# When can electronic music be considered classical?



## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

I'm a fan of Ingram Marshall, a composer who writes for both electronic medium and acoustic medium. He is generally considered one of our contemporary "classical" composers.

If he were to write purely electronic music, would he still be considered a classical composer? If the answer is yes, where do we draw the line between him and a techno-pop all-electronic composer?

It raises questions such as "What actually defines classical music?" John Cage asked that question. Golijov asks that question, at least indirectly, wth his _Pasión_.

Is it where the music is performed? Is it defined by WHO listens to it? Is it by the educational background of the composer? Well then what about self taught composers?


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

I can't give you a definition but I can tell the difference when I hear it! To be sure, it doesn't matter what instrument is chosen: a 'classical' composer could write only electronic music and still be a 'classical' composer. As a matter of fact, a lot of modern 'classical' composers wrote electronic music and I will give you this beautiful piece by Stockhausen as an exhilarating example:






This is definitely 'classical' music not techno pop. The word 'classical' is misguided though: the antonym of 'classical' is 'modern' so 'modern classical' music (which is all 'classical' music from the 20th and even 19th century) contains a contradiction. What people actually mean by 'classical' music is music as art which is opposed to music as (simply) entertainment like pop and jazz. So basically your question is: what makes music art (as opposed to music as entertainment) or simply 'what is art'? It is notoriously hard to provide a definition of art, perhaps because there is a paradox involved: art has a transcending quality so if one could give a definition of art then everything that qualifies would not be art because not transcending the definition!


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## Guest (Jul 22, 2017)

20centrfuge said:


> I'm a fan of Ingram Marshall, a composer who writes for both electronic medium and acoustic medium. He is generally considered one of our contemporary "classical" composers.
> 
> If he were to write purely electronic music, would he still be considered a classical composer? If the answer is yes, where do we draw the line between him and a techno-pop all-electronic composer?
> 
> ...


Two of the criteria often offered (not the only ones) are that it is written down - there is a score - and that it is 'art' or 'serious' music. The first is somewhat helpful, the second simply begs the question, "What is the definition of 'art' or 'serious' music'?"

A third criterion might be that it's 'classical' if it is derived from the recognisable tradition of 'classical' as inherited - not without mutation - from previous generations. So those who belonged to the 'classical music' community in Beethoven's time - composers, publishers, audiences, patrons, musicians etc - inherited from their immediate predecessors of Mozart's time, and Handel's before that, and Monteverdi's before that, and Palestrina's before that. And Beethoven's 'community' passed on to Berlioz and thence to Tchaikovsky...to Mahler...to Schoenberg etc etc.


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## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

Very helpful MacLeod!


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

The more one thinks about the question the murkier it gets. Agamemnon set out the criteria well and I'd agree with it. Then I start thinking about electronic artists who are not thought of as 'classical' artists, but who are also not particularly making straight-up pop music.
Jumping back a few decades, when the early so-called 'Krautrock' musicians were making music, you see definite crossover tendencies in the output. On Kraftwerk's early albums there is obvious input from their 'classical' background and forays into musique concrete, but some pieces like 'Tanzmusik' are definite prototype examples of technopop. I think what they were doing early on is still in the classical or 'art-music' tradition, but then it also influences their later output which is more like pop music!

I'd also argue that the business of writing a score, as something that pre-dates the ability to record, is something particular to that situation. I'm not saying recording supersedes score writing, but it is possible to e.g. "write" a piano sonata in your head and make a recording of it, perhaps even not on a piano but an electronic medium. It has no actual written score, but it's no less a sonata.


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

I agree, eugeneonagain: the score can not be a right criterion and some pop/rock comes close to being art as well. I want to make two remarks on that. There is a definite influence between 'serious' music and pop/jazz, so e.g. Debussy was influenced by jazz and jazz became influenced by the harmonies of Debussy and thereby becoming almost art music itself. In pop/rock there is a genre named 'art rock' as it aims to be art as well but I think this 'art rock' (The Velvet Underground, Captain Beefheart, Roxy Music and so on) is not so much influenced by art/serious music as by visual arts (it seems to be no coincidence that a lot of these avantgarde rock artists also painted or had a background in art college).

