAG likes most (beginning at Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and continuing on from there excluding Romantic Spillover music)
What the hell is wrong with you? It ain't the 18th century any more! (For composers like Hendrik Bouman)


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## SimonNZ (Jul 12, 2012)

Dead
Retired
Working


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

The nose said:


> "Let's pray God" Era
> "Cool, we can use more than one voice at the time" Era
> "Music instruments are kind of cool too" Era
> "Perhaps if we dont sing different texts all at the same time the listener can understand something" Era
> ...


:lol::lol::lol:


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## Fagotterdammerung (Jan 15, 2015)

Plainchant
Fancychant
Earliest Modernism ( Head In Ars )
Fauxbourdon
Real Bourdon 
Italians In Tights 
Trills 'n' Stuff
Germans In Wigs
Angst
Actually Entertaining Opera
Ascending And Descending In Semitones
Frenchmen Being Vague
Russians Being Loud
Melody = "The Man"
Unplayable Masterpieces Featuring Clusterchords
Americans Playing White Piano Keys
Ideas Officially Run Out ( _Fin_ )


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## Guest (Jan 23, 2015)

Fagotterdammerung said:


> Ideas Officially Run Out ( _Fin_ )


Oh no! When is this supposed to occur?


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## mtmailey (Oct 21, 2011)

I think only 2 apply they either great music era or crap music era .


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## MoonlightSonata (Mar 29, 2014)

The Age of Peace
The Cage Age
The Age of 4'33'' Jokes


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## Guest (Jan 23, 2015)

MoonlightSonata said:


> The Age of Peace
> The Cage Age
> The Age of 4'33'' Jokes


A joke about jokes about 4'33?

JOKE WITHIN A JOKE


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

*Aw, c'mon, Couchie, don't hold back...*



Couchie said:


> Medieval, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, etc era system is garbage. Please propose new system.
> 
> - Early
> - Age of Harpsichord
> ...


Aw, c'mon, Couchie, don't hold back... 
tell us what you really think!​


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Skilmarilion said:


> Oh dude, and yet you still refuse to contribute to the _Stupid Thread Ideas_ thread.


My thought exactly: Great post, wrong category


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Fagotterdammerung said:


> Americans Playing White Piano Keys***


Reminds me of Randy Newman's response when an interviewer said that currently, there were rock musicians crossing over in to film composing and then he mentioned that rock musician Jack White was about to make such a crossover and would be scoring an upcoming film. Newman quickly shot back with, ***_"Is it all going to be in A-minor?"_ :lol:

I've heard buzz, though, that there is an alternative underground movement afoot within the new-age contemporary piano music genre... they're starting to go high chromatic -- of course anticipating huge public resistance! (I think this trend in the contemporary pop piano genre has to do with the recent upsurge of the classical neoromantic genre, but there is not enough material in either the pop or the non-pop of these genres to yet make a stronger connection.)


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

No hits. No runs. No eras.


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

Holy ****
Boring ****
Good ****
Tough ****
Weird ****


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

senza sordino said:


> Holy ****
> Boring ****
> Good ****
> Tough ****
> Weird ****


:lol: :lol: :lol:


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

Music -> Music -> Music -> Music -> Music -> Music... and now, more Music!


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## Haydn man (Jan 25, 2014)

Hey, I quite like this era idea

Before
Haydn
After

Must dash, going to re catalogue my collection


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Blake said:


> Music -> Music -> Music -> Music -> Music -> Music... and now, more Music!


What comes after "more music"?! I HAVE TO KNOW!!


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Ideally, the classification of musical eras should match up with other sorts of historical classifications.


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## The nose (Jan 14, 2014)

^^^
In theory yes but sometimes it isn't so simple to match evolution in music with historical evolution.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

The nose said:


> ^^^
> In theory yes but sometimes it isn't so simple to match evolution in music with historical evolution.





The nose said:


> ^^^
> In theory yes but sometimes it isn't so simple to match evolution in music with historical evolution.


That's true. But even if we take one field at a time, the art of periodization is becoming aware of the generalizations and then becoming aware of all the exceptions to the generalizations. (I'm a history teacher so I've put some thought into this.)

For my money... well, as a teacher, the basic framework for European history that I give my students is:

400-700 Late Antiquity
700-1000 the "dark" part of the Middle Ages
1000-1200 the Middle Ages
1200-1350 the High Middle Ages
1350-1450 transition to the Renaissance
1450-1492 the Renaissance Part 1
1492-1550 the Renaissance Part 2 and the Reformation 
1550-1618 the Renaissance Part 3 and the Reformation 
1618-1649 the Renaissance Part 4 and the Reformation 
1649-1688 transition to the Enlightenment
1688-1715 the Enlightenment Part 1
1715-1789 the Enlightenment Part 2 
1789-1814 transition to Romanticism 
1814-1848 Romanticism 
1848-1870 Late Romanticism and Realism 
1870-1914 transition to Modernism
1914-1945 Modernism
1945-1968 transition to Post-Modernism
1960-2015 Post-Modernism

That has evolved over the years. It is a respectable approximation to what most historians would say and it does a fairly nice job of mapping onto various fields - music, art, architecture, philosophy, literature, economics, whatever. I try to be honest with them about its strengths and weaknesses, about how other teachers might do it differently.

Most teachers have moved away from a "names and dates" approach, and I let them know that, but I think that is mostly a mistake. The timeline is never far away. I tell them all the time, "More is easier to remember than less." Often, in fact, remembering a few exceptions makes the generalizations easier.

Most of my students have had piano, violin, and/or cello lessons, and the rest of them have mothers who somehow failed to persuade them to take such lessons, but the big name composers are familiar to them anyway, so for the most part the classical music bit is just a matter of putting them in the right places on the timeline. I add a few too, of course. Then I can tell stories about Pérotin and Notre Dame de Paris, the legend about Palestrina and the Council of Trent, Bach and Frederick the Great, Beethoven and Napoleon, Verdi and Italian nationalism, and so on, and the students' familiarity with the music can help them get a "feel" for the flow of history. Of course we also do the most famous artists, writers, scientists, mathematicians, and so on. Occasionally I have a day for my students to just name famous stuff they've heard of and we put it on the timeline, making connections. (Thanks to Google, if my students surprise me, the answer is never far away! You can never guess what they'll come up with. When I did this last month, a student asked me about Yuan Shikai. How does a 6th grader ever hear of Yuan Shikai?)


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## Guest (Jan 27, 2015)

Roots
Stem
Branches
Leaves
Buds
Flowers


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

I classify classical music like this:

1) Music I Like
2) Music I Don't Like
3) Music I might like but am not going to try because I already am overwhelmed with all the music I already like.

Occasionally stuff from category 3 moves to category 1 or 2.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

,
.
;
:
!
?
??
???​


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Deleted post..................


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

some guy said:


> Roots
> Stem
> Branches
> Leaves
> ...


Eh, I hope that when the Pollen era comes (if I live long enough to witness it) I'm not allergic.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

. . . 
Era Before the Era Before the Era of Best Music
Era Before the Era of Best Music
Era of Best Music
Era After the Era of best Music
Era After the Era After the Era of Best Music
. . .


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