# For the love of music - radical eclecticism!



## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

How about just appreciating whole music in all its forms, genres and combinations?
I guess such approach would be healthy.
I am also all for free competition between genres, and acknowledgment of merit and dignity of all genres!

I think classical music is both superior and inferior to popular music.
Superior in depth, complexity, sophistication, but inferior (which is especially true for post 1940 classical music) in cultural significance, social/political impact, emotional relateability, and perhaps even originality. While popular music saw true creative explosion and tons fresh energy and originality after world war II, classical musicians were more concerned about further developing theoretical concepts of music and pushing music to its edges, with the results that were, to say it in mild terms, unimpactful. This is perhaps a true failure of classical music in our times, because no other art form lost so much popularity and impact as classical music did (speaking just about new/contemporary classical music). People still read new novels, go and see new movies, plays, they even appreciate abstract/modernist art I guess way more than new classical compositions.

This video inspired me to start this theme:






It treats all music equally... (which I agree with)... and unfortunately we see that around 1940 classical music reached the dead end, almost as its era has ended completely.

*Music itself, however, not only survived, but continued to thrive.* If we consider all types of music, 20th century is *for sure * by far best century for music. The century with unprecedented creativity, originality, variety and development of new genres, etc... Everywhere, music blossomed, all music except classical.

If classical music recognized that it's nothing special, but just a type of music, perhaps it would have greater chance to keep thriving and competing with modern genres. If it was just another genre, people who listen to popular music would perhaps be more likely to give it a chance. Now many of them don't even consider it, because for their mentality it doesn't even belong to the category of music... it's some other stuff. You have music, and you have classical music - that's their mentality.
You listen to music, and you study classical music, you struggle to play it, you HAVE to study it at school... all of which makes it less attractive.

Music should be primarily for listening.
Music should also be socially / politically relevant.

I am wondering why 20th century hasn't seen tons of art songs with socially critical lyrics? That would be relevant. That's what singers-songwriters did and rock musicians, but classical musicians didn't even bother trying to do it (to any significant extent). Why?

I opened another thread "When was the last classical music hit"?

Perhaps the better question would be:

Why composers can't (or don't want to) produce something like this today:





I guess such stuff wouldn't find it too hard to reach masses and become popular.
And we can't say that it's lightweight, trite, or shallow either. It's good music, that is also impactful and catchy.

When I ask why don't they produce something like this today I don't mean something that is exactly LIKE this... but something different, original, that would still have such emotional impact and that could be iconic and instantly recognizable. Of course I am not for derivative art and recycling old styles... but I am for new styles that are still as powerful and as impactful as old stuff.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

everywhere in the world we can see, that quality is replaced with mass-produced garbage. And this does not concern just music, but many different areas such as food as well. I am not sure that classical music should even try to compete with pop music, because that would mean it would need to be watered down, trivialized, shortened etc. And besides, that market is already occupied by film music. What I would prefer is that modern classical composers take inspiration in modern pop culture, but distill it and transmute it into high quality products. Dvořák was mostly inspired by Czech folk music and that is why his music is beautiful.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

CJovicic, I agree with much of your post: in Classical Music, most people reside at or near the center of the bell curve of what most leople listen to and like, but the composers have mostly moved away, trying out stuff largely to please themselves. And so popular musics--rock, pop, C&W, various "ethnic" musics, other musics--have filled the void. And if one has been raised in a musically eclectic background, switching back and forth between favored classical composers to, say, some Prog Rock is as easy as can be.

But the bigger picture is the explosion of music everywhere and the ease of access to it. The musical pie has grown enormously, and there is now room for many, many more slices of pie so that the percentage of the pie occupied by classical music gets smaller and smaller, even though the quantity available gets larger and larger--60 years ago, how many Miaskovsky symphonies would one be able to hear, whenever one wanted--if one wanted? This is all part of the New Stasis in the arts.


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

Jacck said:


> because that would mean it would need to be watered down, trivialized, shortened etc.


Well I am not sure it would need to be watered down, or any of the things you mentioned. I think it should just be marketed better.

Imagine one of the most unapproachable composers today, say Brian Ferneyhough - if he wrote a couple of highly relevant art songs, that speak about issues such as technological advancement, rise of radical right, alienation, global warming, dumbing down of a society, or perhaps even about sexuality, relationships, but in a smart, deep, yet unpretentious way, and if he made an album with modern, appealing cover art that would feature, say 3-4 of such songs, and the rest filled with his highly complex instrumental compositions (whose choice would be appropriate for the concept of whole album), I am sure he would find many more listeners, and even fans, even for his most complex and demanding pieces.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

ZJovicic said:


> Well I am not sure it would need to be watered down, or any of the things you mentioned. I think it should just be marketed better.
> 
> Imagine one of the most unapproachable composers today, say Brian Ferneyhough - if he wrote a couple of highly relevant art songs, that speak about issues such as technological advancement, rise of radical right, alienation, global warming, dumbing down of a society, or perhaps even about sexuality, relationships, but in a smart, deep, yet unpretentious way, and if he made an album with modern, appealing cover art that would feature, say 3-4 of such songs, and the rest filled with his highly complex instrumental compositions (whose choice would be appropriate for the concept of whole album), I am sure he would find many more listeners, and even fans, even for his most complex and demanding pieces.


I agree. Or you could make wonderful scifi inspired music
Jerry Goldsmith - The Mutant
Jerry Goldsmith - Logan's Run
I would love to have modern symphonies like this


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

ZJovicic said:


> Well I am not sure it would need to be watered down, or any of the things you mentioned. I think it should just be marketed better.
> 
> Imagine one of the most unapproachable composers today, say Brian Ferneyhough - if he wrote a couple of highly relevant art songs, that speak about issues such as technological advancement, rise of radical right, alienation, global warming, dumbing down of a society, or perhaps even about sexuality, relationships, but in a smart, deep, yet unpretentious way, and if he made an album with modern, appealing cover art that would feature, say 3-4 of such songs, and the rest filled with his highly complex instrumental compositions (whose choice would be appropriate for the concept of whole album), I am sure he would find many more listeners, and even fans, even for his most complex and demanding pieces.


With this, I disagree. Art Song just isn't the effective format to deliver commentary on the issues you list. Such commentary works much better and receives so much more attention when delivered as anthemic popular song. Think Bob Dylan, John Lennon's _Imagine_, Barry McGuire's _Eve of Destruction_, Helen Reddy's _I Am Woman_, PJ Harvey's powerful _Let England Shake_ album, Jefferson Airplane, Bruce Springsteen, etc. One of the most powerful songs commenting on species loss was Ian and Sylvia's _Antelope_ these many decades ago.


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

Strange Magic said:


> With this, I disagree. Art Song just isn't the effective format to deliver commentary on the issues you list. Such commentary works much better and receives so much more attention when delivered as anthemic popular song. Think Bob Dylan, John Lennon's _Imagine_, Barry McGuire's _Eve of Destruction_, Helen Reddy's _I Am Woman_, PJ Harvey's powerful _Let England Shake_ album, Jefferson Airplane, Bruce Springsteen, etc.


Do you mean that classical musicians can't find appropriate format for such thing within the domain of classical music? If not art song, perhaps something else, that would still belong to classical music domain?


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

ZJovicic said:


> Do you mean that classical musicians can't find appropriate format for such thing within the domain of classical music? If not art song, perhaps something else, that would still belong to classical music domain?


If one chooses to include Broadway Musical as a component of CM, then it becomes much more both possible and effective: _West Side Story, South Pacific_.


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

Returning to the main topic of eclecticism. *I think it would be really interesting (and fun!) if someone tried to make a TOP 100 or TOP 1000 list of best pieces of music, based on critical acclaim and artistic merit, but in which all genres could participate. *The ultimate eclectic list. So, anything goes, but it's all ranked and very competitive. It truly needs to be the best stuff to enter the list.

I guess, the top entries and a big part of all entries to such a list (at least 50%) would come from Western Classical Music canon, but it would be really interesting to see how classical pieces rank on such a list in comparison to other genres, such as traditional/ethnic/folk music, jazz, popular music, classical music of other cultures (Asian, etc...)

*So such a list would be somewhat akin to Voyager Golden Record, but ranked, and much larger.*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contents_of_the_Voyager_Golden_Record#Music


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

ZJovicic said:


> Returning to the main topic of eclecticism. *I think it would be really interesting (and fun!) if someone tried to make a TOP 100 or TOP 1000 list of best pieces of music, based on critical acclaim and artistic merit, but in which all genres could participate. *The ultimate eclectic list. So, anything goes, but it's all ranked and very competitive. It truly needs to be the best stuff to enter the list.
> 
> I guess, the top entries and a big part of all entries to such a list (at least 50%) would come from Western Classical Music canon, but it would be really interesting to see how classical pieces rank on such a list in comparison to other genres, such as traditional/ethnic/folk music, jazz, popular music, classical music of other cultures (Asian, etc...)
> 
> *So such a list would be somewhat akin to Voyager Golden Record, but ranked, and much larger.*


pop music comes and goes, classical music stays. Where are all the top10 song of the 1930's, 1980's, 2010's? Short-lived, dispensable music. There is no way to compare it to the Goldberg Variations, for what would be the criteria?


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

Jacck said:


> pop music comes and goes, classical music stays. Where are all the top10 song of the 1930's, 1980's, 2010's? Short-lived, dispensable music. There is no way to compare it to the Goldberg Variations, for what would be the criteria?


Not so quick writing off popular music classics. Where they are, you ask? Well, here:

1975 - 829+ million views on YouTube





1979 - 385+ million views on YouTube





1970 - 73+ million views on YouTube





1966 - 17+ million views on YouTube





1976 - 311+ million views on YouTube


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

Had an error with links... had to edit...


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

ZJovicic said:


> How about just appreciating whole music in all its forms, genres and combinations?
> I guess such approach would be healthy.
> I am also all for free competition between genres, and acknowledgment of merit and dignity of all genres!
> 
> ...


Well, I certainly can't agree about the "failure of classical music in our times". I do think classical music had a surge of popularity from the 1920s through the 1960s due to the emergence of the phonograph and broadcast radio. Before that, the opera and the symphony was mainly entertainment for the wealthy elite in large cities. When the middle class emerged in the mid- to late-19th century, if they wanted music they had to buy a piano and play it themselves. True, in those days there were simplified piano arrangements of classical hits, even whole Beethoven symphonies, but no doubt that didn't convey the full experience. The phonograph and radio suddenly brought it all into their homes, and that resulted in a classical music boom. Jazz, swing and blues suddenly became popular for the same reason, though they had already been around for many years.

The onset of broadcast TV meant the beginning of the end for the classical music boom. Suddenly, all kinds of non-musical as well as musical entertainment was freely available. Technology also greatly changed music itself, first with electric amplification, then with electronic processing and even computer programming. You can't blame "serious" or classical composers for that, it's pervasive in nearly all popular music too.

The good news is, today the music of earlier centuries is more plentiful, available and accessible than ever. But that also means that if people don't wan't to listen to it as much as they did in the mid-20th century during the halcyon days of Toscanini and the NBC Symphony, the Voice of Firestone and the Bell Telephone Hour, you can't blame today's serious or classical composers for that either.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

fluteman said:


> Well, I certainly can't agree about the "failure of classical music in our times". I do think classical music had a surge of popularity from the 1920s through the 1960s due to the emergence of the phonograph and broadcast radio. Before that, the opera and the symphony was mainly entertainment for the wealthy elite in large cities. When the middle class emerged in the mid- to late-19th century, if they wanted music they had to buy a piano and play it themselves. True, in those days there were simplified piano arrangements of classical hits, even whole Beethoven symphonies, but no doubt that didn't convey the full experience. The phonograph and radio suddenly brought it all into their homes, and that resulted in a classical music boom. Jazz, swing and blues suddenly became popular for the same reason, though they had already been around for many years.
> 
> The onset of broadcast TV meant the beginning of the end for the classical music boom. Suddenly, all kinds of non-musical as well as musical entertainment was freely available. Technology also greatly changed music itself, first with electric amplification, then with electronic processing and even computer programming. You can't blame "serious" or classical composers for that, it's pervasive in nearly all popular music too.
> 
> The good news is, today the music of earlier centuries is more plentiful, available and accessible than ever. But that also means that if people don't wan't to listen to it as much as they did in the mid-20th century during the halcyon days of Toscanini and the NBC Symphony, the Voice of Firestone and the Bell Telephone Hour, you can't blame today's serious or classical composers for that either.


You don't accept that modern classical music (including 12 tone, serial, avant garde and experimental) has failed? Really?


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

> You don't accept that modern classical music (including 12 tone, serial, avant garde and experimental) has failed? Really?


Has it really failed or not is open to debate. There are surely some great works that it produced, but it still hasn't touched people in a way popular or older classical music did. It's still pretty much unknown, even for a big chunk of classical music fans (who are already a minority). Not only that it's not popular, it's also struggling to get real acknowledgement in terms of merit or critical acclaim. Lists of best classical pieces of music feature very little of contemporary pieces, they are filled mostly with 1600-1940 stuff instead. I guess it's comparable to early music in its obscurity.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

janxharris said:


> You don't accept that modern classical music (including 12 tone, serial, avant garde and experimental) has failed? Really?


Really. ..........


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

fluteman said:


> Really. ..........


In general such music has not found favour with enough concertgoers in order to establish them as staples.

I actually think there is value in this type of music but I can't think of a single piece that totally engages me. Just my view.


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## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

My conductor friend says modern music has yet to be successful with vastness . I whisper , relax , let it be for 200 years more . He thought this a rare and delightful reply . We meet at the pub occasionally and once had the same piano teacher . He's told me of once playing piano for a famous new composer , actually , the composers own work . Said he was very nervous and at one point made what he considered a glaring mistake . I imagined the composer being quite un-critical of invention , so that's why I laughed . 

If the glory of the large concert hall declines , I don't mind . Something else may better suit what is and is to come , and even then the music won't demand and dictate it's form .


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## Red Terror (Dec 10, 2018)

Jacck said:


> everywhere in the world we can see, that quality is replaced with mass-produced garbage. And this does not concern just music, but many different areas such as food as well. I am not sure that classical music should even try to compete with pop music, because that would mean it would need to be watered down, trivialized, shortened etc. And besides, that market is already occupied by film music. What I would prefer is that modern classical composers take inspiration in modern pop culture, but distill it and transmute it into high quality products. Dvořák was mostly inspired by Czech folk music and that is why his music is beautiful.


Modern Jazz seems to be practicing what you suggest quite successfully.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Maybe it's time to give up on the idea that classical music is an endless continuum. The sort of music favoured by the majority of listeners is more-or-less an historical relic, with only its influences actively left over. The music itself is no more 'active' than historical films and novels and fashions. Which doesn't mean you can't partake of them; even with other people, but they are not contemporary culture, even when they have become part of the fabric of culture.


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## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

The Euro classical is all around the world . Be pleased with that . We received an elaborate brochure in the mail promoting a Chinese performance touring the USA . " _Shen Yun's_orchestra is one of a kind , harmoniously blending the distinct beauty of ancient Chinese instruments with the grandeur of a Western orchestra ." Studying the photo of the orchestra I see about 40 musicians and most play Euro violins ... then one cello , one bass , and they have a woodwind section . Horns seem absent .
Flutes are two and bamboo . There's four Chinese stringy things ; two in the bass section . Hey , I'd like to play with a Chinese string bass !

What's to do with world music ? Shall the Israeli Philharmonic be warriors for peace ?


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

I'm wondering if classical music could function as another genre of contemporary popular music. By that I mean the following: it would adopt all the format and conventions of the popular music: so you'd have albums, singles, album cover art, music videos, concerts, more direct interaction with fans, participation at pop music festivals, the use of microphones, amplifiers and speakers during live performance and the composer would also frequently perform his pieces or would be closely connected to people who perform it. So a classical music "band" could be a solo artist who composes and performs on whatever instrument, or it could be a duo, trio, quartet, all the way up to full philharmonic orchestra, and the composer(s) would always be a part of the team and present during performance... for example if the band is a philharmonic orchestra, the composer could be the conductor.
The singing style would be more relaxed, less operatic, but still precise and high quality.

The important thing to add: the music itself would not change much. It would still be full blown classical, not watered down version. It would still be a written music with full scores etc. It wouldn't be a classical crossover either. It would be normal classical music, just the classical music that has adapted to the FORMAT of modern popular music, but without in anyway changing its essence.

The difference between such music and regular popular music is that albums could be longer, and they wouldn't be necessarily need to have say 10-15 "songs". Album could also consist of just 1-5 longer pieces of music.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

janxharris said:


> In general such music has not found favour with enough concertgoers in order to establish them as staples.
> 
> I actually think there is value in this type of music but I can't think of a single piece that totally engages me. Just my view.


I do think it would be better to give this line of argument a rest. You have posted it 100s of time and everyone who is likely to be convinced has been.

But I think you could also reverse your (false) argument:

The very limited repertoire that actually does get played suggests that much of the greatest music of our past must also now be seen as having failed. And, when you look at who attends the concerts that are filled with the same works again and again, it seems that the model of delivering music by concerts is rapidly failing to reach most people, including many who love music.

I think the matter is that the success of CM is no longer to be found in the concert hall. Right now there are more and better orchestras and soloists than ever. They are making good livings (well, maybe not the orchestral musicians). They seem to be thriving. Many of them, actually, play quite a lot of contemporary music.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Enthusiast said:


> I do think it would be better to give this line of argument a rest. You have posted it 100s of time and everyone who is likely to be convinced has been.
> 
> But I think you could also reverse your (false) argument:
> 
> ...


You think it's better if I don't? If I disagree with an assertion, I shouldn't refute it because I've done so before? It's an established fact that such music has failed.

I didn't follow your contrary argument.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

janxharris said:


> You think it's better if I don't? If I disagree with an assertion, I shouldn't refute it because I've done so before? It's an established fact that such music has failed.
> 
> I didn't follow your contrary argument.


it is certainly not a fact. It is your sentiment/judgement. I am pretty sure that some of the avantgarde music will survive and be rediscovered and enjoyed in the future, and will become part of the classical music haritage. The bad stuff will get filtered out and the most interesting compositions will survive. It will never become part of mainstream listening, but the same could be said about the classical music as a whole genre.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

ZJovicic said:


> How about just appreciating whole music in all its forms, genres and combinations?
> I guess such approach would be healthy.
> I am also all for free competition between genres, and acknowledgment of merit and dignity of all genres!