Indeed, especially in Germany there is a tradition of pop/rock that is very closely related to art: like The Velvet Undergound and Captain Beefheart actually play simple rock 'n' roll or blues they play simple pop but in a way that - like The Velvet Underground and Captain Beefheart - totally transcends these traditional pop genres because they add an artistic approach to it (perhaps in the way Andy Warhol and other 'pop' arists took popular images and transformed them into art) . My example of the day would be this very curious song by Palais Schaumburg:


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## Guest (Jul 22, 2017)

Unlike the biological definition of 'species' - which separates animals into groups that reproduce with each other - species of music have been cross-fertilising for donkey's years. That's why definitions of 'classical' have become almost meaningless, of value to historians and purists but not to those of us who like classical, electronic and the hybrids between.


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## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

I know that as humans we like to label and categorize. We do it with everything. Every person we meet we quickly label as a certain type of person, etc. It makes sense that we try to do that with music, but I agree, it doesn't always work. I think we are seeing a fair share of crossover music happening nowadays. I am open to it, but also wonder what kind of acceptance it would find in concerthalls.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

eugeneonagain said:


> it is possible to e.g. "write" a piano sonata in your head and make a recording of it, perhaps even not on a piano but an electronic medium. It has no actual written score, but it's no less a sonata.


It is true that some historians define "classical" in terms of a written score, but their claim is not simply that music is classical if it has a score. The claim is that music is classical if its _dissemination_ depends on scores. Whether the composer creates the music with written notation is not the issue; it's whether further performances of that music, and therefore listeners' exposure to the music, depends on written notation. So even if, for example, a written score exists for a rock song, that alone would not make it "classical" because that song is still disseminated primarily through not-written means: bands who create the riffs by themselves in their garages and perform it live without sheet music, as well as listeners who listen to it on the radio. The score is basically secondary if it enters into the picture at all. This isn't true of, say, a Beethoven sonata, whose performance and therefore dissemination is basically unthinkable without a score.

As you point out in your example, the invention and (more importantly) widespread use of recording technology, as well as electronic music, do mess up this definition a little bit, which is one reason (there are others) why many historians think the "classical tradition" is fundamentally different thing, though obviously not completely dead, in the 21st century.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

There will always be marginal cases, but I think the best test is what the composer says.


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## Clairvoyance Enough (Jul 25, 2014)

Maybe it would be easier to categorize the electronic music that wouldn't fit? There was a similar thread recently about defining the difference between classical and pop, and to me a focus on development was the most convincing answer given. Obviously there are genres of music that don't focus on danceable repetition that most still wouldn't consider classical, like the various subgenres of progressive rock, space/trance, and etc, and it seems to me that distinction is related to lineage. 

I've never heard any progmetal that sounded directly influenced by modern and contemporary composers the way modern and contemporary composers were clearly influenced by the romantic composers. Even Jazz, often considered the closest equal to classical in terms of complexity, seems to exist in a separate category - I'm sure many of the great jazz musicians were familiar with classical, but their output was something so much their own that it seems to warrant its own timeline. Maybe I'm wrong here, but it doesn't really sound like Jazz got its origins from the classical music being written around the time it was being created. 

Much of the progressive metal I listen to contains complexity, and so if the label 'classical' is more of a status symbol for more serious artists I could see the temptation to give it, but I personally wouldn't because progmetal sounds more like the expansion of a tradition that was begun by blues guitarists than any classical composers.

So if complexity and development alone aren't sufficient, I'd try to feel out the influences. I thought of Xenakis listening to Ingrid Marshall on youtube, so my first instinct was to consider it classical. I'm not sure I even consider certain avant garde electronic works, however complex and often grouped with classical, to be a continuation of the classical tradition. They sound more like the beginnings of an entirely new tradition deserving of its own timeline, to me more for the emphasis on experimental timbre at the expense of development than the novelty of the sounds alone.


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## techniquest (Aug 3, 2012)

Taking it from a different angle entirely, in answer to the original question of when can electronic music be considered classical, how about the work of Isao Tomita? He was an electronics wizz who took pieces of classical music and re-created them note for note in electronic form. So is the music still classical; or is it now something else?


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

Clairvoyance Enough said:


> There was a similar thread recently about defining the difference between classical and pop, and to me a focus on development was the most convincing answer given.


I remember I've read recently - probably here - that the musical revolution of Debussy was really the halt of development in music: before Debussy music was all about development, culminating in Wagner, but Debussy and other impressionist/modern composers rejected development altogether so 'classical' music became more scenic, more like variations on a theme (akin to jazz) or simply more repetitious (Ravel's Bolero, minimalist music)...


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

Eschbeg said:


> It is true that some historians define "classical" in terms of a written score, but their claim is not simply that music is classical if it has a score. The claim is that music is classical if its _dissemination_ depends on scores. Whether the composer creates the music with written notation is not the issue; it's whether further performances of that music, and therefore listeners' exposure to the music, depends on written notation. So even if, for example, a written score exists for a rock song, that alone would not make it "classical" because that song is still disseminated primarily through not-written means: bands who create the riffs by themselves in their garages and perform it live without sheet music, as well as listeners who listen to it on the radio. The score is basically secondary if it enters into the picture at all. This isn't true of, say, a Beethoven sonata, whose performance and therefore dissemination is basically unthinkable without a score.


I think you are right but I think we need to go deeper and ask why this is important or even relevant to the distinction. I think serious music is composed with knowledge and understanding music theory (that's why it is 'written' into a score) while pop and jazz artists don't have a clue about music theory but just jam around till it 'sounds' good. Especially some of the finest jazz artists, like Thelonious Monk, have a great intuition about music theory - they seem to grasp how music works without studying it - but simply because they haven't studied music theory (and therefore they didn't even know how to create scores of their music) they remain amateurs and not 'classical' composers.

So perhaps it all comes down to this: a classical/serious composer knows what he is doing (he knows music theory) while the pop/jazz artist don't have a clue what he is doing musical-technical-wise.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

*When can electronic music be considered classical?*

Electronic music for the most part starts as sound. Its "score" is the recording. Stockhausen worked directly to tape, with sound, and he made "listening scores" which were transcriptions after the fact; if he used a score to compose, it was only a rough guide, until computers allowed more precision and control.

"Scores" are written sets of instructions for prescribed instruments. If there are no instruments, then there is no need for a score; it is just sound. Most pop music (The Beatles) is composed this way: in the studio, as sound on tape. This is not what makes music "classical" or not, but it is a defining characteristic of what makes most classical music "classical." But this is not essential to the music or art form; this is only a way of recording musical events and presenting them to other players.

Once we get that out of the way: all "serious" art, since our conception of art came into being, has had a 'spiritual' nature which is designed for "sublime contemplation." This is to distinguish it from lighter art and entertainment.

If "electro-pop" is designed for a certain consumer market, then I do not consider it serous art; but I do not denigrate it, and I recognize that there are cross-over areas. The Beatles' music was designed at first to be consumer pop music, but it transcended those limits; Samuel Beckett was interested in meeting John Lennon after hearing "I Am the Walrus," and tha's close enough to art for me.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Agamemnon said:


> I remember I've read recently - probably here - that the musical revolution of Debussy was really the halt of development in music: before Debussy music was all about development, culminating in Wagner, but Debussy and other impressionist/modern composers rejected development altogether so 'classical' music became more scenic, more like variations on a theme (akin to jazz) or simply more repetitious (Ravel's Bolero, minimalist music)...


Are you sure this trend did not start earlier, with Chopin? His "poetic wandering" does not really develop, but just wanders.

And Wagner 'wanders' around a lot, with all those diminished chords and unresolved areas...


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## Clairvoyance Enough (Jul 25, 2014)

Agamemnon said:


> I remember I've read recently - probably here - that the musical revolution of Debussy was really the halt of development in music: before Debussy music was all about development, culminating in Wagner, but Debussy and other impressionist/modern composers rejected development altogether so 'classical' music became more scenic, more like variations on a theme (akin to jazz) or simply more repetitious (Ravel's Bolero, minimalist music)...


When I listen to minimalism, let alone Debussy and Ravel, I still hear a much greater emphasis on change over time than I do in the electronic music that I wouldn't consider classical. To me something like Stockhausen's Kontakte sounds classical in the impressionistic way you're talking about; there's no traditional theme and development structure so far as I can hear, but it seems to have a clear beginning, middle, and end defined by contrasts of tempo and business. To me that's still "development" of a sort, but apparently that term defines techniques more specific than I realized.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Clairvoyance Enough said:


> I'm sure many of the great jazz musicians were familiar with classical, but their output was something so much their own that it seems to warrant its own timeline. Maybe I'm wrong here, but it doesn't really sound like Jazz got its origins from the classical music being written around the time it was being created.