I guess many of us like many forms of music. And within each genre we probably discriminate between things we like a lot and things we don't. As well as classical music, I like a lot of "rock" and rap music - and not only from my youth - and jazz and an awful lot that gets classified as "world music". I love music.



ZJovicic said:


> I think classical music is both superior and inferior to popular music.
> Superior in depth, complexity, sophistication, but inferior (which is especially true for post 1940 classical music) in cultural significance, social/political impact, emotional relateability, and perhaps even originality. While popular music saw true creative explosion and tons fresh energy and originality after world war II, classical musicians were more concerned about further developing theoretical concepts of music and pushing music to its edges, with the results that were, to say it in mild terms, unimpactful. This is perhaps a true failure of classical music in our times, because no other art form lost so much popularity and impact as classical music did (speaking just about new/contemporary classical music). People still read new novels, go and see new movies, plays, they even appreciate abstract/modernist art I guess way more than new classical compositions.
> 
> This video ..................treats all music equally... (which I agree with)... and unfortunately we see that around 1940 classical music reached the dead end, almost as its era has ended completely.


I don't know if classical music is superior to other forms of music but it is different and is good for different things. But why oh why do you need to rubbish classical music that came after 1940? Just because you don't know/like/get it (yet) doesn't mean it is not there for us and thriving. And why do you state that since 1940 composers suddenly became concerned by only theory and concepts? Yes, there is conceptual art - I guess since Dadaism - but there is so much art that is powerful in its visceral appeal. You acknowledge this perhaps but don't think it extends to music. Why not? There are so many of us who feel that we have been living in a golden age for new music. Why pretend we do not exist?

You know, what I would really like to say is "take your crusty dinosaur opinions and false arguments somewhere else"! But, of course, I can't speak like that in such a civilised forum. But I do wish you would put your question differently. Instead of stating as fact that suddenly in 1940 pop music replaced classical music because classical music had no inspiration left - such controversial "statements of fact" (to say the least) - was there not a better way of getting to your purpose?

BTW, what was your purpose? Was it to talk about how there is good popular music or was it to rubbish new classical music? Or to connect the two as if they were both equally factual?


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Jacck said:


> it is certainly not a fact. It is your sentiment/judgement. I am pretty sure that some of the avantgarde music will survive and be rediscovered and enjoyed in the future, and will become part of the classical music haritage. The bad stuff will get filtered out and the most interesting compositions will survive. It will never become part of mainstream listening, but the same could be said about the classical music as a whole genre.


I didn't say anything about surviving.


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

Enthusiast said:


> I guess many of us like many forms of music. And within each genre we probably discriminate between things we like a lot and things we don't. As well as classical music, I like a lot of "rock" and rap music - and not only from my youth - and jazz and an awful lot that gets classified as "world music". I love music.
> 
> I don't know if classical music is superior to other forms of music but it is different and is good for different things. But why oh why do you need to rubbish classical music that came after 1940? Just because you don't know/like/get it (yet) doesn't mean it is not there for us and thriving. And why do you state that since 1940 composers suddenly became concerned by only theory and concepts? Yes, there is conceptual art - I guess since Dadaism - but there is so much art that is powerful in its visceral appeal. You acknowledge this perhaps but don't think it extends to music. Why not? There are so many of us who feel that we have been living in a golden age for new music. Why pretend we do not exist?
> 
> ...


If you ask me what I root for: I root for classical music. My purpose was to be provocative, to test the validity of the following notion by seeing if someone agrees with it, and the notion is:

"Musical mainstream has moved away from classical music since 1940."

What exactly does this, controversial statement mean?

It means not only that popular music has become more popular (heh, truism) than classical, but also that the most important contributions to the art of music as a whole, since 1940, can be found outside the realm of classical music.

In everyday words it means that in big scheme of things, for humanity as a whole, for example The Beatles are more important than probably any classical composer that was born at the same time when they were born.

By more important I mean: more culturally relevant, but also more influential, more critically acclaimed, more artistically innovative and original, etc, etc... and not only The Beatles, but a big chunk of greats of various popular music genres.

This is definitely controversial, but I dare to claim, that if you had to write a general encyclopedia, with a limited number of articles, it would be greater priority to include The Beatles or Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin, than say, Karlheinz Stockhousen.

And not only now, but I believe that the situation would be the same even if you wrote this encyclopedia 200 years from now.

This is perhaps controversial stance, and I am not sure if I truly believe in it, but I can easily defend it and I want to test its validity against other people's opinions.

To return to the start of this post: I root for classical music. I wish there was some of our contemporaries of the stature of Beethoven who would easily outshine Beatles, Stones, Nirvana, etc... But the problem is I can't think of any such figure.


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## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

I don't think the music of Beetles is important . No one ever explained to me why I should think tiddly . But , ok , I heard the teen-age girls at their concert screaming . Personally , I wouldn't put up with the screaming of girls while I played . I'd quick go away .


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

eugeneonagain said:


> Maybe it's time to give up on the idea that classical music is an endless continuum. The sort of music favoured by the majority of listeners is more-or-less an historical relic, with only its influences actively left over. The music itself is no more 'active' than historical films and novels and fashions. Which doesn't mean you can't partake of them; even with other people, but they are not contemporary culture, even when they have become part of the fabric of culture.


Well put. I see art as a mighty river, with smaller streams feeding it here and there. Each smaller stream has its impact and makes its contribution, though that contribution may gradually be diluted over time (or downriver, to continue the metaphor) as other streams join in. One can complain about various sorts of 20th-century music, but it's not much use at this point. That music has had its impact and made its contribution to our culture, and our music, our culture and our minds will never be quite the same. That doesn't mean we can't love and treasure 18th and 19th century music. It just means that some adjustment (or education) may be necessary, as it isn't the music of our own era.
Edit: I can't agree that "The sort of music favoured by the majority of listeners is more-or-less an historical relic", though. Quite the opposite is true, at least everywhere I've ever been, unless you happen to be in a university or music conservatory.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

fluteman said:


> Well put. I see art as a mighty river, with smaller streams feeding it here and there. Each smaller stream has its impact and makes its contribution, though that contribution may gradually be diluted over time (or downriver, to continue the metaphor) as other streams join in. One can complain about various sorts of 20th-century music, but it's not much use at this point. That music has had its impact and made its contribution to our culture, and our music, our culture and our minds will never be quite the same. That doesn't mean we can't love and treasure 18th and 19th century music. It just means that some adjustment (or education) may be necessary, as it isn't the music of our own era.
> Edit: *I can't agree that "The sort of music favoured by the majority of listeners is more-or-less an historical relic", though. Quite the opposite is true, at least everywhere I've ever been, unless you happen to be in a university or music conservatory.*


I should clarify: I meant specifically classical listeners and perhaps those people who came to classical music in the last 50 or so years.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

eugeneonagain said:


> I should clarify: I meant specifically classical listeners and perhaps those people who came to classical music in the last 50 or so years.


Aha. That's quite different. I think if your first major exposure to classical music was Disney's Fantasia, as mine was, you may well end up a big fan of Stravinsky's music, as I did. I also grew up with the theme to the Twilight Zone, an example of musique concrete. Not long ago I was in a move theater full of youngsters watching a Pixar animated movie, and suddenly the soundtrack music was Arvo Part's Spiegel im Spiegel. They certainly took it in stride. So I think it's safe to say that if modern music has had an impact on popular culture, which it clearly has, it will continue to have an impact on serious culture, even if that takes another generation or two to fully develop. Contemporary music concerts I've attended usually have smaller but also much younger audiences than traditional classical music concerts.

Funny, I was at a choral concert last night that involved a large number of groups ranging from high school beginners to top professionals (some of whom had spent the day coaching the young students). None of the music was classical (as that term would be defined here, anyway), with one exception. One of the professional groups sang a fugue from the Well-Tempered Clavier, and one of the more complicated fugues to boot, fully up to tempo and straight, not Swingle Singers style. At the end they did throw in some extra non-original and non-baroque cadences, and it was a lot of fun. So never take for granted where and when classical music may show up.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

eugeneonagain said:


> Maybe it's time to give up on the idea that classical music is an endless continuum. The sort of music favoured by the majority of listeners is more-or-less an historical relic, with only its influences actively left over. The music itself is no more 'active' than historical films and novels and fashions. Which doesn't mean you can't partake of them; even with other people, but they are not contemporary culture, even when they have become part of the fabric of culture.


The elephant in the room. Classical music came to be defined as music of or descended from a certain tradition - i.e., of or from the past. During the period of classical music's movement toward the esoteric and into the academy, its diminishing place in popular consciousness was taken by newer, more vital, indigenous forms of music - jazz, tin pan alley, the musical, popular song, country music, rock 'n' roll...

Classical music no longer meant the new Verdi opera or Brahms symphony which people looked forward to, read reviews of in the daily newspaper, and bought sheet music arrangements of to sing and play at home. It meant that same Verdi opera or Brahms symphony performed as a glorious relic of a romantic past, which we were now pleased to preserve as "culture" and which we now got dressed up for and paid high prices to hear while we didn't know any Italians currently writing operas or Germans currently writing symphonies. It meant music for highbrows or longhairs, which many lowbrows and shorthairs still liked and for a while could hear on TV "culture hours." It did not mean anything being written after, say, Stravinsky (who sounded exciting accompanied by dinosaurs and volcanoes) or Copland (who sounded heartwarming adapted for movies about ponies and cornfields). It did not mean Schonberg, Webern, Stockhausen, or Cage, much less Feldman, Wuorinen or Boulez. Nor does it now mean Scelsi, Ferneyhough or Saariaho except to people who have heard of Scelsi, Ferneyhough and Saariaho. "Classical music" is now either a wonderful museum filled with archaic beauties that speak to us out of our glorious past, or it's a passion of a small group of aficionados and postmodern curators who occasionally impose it on the public because commissioning new works gives us highbrow cred, gets us grants and donations, and makes us feel good about feeding and clothing contemporary artists (the Met apparently has to support Thomas Ades and Nico Muhly, but has to make the stagecraft memorable because the music sure isn't).

Whatever classical music is now, it isn't a lively expression of our culture (whatever _that_ is). Now it's just another commodity with its own specialized niche markets. But fortunately it's a commodity that's easily available everywhere, and that will remain true whether or not any highbrow composer ever again puts together five notes anyone finds relevant or memorable.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

ZJovicic said:


> "Musical mainstream has moved away from classical music since 1940."
> 
> This is definitely controversial, but I dare to claim, that if you had to write a general encyclopedia, with a limited number of articles, it would be greater priority to include The Beatles or Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin, than say, Karlheinz Stockhousen.


The popularity of pop music today came with the modern development of the media, TV, internet, radio etc. There was no such thing as "popular music" (of the scale we have today) in the time of Vivadi, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn etc. The masters whose music we consider as mainstream classical today weren't even so popular as to call themselves 'stars'. For example, Vicente Martin y Soler was beating Mozart's Marriage of Figaro in popularity with his operas (such as 'Una Cosa Rara') big time. Even Beethoven complained "Rossini's stuff is what everybody wants" back then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haydn_Quartets_(Mozart)#Critical_reception
"An anonymous early reviewer, writing in Cramer's Magazin der Musik in 1789, gave a judgment characteristic of reaction to Mozart's music at the time...:
Mozart's works do not in general please quite so much [as those of Kozeluch] ..."

Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn are remembered today not just because their wrote good music, but music that would inspire thousands of classical later composers. There's even statistical analysis done on that shows their immense influence into the later eras. http://blogs.springeropen.com/sprin...ata-reveals-classical-music-creation-secrets/ 
The difference between Vicente Martin y Soler and Mozart is that, Martin y Soler achieved immense popularity in his time, but that popularity did not last long because his work failed to inspire later composers in the academic level in the way Mozart did.

So we need to ask the question, are the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Pink Floyd - the "Martin y Solers", or "Mozarts" of modern music? Is their work going to have influence over centuries of time in the way the classical masters' like Bach's has?
The thing we do know is that, Beatles, Michael Jackson had so little knowledge of musical theory they could not even read notated sheet music. Songwriters today don't need to study Beatles, Michael Jackson to write 4-chord pop songs that dominate the pop industry. Unlike the classical masters' https://www.youtube.com/user/richardatkinson2108/videos there isn't that much to study from their music. 
There are still older generations of fans alive today who still remember and keep coming to them, but would that popularity last 100 years of time? Would it still be loved and played over 300 years of time like Bach's music? I doubt it. (There are claims that the Beatles are declining in popularity on google and youtube. http://ultimateclassicrock.com/beatles-popularity-decline/)


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

I don't look at Prog Rock as the same as classical music, but you have to admit that a lot of people are listening to music that is closer to classical music than any pop music ever has been. Also, a lot of these prog rockers try their hand in composing classical works, or adapt classical works for their rock albums. So not sure the last two generations have failed completely if you take this music into account.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

regenmusic said:


> I don't look at Prog Rock as the same as classical music, but you have to admit that a lot of people are listening to music that is closer to classical music than any pop music ever has been. Also, a lot of these prog rockers try their hand in composing classical works, or adapt classical works for their rock albums. So not sure the last two generations have failed completely if you take this music into account.







(Genesis - Firth of Fifth - instrumental section)


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## haydnguy (Oct 13, 2008)

I'm eclectic.

I don't think 12-tone, or classical music has failed. It appears to me that you equate success or failure of the music by popularity.

But popular music is by and large put out specifically to sell records. It is not made to be creative. Not true with classical. If classical composers wanted to put out records that would sell they would have all the tools they need to knock people's socks off. Not necessarily true of pop composers who mostly produce either cookie-cutter music or the same type of stuff that's sold in the past.

No, classical music hasn't failed. It has it's own criteria for success which isn't the same as popular music.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

"Variety is the mice of life and it can get into small corners." —L.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

ZJovicic said:


> If you ask me what I root for: I root for classical music. My purpose was to be provocative, to test the validity of the following notion by seeing if someone agrees with it, and the notion is:
> 
> "Musical mainstream has moved away from classical music since 1940."
> 
> ...


I'm not sure that popular music has become more popular since 1940 or even 1840. But its audience was different then as it is now. And I am sure that the music written in the tradition of CM continues and has not become - as you imply - irrelevant. We may not have a composer these days of the stature of Beethoven but I don't think they did in 1880 either. I feel fairly confident that we continue to produce great composers.

Of course, the audience for CM - including modern CM - is not great. But does this really only apply to new - post-1940 - music? I don't think so. A large part of the great works of Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms is only rarely played these days. To ask for a modern composer of the stature of Beethoven to blow the Beatles out of the water seems unreasonable when Beethoven himself is failing to do so! But is pop music taking over from CM? Perhaps there has been a hardening of the boundaries. Perhaps our current obsession with it being "OK to be ignorant" and with calling love of Shakespeare or Bach elitism is also playing a role. ut these are fashions: they come and go. One of the features of the labour movement until relatively recently was to encourage and assist workers to "educate and improve" themselves. It sounds very condescending and very "elitist" now but it was based on the idea that just because your family is poor does not mean you should not get to enjoy the best that the arts can offer. These days we have the opposite: even if you have had the education it is almost shameful (and certainly elitist) to enjoy great art. The word culture at the moment means celebrities and the popular. This is a fashion and it won't last for ever.

As for your encyclopedia, I think it would be hard to talk about music - even popular music - without mention of Stockhausen. And I feel doubly certain that 200 years in the future any mention of "music 1940-2020" would look at most trends and would certainly not ignore the CM being written today. Indeed, the problem with modern music is that in our current environment too many CM-listeners have very conservative tastes and follow the popular pattern of wanting an easy bang for their buck. That won't last either.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Also one thing that pop music lacks is 'practice of interpretation', would any Beatles fan want to listen to a Beatles song that's not sung by the Beatles, but say, BTS? (The best example of a pop singer singing someone else's song is Celine Dion singing Eric Carmen's All By Myself. But many people remember it as "Celine Dion's All By Myself" and not "Celine Dion singing Eric Carmen's All By Myself") In classical music on the other hand, Evgeny Kissin's performance of Rachmaninoff 2nd is just as widely acclaimed as Rachmaninoff's own. There are various performances with differences that satisfy different tastes of various people, as well, there are research and studies on the composers' actual intentions and ways to interpret them better. Pop music doesn't have this. If a Beatles song is not sung by the Beatles, it is generally considered to not have the Beatles' feel.



ZJovicic said:


> This video inspired me to start this theme:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I don't know what videos like these (which I have found several of on youtube) are trying to say. It says Evolution of Music (from classical to modern), but look at the duration that covers classical music (all written prior to 1930). Only 15 minutes for a 80 minute video. It seems the purpose is to simply put pop music at the same level of pretige as classical music. Why not just cut out the first 15 minutes and call it Evolution of Music from 1930~2017? I think it's because having that first 15-minute section makes the rest look greater than it actually is; they want to make pop music look like a sort of 'true heir' of classical music.






_"Music should also be socially / politically relevant."_

There is an artist that's far more relevant to me than any of the popular pop artists today. It's Jon Lajoie, at least he has lyrics that are far more interesting. All the other popular artists use random gibberish love stories I don't give a damn about. They use 4 chords all the time (that are not even written by themselves, but specialized songwriters), even use lip-sync and Autotune to fake their performance skills. Being critical about today's pop music isn't about being a snob. It's about not being braindead - but having the right thinking capability to distinguish between actual 'musicians' and 'musical clowns'.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

^^^ For what it is worth there are many famous recordings of popular performers doing someone else's song. The Beatles themselves did many. And there are very many famous "covers" of Bob Dylan songs that are different - that reinterpret - to the original but very highly considered. The Jimi Hendrix version of All Along The Watchtower and the Byrds doing Hey Mr Tambourine Man and both possibly more famous than the originals. Dylan, himself, rarely performed his own songs in the same way twice. Also, David Bowie made an album of covers of his favourite songs while growing up - it's called Pin Ups. But there are so many examples of covers that are excellent that a whole essay could be written about the practice. And there are even more examples of terrible covers and covers that added nothing to the original.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

hammeredklavier said:


> Also one thing that pop music lacks is 'practice of interpretation', would any Beatles fan want to listen to a Beatles song that's not sung by the Beatles, but say, BTS? (The best example of a pop singer singing someone else's song is Celine Dion singing Eric Carmen's All By Myself. But many people remember it as "Celine Dion's All By Myself" and not "Celine Dion singing Eric Carmen's All By Myself") In classical music on the other hand, Evgeny Kissin's performance of Rachmaninoff 2nd is just as widely acclaimed as Rachmaninoff's own. There are various performances with differences that satisfy different tastes of various people, as well, there are research and studies on the composers' actual intentions and ways to interpret them better. Pop music doesn't have this. If a Beatles song is not sung by the Beatles, it is generally considered to not have the Beatles' feel.