It's origins definitely. It would be a hard sell to try and link King Oliver to classical music. However later jazz (and earlier Bix Beiderbecke's lesser known experimental pieces like _In a Mist_ which sounds almost like Thelonious Monk) started to be influenced by musicians familiar with classical idioms and modern ideas in art-music. It runs through the 40s on and off, Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw dallied with classical ideas, but you hear it best with pianists like Dave Brubeck. Miles Davis's music of the 50s and maybe early 60s is definitely 'art music'.


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

millionrainbows said:


> Are you sure this trend did not start earlier, with Chopin? His "poetic wandering" does not really develop, but just wanders.
> 
> And Wagner 'wanders' around a lot, with all those diminished chords and unresolved areas...


I guess you are right, although it still makes sense to me to think the modern composers were less interested in development than the (truly) classical composers. Maybe Chopin and Wagner were already quite modern (and Debussy was still quite a Wagnerian!). BTW, in my experience you can always find a precursor in all things so in the end everything was already there in the beginning (which is also an old metaphysical wisdom: the cause - the beginning - can never result in anything more than the cause already contains...).


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

Clairvoyance Enough said:


> When I listen to minimalism, let alone Debussy and Ravel, I still hear a much greater emphasis on change over time than I do in the electronic music that I wouldn't consider classical. To me something like Stockhausen's Kontakte sounds classical in the impressionistic way you're talking about; there's no traditional theme and development structure so far as I can hear, but it seems to have a clear beginning, middle, and end defined by contrasts of tempo and business. To me that's still "development" of a sort, but apparently that term defines techniques more specific than I realized.


You are right but I guess the halt of development must be understood in a more relativistic way: development wasn't the dominant musical structure anymore.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> .
> 
> "Scores" are written sets of instructions for prescribed instruments. If there are no instruments, then there is no need for a score; it is just sound._* Most pop music (The Beatles) is composed this way*_: in the studio, as sound on tape.


Most pop? By far, most pop music in the past started with one or more musicians sitting around with a piano, a guitar or with several instruments working out songs well before recording to tape. Inevitably, the end point is some kind of score (with lyrics) before recording although some musicians may commit to memory. A lot of present-day pop music still originates in the same way.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Agamemnon said:


> I remember I've read recently - probably here - that the musical revolution of Debussy was really the halt of development in music: before Debussy music was all about development, culminating in Wagner, but Debussy and other impressionist/modern composers rejected development altogether so 'classical' music became more scenic, more like variations on a theme (akin to jazz) or simply more repetitious (Ravel's Bolero, minimalist music)...


"Non-developmental" music, if we understand it to mean the absence of motivic development as opposed to simply having something like a development section, was the norm rather than the exception for most of history. It's mostly the post-Beethoven, Austro-German strain of music that elevated motivic development to a primary standard of composition. (I say "post-Beethoven" because historians can't quite agree whether Haydn and Mozart cared about motivic development as much as their successors did.)

Debussy is an important milestone not because he was the first to deemphasize development but because he was the first to make everyone realize what an arbitrary standard it was. Like any standard, it was one among many. That's why Debussy marks the point when the Austro-German strain was no longer the dominant one. It's also why Schoenberg said his own attempt to continue the "developmental tradition," in the form of 12-tone music, would "guarantee the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years."


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Agamemnon said:


> jazz artists don't have a clue about music theory


My experience has not shown me anything remotely resembling this. Back in my time as an academic, I taught every level of music theory, and when we got to chromatic harmony the jazz students not only held their own against the classical ones but positively ran circles around some of them.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

_"Scores" are written sets of instructions for prescribed instruments. If there are no instruments, then there is no need for a score; it is just sound.__Most pop music (The Beatles)is* composed *this way: in the studio, as sound on tape._



DaveM said:


> Most pop? By far, most pop music in the past started with one or more musicians sitting around with a piano, a guitar or with several instruments working out songs well before recording to tape. Inevitably, the end point is some kind of score (with lyrics) before recording although some musicians may commit to memory. A lot of present-day pop music still originates in the same way.


I specified The Beatles to make that more accurate. The point being, most pop music is not _composed or conceived _by scores; scores are only needed to instruct other musicians.

Frank Sinatra with Nelson Riddle is another story.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

> I specified The Beatles to make that more accurate. The point being, most pop music is not _composed or conceived _by scores; scores are only needed to instruct other musicians.
> 
> Frank Sinatra with Nelson Riddle is another story.


That's a distinction without a difference. Music came into Beethoven's head and he wrote it down as a score. Music came into McCartney's head and it got written down as a score at some point (McCartney couldn't read music in the earlier days). The recording to tape early on in the process is a convenience that wasn't available before the 20th century. I'm sure Beethoven would have used if available. For the most part, the process of composing music has been broadly the same through the ages. Diddle around with an instrument or instruments, come up with a tune, flesh it out, come up with lyrics if a song (sometimes precedes the coming up with tune), write it down. Then record it if the last 60+ years.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> Are you sure this trend did not start earlier, with Chopin? His "poetic wandering" does not really develop, but just wanders.
> 
> And Wagner 'wanders' around a lot, with all those diminished chords and unresolved areas...


I can't recall a passage from either composer that sounds like wandering. Perhaps you could refresh my memory?


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

I think it gets to a point where it can't be heard in the music itself. This used to bother me because the distinction seems too arbitrary when only a (small) group of enthusiast listeners and perhaps the composer's educational background determine whether the music is "classical electronic" or "non-classical electronic" (and please, there is lots and lots of electronic music that has little to do with commercial pop music). 

I'm certain that in some cases nobody could possibly make the distinction between non-classical and classical electronic music, unless that person knew in advance that the composer and his music are regarded as "classical". 

I don't care anymore. I think it's better to let go of supposed ties to classical music and simply accept it as a seperate genre of electronic (art) music.


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## Guest (Jul 23, 2017)

DeepR said:


> I don't care anymore. I think it's better to let go of supposed ties to classical music and simply accept it as a seperate genre of electronic (art) music.


Hear hear !


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## Daniel Atkinson (Dec 31, 2016)

I don't understand the question. 

Electronic music in the classical tradition functions and sounds completely different to electronic music in the pop tradition (whether we're talking EDM or Ambient music). It is obvious almost straight away whether I am listening to a classical electronic work or otherwise, they really aren't that similar at all. The only similarity is that they are both tagged with the word "electronic" 




Daniel


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## malc (Apr 19, 2018)

This is like being on a Jury : what was the defendant thinking at the time of the crime! Check out the obscure Metabolist , which was structurally and conceptually influenced by classical music.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Reading the above posts reminds of fitting a square peg in a round hole. I don't see the need for electronic music such as the example given above to be classed as classical music. Let it have its own stand alone category.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

When in doubt, see how the composer refers to him- or herself. Someone like Ingram Marshall: “Though the composer uses the term "expressivist" to describe his music, he is often associated with post-minimalism. His music often reflects an interest in world music, particularly Balinese gamelan tradition, as well as influence from the American minimalism trends of the 1960s (the composer often acknowledges the work of Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and John Adams).” None of that fits entirely under the single heading of classical music or electronic music.

Not always, but sometimes classical music and electronic music get associated with each other because those who like classical music will also listen to electronic music, and sometimes an electronics composer may have previously written acoustical classical music or vice versa. There are times when strict labels just do not work, and I believe they should be avoided. Not everyone can be conveniently pigeonholed under one category or another, especially if the person has had a considerably long career. So while there can be distinct differences between electronic and classical music, they are both typically composed, and there’s nothing wrong with referring to the person has a composer rather than labeling him with the identity of one type of music or another.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

When its Poème électronique


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## Madiel (Apr 25, 2018)

Classical music is not defined by the instruments used to play it - instruments, electronics included, are not a style, they are only means to produce sounds -but by the various musical techniques - evolved and developed along many centuries - who define the idiom of a classical composer. It is the idiom who defines the music genre, then of course some cross-pollination is possible, but this is a feature that it is not unique to music, a lot of French words have become common in the English language, nonetheless there is no risk that an English speaker will confuse the two languages. Different idioms can borrow from each other freely, we slip into cross-over territory only when an idiom loses its peculiar character, simple borrowing does not make an idiom, Garth Hudson - keyboardist of The Band - used to insert a variety of classical techniques in the songs, but the idiom remained pop/rock, once again: it is the idiom who defines the genre.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Madiel said:


> Classical music is not defined by the instruments used to play it - instruments, electronics included, are not a style, they are only means to produce sounds -but by the various musical techniques - evolved and developed along many centuries - who define the idiom of a classical composer. It is the idiom who defines the music genre, then of course some cross-pollination is possible, but this is a feature that it is not unique to music, a lot of French words have become common in the English language, nonetheless there is no risk that an English speaker will confuse the two languages. Different idioms can borrow from each other freely, we slip into cross-over territory only when an idiom loses its peculiar character, simple borrowing does not make an idiom, Garth Hudson - keyboardist of The Band - used to insert a variety of classical techniques in the songs, but the idiom remained pop/rock, once again: it is the idiom who defines the genre.