This is largely true and a great point. It does however apply mostly to music from the 1960s onwards and the 'singer-songwriter' in particular. Before the '60s it was common for many artists to record or just perform from a wide repertoire of songs written by established composers/songwriters - I'm thinking here of Rogers & Hart, Jerome Kern...

There are several artists of the pre-60s period who are known for the same songs; especially those of musicals. _Singin' in the Rain _being a notable example, which is still being recorded (the last hit version was 2008!). Jazz in particular is built on the idea of many different interpretations of standards.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Nice post, Woodduck. One nitpick -- Copland's music wasn't just adapted for movies, he wrote music specifically for the silver screen, as well as for the stage. It's probably the one arena in which he was clearly surpassed by his younger colleague and close friend Leonard Bernstein. But both have clearly been surpassed in that regard by John Willliams, who has been so profoundly successful in movies he has already forced his way into the classical concert hall. Toru Takemitsu, Arvo Part, Phillip Glass, John Corigliano, Michael Nyman, and Tan Dun have also had great success with movie soundtracks. And a new one to watch and listen for, in my opinion: Mica Levi. But I don't want to rub anyone's face in modernist or modernist-inspired music. All sorts of music has slipped into our culture through the movie screen.

And I keep jabbering about movies because there is no avoiding that beginning with the onset of talkies in the late 1920s, the movie screen largely replaced the opera stage as well as the vaudeville stage in our culture. We can still celebrate our glorious cultural past with undiminished enthusiasm, but culture has a way of reinventing itself. And it is very much not a continuum, so speaking about music getting better or worse makes little sense. 

I do agree with you, Woodduck, that the self-appointed arbiters of what music should be, or should become, such as Schoenberg and Boulez, have not had and will not have their commandments strictly obeyed. Culture is created through long-term broad consensus, not fiat. On the other hand, Stockhausen in particular had considerable influence over the biggest popular music trend of his time, rock 'n' roll, and in turn rock 'n' roll has had a considerable impact on our culture, though it is now (finally!) increasingly being superseded by other popular music trends. So, if to you, the highest culture is a culture completely purged of Stockhausen, you may be disappointed.


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## BabyGiraffe (Feb 24, 2017)

Jacck said:


> pop music comes and goes, classical music stays. Where are all the top10 song of the 1930's, 1980's, 2010's? Short-lived, dispensable music. There is no way to compare it to the Goldberg Variations, for what would be the criteria?


Comparing music written for harpischords and music written for vocals and whatever instrumentation is in vogue is pretty silly... 
Composing a virtuoso popular song is also missing the point - it has to repetitive, rhythmical and easy to sing along.
I'm pretty sure that many of the great composers from the past would have been writing commercial pop, film or electronic music for living (if they were alive today). Even the most respected people on this forum - Mozart and Beethoven - have done some pretty shallow and uninspired dance and folklore arrangements that everyone prefers to forget that they exist.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

BabyGiraffe said:


> Comparing music written for harpischords and music written for vocals and whatever instrumentation is in vogue is pretty silly...
> Composing a virtuoso popular song is also missing the point - it has to repetitive, rhythmical and easy to sing along.
> I'm pretty sure that many of the great composers from the past would have been writing commercial pop, film or electronic music for living (if they were alive today). Even the most respected people on this forum - Mozart and Beethoven - have done some pretty shallow and uninspired dance and folklore arrangements that everyone prefers to forget that they exist.


indidentally, I have been listening to some Monteverdi madrigals today and I was instantly reminded of pop. This Monteverdi - "Si dolce è'l tormento" sounds like Lucio Battisti, or rather Battisti sounds like him. Monteverdi's pop survived for 400 years


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

I struggle to see the point of any of these discussions when it comes to classical vs non-classical or "pop". What exactly is the problem? All these different genres can and do coexist. How there can be "competition" between genres is beyond me.
Also, a comparison would only make sense if there was somehow an objective, universal standard which all music had to live up to. But there isn't. Classical music, pop music and other non-classical music all exist for different reasons, purposes, occasions and audiences. When certain musical/compositional aspects of pop music are trash compared to classical music standards, that means absolutely nothing, since there is no intent and no expectation to live up to those standards. 
Millions or even billions of people are happy listening to not much more than ultra commercial hit charts music that would give most us the shudders. I say, let them be. It is what it is. Those who want something more from music will find what they seek. And with the internet, almost everyone has access to different, more artful genres of music.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

DeepR said:


> I struggle to see the point of any of these discussions when it comes to classical vs non-classical or "pop". What exactly is the problem? All these different genres can and do coexist. How there can be "competition" between genres is beyond me.
> Also, a comparison would only make sense if there was somehow an objective, universal standard which all music had to live up to. But there isn't. Classical music, pop music and other non-classical music all exist for different reasons, purposes, occasions and audiences. When certain musical/compositional aspects of pop music are trash compared to classical music standards, that means absolutely nothing, since there is no intent and no expectation to live up to those standards.
> Millions or even billions of people are happy listening to not much more than ultra commercial hit charts music that would give most us the shudders. I say, let them be. It is what it is. Those who want something more from music will find what they seek. And with the internet, almost everyone has access to different, more artful genres of music.


Well put. I've often said that with popular music, the main objective is to capitalize on the zeitgeist of the moment and make the biggest possible impression on as big an audience as possible, or at least on a large target demographic, as quickly as possible. In contrast, the main objective of classical or serious music is to make a profound, universal and lasting statement that reaches across demographics, eras, and cultures, even if it takes many years to be fully understood or appreciated by more than a few.
Of course, whether and how much any particular popular or classical music succeeds in achieving these objectives is another question entirely.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

BabyGiraffe said:


> Even the most respected people on this forum - Mozart and Beethoven - have done some pretty shallow and uninspired dance and folklore arrangements that everyone prefers to forget that they exist.


Classical composers from the past sought artistic freedom. They didn't want to be obedient servants to employers who imposed all kinds of restrictions on them. That's how Mozart got his *** literally kicked by Archbishop Colloredo's steward and became a freelancer at age 25. Give me examples of light music by Mozart or Beethoven repeating the same "four chords" over and over to death like modern pop music without any structural form, contrapuntal devices, orchestration color, motivic development, chromatic vs diatonic elements etc.






by "virtuoso popular song", you mean "Mimed" and "Autotuned" virtuoso popular song.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Enthusiast said:


> I'm not sure that popular music has become more popular since 1940 or even 1840. But its audience was different then as it is now. *And I am sure that the music written in the tradition of CM continues and has not become - as you imply - irrelevant. We may not have a composer these days of the stature of Beethoven but I don't think they did in 1880 either. I feel fairly confident that we continue to produce great composers.
> *
> I think it would be hard to talk about music - even popular music - without mention of Stockhausen. And I feel doubly certain that 200 years in the future any mention of "music 1940-2020" would look at most trends and would certainly not ignore the CM being written today. *Indeed, the problem with modern music is that in our current environment too many CM-listeners have very conservative tastes and follow the popular pattern of wanting an easy bang for their buck. That won't last either.*


I see the position of classical music in our society quite differently.

I believe that classical music is indeed less relevant than it was in the past, and that is shown by the very existence of the idea of "classical music." The idea of designating some music as "classical" originated specifically to identify and acclaim a body and a tradition of music felt to represent the highest standards and ideals of beauty, excellence, and value, standards and ideals necessarily rooted in the past and thought worthy of maintaining. "Classical" was an elitist concept from the start - with no disparagement of "elite" intended - and once anything is considered elite it is automatically "less relevant," i.e., set above and apart from what is popular, indigenous, vernacular, pervasive, and "normal." What becomes "elite" becomes less rooted in contemporary culture, and will have less influence upon it.

Much of the music we now call classical - music which was not called "classical" when it was new because the concept didn't exist - was always an elite form of music, enjoyed primarily by the members of the aristocracy or the more affluent and educated middle class. But much of it was consumed, often in the form of transcriptions and arrangements, by people of common circumstances as well. This was possible because the basic language of the different musical styles current in the culture was more or less the same and was comprehensible to all; composers of symphonies also wrote songs and dances which differed from their more ambitious works mainly in length and complexity, not in their basic musical syntax, and so people who did not attend concerts of symphonic music and would have found following the structure of a symphony difficult sang and danced to melodies that might have been written by the composer of that symphony, whose name might have adorned the sheet music on the piano in the parlor. In the case of opera, the line between "classical" and "popular was even less clear, or even nonexistent; opera may now be thought one of the most "elite" of art forms, but when Verdi died all of Italy was in the streets to bid him farewell, while opera houses hosted famous singers even in the American wild west.

Classical music eventually lost contact with its popular roots and became largely a concern of academic elites and the culturally hip, and the performing repertoire of classical ensembles became increasingly conservative while genres of popular music proliferated. It's pretty hard to say in what way the cutting edge classical music of the late 20th century was "relevant," except to the extent to which some of its sounds were adopted in special contexts such as music for films and TV. I'd say that this situation is largely unchanged today. The Met may feel obliged to produce a new opera by Nico Muhly because Nico Muhly is someone whose operas we are obliged to produce, but I'll go out on a fairly short limb and say that very, very few people will feel obliged to buy the recording of his opera and that no one at all will be singing its music at home.

Whatever we think of Nico Muhly or Helmut Lachenmann or any other contemporary "classical" composer, we may as well be realistic about their position in society. The composers themselves probably are; they vie for academic positions and government grants which will save them from waiting tables or, worse, prostituting their skills in the mills of mass-produced pop music. No doubt some of these composer are brimming with talent. But does it make sense even to speculate on whether any of them, sitting in university chairs or slaving away unrecognized in basement apartments, will be judged by history to be "great"? And is the present situation really comparable to 1880, when Wagner, Brahms, Verdi, Bruckner, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, and many other producers of seemingly immortal masterworks were all active and widely acclaimed as not only "great" but also "relevant"?

I find in your last statement a combination of elitism and optimism for which I can see no justification whatever. You say: "Indeed, the problem with modern music is that in our current environment too many CM-listeners have very conservative tastes and follow the popular pattern of wanting an easy bang for their buck. That won't last either." To the contrary, I'm saying in all I've written above that the horse of classical music left the barn of relevancy long ago and is not coming back. I've speculated about its possible return throughout my now rather long life, but at last cannot escape the conclusion that when "classical" music distinguished itself from "popular" music its cultural fate was sealed.

Don't cry! All good things must come to an end.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> I see the position of classical music in our society quite differently.
> 
> I believe that classical music is indeed less relevant than it was in the past, and that is shown by the very existence of the idea of "classical music." The idea of designating some music as "classical" originated specifically to identify and acclaim a body and a tradition of music felt to represent the highest standards and ideals of beauty, excellence, and value, standards and ideals necessarily rooted in the past and thought worthy of maintaining. "Classical" was an elitist concept from the start - with no disparagement of "elite" intended - and once anything is considered elite it is automatically "less relevant," i.e., set above and apart from what is popular, indigenous, vernacular, pervasive, and "normal." What becomes "elite" becomes less rooted in contemporary culture, and will have less influence upon it.
> 
> ...


You tell a good story. But I fear you are arguing a case rather than attempting an accurate portrayal of a history! You see CM as having popular roots and eventually losing these but was it really such a smooth process. At different times and in different (but invariably urban) places some (but certainly not all) of what we now call CM had a popular appeal. Yes, Italians loved their opera. And yes Handel was a star in London and both Haydn and Mozart wrote a few tunes that were widely whistled. But for much of the time and in most places most CM was a music for the elite. The elite also had the best food to eat and fabrics to wear and education. The poorer people had music, of course, and some of it had real power ... but it was less refined than the music of the elites. The story of much of the last century has been of the many slowly gaining much better access to fine things. That process may now be going backwards.

You pick out certain contemporary composers to make your case concerning their academic interests and choose to ignore (or consign to a basement) those who don't fit this pattern. Your example of the Met having to stage certain new operas may be true - I have no idea about the US music world - but there are many houses in Europe that want to stage contemporary operas and that consider many of them to have been among their successes. It seems that you and I see very different things going on at the moment! But the sentences I have highlighted above are so far from being an accurate reflection of what is happening that I am surprised at your writing it at all. Most composers who get played do alright. Nor does employment by a university signify an "academic composer" in the way you imply. For the academically minded it is of course an opportunity to engage in academic pursuits. But for many their academic position is more a form of patronage that allows them to practice their trade - not so very different from the arrangements that supported composers in the 17th and 18th centuries. And, of course, things are different for composers now to how they were at the end of the 19th century. Everything is different.


Woodduck said:


> I find in your last statement a combination of elitism and optimism for which I can see no justification whatever. You say: "Indeed, the problem with modern music is that in our current environment too many CM-listeners have very conservative tastes and follow the popular pattern of wanting an easy bang for their buck. That won't last either." To the contrary, I'm saying in all I've written above that the horse of classical music left the barn of relevancy long ago and is not coming back. I've speculated about its possible return throughout my now rather long life, but at last cannot escape the conclusion that when "classical" music distinguished itself from "popular" music its cultural fate was sealed.
> 
> Don't cry! All good things must come to an end.


Well, I'm certainly not going to cry because of what the future may or may not hold. I don't expect to live long enough for any really interesting development to happen! In many ways CM - including the contemporary - does better today than it ever did. I agree CM was a relatively recent invention but it is still growing. There are more and better orchestras and musicians. You can hear lots of different performances of a very wide range (and several hundred years) of CM. You can hear obscure works and hear them very well played.

It isn't easy or even possible to know which ones among the living composers will come to "matter" but we don't need to worry about that as we can enjoy them all now. We also don't know that CM will continue to be listened to or thought of in the way we do it now. Composers influence each other - even the ones who seem so different - so in a way what goes forward will be the product of a community. I suspect many composers writing now, some much more accessible and popular than others, will come to be seen as having been very worthwhile and will be listened to in the future.

So, yes, CM and what we mean by the term will change. But we will always need music and as our tastes diversify more and more different forms of musical experience will come to be valued.


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

ZJovicic said:


> Not so quick writing off popular music classics. Where they are, you ask? Well, here:
> 
> 1975 - 829+ million views on YouTube
> 
> ...


As my nephew says - paunch rock.

"What? What is paunch rock?"

"You know, old stuff enjoyed mostly by old people with paunches."


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

JeffD said:


> As my nephew says - paunch rock.
> 
> "What? What is paunch rock?"
> 
> "You know, old stuff enjoyed mostly by old people with paunches."


And in 40 or 50 years your nephew will have a paunch, enjoying his favorite rock music which will also be 40 or 50 years old...you know, "old stuff".


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Don't cry! All good things must come to an end.


Yes, they must, so that other good things can begin. Recently I was listening to Notations by Pierre Boulez, and I was struck by how obviously and intentionally derivative Notation II is of the Sacrificial Dance from The Rite Of Spring. As a dyed in the wool Stravinsky fan, I enjoy things like this, and it's brilliantly conceived and written, but I also think it points to a fundamental limitation. At least in this piece, Boulez can't or won't free himself from a traditional and by his time aging basic musical syntax. Thus, he cuts himself off from his own generation. (Of course, he was only a little more than one generation older than Stravinsky himself.)

In a recent thread I remarked on the continuing popularity of Arvo Part, the most popular living 'classical' composer for eight years running. The chasm between Boulez and Part is immense, as compared with Boulez, Part is not tied down by the ancient musical syntax traditions represented by Debussy and Stravinsky. Unlike the brilliant but intellectual elitist Boulez, Part has at least somewhat succeeded in finding and using, to use your terms, a new basic language that is comprehensible to all.

As for your own perspective, if you view movies and TV as a "special context", you had a most unusual upbringing, or one that took place for the most part before the 1960s.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

I don't see much mileage in the idea that there is this very healthy culture of contemporary 'classical music' happening, or just waiting to explode. Let us be honest, it is a fringe cultural activity and largely an academic one. There are the odd figures who cross over into shared public culture - Arvo Part, as mentioned by fluteman above - but his most well-known piece _Spiegel Am Spiegel _actually _was_ popularised by use in other popular media; film and TV. It was once in every documentary going.

When classical music finally did make it into truly widespread popular culture - late 19thc to round about the turn of the 20th, among bourgeois families at least - it was soon diluted to fit the popular mould. It's not as if hordes of people took up the cause of classical music in the way hordes of people listened to Motown hits on a transistor radio.

Classical music has had its day more than once in several spheres: as the music of the reformed Church; as music of the courts; as an expression of the highest form of music, also eventually incorporating folk music and other elements; as a facet of several guiding philosophies of at least three epochs. It is no longer like that.

If it ever occupies that position again I shall eat my hat, with a knife and fork.


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## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

I think pop music has been arranged , recorded and EQ'd for car radios . And symphonies can seem absurd coming from a boom box .


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Enthusiast said:


> You tell a good story. But I fear you are arguing a case rather than attempting an accurate portrayal of a history! You see CM as having popular roots and eventually losing these but was it really such a smooth process. At different times and in different (but invariably urban) places some (but certainly not all) of what we now call CM had a popular appeal. Yes, Italians loved their opera. And yes Handel was a star in London and both Haydn and Mozart wrote a few tunes that were widely whistled. But for much of the time and in most places most CM was a music for the elite. The elite also had the best food to eat and fabrics to wear and education. The poorer people had music, of course, and some of it had real power ... but it was less refined than the music of the elites. The story of much of the last century has been of the many slowly gaining much better access to fine things. That process may now be going backwards.
> 
> You pick out certain contemporary composers to make your case concerning their academic interests and choose to ignore (or consign to a basement) those who don't fit this pattern. Your example of the Met having to stage certain new operas may be true - I have no idea about the US music world - but there are many houses in Europe that want to stage contemporary operas and that consider many of them to have been among their successes. It seems that you and I see very different things going on at the moment!
> 
> ...


You may ignore history if you want to and call it a "story," but you haven't shown how my account of it is incorrect, or refuted my argument that "classical music" is less relevant to society in modern times than in past eras.

The popular successes of Handel and Verdi in their lifetimes can't be compared to the genuine but circumscribed successes experienced by a few of our contemporaries. How many people, relative to the population, know who Arvo Part is, despite his being the most popular classical composer of the day (according to somebody)? When Verdi died everybody in Europe not living under a rock knew who he was and could probably sing at least one of his tunes. It was harder to sing Wagner's tunes but people knew who he was too. When Gubaidulina dies most people will say "Good bye to Lina who?" This doesn't mean Gubaidulina isn't a fine composer. It just means that society finds her less important ("relevant") than it found Verdi - or Handel, or Haydn, or any number of other composers in their day. I've already made two posts discussing the purely musical reasons why that would be, so I'll just summarize here by saying that serious music and popular music once shared common idioms, and that as they grew farther apart in style and composers pursued ideas less accessible to listeners, the idea of a special, elite category of music called "classical" was born. Listeners struggled increasingly to keep up with composers' thinking, the audience for classical music shrank, and popular genres proliferated and claimed an ever-increasing share of the market for music. By the mid-20th century avant garde music, still under the "classical" banner, had become incomprehensible and irrelevant to nearly everyone except highly experienced musicians and classical aficionados, and by no means all of them.

I don't think our progress in gaining access to the "finer things" is going backwards. I think it's continuing to increase. But if that doesn't succeed in making classical music more relevant to people's lives, what are we to conclude? And what does it mean to say that "most composers who get played do alright"? How many get played? How often? Who is listening? Isn't it the common complaint among apologists for contemporary classical music that the major musical ensembles aren't playing new music, or even very much music written since ___ (fill in a date between 1900 and 1950), despite the enterprise of recording companies in making nearly all music known to man available for people to come to know and like? The mass distribution of media has enabled more people to experience music in greater variety and more continuously than even people of my generation would have imagined possible. But what music are people choosing to experience? What percentage of the small and shrinking media market for classical music is for music composed in the last 50 years? It's very easy for people who inhabit such rarefied domains as music forums to have grand ideas of the importance of what they like. Sure, it's tremendously important to _us,_ but...

I agree with those who believe that forms of music other than classical have been the true voices of contemporary society. I do see, however, some breaking down of genre boundaries, to the degree that it's impossible to categorize some of the music being produced. Maybe we should look forward to the day when the elitist idea of "classical" music has vanished altogether.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Allan Forte, America's premier theorist, used "Over the Rainbow" as a model for analysis in his theory classes. He played "jazz" piano in groups when he was younger. He didn't seem concerned with these distinctions, but apparently knew a good song when he heard it.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Uncle is Gangnam style

A girl who is warm and humanly during the day
A classy girl who knows how to enjoy the freedom of a cup of coffee
A girl whose heart gets hotter when night comes
A girl with that kind of twist

I'm a guy
A guy who is as warm as you during the day
A guy who one-shots his coffee before it even cools down
A guy whose heart bursts when night comes
That kind of guy

Gangnam style

:tiphat:


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## haydnguy (Oct 13, 2008)

DeepR said:


> I struggle to see the point of any of these discussions when it comes to classical vs non-classical or "pop". What exactly is the problem? All these different genres can and do coexist. How there can be "competition" between genres is beyond me.
> Also, a comparison would only make sense if there was somehow an objective, universal standard which all music had to live up to. But there isn't. Classical music, pop music and other non-classical music all exist for different reasons, purposes, occasions and audiences. When certain musical/compositional aspects of pop music are trash compared to classical music standards, that means absolutely nothing, since there is no intent and no expectation to live up to those standards.
> Millions or even billions of people are happy listening to not much more than ultra commercial hit charts music that would give most us the shudders. I say, let them be. It is what it is. Those who want something more from music will find what they seek. And with the internet, almost everyone has access to different, more artful genres of music.


I agree with this. Everyone listens to what they like.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

eugeneonagain said:


> Classical music has had its day more than once in several spheres: as the music of the reformed Church; as music of the courts; as an expression of the highest form of music, also eventually incorporating folk music and other elements; as a facet of several guiding philosophies of at least three epochs. It is no longer like that.
> 
> If it ever occupies that position again I shall eat my hat, with a knife and fork.


But maybe, just maybe, the concept of classical art is more fundamental, pervasive and permanent than you imply, in fact at least as permanent as human civilization, which I concede is a very long-term but not a permanent thing. For human beings have a natural and instinctive need to express what they hope and believe are the fundamental, pervasive and permanent characteristics of their humanity. It is that instinctive need that results in the creation of art, very much including music, and always has from the earliest, prehistoric origins of humanity. I respectfully suggest that the upheavals of the 20th century, great as they were, did not eradicate that need.


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## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

Extreme minimalist art music has been featured by university radio stations . It's simplicity is great for broadcast , digestible like black coffee and plain toast for breakfast . I hear this music as inventively composed .


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

fluteman said:


> But maybe, just maybe, the concept of classical art is more fundamental, pervasive and permanent than you imply, in fact at least as permanent as human civilization, which I concede is a very long-term but not a permanent thing. For human beings have a natural and instinctive need to express what they hope and believe are the fundamental, pervasive and permanent characteristics of their humanity. It is that instinctive need that results in the creation of art, very much including music, and always has from the earliest, prehistoric origins of humanity. I respectfully suggest that the upheavals of the 20th century, great as they were, did not eradicate that need.


This is inspiring. I just wonder how much music in a postmodern era aspires to such nobility, and how much of what aspires to it actually attains it. And this brings up the deeper, and very difficult, question: how great can a work of art be if it has nothing great to say?


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

I like it!






Artistry and genius comes in all shapes and sizes (except perhaps to the classical music connoisseurs):


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> You may ignore history if you want to and call it a "story," but you haven't shown how my account of it is incorrect, or refuted my argument that "classical music" is less relevant to society in modern times than in past eras.


I am not ignoring history any more than you are: I'm just choosing different parts. But I am not trying to refute your argument that CM is less relevant than it was these days. That is probably correct - although I suspect it depends a bit on which age you pick and which sections of the population you think matter - but what does that mean?



Woodduck said:


> The popular successes of Handel and Verdi in their lifetimes can't be compared to the genuine but circumscribed successes experienced by a few of our contemporaries. How many people, relative to the population, know who Arvo Part is, despite his being the most popular classical composer of the day (according to somebody)? When Verdi died everybody in Europe not living under a rock knew who he was and could probably sing at least one of his tunes. It was harder to sing Wagner's tunes but people knew who he was too. When Gubaidulina dies most people will say "Good bye to Lina who?" This doesn't mean Gubaidulina isn't a fine composer. It just means that society finds her less important ("relevant") than it found Verdi - or Handel, or Haydn, or any number of other composers in their day. I've already made two posts discussing the purely musical reasons why that would be, so I'll just summarize here by saying that serious music and popular music once shared common idioms, and that as they grew farther apart in style and composers pursued ideas less accessible to listeners, the idea of a special, elite category of music called "classical" was born. Listeners struggled increasingly to keep up with composers' thinking, the audience for classical music shrank, and popular genres proliferated and claimed an ever-increasing share of the market for music. By the mid-20th century avant garde music, still under the "classical" banner, had become incomprehensible and irrelevant to nearly everyone except highly experienced musicians and classical aficionados, and by no means all of them.


But is it only contemporary music that is so incomprehensible to the majority? The public interest in and understanding of CM in general is these days reduced to a small number of works and even these don't matter to most people. But what does this mean? Does it mean that CM as a tradition is dead or does it mean that it is changing? Our musical interests these days are far more specialised and restricted than in the past. Within CM we can see that there was a huge diversification in styles and approaches that started in the later Romantic and accelerated through the 20th Century. And outside of CM there was a parallel diversification. Some people enjoy the variety and see it as a flowering (I am one) but most people have a more limited range of tastes. And what people choose is part of expressing their identities.



Woodduck said:


> I don't think our progress in gaining access to the "finer things" is going backwards. I think it's continuing to increase. But if that doesn't succeed in making classical music more relevant to people's lives, what are we to conclude? And what does it mean to say that "most composers who get played do alright"? How many get played? How often? Who is listening? Isn't it the common complaint among apologists for contemporary classical music that the major musical ensembles aren't playing new music, or even very much music written since ___ (fill in a date between 1900 and 1950), despite the enterprise of recording companies in making nearly all music known to man available for people to come to know and like? The mass distribution of media has enabled more people to experience music in greater variety and more continuously than even people of my generation would have imagined possible. But what music are people choosing to experience? What percentage of the small and shrinking media market for classical music is for music composed in the last 50 years? It's very easy for people who inhabit such rarefied domains as music forums to have grand ideas of the importance of what they like. Sure, it's tremendously important1 to _us,_ but...


I'm glad you feel that we are still making progress towards a fairer and more just world. This is not the place to argue that one. You ask how many composers get played and want to imply that it is few. But is it so few. There are more composers writing and getting performed today than I can ever hope to get to know! I don't know how that compares with the past but if it is not an increase I doubt it is much of a decrease. You are "who is listening?" but must realise that some people are. You are not among them and few come to and stay on TC so this is not the place where someone who enjoys some contemporary music can do much more than defend against the less credible myths. And that becomes tiresome, believe me. I don't know that "apologists for contemporary classical music" are that concerned with the failure of "major musical ensembles" to play contemporary music as plenty of very able ensembles to play in and that has been the way for as long as I can remember (I have been listening to music for some 55 years). But you point to something disastrously wrong when you hint that most music written after 1900 is not played mu either. I don't know how true that is for the US but I do know that the same pattern also affects how much of the great music from before 1900 gets played. It does seem at the moment that most of the concerts of the big orchestras in the big cities need to appeal to audiences with only a limited interest in CM. But at the same time there are other ways of listening to music that are growing and that connect people of like tastes across 100s and 1000s of miles. It seems to matter to you that the proportion of people who listen to CM is small and those who listen to contemporary CM is even smaller. Why does that matter to you? My taste in popular music is also fairly niche. I am just happy that I enjoy what I enjoy and that there are plenty of others who enjoy it, too.



Woodduck said:


> I agree with those who believe that forms of music other than classical have been the true voices of contemporary society. I do see, however, some breaking down of genre boundaries, to the degree that it's impossible to categorize some of the music being produced. Maybe we should look forward to the day when the elitist idea of "classical" music has vanished altogether.


Yes, we don't know what the future will bring. It may involve the breaking down of genre boundaries and all sorts of cross-over styles developing. I doubt that I know enough about what is happening now to be able to engage intelligently on how our global musical appreciation will develop. And, even if I did, I would probably be wrong. I do wonder, though, what it means to say that this or that music is the "true voice of contemporary society". From the above it is obvious that my view on that is that diversity and fertility is that "true voice" and the ability of people from diverse places to form communities of interest for particular niches is part of what fuels it.

I sense that none of the above will convince you to change your position or understanding. That's OK. We see things differently. We experience the world differently. We want different things from it. And probably we want different things from a forum like this as well. It has been an interesting discussion, one that I would continue if it actually moves anywhere.


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## Iota (Jun 20, 2018)

fluteman said:


> But maybe, just maybe, the concept of classical art is more fundamental, pervasive and permanent than you imply, in fact at least as permanent as human civilization, which I concede is a very long-term but not a permanent thing. For human beings have a natural and instinctive need to express what they hope and believe are the fundamental, pervasive and permanent characteristics of their humanity. It is that instinctive need that results in the creation of art, very much including music, and always has from the earliest, prehistoric origins of humanity. I respectfully suggest that the upheavals of the 20th century, great as they were, did not eradicate that need.


What an excellent, thought-provoking post! And I think it's possible to imagine 'classical art', as the product of an archetypal human instinct, being relevant even to some people who don't choose to experience it. Something akin to people valuing the green belt around a city, even though they never visit it.

Even when something's disliked/discounted, it's presence can nonetheless can exert all sorts of subliminal influences I think.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Iota said:


> What an excellent, thought-provoking post! And I think it's possible to imagine 'classical art', as the product of an archetypal human instinct, being relevant even to some people who don't choose to experience it. Something akin to people valuing the green belt around a city, even though they never visit it.
> 
> Even when something's disliked/discounted, it's presence can nonetheless can exert all sorts of subliminal influences I think.


I wouldn't be that optimistic. The digital age, computers, internet, instant entertainment and gratification on a mouse-click, artificial intelligence, robotics etc - the social implications of that are not yet understood and might lead to the degeneration of mankind. One of my favorite scifi books exploring this topic is the Mockingbird
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mockingbird_(Tevis_novel)
it is almost scary how prophetic this books seems to be
or watch this dystopia from the movie Wall-E


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Jacck said:


> I wouldn't be that optimistic. The digital age, computers, internet, instant entertainment and gratification on a mouse-click, artificial intelligence, robotics etc - the social implications of that are not yet understood and might lead to the degeneration of mankind. One of my favorite scifi books exploring this topic is the Mockingbird
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mockingbird_(Tevis_novel)
> it is almost scary how prophetic this books seems to be
> or watch this dystopia from the movie Wall-E


What a cheerful post, Jacck!  My only rejoinder to you, really more of an observation rather than an argument, and maybe it applies to the discussion between Woodduck and Enthusiast above, is that it is very hard to achieve a reasonable historical perspective of an era one is currently living in.

One other observation, and this comes from much personal experience and isn't something I'm going to try to explain or prove, or argue about anywhere, especially online: live acoustic music still provides something that can't be had solely from the digital age, computers, internet, instant entertainment and gratification on a mouse-click, artificial intelligence, or robotics, important as all those things have become in the art world and everywhere else.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

fluteman said:


> But maybe, just maybe, the concept of classical art is more fundamental, pervasive and permanent than you imply, in fact at least as permanent as human civilization, which I concede is a very long-term but not a permanent thing. For human beings have a natural and instinctive need to express what they hope and believe are the fundamental, pervasive and permanent characteristics of their humanity. It is that instinctive need that results in the creation of art, very much including music, and always has from the earliest, prehistoric origins of humanity. I respectfully suggest that the upheavals of the 20th century, great as they were, did not eradicate that need.


The most fundamental characteristic that Humanity could ever hope to express would be their "being," and if that results in the creation of art, it hopefully will be a reflection of that. Unfortunately, Humanity seems to have problems in reaching that state, and invariably seem totally unaware of their essential state of being, which remains buried under the rubble of destruction and bombast. "Historical perspective" is an unreality.
The "upheavals" of 20th century music have in many cases already identified and satisfied the needs of Humanity, but most listeners seem to be caught in the vortex of an outdated and archaic history which has nothing to do with that, but more to do with bombast, ego, conquering, posturing, domination, control, and self-destruction.


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

I've read this thread so far, and I've seen a big generalization of what popular music means. People usually equate popular music to pop music, or even to the banal "4 chord pop".

"Popular music" is actually misnomer. It's actually just *music*... all music produced and published today that is not classical.

So when you subtract the traditional music (ethnic, genuine folk), etc, and classical music, what remains is called popular music.
I would be more appropriate to call it simply "music", or "rest of the music" or "all the rest".

Popular music, defined in such a way, (and this was my intended meaning) is definitely more relevant and important than contemporary classical music, and that's perhaps the strongest argument against the importance of contemporary classical music.

Because "popular" music contains all: from bubblegum pop, to progressive rock, death metal, mathcore, avantgard rock, indie rock, low-fi music, all sorts of underground music, all sorts of electronic dance music, country, punk, reggae, funk, traditional and modern jazz, world music, new-age music, EVERYTHING UNDER THE SUN except classical and strictly traditional.

What all these types of music have in common?

Pretty much nothing: they differ in values, approaches to music, aesthetics, sound, level of complexity, themes, content, moods and popularity... Some of the genres are commercial and seek to reach charts. Some are ANTI-COMMERCIAL and have highly limited audiences, critical lyrics, anti-establishment, etc... some are intellectual, some are passionate, etc...

The only thing they have in common is format: there are albums, there are singles, there is communication with audience, the music is published as sound files, rather than sheet music, and that's pretty much it. But they are all lumped together into "popular" music, even though some genres are far from being popular and actively oppose popularity and commercialism.

The fact that classical music is excluded from all this, and can't find its place in such a huge and so inclusive realm maybe speaks about its voluntary segregation, which lead though, perhaps to real and involuntary irrelevance.

The contemporary classical music is behaving in a strange way. When you publish your work in sheet music form without trying to reach any audience, it's as if you were a writer and instead of PUBLISHING your novel in some relevant publishing house, you just published it in some obscure specialist literary journal that's read by no one, and is written in a language only experts understand.

That's why Contemporary Classical Music is not even counted anymore among normal genres.

I agree with Alma Deutcher that music should be beautiful. Or perhaps it doesn't need to, but it should be at least fun, or daring, or provocative, and it shouldn't be mute, it should communicate with people. Contemporary classical music should have its crazies and its celebrities and superstars. Girls should be screaming, like they did in Liszt's days. There should be new Paganini, not only new Mozart.
_*And yeah, there should definitely be a new Mozart too, especially in "Leck mich im Arsch" sense.*_

Producing music that's utterly incomprehensible was perhaps shocking 80 years ago in Schoenberg's days. He was daring, kudos to him. But doing it today is totally expected of contemporary classical music, and therefore it's utter conformism and lack of daring to still try to shock by using old Schoenberg's tricks.

Real step forward and real daring would be reaching top 40 with new REAL CLASSICAL MUSIC, that would be genuine, innovative, daring, that would communicate real emotion, or message, that people could understand, and that would not be dumbed down. Music needs to be powerful, or sublime, or penetrating, and definitely very memorable.

It needs to be like this:





Or like this:






Or this:






These pieces have very different aesthetics, but all of them "work" and are very powerful and great representatives of their respective genres.