Exactly! All that remains is to explore how much electronic classical music (that is classical music that was composed for electronic instruments or one sort or another) is actually good. I think the list will be quite a long one, though.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

DaveM said:


> That's a distinction without a difference. Music came into Beethoven's head and he wrote it down as a score. Music came into McCartney's head and it got written down as a score at some point (McCartney couldn't read music in the earlier days). The recording to tape early on in the process is a convenience that wasn't available before the 20th century. I'm sure Beethoven would have used if available.


Then another finer distinction must be made; the difference between oral/aural 'performance' based musics, and music which is scored. I've talked extensively about this in other threads.

Scores are visual; recording is ear.

Ear music is based on sound, by performing , playing, or creating sound. It could be argued that all music is 'ear' music, but this is to disregard the procedures which go in to creating the music, and this is the distinction we need to examine, not ignore.



DaveM said:


> For the most part, the process of composing music has been broadly the same through the ages. Diddle around with an instrument or instruments, come up with a tune, flesh it out, come up with lyrics if a song (sometimes precedes the coming up with tune), write it down. Then record it if the last 60+ years.


But this ignores the very differences I'm interested in illuminating and defining. There are those who read music, and those who don't. There is music which is created by scores, and there is music which is simply an ear performance.

I'm interested in those differences, because it adds to my understanding of popular music, jazz, rock, and classical, and the differences between those processes. After all, that quandary was what gave birth to this thread idea.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

A score can't be 'definitive' like a performance is definitive, because a score is a written form of recording an idea, and a sound recording is an aural way of recording an idea (performance). Therefore, since music is ultimately manifest as sound, a written score can never be as fully realized and complete as a sound recording, in a performance sense. However, written scores are detailed instructions, so a complex idea involving a hundred musicians is not possible without the score as a set of unchanging instructions, embodying a consistent 'unchanging' musical idea, resulting in a more-or-less consistent result.
The hesitancy of traditionalists to see any recorded version of, say, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony as 'definitive' is based on the mythology of the pre-recording era, when the composer was at the top of the hierarchy, because 'the score as idea' was his, and was the only fixed version which was an essentially unchanging set of instructions and musical ideas. The score was not simply a set of unchanging instructions, though; the score embodies a consistent 'unchanging' musical idea, thus it is a written recording of a musical idea, and in written form it takes on the characteristic of an 'idealized' Platonic musical idea. Thus, the mythology arose of the score (as ideal Platonic idea), as being 'definitive' in that sense, like written scripture. "In the beginning was the word." And the conductor said, "Let there be sound," and there was sound. Classical music hierarchy is: Conductor at top, as "God," with the sacred Platonic idea; then conductor as demi-god, bringing the Word to light, manifesting "God's" will, since it is irrelevant to an aural approach to creating music.

The written score has always been a 'set of instructions,' and still is. If Frank Sinatra used Nelson Riddle's orchestra in a recording session, Riddle's written charts would still be just a 'set of instructions,' but in popular music, they are not revered, or seen as the ultimate goal; the ultimate goal of a Frank Sinatra recording session/performance would be to 'create a definitive recording of a definitive performance.' This, in order to create a 'definitive artifact,' i.e, a record which can be sold and listened to.

In classical music there are authored musical ideas and aesthetic approaches and styles, such as Beethoven's, which exist in the abstract, as written scores, as potentialities, and also as historic artifacts, like books.

This Platonic aspect of classical music exists before the performance, and has taken of an aura of 'reverence' among both players and listeners. This hierarchy in classical music still persists in the organization of recordings "by composer," not always by performer.

In popular music or jazz, which is composed and performed in recording studios from essentially aural ideas, this separation of composer/performer does not exist; as in aurally-transmitted unwritten folk music, the performance is the origin of musical ideas, and in many cases the performer is the 'composer.' John Coltrane performing an extended saxophone solo on "My Favorite Things" is the important creative aspect of jazz, and is most valued, not the song by Rogers and Hammerstein, which is only the vehicle for Coltrane's improvisation. The performer is at the top of the hierarchy.

There are classical traditionalists who insist that the performer is only a servant of the composer, and should not intrude.