Classical music will become relevant again when it starts producing again pieces like this and when it starts communicating with people.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> The most fundamental characteristic that Humanity could ever hope to express would be their "being," and if that results in the creation of art, it hopefully will be a reflection of that. Unfortunately, Humanity seems to have problems in reaching that state, and invariably seem totally unaware of their essential state of being, which remains buried under the rubble of destruction and bombast. "Historical perspective" is an unreality.
> The "upheavals" of 20th century music have in many cases already identified and satisfied the needs of Humanity, but most listeners seem to be caught in the vortex of an outdated and archaic history which has nothing to do with that, but more to do with bombast, ego, conquering, posturing, domination, control, and self-destruction.


Another cheerful post. I think we need a fresh shipment of optimism.


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## wandelweisering (Aug 5, 2014)

ZJovicic said:


> The contemporary classical music is behaving in a strange way. When you publish your work in sheet music form without trying to reach any audience, it's as if you were a writer and instead of PUBLISHING your novel in some relevant publishing house, you just published it in some obscure specialist literary journal that's read by no one, and is written in a language only experts understand.
> 
> That's why Contemporary Classical Music is not even counted anymore among normal genres.


I would argue sheet music is less important nowadays than getting recorded. Nowadays, you can find on YouTube many pieces illustrated by their sheets. Part of the niche appeal of certain "CCM" composers is that their works may be very complex and some of them are in highly idiosyncratic notation. With something like Cornelius Cardew's "Treatise" (to give an extreme example), no interpretation is the same, interpretation implies improvisation. But I am just speaking from the point of view of a nearly hipster kind of person - I don't judge things as comprehensible or incomprehensible, and what I find incomprehensible is this notion of understanding that seems to get in the way of poetry for most people. Well, that is another topic altogether, but you seem to associate "CCM" with something between scholarly writings (which anyway tends to be paywalled as hell) and academic-experimental literature (which may not be read right now by almost anyone, but some of it could be over a few decades; in reality, there is a niche even for that, around the world there are a few bookstores dedicated exclusively to experimental literature or several more to poetry in general).

It makes no sense to me to more or less appreciate that some parts of non-classical music are anti-commercial (your outdated list of genres fails to include the "noise" scene, which involves both the limited edition cassettes and CDs circuit - it is not for nothing Merzbow or John Wiese put out hundreds of recordings - and the art gallery/sound art/performance festival circuit, where it sometimes intersects with certain kinds of "CCM" composers) and then scold "CCM" for being too anti-commercial. Your post speaks nothing about (post-)minimalist music (do you know Arvo Part?) or the kind of neo-classical or neo-romantic music that get not in the top 40, but certainly on film soundtracks, yet those are major veins of, broadly speaking, "contemporary classical music".

What does "normal genres" even mean? Radio formats? Why should we care anymore about the radio and about top 40 when there is Bandcamp and Spotify? "Girls should be screaming, like they did in Liszt's days." People are certainly screaming for André Rieu, and that is a good thing by what measure? And what you define as relevant is the opposite of innovative. "Real emotion"? If I want real emotion, I go hug the people I care for. If I want beauty, I can just listen to birdsongs. If I want to communicate with people, guess what, I can communicate. Music and the other arts - I prefer to see them as laboratories, to the degree I seek experimenting and expanding knowledge of the nearly infinite creative potential of the materials. I know, it sounds like outdated modernism, but I see no better way of opposing the oppression of ill-informed world views such as yours - "everything goes", but only as long as it makes conformism seem the new non-conformism (or pretending "it's hip to be square").


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> The "upheavals" of 20th century music have in many cases already identified and satisfied the needs of Humanity, but most listeners seem to be caught in the vortex of an outdated and archaic history which has nothing to do with that, but more to do with bombast, ego, conquering, posturing, domination, control, and self-destruction.


Maybe I'm not like "most listeners," but when I listen to music I never feel caught in a vortex of an outdated and archaic history. Actually I doubt that I could locate such a vortex even if I knew what it was. What I _do_ feel is pleasure in being a participant in the sensibilities of various past eras, depending on the music I'm listening to, and this tends to be an experience that enlarges my sense of what it is to be human. This doesn't feel like being caught in a vortex.

Bombast, ego, conquering, posturing, domination, control, and self-destruction are certainly all within the realm of human nature, but these are not things that I turn to music for, and in fact I rarely find any suggestion of them there. They are the kinds of things that artists throughout most of history have wanted to rise above in the experience of creation and wanted _us_ to rise above in the act of appreciation, and in the works of the artists whom we continue to revere, often centuries on, we see their remarkable success in that project. We encounter beauty and even ecstasy in the transcendence of the meaner and baser things which will always be with us, but to which we need not submit.

This transcendence, I think, was a primary function of art in most times and places. However, it seems to be a common experience among many (if not most) listeners that the "upheavals" of 20th century music have, in many (though not all) cases, induced feelings which much more nearly, and even alarmingly or depressingly, suggest the various unpleasant things you mention. Perhaps there are, as you say, also many cases in which those upheavals (which ones, exactly?) have "satisfied the needs of humanity." I have to say, though, that from my vantage point the needs of humanity don't appear to be much more satisfied than they ever were, and that some of them seem much less satisfied. Is there a particular need that's been satisfied by, say, Stockhausen? Should more people know about that, so that they can be lifted out of the vortex of outdated history and have their up-to-date needs satisfied?

I guess a long lifetime of listening to music has failed to teach me how badly the art of music was failing humanity before 20th century upheavals set things right.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

ZJovicic said:


> How about just appreciating whole music in all its forms, genres and combinations?
> I guess such approach would be healthy.
> I am also all for free competition between genres, and acknowledgment of merit and dignity of all genres!


Leck mich im Arsch is a vocal canon in six voices, there's actually contrapuntal texture involved. Musical Joke K522 is an experimental piece in polytonality and whole-tone scales. Again, none of these examples prove Mozart and Beethoven wrote anything like modern pop songs that repeat the same 2~4 chords to death (no structure, no development, only formulated to sell). Modern pop makes Wellington's Victory look like a work of art in comparison.

If you can measure the greatness of classical piece just by its popularity with the public, Bach's Air on G string would be his greatest piece. Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik would be his greatest, while Beethoven's Fur Elise would be his. In reality, they're not. That's why we can't measure greatness of a piece classical music based on its popularity. There are tons of other factors to consider and That's why in classical forums, there's constant debate on what makes a piece of music great. If not, why don't we just say "Beethoven's Fur Elise is the greatest piece ever written cause it's the most popular." In reality, it's not as simple as that.






And all the famous pop musicians today, ask yourself how much of their "talent and skills" are really "musical"? As I said, the "gods of pop music", Beatles and Michael Jackson could not even read notation and that tells a lot about the depth of knowledge regards to music theory they had. Composers in the past dueled on improvisation skills. Contemporary classical and jazz follow this tradition of exploring music theory to compose and improvise. Pop music does not and extra-musical traits such as "good looks" and "sexy voices" matter more than actual "musical skills" in modern pop music. This is my answer to your original question "why can't we treat all genres of music equally."


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

"Again, none of these examples prove Mozart and Beethoven wrote anything like modern pop songs that repeat the same 2~4 chords to death (no structure, no development, only formulated to sell."

Maybe not, but a mile-long list of songs that use more than 2 to 4 chords could be presented related to pop music. While most pop songs may be harmonically limited, it's not all, such as _Yesterdays_ by the Beatles, not to mention any number of songs by George Gershwin, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin. It's pop music that makes the world go 'round and only about 3% buy music that's considered "classical." In fact, most people could go through an entire lifetime without hearing classical music, whether it's Mozart or Beethoven, and do just fine and not miss it for a split second. But for those who need classical music and cannot possibly do without it-it exists. But it's an exceedingly minority interest and most people could care less about Mozart and Beethoven, no matter how fine, how exquisite, how marvelous, how great it is in its development, its melodic richness, its rhythmic subtleties... well, most people care more about the Beatles, Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra than these two classical composers, as fine as they are , and I believe that those who care about CM should not get carried away with the estimated 3% of sales that it represents. It's variety that makes the world go around, not just Mozart and his incredible sonatas, sacred works and symphonies, including his unprecedented Jupiter Symphony, as much as I love it. The downside of classical music, which is not mentioned enough, is how it can isolate people socially into an ivory tower existence that may not be connected with reality and the way that most people live who are not without their virtues. Someone who likes Lady Gaga may be the one who's courageous enough to pull us out of a burning car.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Larkenfield said:


> The downside of classical music, which is not mention enough, is how it can isolate people socially into an ivory tower existence that may not be connected with reality and the way that most people live who are not without their virtues. Someone who likes Lady Gaga may be the one who's courageous enough who pulls us out of a burning car.


A salutary reminder to us musical snobs. But although you speak truth, I seem rarely to develop close relationships with people who don't like classical music. I mustn't be hanging out with the right crowd. Well, OK, I'm just not hanging out.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> I guess a long lifetime of listening to music has failed to teach me how badly the art of music was failing humanity before 20th century upheavals set things right.


No, your blind spot is that you don't understand the real purpose of music, and you don't live in the present moment, except vicariously. JVovicic's post says essentially the same thing. You're living in a dream, a fantasy, made out of your ideas and what you think is "your identity," which has nothing to do with reality.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> No, your blind spot is that you don't understand the real purpose of music, and you don't live in the present moment, except vicariously. JVovicic's post says essentially the same thing. You're living in a dream, a fantasy, made out of your ideas and what you think is "your identity," which has nothing to do with reality.


I've tried Google's translate app/function innumerable times (millions of times?) but can't get it to work....... I must be living in a fantasy.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Strange Magic said:


> I've tried Google's translate app/function innumerable times (millions of times?) but can't get it to work....... I must be living in a fantasy.


You are. But reality will have the last laugh. After you die you will find yourself standing before the Great Drone, and you will fall on your knees and repent of ever having enjoyed the resolution of a dominant chord to the tonic.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

hammeredklavier said:


> Musical Joke K522 is an experimental piece in polytonality and whole-tone scales.


Is it though? It surely wasn't a serious foray into polytonality etc, as the title suggests. It seems to have been more about Mozart using elements considered "wrong" for his time and that's what makes the 'joke'.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

eugeneonagain said:


> Is it though? It surely wasn't a serious foray into polytonality etc, as the title suggests. It seems to have been more about Mozart using elements considered "wrong" for his time and that's what makes the 'joke'.


Or perhaps the idea was to use those elements wrongly.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

millionrainbows said:


> The most fundamental characteristic that Humanity could ever hope to express would be their "being," and if that results in the creation of art, it hopefully will be a reflection of that. Unfortunately, Humanity seems to have problems in reaching that state, and invariably seem totally unaware of their essential state of being, which remains buried under the rubble of destruction and bombast. "Historical perspective" is an unreality.
> The "upheavals" of 20th century music have in many cases already identified and satisfied the needs of Humanity, but most listeners seem to be caught in the vortex of an outdated and archaic history which has nothing to do with that, but more to do with bombast, ego, conquering, posturing, domination, control, and self-destruction.


Completely baffling millionrainbows.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

fluteman said:


> Or perhaps the idea was to use those elements wrongly.


Surely that's the same thing?


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> You are. But reality will have the last laugh. After you die you will find yourself standing before the Great Drone, and you will fall on your knees and repent of ever having enjoyed the resolution of a dominant chord to the tonic.


At first I wondered if this joke wasn't a bit disrespectful of those of a different culture and religion than many of us here. But it occurred to me that the drone you had in mind might have originated far from India.

Ò gur mòr mo chùis mhulaid,
'S mi ri caoineadh na guin atà 'm thìr;
À Rìgh! bi làidir, 's tu 's urrainn
Ar nàimhdean a chumail fo chìs

"Great is the cause of my sorrow,
As I mourn for the wounds of my land
O God, be strong, thou art able,
To keep in subjection our foes"


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

fluteman said:


> At first I wondered if this joke wasn't a bit disrespectful of those of a different culture and religion than many of us here. But it occurred to me that the drone you had in mind might have originated far from India.
> 
> Ò gur mòr mo chùis mhulaid,
> 'S mi ri caoineadh na guin atà 'm thìr;
> ...


You may, without realizing it, have discovered here the highest musical expression of "being." There's not a chance in Hades that anyone's ego could survive twelve hours of that.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> You may without realizing it, have discovered here the highest musical expression of "being." There's not a chance in Hades that anyone's ego could survive twelve hours of that.


My choice of video there was not entirely arbitrary.


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

I'd just like to clarify certain things about this thread:

I am not against contemporary classical music, in fact I sometimes listen to it, though I must say I am not a big fan of a good chunk of it.

I was deliberately a bit provocative to arouse the discussion.

My main criticism is not against CCM, but against the notion that non-classical music is not a real art music and shouldn't be considered seriously. What follows from such an attitude is that contemporary composers can be well satisfied with themselves and unconcerned about the lack of impact their music has, because they don't see popular music as real competition. In comparison to other CCM composers they are doing great, but the problem is that CCM composers as a whole are not doing great.

If you are blind about the giant ocean of popular music genres, you might think you're doing the most important thing in today's music and making impact, while in fact you're not.

Real artists want to make impact. Not through complacency to popular tastes, but by producing real, powerful art, that changes the world, and if needed, changes these tastes. Writers of literary fiction still keep doing it and they do make impact and are still being read. Perhaps a little less than Danielle Steel, but - yeah, whole world knows who is Umberto Eco and many read his books. And he is not a pulp writer. How many contemporary composers enjoy the same popularity or have the same impact?

For all these reasons I think popular music should be given equal prestige and acknowledgement as classical, BUT ON INDIVIDUAL BASIS. Not saying that all pop is the same as all classical, because it's definitely wrong, and in fact, classical music has produced some much better works than popular music.

But it means that they should have equal rights, and every piece of music, classical or popular should be considered seriously, and be given benefit of doubt.

So if we look at genres as races, by that analogy, I am simply against musical racism.
While some genres(races), might on average have certain advantages or disadvantages, every member of such race should be treated individually and equally as any member of any other race.

So for example, instead of saying that Gangnam Style is a degenerate trash, it deserves to be studied, both as a piece of music and as a cultural phenomenon, etc.

"Smoke on the water" riff should be analyzed musically and theoretically, because it is in fact powerful, its power lies in its simplicity and that's why it's iconic. It's almost as iconic as the beginning of 5th symphony... though 5th symphony as a whole piece of music is incomparably better than the song "Smoke on the water". But if you compare just the riff with those first 4 notes of the Fifth, they are definitely comparable.

So by giving other genres equal treatment CCM composers would be more aware of their actual importance (or lack thereof), and they would be more strongly motivated to actually change this state of affairs and make some real impact.

Also, by including all the genres in the serious study we could provide much better and more complete guidance and orientation for all the potential lovers and listeners of MUSIC.

Because if you lack certain critical knowledge about certain popular music, you're not a complete erudite. You lack in general education. You're not a complete intellectual if you have no clue about the most important rock albums, etc.

Of course equal treatment is just a principle, it doesn't mean mathematical equality, like giving all genres the same amount of time or attention. It means equal APPROACH to all genres and pieces of music, but focusing more time and energy on those genres and pieces that deserve it.

So Beethoven would be deeply analyzed and focused on, but so would Queen, perhaps not as much as LVB, but they definitely need to be analyzed and appreciated as well.

And so would be ABBA for example whose trite sugary songs became cultural phenomena and are still popular and relevant in some ways and sampled in new songs, despite all the sugary triteness...

And so would be Bob Marley both from musical and cultural point of view...

So to some up, I believe there is some SERIOUS ROCK, SERIOUS METAL, SERIOUS JAZZ, even some SERIOUS POP out there and real art is to be found among these genres as well, though perhaps with lesser frequency than in works of major classical composers, but nevertheless, these genres should be approached equally as they also produced some real art and important music.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

ZJovicic said:


> I'd just like to clarify certain things about this thread:
> 
> For all these reasons I think popular music should be given equal prestige and acknowledgement as classical, BUT ON INDIVIDUAL BASIS.


I couldn't agree more. As I keep saying, the key difference between popular art and classical or 'serious' art is in their objectives. The popular artist tries to have as big an immediate impact as possible with a large audience, often a target audience of a specific demographic (teenagers, young adults, etc.).  The classical artist tries to have more of a long-term and universal impact.

Both objectives take a lot of talent, skill and hard work to achieve. I have the utmost respect for many great popular artists of the present, over the course of my lifetime, and even as much as 40 years or more before my lifetime. But it is usually the greatest classical artists who are remembered for centuries, as that is one of their main objectives. In saying that, I do not mean to belittle the work of many great popular artists.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

ZJovicic said:


> I'd just like to clarify certain things about this thread:
> 
> I am not against contemporary classical music, in fact I sometimes listen to it, though I must say I am not a big fan of a good chunk of it.
> 
> ...


I disagree with just about everything in this post...and all your posts in this topic for that matter. Maybe I will take the time soon to explain but right now I am too busy composing my first Mass. For now I will refer you to another post of mine in another topic thread: https://www.talkclassical.com/59518-positive-thread-why-classical-6.html#post1584507


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

ZJovicic said:


> But it means that they should have equal rights, and every piece of music, classical or popular should be considered seriously, and be given benefit of doubt.
> So if we look at genres as races, by that analogy, I am simply against musical racism.
> While some genres(races), might on average have certain advantages or disadvantages, every member of such race should be treated individually and equally as any member of any other race.


Your analogy relating equality of music genres to that of human races is not plausible. As I said, it's worth asking the question "is general pop music really that worth it to go crazy for, without stopping to think for a moment: are the famous pop musicians, the most 'musically talented and skilled' of our time?"
Pop music in general are 'music' for people who aren't interested in 'music'. People who don't care how it's composed, who composed them. who care more for extramusical elements such as sexiness in looks and voices of the artist rather than his/her actual competence as an actual musician.






And about all the 'cultural phenomena' famous pop musicians have caused. Singing clowns can bring about cultural phenomena, but how much 'musical merit' they have a different matter. You're telling us to have respect for their "I'm too lazy I won't bother to learn theory, since popularity is all that matters anyway" mindset and I'm telling you why we can't.
On the spectrum of 'overratedness' and 'underratedness' in music, famous pop musicians deserve their places in the extreme far 'overrated' end. You're trying to argue 'popularity' as a strong point of pop music, but we should be asking if pop music really deserves the popularity it enjoys today. I don't think this is musical discrimination, racism, rather it is 'qualitative evaluation' applied fairly and objectively to all. To those who argue pop music adheres to different criteria of aesthetics -- that's exactly why we can't treat all music the same way.

_No talent is required to perform electronic dance music_
https://www.straight.com/music/no-talent-required-perform-electronic-dance-music


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

"As I said, it's worth asking the question "is general pop music really that worth it to go crazy for, without stopping to think for a moment: are the famous pop musicians, the most 'musically talented and skilled' of our time?"

Why should anyone care about such an opinion when, just for starters, even the likes of Debussy, Schubert, and Chopin have been grossly distorted and mischaracterized with unreasonable prejudice and opinion by the likes of someone like Dr. David Wright and those who apparently agree with his opinions hook, line, and sinker—and these are the opinions of those who are supposedly "educated" in music theory and have any insights into contemporary culture?

Knowing something about classical music theory doesn't follow that the person understands it in a wider context of other genres. If one can't do any better than that then I suggest that their blanket opinions on any other genre of music are worth about as little as their opinion is on Schubert, though no composer is universally admired, including Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven

There are two groups when it comes to music criticism: the 'includers' and the 'excluders.' It's the 'includers' whose standards for excellence can be just as high as the 'excluders' but who thoroughly understand that genius can be found in every genre, such as a Gershwin or Cole Porter, who wrote musicals and pop songs. 

On the other hand, the 'excluders' never apparently find anything of value in any other genre but CM and it's nothing but condemnation as if every pop song sounded exactly the same, the musicians are completely ignorant—and that's patently untrue. Some of the more popular singers and songwriters have gone to Julliard or other schools to seriously study music theory, such as Norah Jones, who graduated from the Berkely School of Music and has sold millions of albums. She could be considered a 'pop' artist.

The 'includers' actually have some type of original insight into the music—all music—while the' excluders' think that everyone should think exactly like them and pop is nothing but trash. Their wholesale condemnation would also have to exclude someone of genius like Irving Berlin.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Larkenfield said:


> "As I said, it's worth asking the question "is general pop music really that worth it to go crazy for, without stopping to think for a moment: are the famous pop musicians, the most 'musically talented and skilled' of our time?"
> 
> Why should anyone care about such an opinion when, just for starters, even the likes of Debussy, Schubert, and Chopin have been grossly distorted and mischaracterized with unreasonable prejudice and opinion by the likes of someone like Dr. David Wright and those who apparently agree with his opinions hook, line, and sinker-and these are the opinions of those who are supposedly "educated" in music theory and have any insights into contemporary culture?
> 
> ...


Yes. And while it's true that in the world of popular art, including popular music, it is possible, though not as common as some here seem to think, for an untalented hack to luck into a few moments of fame, the biggest stars often have astounding talent. Just to give one example from the small world of the flute: Jazz flute star Hubert Laws not only studied at Juilliard with the great Julius Baker, longtime NY Philharmonic principal, but in his younger years routinely substituted in the NY Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera orchestras. I could go on endlessly about great musicians in all sorts of other popular genres, and I'm not even especially knowledgeable, as many here would be quick to confirm.

The classical artist tries to create something more universal, more permanent and perhaps more profound than the popular artist. IMHO, that is the only general statement you can really make about the distinction between the two.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

There are a myriad of different genres and types and styles of music, now almost instantly available to virtually everyone at any time. Each of these musics has an audience that dearly loves it, as each music appeals to and is written for that audience which seeks and finds it. Everyone's needs are met. Yet, over and over and over, it is a segment of the classical music audience, well-represented here on TC, that continually wrings its hands over the degraded tastes of those enamored of other (rival?) musics. It is this unique segment of this unique genre whose lips tremble with indignation at the degraded tastes of those who should be fleeing inferior musics and instead flocking to classical music if they had been raised properly or had more self-discipline or intelligence or sensitivity. There is the concomitant feeling of immense pride, self-satisfaction, and superiority that is the complement to the disdain. Yet these, after all, are (merely) the sounds that people listen to when they have the time and are motivated to do so. As for me, I listen to whatever I choose to listen to, when I choose, without for a moment considering whether my selection is elevating or degrading, though I do so appreciate the fact that I have, by some others' standards, wretched taste. For which I am very grateful, as my too-inclusive and wretched taste allows me to enjoy, liberally and widely and continually, all sorts of music all of the time. I have made a god of my own tastes, and find it good to do so.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Larkenfield said:


> Why should anyone care about such an opinion when, just for starters, even the likes of Debussy, Schubert, and Chopin have been grossly distorted and mischaracterized with unreasonable prejudice and opinion by the likes of someone like Dr. David Wright and those who apparently agree with his opinions hook, line, and sinker-and these are the opinions of those who are supposedly "educated" in music theory?


I like to note that while Dr. David Wright did criticize Chopin for the Waltzes and Mazurkas, which do adhere to elementary devices, structure, development and make up almost half his output (but are still far more listenable than modern pop music) , he also acknowledged some of Chopin's better works, such as Ballade in G minor as a masterpiece. He criticized modern pop music even more severely in another article. 
Maybe you're the one having unfair prejudice against him. You seem to be playing an "advocate for all mediocrity in music" again, but I wonder what you think about David Wright's evaluation of Johann Strauss II. You just find it hard to accept the fact great masters like Wagner didn't place Chopin in the same level as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven in terms of contribution in music history.

Anyway, keep defending pop music and encouraging its constant 'deterioration'. Let the pop music fandom keep playing 'emperors without clothes' and keep living in the delusion "Bach, Mozart, Beethoven etc would have written 4-chord pop songs had they lived in our age". Why should I even care anyway. It's up to the future posterity to decide if Justin Bieber was truly the Johann S Bach of our age. Surely, they will remember it as a golden age of Lip-synch, Autotune and 4-chords. Glad to hear you don't care for my opinion, I don't care for those advocating for modern pop music either.

I should like to point out that Berkely School of Music teaches singing, instrument playing, chord progression, and sound engineering required for pop music and Norah Jones still wrote songs like Sunrise that use 4 chords. And she isn't even the one making the biggest dollars, and for the vast majority of pop musicians, "actual musical talent and skills" aren't the greatest assets to success and the whole multi-billion dollar industry is built around the concept. "Lip-synch and Autotune are always there to aid you if you can't sing."


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

hammeredklavier said:


> I like to note that while *Dr. David Wright *did criticize Chopin for the Waltzes and Mazurkas, which do adhere to elementary devices, structure, development and make up almost half his output (but are still far more listenable than modern pop music) , he also acknowledged some of Chopin's better works, such as Ballade in G minor as a masterpiece. He criticized modern pop music even more severely in another article.
> Maybe you're the one having unfair prejudice against him. You seem to be playing an "advocate for all mediocrity in music" again, but I wonder what you think about David Wright's evaluation of Johann Strauss II. You just find it hard to accept the fact great masters like Wagner didn't place Chopin in the same level as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven in terms of contribution in music history.
> 
> Anyway, keep defending pop music and encouraging its constant 'deterioration'. Let the pop music fandom keep playing 'emperors without clothes' and keep living in the delusion "Bach, Mozart, Beethoven etc would have written 4-chord pop songs had they lived in our age". Why should I even care anyway. It's up to the future posterity to decide if Justin Bieber was truly the Johann S Bach of our age. Surely, they will remember it as a golden age of Lip-synch, Autotune and 4-chords. Glad to hear you don't care for my opinion, I don't care for those advocating for modern pop music either.
> ...


After reading this guy's half-baked and self-opinionated writings, the best thing to do is press the ignore button - on Chopin and anyone else.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

ZJovicic said:


> I'd just like to clarify certain things about this thread:
> 
> I am not against contemporary classical music, in fact I sometimes listen to it, though I must say I am not a big fan of a good chunk of it.
> 
> ...


I'm not against jazz, folk and the various genres of popular music being treated with respect and being "studied" _*but I think this is already happening*_. Universities do offer courses that do this. For me, though, I'm not terribly interested in the study of any sort of music. I enjoy (x100) listening to it.

But I do take exception to your implication that



> contemporary composers can be well satisfied with themselves and unconcerned about the lack of impact their music has, because they don't see popular music as real competition.


What an extraordinary statement! Which composers do you think don't care about the impact of their music? Just because you are cold to it, you think the composer does not care about her/his audience? And you also seem to think there is no audience for such music - which (you don't name names but we can assume to are talking of the big names of today's CM) is obviously wrong. Perhaps the gap is in you? Of course, popular music appeals to much larger audiences than any CM but does that mean that today's composers should switch genres to achieve a mass audience? Or what?

You talk of today's literature as if it shows that the CM equivalent in literature does reach a mass audience while modern composers don't but how do you know you are comparing like with like. Eco, who you name, wrote entertaining books. High brow, no doubt, and filled with in-jokes for the well educated, but who is to say that the musical equivalent is not a jazz player or someone in the more intellectual wing of popular music? I enjoy his books but they certainly don't seem to be aiming at the "serious great literature" target. They are entertainments. The same could be said in one way or another for all the mass audience "Booker" writers. They are writing intelligent popular fiction and many of them will be out of print in 70 years. The more serious writers - the ones who probably are the equivalent of contemporary CM composers - can be quite a challenging read. Do you read the great works of the past? Are you interested in literature?

It seems to me that you want to blame contemporary classical composers for being contemporary classical composers when the failure is yours for not being interested enough to listen to them. It is OK that your contemporary tastes are taking you to more popular musicians (/writers) and genres. There is a lot of very rewarding stuff out there. But why do you need to knock those who are continuing a tradition that continues to give us toweringly great music?


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

DavidA said:


> After reading this guy's half-baked and self-opinionated writings, the best thing to do is press the ignore button - on Chopin and anyone else.


I'm not familiar with Dr. Wright's ideas, but if he criticizes Chopin's waltzes and mazurkas as too simple, let's just say he's not climbing very quickly up my list of authors to investigate.


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

Enthusiast said:


> I'm not against jazz, folk and the various genres of popular music being treated with respect and being "studied" _*but I think this is already happening*_. Universities do offer courses that do this. For me, though, I'm not terribly interested in the study of any sort of music. I enjoy (x100) listening to it.
> 
> But I do take exception to your implication that
> 
> ...


Well I am sure there are many serious and great writers that are very popular today, both contemporary and historical. Today, in general, people don't read much. But those who read, read. And not only popular stuff. I am not the most well-read person in the world, but I did read, and enjoy several high-brow literary classics such as "The Brothers Karamazov", "The Magic Mountain", "Anna Karenina", "The Stranger", "Steppenwolf", etc...

But who is to say that literature being entertaining, makes it somehow less serious and less valuable? It couldn't be further from truth. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky wrote quite entertaining literature. And they are considered among the greatest novelists of all time.

Beethoven and Mozart also wrote entertaining music. My mind is being entertained when I listen to it, and it gives me pleasure.

Even Bach wrote entertaining music. Dance suites! Lullabies! Cantatas, including the one about coffee! Brandenburg concertos are entertaining stuff!

When composers got that idea that entertainment is bad, they kind of signed death sentence to their music.

I don't think CCM composers should switch genres and start composing some banal trash.
They don't need to be as popular as the hottest current pop star.

But they should strive to be at least as popular as the likes of Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Verdi, Vivaldi, Mahler, Brahms, etc...

In fact they should be as popular as Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, but I am giving them a discount and not asking for too much.

If you have an art in which the dead are dozens of times more popular than the living, even among the core audience of that art (listeners of classical music), then there must be something wrong happening with that art right now.

CCM composers need not please an average Joe who listens to Taylor Swift, but hey, they might think about not-at-all-average-and-in-tiny-minority Jack who loves classical music.

They not only fail to reach Joes, they also fail to reach a large majority of Jacks. That is the problem.


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

hammeredklavier said:


> Your analogy relating equality of music genres to that of human races is not plausible. As I said, it's worth asking the question "is general pop music really that worth it to go crazy for, without stopping to think for a moment: are the famous pop musicians, the most 'musically talented and skilled' of our time?"
> Pop music in general are 'music' for people who aren't interested in 'music'. People who don't care how it's composed, who composed them. who care more for extramusical elements such as sexiness in looks and voices of the artist rather than his/her actual competence as an actual musician.


When I speak about popular music, I speak actually about all non-classical, non-traditional music - not just commercial pop. Most of the general audience, yes, listens to quite banal pop. But most of the people who are seriously into music - any kind of music - have much more refined tastes. They not only DO CARE about who composed music, but they know all about the songwriters, guitarists, bass players, drummers, in their favorite band, etc. They might play guitar and struggle to find out how Slash manages to do that solo in "Paradise city", etc. To be a really good, world class rock guitarist, you need to know many chords, scales, improvisation, and composition as well. Which is a step ahead from most classical performers who very seldom compose.



> And about all the 'cultural phenomena' famous pop musicians have caused. Singing clowns can bring about cultural phenomena, but how much 'musical merit' they have a different matter. You're telling us to have respect for their "I'm too lazy I won't bother to learn theory, since popularity is all that matters anyway" mindset and I'm telling you why we can't.


World class rock musicians are far from lazy. They can practice guitar for 10 hours at a time. The only difference is that their study is not formal. But they do study and practice hella lot of it.

Too lazy to bother learning theory?

Well how about those talented kids who weren't fortunate enough to be sent to musical schools by their parents when they were 5 year old? When you reach certain age (quite young age), formal musical education is unavailable to you anymore, even if you wanted. If your parents don't choose it for you while you're a little kid , you're almost doomed, when it comes to getting a formal musical education.

But then again - SHOULD THEY formally study music? Maybe they should not! Maybe formal study would make them too similar to all others who had similar education and thwart their natural originality... Maybe it would fill their mind with too many rules and limitations...

Of course I think musical education is a really good thing. I regret not getting it when it was still available to me... but there is the other side to it as well, which I just mentioned. Yet... many rock musicians DID study music theory, some of them even formally...



> On the spectrum of 'overratedness' and 'underratedness' in music, famous pop musicians deserve their places in the extreme far 'overrated' end. You're trying to argue 'popularity' as a strong point of pop music, but we should be asking if pop music really deserves the popularity it enjoys today. I don't think this is musical discrimination, racism, rather it is 'qualitative evaluation' applied fairly and objectively to all. To those who argue pop music adheres to different criteria of aesthetics -- that's exactly why we can't treat all music the same way.
> 
> _No talent is required to perform electronic dance music_
> https://www.straight.com/music/no-talent-required-perform-electronic-dance-music


Yeah, I agree when it comes to qualitative evaluation, I just say that the fact that a certain piece of music is a rock song or a pop song should NOT AUTOMATICALLY influence our opinion of it. Instead, listen, try to enjoy it, and THEN judge, if you really have to.


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

hammeredklavier said:


> I like to note that while Dr. David Wright did criticize Chopin for the Waltzes and Mazurkas, which do adhere to elementary devices, structure, development and make up almost half his output (but are still far more listenable than modern pop music) , he also acknowledged some of Chopin's better works, such as Ballade in G minor as a masterpiece. He criticized modern pop music even more severely in another article.
> Maybe you're the one having unfair prejudice against him. You seem to be playing an "advocate for all mediocrity in music" again, but I wonder what you think about David Wright's evaluation of Johann Strauss II. You just find it hard to accept the fact great masters like Wagner didn't place Chopin in the same level as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven in terms of contribution in music history.
> 
> Anyway, keep defending pop music and encouraging its constant 'deterioration'. Let the pop music fandom keep playing 'emperors without clothes' and keep living in the delusion "Bach, Mozart, Beethoven etc would have written 4-chord pop songs had they lived in our age". Why should I even care anyway. It's up to the future posterity to decide if Justin Bieber was truly the Johann S Bach of our age. Surely, they will remember it as a golden age of Lip-synch, Autotune and 4-chords. Glad to hear you don't care for my opinion, I don't care for those advocating for modern pop music either.
> ...


Well, in my opinion Justin Bieber is definitely not JSB of our age. Also, you should not compare classical music with worst types of popular music. When we listen to Beethoven we don't care much about Wellington Victory... we also don't listen too much to third or fourth tier composers who were Beethoven's contemporaries. We usually focus on good stuff in classical music.

So if we make comparisons with popular music, we should compare it with really GOOD STUFF in popular music, not with Justin Bieber, though he too, isn't without talent!

How about comparing classical music to stuff like this?





But then again, even very simple songs with few chords can be beautiful and very authentic, like this song by an AMATEUR musician:


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

@hammeredklavier

I must admit, though, that I loved that video about how to make a song without talent!


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

ZJovicic said:


> So for example, instead of saying that Gangnam Style is a degenerate trash, it deserves to be studied, both as a piece of music and as a cultural phenomenon, etc.
> 
> "Smoke on the water" riff should be analyzed musically and theoretically, because it is in fact powerful, its power lies in its simplicity and that's why it's iconic. It's almost as iconic as the beginning of 5th symphony... though 5th symphony as a whole piece of music is incomparably better than the song "Smoke on the water". But if you compare just the riff with those first 4 notes of the Fifth, they are definitely comparable.
> 
> So Beethoven would be deeply analyzed and focused on, but so would Queen, perhaps not as much as LVB, but they definitely need to be analyzed and appreciated as well.


Instead of telling us to analyze modern pop music, why don't you do it yourself and show us how it's done. Write essays after essays on how ingenious Gangnam Style is all you want (if anybody gives a damn). Or ask people who analyze classical music online to analyze popular pop songs as well in the same way they do classical music. 











ZJovicic said:


> So to some up, I believe there is some SERIOUS ROCK, SERIOUS METAL, SERIOUS JAZZ, even some SERIOUS POP out there and real art is to be found among these genres as well, though perhaps with lesser frequency than in works of major classical composers, but nevertheless, these genres should be approached equally as they also produced some real art and important music.


But I thought you said the more popular the music is, the greater value it has, due to its impact (whatever it is) on masses. But the fact is, these few, obscure 'serious musicians' aren't getting popularity like Taylor Swift or Lady Gaga, who dominate the industry.
So wouldn't they be *less relevant* to our society compared to Justin Bieber or Bruno Mars. Sometimes you tell us to "treat all music equally." Other times you seem to be saying "I admit pop music (we hear on the radio) is not good". You seem to be contradicting yourself in some points.