Oral and aural traditions transmit ideas by ear, and they are stored in 'biological memory,' unwritten. Thus, these sorts of ideas change, and are not consistent. Written scores introduced the idea of authorship, and music which could be more consistent and true to the composer's intent. Plus, we're talking large groups of musicians here, not four or five guys sitting around a fire, or four Beatles in a studio.

Classical music puts the emphasis on the composer; the performers in an orchestra are employees following instructions in an hierarchy which puts composer and conductor on top, and performers to the lower parts of the pyramid. Classical music, in this regard, is an hierarchy of power which parallels the social power structure, rather than the 'tribe' or individual or jazz group.

In popular and folk musics, the performer is at the top of the hierarchy; and with the advent of sound recordings, their performances can now have a consistency which rivals the former domination of the written score.

While not even Schumann himself would have expected, or wanted, every performer of his work to render it in an identical manner, nor would he have wanted them to change, or add notes.

The point I wish to make is that written scores are more consistent in preserving unchanging ideas than aurally-performed music in the era before sound could be recorded."definitive."

The Beatles record catalogue is definitive, since they are recorded artifacts. Popular recordings which are conceived and created as 'definitive artifacts' such as Pet Sounds, Beatle albums, etc, are easily seen as 'definitive.'

Not so in classical; its history, in the era before recording, created a different paradigm, as I have explained.

In this sense, Stockhausen's recording of "Song of the Youths" is a definitive version, created as an unchanging artifact. In this sense, it follows a "classical" paradigm because, like a score, it presents an unchanging _idea_ (not merely a performance) which was issued from the composer himself.


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## Capeditiea (Feb 23, 2018)

:O so does this mean all my non-classical music is actually classical? :O

---edited to add an example (not promotion) just an example


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https://soundcloud.com/moistica-capeditiea%2Fthee-angelique-song


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## Madiel (Apr 25, 2018)

millionrainbows said:


> The point I wish to make is that written scores are more consistent in preserving unchanging ideas than aurally-performed music in the era before sound could be recorded."definitive."


Once I read in The Gramophone a quote attributed to Mozart that sounded something like: written music is no more than fly specks. True or not the quotation, this is a well known fact from the beginning: in the Middle Ages when the Roman church decided to uniform its church music in all of Europe soon discovered that written music was not enough, written music could not perform the role of sending a musician to explain how those scores had to be performed.
The practice to write extremely detailed scores is quite recent in the history of written music, but no matter how detailed the instructions are practice - and the transmission of practice through generations of teachers and interpreters - remains the true decisive factor in the way classical music is performed. Written scores by themselves are useless, a Beethoven scores contains more detailed instructions than a Bach score, but far less than a Britten score. Have I said Britten? let's take Britten then, a composer for which we have detailed written scores, practice and his own recordings: do we have definitive performances of his work? and orchestras playing his music behaving like a "tribute band"? of course not, but why? because classical music is too complex to be exhausted by a single interpretation: classical music - just like painting or philosophy or poetry - offers itself to a never ending investigation.
Furthermore we need to consider that along the centuries different composers have had a different attitude towards the written score, for some of them - let's say Haydn or Boccherini (who in their time enjoyed the birth of the music industry thanks to bourgeois hunger for written music to perform at home) - were absolutely willing to adapt their works so to make them playable for typical bourgeois musicians, money was a convincing enough argument. On the other hand people like Verdi were appalled by the way their art was vulgarized, and certainly the work of opera composers - due to the popularity of the medium - were bound to be more sensible to the problem. 
In the end composers have always tried to control the way their work has been performed, I guess every kapellmeister was a musical dictator in his own city, the emergence of detailed scores was both a necessity of the music publishing industry and an attempt by some composers to stay in control of their artistic output. 
Would I like to be able to listen to Beethoven performing the Hammerklavier? of course I'd like it! would then I be willing to renounce the many memorable interpretations of that piano sonata that gifted interpreters have donated us? never!
At the same time here we are talking about electronic music and I guess no one can deny the fact that technology gives composers a firmer than ever control over their work (your Stockhausen example is quite clear on this regard), I guess it is unavoidable and while it can be a conquest for the composers, I consider it a loss for the music, the way I see it what makes classical music high art is its complexity bound to an endless possibility of interpretation, once that bound is dissolved complexity by itself is not enough to make it worth: would Bach's music be so loved if it existed one and only interpretation of it?


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