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

hammeredklavier said:


> Instead of telling us to analyze modern pop music, why don't you do it yourself and show us how it's done. Write essays after essays on how ingenious Gangnam Style is all you want (if anybody gives a damn). Or ask people who analyze classical music online to analyze popular pop songs as well in the same way they do classical music.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Regarding the relationship between quality and popularity, I think it's quite complex. It's not strictly proportional one to the another, but it's not inversely proportional either.

But then the very best works, usually do achieve popularity as well. Like Beethoven symphonies, for example.

All other things being equal, popularity is a good thing... it's better for a piece to be popular than not. And each musician is happy when their work is well received. Mozart and Beethoven were very popular in their time. *Half of Vienna attended Beethoven's funeral. *Which contemporary composer could receive such an honor?

I don't think that the best representatives of popular music are "obscure serious musicians". Of course there are some of them who are great! But some of the greatest popular musicians were actually POPULAR in literal sense, like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, etc.


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## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

An industry has the power to imprint the young with industrial values . I do not think that music has always been an industry and that the maturation of an industrial condition for music has been post-1990s . Why do I mark that time ? Culture started to act uninspired yet kept plodding on , programmed .


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

ZJovicic said:


> it's better for a piece to be popular than not.


So are you saying the pop **** we hear on the radio today deserves to have their places alongside Beethoven's masterworks? Please be clear with what you're saying. How does this relate to all your claims about "musical discrimination", "musical racism", etc.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

hammeredklavier said:


> So are you saying the pop **** we hear on the radio today deserves to have their places alongside Beethoven's masterworks? Please be clear with what you're saying. How does this relate to all your claims about "musical discrimination", "musical racism", etc.


_All _of the works that a consensus of listeners considers central to the Western classical music tradition hold their places due, ultimately, to their popularity. Enduring popularity to be sure, but popularity nonetheless.


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

hammeredklavier said:


> So are you saying the pop **** we hear on the radio today deserves to have their places alongside Beethoven's masterworks? Please be clear with what you're saying. How does this relate to all your claims about "musical discrimination", "musical racism", etc.


I said it's better for* A PIECE *to be popular than not. Not for the whole world. Popularity is just one of the many different measures of piece's greatness and/or success. So yes, it's better for a PIECE to be popular.

For the world, on the other hand, it's best if good stuff gets its well deserved popularity.

Then again if you look more closely and consider just pop music, or even just this week's hits. Well, usually songs that reach the top of the charts are better than those at the bottom.

Overtime, however, better measure of quality is enduring popularity. Which is still a type of popularity. Some songs don't chart well when they are released but they remain well known even after 50 years. So if a song is getting millions of views on YouTube 50 years after its publication, there's probably something good about it.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

ZJovicic said:


> I said it's better for* A PIECE *to be popular than not. Not for the whole world. Popularity is just one of the many different measure's of piece's greatness and/or success. So yes, it's better for a PIECE to be popular.
> 
> For the world, on the other hand, it's best if good stuff gets its well deserved popularity.
> 
> ...


I'm still not convinced what's so great about pop songs that require no musical talent or skills to write and are still labelled "music". They won't have impact in the scale of centuries of history cause there's nothing to study and learn from them. 
If you're so insecure about obscure artists or old artists not getting attention you they deserve, why don't you visit pop music forums and persuade people there to follow artists you like. 
I'm not sure why should you be insecure about fans of other genres not having respect for your favorite artists, when you should be caring more for fans of your own kind, about whether they have proper respect for your artists.





"So if a song is getting millions of views on YouTube 50 years after its publication, there's probably something good about it." 
Well said.

It's better for a PIECE to be popular, but popularity isn't everything and just because it doesn't enjoy popularity like Justin Bieber it doesn't mean it has no relevance to modern society.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

fluteman said:


> I'm not familiar with Dr. Wright's ideas, but if he criticizes Chopin's waltzes and mazurkas as too simple, let's just say he's not climbing very quickly up my list of authors to investigate.


Here are three articles from Wright that are representative of his views and which have been quoted by HammerK to discredit these composers without questioning or pondering the source. Much of what Wright says may be true. But what does it matter when he misses the essence, the talent, the magnificent creativity, the essential soul of these musicians and why the public loves them despite their shortcomings? Whatever these composers did wrong in their lives, they paid for it in terms of their health or personal losses, and the problem with a moralist is that he imagines that he's never done a wrong thing in his life.

https://www.wrightmusic.net/pdfs/schubert.pdf
https://www.wrightmusic.net/pdfs/frederick-chopin.pdf
https://www.wrightmusic.net/pdfs/claude-debussy.pdf


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

Spiegel im Spiegel... this is beautiful music! Should definitely deserve even more views than these almost 4 millions!
Thanks for sharing:

BTW, to add to the discussion

What I would really like to see is to see CCM stopping being a deviation from a musical mainstream or a fringe interest.

There's a couple of things I would like to see happening:

1) CCM starting to flourish again, though perhaps dropping the label "classical music" and differentiating in multiple genres that would all be accepted in contemporary musical mainstream... it's just return to the historical state of affairs. Bach didn't compose "classical music" but music of his era which happens to be baroque music, etc. So Arvo Part for example might be more acceptable to modern audience if he's labeled composer of holy minimalism, rather than CCM. The term "classical music" should perhaps be reserved for works at least 50, or even 100 years old, regardless of their genre, just like you have "classics" in literature, but no new novel is considered "a classic". So instead of "classical music" we should speak of "*classics in music*" and this status would of course have all the giants of what we call now "classical music", but this status would also have (or earn in due time) greatest and most influential jazz, blues, soul, country, rock, pop, metal, etc... artists, albums and songs.

2) there should be mutual reconcilliation between classical and popular music scholars, fans, musicians, audiences, etc... popular music audiences need to recognize the beauty and power of music that is now called "classical" and need to be aware that this music is alive, interesting and beautiful, and not boring scholarly stuff. Classical audiences, on the other hand, need to recognize that belonging to western classical music tradition, its composition techniques, and/or authors having formal musical education, is NOT a requirement for a piece of music to be a true work of art. In the end, all that's important is who produced better music, who did a better job... regardless of which genre or tradition they come from.

I think classical music would profit much more from such reconcilliation, because it would be considered alive again, and it would, more importantly be *CONSIDERED * by mainstream modern audiences.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I glanced at Wright's articles, and they are the spewings of a crackpot. He sounds like _me _on a bad day, when I just make up stuff for argument's sake. Woodduck is a better critic than him.


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## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

Tikoo Tuba said:


> An industry has the power to imprint the young with industrial values . I do not think that music has always been an industry and that the maturation of an industrial condition for music has been post-1990s . Why do I mark that time ? Culture started to act uninspired yet kept plodding on , programmed .


Likely , unless it has been reactionary , a common modern viewpoint has been becoming industrialized and referenced to recordings . In that , all tech is equal when sourced by audio-philes .

If'n I had a goob of money , I'd build my little town a fine little music hall and imprint our children(especially) with something naturally true - just like an old Austrian emperor . And His theatre had folding wooden chairs with velvet cushions - folded , we dance .


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Larkenfield said:


> Here are three articles from Wright that are representative of his simplistic thinking and which have been quoted by HammerK to attack these composers on the forum without questioning or pondering the source. Much of what Wright says may be true!


You've been trying to derail the thread for two posts now. This is not a thread for British classical music critic David C F Wright or his criticisms against classical composers Chopin, Schubert, Debussy. This is a thread discussing merits of pop music compared to classical music. Discussions regarding the quality of today's pop music are actually widespread and universal on the net, while having no relevance to Wright, Chopin, Schubert 99.99...% of the time. Please don't use this opportunity to go off-topic and accuse me of bias. If you think Wright was unjust in his criticisms on those composers and wish to argue about it, please create another thread dedicated for it. I did admit Wright is a self-righteous dummy who makes unfair attacks on composers' personal lives (as if we care). But in discussing the actual music itself, he's so outspoken he sometimes makes claims that are "sadly true" of some composers, in my view.



hammeredklavier said:


> https://www.wrightmusic.net/pdfs/frederick-chopin.pdf
> (I know there are some unfair attacks on Chopin's personal life in the article but) I didn't notice on the score Chopin didn't bother to write a tempo marking for the middle section of Scherzo in B flat minor until I read this.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

ZJovicic said:


> Well I am sure there are many serious and great writers that are very popular today, both contemporary and historical. Today, in general, people don't read much. But those who read, read. And not only popular stuff. I am not the most well-read person in the world, but I did read, and enjoy several high-brow literary classics such as "The Brothers Karamazov", "The Magic Mountain", "Anna Karenina", "The Stranger", "Steppenwolf", etc...
> 
> But who is to say that literature being entertaining, makes it somehow less serious and less valuable? It couldn't be further from truth. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky wrote quite entertaining literature. And they are considered among the greatest novelists of all time.
> 
> ...


You are working with caricatures. You are comparing music with literature but for "popular" you go to the popular extremes of both art forms and then you want to claim that writers like Eco are the opposite and therefore equate with modern classical. But there is a lot of "popular music" of serious intent - including some of what used to be called progressive rock - and the books you are thinking of equate better with that body of work than with contemporary classical. For the literary equivalent of contemporary classical you need to look at different authors, most of whom are far less popular. But if you want to claim Eco as the literary equivalent of avant garde music then it seems to me that it it you who is belittling the aesthetic merit of much "popular" music.

You want modern composers to repeat what was done in the past whereas surely they should be making new music. You say that today's composers should be as popular, or more so, as the greats of the past. Why? Who made that rule? The cultural roles that CM has played in different past eras is not relevant to the roles it might play now - it has been changing since long before there was even such a term as classical music - and (your own taste aside) I can see no reason to declare modern CM dead or to suggest that its failure to reach mass audiences is "a problem". Indeed, many of us (mostly those who enjoy a wide range of CM ... and also other music forms as well) feel we are in a golden period, a time when there is almost too much wonderful classical music being created and in such a wealth of variety. It is true that contemporary classical music does not even attempt what the music of the previous era attempted. But then Romantic music attempted very different things to music of the Classical era (and the music of the Classical era attempted very different things to Baroque music). That is how music has been evolving and there are many who only like the music of some eras - this forum is full of people who "like Romantic music but don't like Classical so much" or vice versa.

OK you can dismiss those of us who enjoy modern classical music as ... wrong (is that what you think?) ... or you can get over your theoretical concerns and try to take it seriously .... or you can go your own way and enjoy the more popular music and books (there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with that). But, just because music as a whole has diversified massively over the last 100 years, does not mean that someone has to come along and trim the glorious diversity! And to take out the music that will probably turn out to have been the best of its time! While you are at it, you might as well trim most of the CM from earlier periods as well because much of that also is hardly ever listened to any more!

BTW - at what point in its history do you see CM starting to fail? Mahler? Stravinsky/Bartok/Schoenberg? Britten/Shostakovich? Boulez/Carter?


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## haydnguy (Oct 13, 2008)

janxharris said:


> You don't accept that modern classical music (including 12 tone, serial, avant garde and experimental) has failed? Really?


I'll say this, at least in modern classical the attempt (and I think it succeeded) was "moving on" which is more than I can say for popular music. Pop music needs to move on from the Taylor Swifts of the world to popular music that pushes the envelope. Even in the old days there were "edgy" bands but still popular music was basically the same as it is now. Pop music needs the equivalent (not the same) as 12-tone to get it out of the rut it's been in for so many years. That's why I left pop music and started listening to classical. I was tired of listening to the same-old, same-old. I moved on.


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

Enthusiast said:


> You are working with caricatures. You are comparing music with literature but for "popular" you go to the popular extremes of both art forms and then you want to claim that writers like Eco are the opposite and therefore equate with modern classical. But there is a lot of "popular music" of serious intent - including some of what used to be called progressive rock - and the books you are thinking of equate better with that body of work than with contemporary classical. For the literary equivalent of contemporary classical you need to look at different authors, most of whom are far less popular. But if you want to claim Eco as the literary equivalent of avant garde music then it seems to me that it it you who is belittling the aesthetic merit of much "popular" music.


OK, perhaps there was some misunderstanding between us when it comes to Eco. I just randomly picked him as one of the contemporary writers that's quite serious, yet still popular. My point with this example is that in the world of literature, unlike contemporary classical music, there are still very serious writers who enjoy great popularity. Perhaps Eco was not the best example, as I said, I picked him up randomly. Perhaps I could choose some of Nobel price winners from the recent years, such as Patrick Modiano, Mario Vargas Llosa, Günter Grass, etc... But I see, now you'll say they are no true equivalent to CCM, they are more like progressive rock. But then if they got Nobel Prizes, there's no higher literary award in the world, and I guess in competent literary circles they are considered serious writers. Perhaps not most avant-garde, but serious literature is NOT limited exclusively to avant-garde. There is also literary mainstream, which is not any less serious, and which is still able to open new frontiers in literature and treat important and relevant issues, but in a way that people can understand. By the way, hermetic literature/poetry can be sort of cool and nice intellectual exercise, and it's especially good if it's done on purpose and if this purpose can't be achieved in any other way. But I am afraid that a great deal of hermetic literature, as well as contemporary classical music, is hermetic and confusing for the sake of being hermetic and confusing. If there's no real substance behind all the confusion, avant-garde, experimentation etc... it could also be just a form of intellectual pretentiousness and perhaps even masking the lack of talent and new ideas behind the mask of mysticism, confusion and avant-garde.

Great ideas are often simple and understandable. Reading Dostoevsky does not pose any special effort or challenge to me, he writes in a simple, understandable and powerful language, yet he asks very deep questions and gets me thinking. Art should make you think, challenge you intellectually (in sense of stimulating thought, not on wasting effort on deciphering convoluted passages, without real meaning behind them). But to achieve that you need to be able to understand it. If no one can understand what you're trying to say, who are you communicating to?

Of course not ALL CCM is like that. I am making perhaps a gross and unfair generalization, but I am speaking about the general state of affairs in this genre. There are many great exceptions, and I enjoyed many contemporary compositions. But the problem is that this general state of affairs kind of creates the air of untouchability and some sort of barrier between general audiences and CCM, so even those works that very much deserve it, don't get much of popular attention.



> You want modern composers to repeat what was done in the past whereas surely they should be making new music. You say that today's composers should be as popular, or more so, as the greats of the past. Why? Who made that rule? The cultural roles that CM has played in different past eras is not relevant to the roles it might play now - it has been changing since long before there was even such a term as classical music - and (your own taste aside) I can see no reason to declare modern CM dead or to suggest that its failure to reach mass audiences is "a problem". Indeed, many of us (mostly those who enjoy a wide range of CM ... and also other music forms as well) feel we are in a golden period, a time when there is almost too much wonderful classical music being created and in such a wealth of variety. It is true that contemporary classical music does not even attempt what the music of the previous era attempted. But then Romantic music attempted very different things to music of the Classical era (and the music of the Classical era attempted very different things to Baroque music). That is how music has been evolving and there are many who only like the music of some eras - this forum is full of people who "like Romantic music but don't like Classical so much" or vice versa.


I agree they should be making NEW music. But what sort of new music? I think popularity is sort of important indicator of general, multi-generational impact, and relavance in society. If you compare music with science, then you see that modern physics is as weird and confusing as it can be. Quantum mechanics, relativity, string theory, particle accelerators, etc... all sorts of stuff that are highly confusing, yet scientists and science IS popular and is considered highly relevant. All know who is Hawking, Einstein, even Edward Witten is well known, etc... People love talking about that stuff. Movies are made about it, etc... On the other hand, who really cares about CCM, except small dedicated circles? I'm just stating factually. I am not saying that no one SHOULD care about it. I would be happier if more people cared. I'm just stating it in a matter-of-fact way... who cares about CCM?

So perhaps new CCM music as much as I wish it was more important in society and better received, it kind of falls short. Whose fault? I wish I knew.

I think that great personalities like Mozart and Beethoven, if they lived in our times, they would not accept the status that current CCM composers enjoy with resignation. If they were unable to shake the Earth in the realm of CCM they would probably choose another genre. Or they would compose a type of CCM music that can still shake the Earth, despite being CCM.



> OK you can dismiss those of us who enjoy modern classical music as ... wrong (is that what you think?) ... or you can get over your theoretical concerns and try to take it seriously .... or you can go your own way and enjoy the more popular music and books (there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with that). But, just because music as a whole has diversified massively over the last 100 years, does not mean that someone has to come along and trim the glorious diversity! And to take out the music that will probably turn out to have been the best of its time! While you are at it, you might as well trim most of the CM from earlier periods as well because much of that also is hardly ever listened to any more!


I don't think anyone is wrong. I love CCM, but I also pity it to some extent. I see it as some sort of cripple child that needs some love and healing to stand strong on his legs. I think composers are bullied by scholars and academics and all sorts of preconceptions and notions of what can and what can't pass as serious new music. So they must conform to these standards which are quite removed from reality and common sense.

All that being said: I do hope we'll always have some cutting edge, experimental, ultra-avant-garde composers, whom very few can understand. They can and do push boundaries in some cases, and they can have impact on music, at least indirectly.

But, why on Earth should *ONLY THIS* be considered acceptable and truly serious new music?
And why on Earth should such stuff be automatically accepted without scrutiny?
Where's the line between "it's so advanced, no one can understand it" and "it's just pretentious ******** and noise, THAT'S why no one can understand it"? Some scrutiny should be there!

Then again, you can go just as far with inventing new languages! Perhaps a better idea would be to express new ideas with old language, that people will understand. Create new language only when needed.

In the first half of 20th century composers thought that expressive powers of tonal music are pretty much exhausted, so they created atonal music.

But then, the second half of 20th century proved that expressive powers of tonal music ARE FAR FROM BEING EXHAUSTED with such tremendous proliferation of truly NEW, ORIGINAL, NEVER HEARD BEFORE popular genres, which are still mostly tonal.



> BTW - at what point in its history do you see CM starting to fail? Mahler? Stravinsky/Bartok/Schoenberg? Britten/Shostakovich? Boulez/Carter?


I think it did well enough until the start of WW2... after the WW2, it increasingly became a fringe interest, with some exceptions.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

haydnguy said:


> I'll say this, at least in modern classical the attempt (and I think it succeeded) was "moving on" which is more than I can say for popular music. Pop music needs to move on from the Taylor Swifts of the world to popular music that pushes the envelope. Even in the old days there were "edgy" bands but still popular music was basically the same as it is now. Pop music needs the equivalent (not the same) as 12-tone to get it out of the rut it's been in for so many years. That's why I left pop music and started listening to classical. I was tired of listening to the same-old, same-old. I moved on.


There's plenty of popular music that pushes the envolope IMO.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

haydnguy said:


> I'll say this, at least in modern classical the attempt (and I think it succeeded) was "moving on" which is more than I can say for popular music. Pop music needs to move on from the Taylor Swifts of the world to popular music that pushes the envelope. Even in the old days there were "edgy" bands but still popular music was basically the same as it is now. Pop music needs the equivalent (not the same) as 12-tone to get it out of the rut it's been in for so many years. That's why I left pop music and started listening to classical. I was tired of listening to the same-old, same-old. I moved on.


Most popular music is about texture and color, not harmonic complexity. It's driven by technology, so we can hear changes as computer workstation recordings developed, and things could be looped and scrambled, pitch-corrected, etc.

Pop music is also about voices, gesture, and "styles" which permeate society. Perhaps you moved on to classical because YOU had moved on into a different social demographic, as your life changed, and you got older.

There is still good pop and rock music out there. Kevin Gilbert is one, plus all the remasterings of older classic rock.


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## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

_If no one can understand what you're trying to say, who are you communicating to?_

The one who stands as authority may dismiss all understanding . Who do I speak of ? no one .
Beware of the manipulative ' if ' .


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

'Pop' exists (plus the American Standards, etc), not all 3-chord trash, because it's primarily about the young and about today - what interests and pleases them as they're trying to find their way through life - and it seems like it takes anyone writing CM an eternity to finish anything new that could possibly be relevant to the 21st-century. Most CM, especially of the 200-year-old variety, has already been predigested by history, which has its advantages but also its disadvantages. But it's unfortunate for the arch-conservatives who would rather find out everything bad about other genres rather than look for what might be the exception to the rule. Genius can be found in every genre, including someone like the quirky genius Thelonious Monk as an important part of jazz and black culture, or the genius of a great vocalist like Billie Holiday. I think that anyone missing out on them is not exactly doing themselves, society, or culture a favor, but some will condemn them on the basis of a 200-year-old standard. I'd rather see _all_ music judged and appreciated on the basis of the genre it's in, not routinely by _comparing_ genres, or one's world can narrow down to the point of _oblivion_.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

All music and art is human technology, so any art that is a reflection of "being" and human existence is just as good as any other art. There can be no "objective" measures of value.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> I glanced at Wright's articles, and they are the spewings of a crackpot. He sounds like _me _on a bad day, when I just make up stuff for argument's sake. Woodduck is a better critic than him.


As my daughter would say, Oh, BURN! Each of those three sentences has an increasingly brutal insult. I hate to think what a fourth sentence would say.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Larkenfield said:


> 'Pop' exists (plus the American Standards, etc), not all 3-chord trash, because it's primarily about the young and about today - what interests and pleases them as they're trying to find their way through life - and it seems like it takes anyone writing CM an eternity to finish anything new that could possibly be relevant to the 21st-century. Most CM, especially of the 200-year-old variety, has already been predigested by history, which has its advantages but also its disadvantages. But it's unfortunate for the arch-conservatives who would rather find out everything bad about other genres rather than look for what might be the exception to the rule. Genius can be found in every genre, including someone like the quirky genius Thelonious Monk as an important part of jazz and black culture, or the genius of a great vocalist like Billie Holiday. I think that anyone missing out on them is not exactly doing themselves, society, or culture a favor, but some will condemn them on the basis of a 200-year-old standard. I'd rather see _all_ music judged and appreciated on the basis of the genre it's in, not routinely by _comparing_ genres, or one's world can narrow down to the point of _oblivion_.


Thelonius Monk and Billie Holiday are too very good choices from the classic jazz hall of fame for anyone seeking to investigate jazz. There are too many others to mention, and I'm certainly not a leading expert, but here's another who I think is particularly good for people who like classical music: John Lewis. He is certainly a dramatic change of pace from most of the other jazz piano greats, especially the one I consider the Everest of the jazz piano mountain range, Art Tatum, with a more modern and minimalist sensibility.
It's often said that Charlie Parker is the Beethoven of jazz. If John Lewis is the Igor Stravinsky of jazz, the Karlheinz Stockhausen of jazz unquestionably is Eric Dolphy. He's one for millionrainbows, though maybe not so much for Woodduck.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

radical eclecticism...put another way: no standards.


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## Red Terror (Dec 10, 2018)

radical eclecticism? Alfred Schnittke


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

fluteman said:


> It's often said that Charlie Parker is the Beethoven of jazz. If John Lewis is the Igor Stravinsky of jazz, the Karlheinz Stockhausen of jazz unquestionably is Eric Dolphy.


I don't really follow this reasoning. Dolphy is a descendant of Charlie Parker. And why is Parker the Beethoven of jazz?


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

ZJovicic said:


> OK, perhaps there was some misunderstanding between us when it comes to Eco. I just randomly picked him as one of the contemporary writers that's quite serious, yet still popular. My point with this example is that in the world of literature, unlike contemporary classical music, there are still very serious writers who enjoy great popularity. Perhaps Eco was not the best example, as I said, I picked him up randomly. Perhaps I could choose some of Nobel price winners from the recent years, such as Patrick Modiano, Mario Vargas Llosa, Günter Grass, etc... But I see, now you'll say they are no true equivalent to CCM, they are more like progressive rock. But then if they got Nobel Prizes, there's no higher literary award in the world, and I guess in competent literary circles they are considered serious writers. Perhaps not most avant-garde, but serious literature is NOT limited exclusively to avant-garde. ..........
> 
> ...........
> 
> ...


OK, you could choose other writers and some of them could indeed be considered great. And it is arresting that they may be widely read while being modern and challenging. James Joyce and Virginia Woolf can be a very challenging read and yet both are (apparently) widely read. It isn't easy to compare literature with music in this way but you may have something that contemporary literature can be widely read while contemporary music .... ? Well, contemporary music is not ignored, either. It is widely recorded, it is performed ... and many of us listen to it. A lot. And often and with great enjoyment. But, yes, in general *all *CM is relatively neglected when compared with much literature. And very few CM works are widely known. Even Shakespeare - who it is considered OK to deride these days - is more widely enjoyed than most CM. So it isn't only modern music that suffers in the comparison.

And what makes you think that contemporary music does not include a lot that is populist or easily approached by those who dislike the avant garde. There is Glass and Part and Adams. There are many Scandinavians, some of whom wire neo-romantic, tonal music. There are composers like MacMillan and even the slightly more challenging Ades is not really at all difficult and is attracting a fairly wide audience. And, anyway, during much of the period you are decrying there was the second half of Shostakovich and most of Britten's masterpieces. The Britten at least stands with the very best CM.

All of that exists in the mix and doesn't really fit with your critique of the contemporary. But then I also strongly disagree with your statement that much of the contemporary music that you are aiming at is not at all relevant. To me it is highly relevant.



ZJovicic said:


> I think that great personalities like Mozart and Beethoven, if they lived in our times, they would not accept the status that current CCM composers enjoy with resignation. If they were unable to shake the Earth in the realm of CCM they would probably choose another genre. Or they would compose a type of CCM music that can still shake the Earth, despite being CCM.
> 
> I don't think anyone is wrong. I love CCM, but I also pity it to some extent. I see it as some sort of cripple child that needs some love and healing to stand strong on his legs. I think composers are bullied by scholars and academics and all sorts of preconceptions and notions of what can and what can't pass as serious new music. So they must conform to these standards which are quite removed from reality and common sense.


Your talk about the "great personalities" (Mozart and Beethoven) and whether they would "accept the status" that our contemporary composers accept today. You feel that being unable to shake the world with music would lead them to choose another art form. This is surely a very romantic picture and is again attempting a comparison between things that cannot usefully be compared. Mozart and Beethoven were musical geniuses (their brains were wired to have extraordinary musical abilities even as infants) and if they lived today would surely produce music. Very possibly it would not be so different from what contemporary composers give us. Shaking the world, these days, is not really in fashion but I find the idea that Mozart and Beethoven wanted to shake their worlds as an example of how we have created myths around them.



ZJovicic said:


> All that being said: I do hope we'll always have some cutting edge, experimental, ultra-avant-garde composers, whom very few can understand. They can and do push boundaries in some cases, and they can have impact on music, at least indirectly.
> 
> But, why on Earth should *ONLY THIS* be considered acceptable and truly serious new music?
> And why on Earth should such stuff be automatically accepted without scrutiny?
> ...


I've answered much of this - there is far more variety (including many very approachable composers) in music composed since 1945 that you give credit for. Just as before WW2 there were Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Bartok and Webern all producing great music at the same time, the period since then has also seen greatness in a wide variety of styles. I personally think that much but not all of the best of it has been that which is seen as rather challenging. But I also know that if you listen a bit then over time the challenge melts and the music gives up its secrets. I once found Boulez to be very alien but I now listen to him with no more challenge than when I listen to Bartok. I think some others had the same experience when they were recently prompted to listen to some Boulez by a thread about his music. 
Nor do I accept your linear view of history. Many composers continue to write broadly tonal music, and atonal music started long before the period you target. In my view some of the most challenging atonal music of all was that written by Schoenberg before WW2.

I am happy that the diversification of music has given us not only a very varied continuing classical (art) tradition but also some really great jazz and all sorts of wonderful "popular" music. There is also a lot of rubbish produced but it has an audience, too, so who am I to be upset by it. Everything is well with the world, I think!


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

@Enthusiast:

I'm glad we agreed about modern literature being more popular than CCM.

Regarding my idea that Beethoven and Mozart not accepting the status of CCM composers had day lived today being romantic... well perhaps it is romantic. It's just my subjective feeling.

Finally, you say there are CCM composers who are great, yet approachable, but the best ones are usually more challenging. I see that you're quite knowledgeable about contemporary music, so I would like to ask you, what are the greatest, most important contemporary composers, and then you can put them in groups like less easy medium and hard, and rank them in each group. Something like this

Easy:
1)
2)
3)
etc..
Medium:
1)
2)
3)
Hard:
1)
2)
3)


and then overall list where you would just list the very best, regardless of the level of difficulty

GLOBAL:
1)
2)
3)

Perhaps it's a silly idea, but I'd really like to know your opinion, as you really seem to be in the know when it comes to new music.
Thank you.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

ZJovicic said:


> @Enthusiast:
> 
> I'm glad we agreed about modern literature being more popular than CCM.


Well, what I think I agreed is that classic literature is more popular than CM and this applies to today's CM as well.

You set me a task but on the basis that I am knowledgeable. But I'm not really. And I do know that what I would choose may not work for you as a way in. With new music I think we all have to find our own ways but I can repeat the names of the most acclaimed ones who I also enjoy and some of them may work for you if you haven't already tried them.

I certainly couldn't rank these - there are some I love more than others and there are some I suspect are greater than others but the two lists are very different!

In general many of the easier ones are just older (a lot has happened in 70 years). The ones in *bold *might be part of a route to and through the more challenging music. The others just seem to me to be to be especially memorable and worthwhile.

Easier (/often "more conventional"):
Shostakovich (*late Shostakovich *is bold); *Stravinsky*; *Britten*; *Schnittke*; Part; Kancheli, Adams; *Gubaidulina*: *Lutoslawski*; *Messiaen*; Ades; Henze; *Ligeti *...

Harder (/less tonal more experimental):
Nono; Xenakis; *Stockhausen*; *Kurtag*; Eotvos; Birtwistle; Maxwell Davies; *Boulez*; Holliger; *Benjamin* ... and there must be many more.

Nearly all that I have mentioned are composers whose music I love (Adams and Henze less than the others). There are a great many more who I also like - the last 70 years have thrown up an enormous amount of really worthwhile music!


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

Enthusiast said:


> Well, what I think I agreed is that classic literature is more popular than CM and this applies to today's CM as well.
> 
> You set me a task but on the basis that I am knowledgeable. But I'm not really. And I do know that what I would choose may not work for you as a way in. With new music I think we all have to find our own ways but I can repeat the names of the most acclaimed ones who I also enjoy and some of them may work for you if you haven't already tried them.
> 
> ...


Thanks, it's a really nice list. I hope it will help others too.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

starthrower said:


> I don't really follow this reasoning. Dolphy is a descendant of Charlie Parker. And why is Parker the Beethoven of jazz?


"Charlie Parker is the Beethoven of jazz" is an old cliche. And Dolphy is famous for his experimental and avant garde work, as is Stockhausen. But I don't mean to derail this thread into a jazz discussion. Their music is there for you to investigate.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

^^^ Except was Dolphy so experimental? That's not how I hear his music.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

ZJovicic said:


> Thanks, it's a really nice list. I hope it will help others too.


Thanks. Actually, others should add to it. I forgot Feldman - he should be there - and I'm sure I have forgotten others that I would like to have included. Others might want to add names that I would not include but that might be just as valid.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Enthusiast said:


> ^^^ Except was Dolphy so experimental? That's not how I hear his music.


Me either, except for Out To Lunch. It would have been interesting to hear him take this further with a working group, but unfortunately he was left to to die in a Berlin hospital instead of getting the treatment he needed.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Enthusiast said:


> Thanks. Actually, others should add to it. I forgot Feldman - he should be there - and I'm sure I have forgotten others that I would like to have included. Others might want to add names that I would not include but that might be just as valid.


Oh and I also forgot (how _could _I?) Dutilleux (at the easier end), Carter (at the tougher end), Ferneyhough (at the tougher end), Lachenmann (tougher), Murail (toughish) and Grisey (toughish). There are so many!


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Enthusiast said:


> ^^^ Except was Dolphy so experimental? That's not how I hear his music.


??? I'm not sure what we'e arguing about. Dolphy is famous for what is commonly considered experimental, innovative, avant-garde work, especially in Out To Lunch!. If you hear his music differently, that's your right, of course. You don't have to accept mainstream critical consensus on this or any topic, as I've pointed out here in many threads. I often don't, though I do in this instance.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/eric-dolphy-mn0000800100/biography
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/dolphy-eric-1928-1964/


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

No - not arguing. Sorry you hear it that way. I know Out To Lunch very well but I didn't know it was generally considered experimental. I tend not to agree with that reputation - there was much more experimental stuff around at the time, it seems to me. It is a great album but I think of Pharoah Sanders or Ornette Coleman as being much more experimental and earlier, too. Do you know what it is about Out To Lunch that earned it that reputation?


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Don't miss out on Dolphy's _Last Date_ and his fantastic virtuosity on the bass clarinet, flute, and alto. He was very controversial at the time because his solos were often so wild and free and he was associated with a number of free-jazz groups that sometimes included the controversial, free-jazz playing Ornette Coleman. John Coltrane was heavily criticized at the time for having him as a sideman in his group. But Coltrane used him anyway and I think one of Dolphy's most memorable, _speech-like_ solos was "Spiritual" on bass clarinet on the _Live at the Village Vanguard_ album. What a loss when he died from diabetes, hugely influential on other musicians, and he was only in his 30s. He was blessed with every possible musical gift except longevity. Such a soulful sincerity in his solo:

He's talking to you!






PS. There's not a classical woodwind player in the world who could have done what Dolphy did to master all three of his instruments. It was unprecedented. Rather than having "no standards" that the critics associate with eclecticism, he had higher standards, wider standards, that is the perfect illustration of the virtues of eclecticism that can lead one outside of just one particular genre and witness genius in another area. There's _still_ no one in CM that can do what he did on bass clarinet, flute, and alto sax, plus he was extraordinarily gifted at improvisation.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

What puts Out To Lunch in the Avant / experimental camp is the freeing up of the rhythm section. Traditional time keeping is abandoned. Of course it was going to be different with Tony Williams behind the drum kit. He plays much freer than anybody else that Dolphy had worked with. And bassist Richard Davis follows suit.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Larkenfield said:


> Don't miss out on Dolphy's _Last Date_ and his fantastic virtuosity on the bass clarinet, flute, and alto. He was very controversial at the time because his solos were often so wild and free and he was associated with a number of free-jazz groups that sometimes included the controversial, free-jazz playing Ornette Coleman. John Coltrane was heavily criticized at the time for having him as a sideman in his group. But Coltrane used him anyway and I think one of Dolphy's most memorable, _speech-like_ solos was "Spiritual" on bass clarinet on the _Live at the Village Vanguard_ album. What a loss when he died from diabetes, hugely influential on other musicians, and he was only in his 30s. He was blessed with every possible musical gift except longevity. Such a soulful sincerity in his solo:
> 
> He's talking to you!
> 
> ...


All true. Dolphy had mind-boggling talent and inventiveness, which is why I mentioned him.

In fairness to the classical music stars, the demands of mastering a huge and challenging repertoire and giving note-perfect performances night after night leave little time for playing other instruments, though if the need was there, no doubt many could do it quite well. Classical violinist Arthur Grumiaux and pianist Clara Haskil frequently performed as a duo and were two of the greatest and most famous on their respective instruments, though it isn't as well known that Grumiaux was an excellent pianist, and Haskil an excellent violinist. I doubt they often switched instruments in public. But your point about Dolphy is on target. I don't see how one could say he wasn't a great musician.

Remember the shrieking strings in the shower scene in Psycho? They were led by one of the greatest Hollywood studio violinists of all time, Israel Baker. He was good enough to routinely perform and record with the likes of Igor Stravinsky and Jascha Heifetz. Other great Hollywood violinists included Felix Slatkin (who became a conductor and first violinist of the Hollywood String Quartet), and Louis Kaufman, who performed the famous Tara's theme in Gone with the Wind. All of these violinists were among the world's best and could have been top classical music stars. All routinely performed with the most famous classical musicians. No doubt the money, stability, and lifestyle of a studio career in Los Angeles appealed to them more, but to suggest they were less than the best because they chose a career playing popular music would be ridiculous.


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