# What IS Classical Music?



## Iforgotmypassword (May 16, 2011)

Of course it is a musical period, but I'm speaking of it in the manner which allows us to call this website "talk classical" as opposed to "talk medieval, renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic... etc." The "genre" that we have conglomerated intelligently composed music into. 
So what is it? Is it music that is composed and utilizes all acoustic instrumentation? Not if we include "contemporary classical" which employs electronics and the occasional electric guitar or beat machine and even on one occasion that i know of four barbed wire fences(kronos quartet). 
Is it music which employs intellectual skill and ability to compose compositionally superior pieces of music? Not as long as music remains an objective art form in which its merit lies in the eye (or ear in this case) of the beholder. One can't draw a line and say where complexity and intellectual merit ends and gratuitous nonsense begins who's to say that there isn't a bit of those on both sides of the board? I would argue that much music dubbed classical falls under the ladder as well. 
What happens when traditional instruments are used to play a rock or jazz song or vice versa? If it's not the instrumentation that determines genre and it isn't nessicarily the complexity of the piece then what remains? 

My belief is that there is no such thing as "genre". Unless I am wrong(and please correct me if I am) music began as just that. Music. They used the instruments that they had and invented new ones and used those. They used their minds and influences from around them and created pieces and compositions. As time progressed music reached incredible subtlety and complexity as well as diversity but it was all just music and I think that was very freeing. 

In my opinion there are only two different branches of music which are very broad and the line is barely defineable in places due to personal perseption.

One branch is music that limits itself for whatever reason, be it to become a "rock band" or a "rapper", be it to please the masses by giving them what they want or be it a person who really only cares for an image or to fit in by making music.

The second branch is music which is created by people who are striving for purity. Pure expression of their art, of that which is a living growing medium similar to a growing tree. This branch is always striving to reach deeper into the soul of music or into the soul of the composer and musician. The instrumentation is of no consequence, nor the complexity or simplicity of the composition, nor the audience which will partake of this kind of music. It is music for the sake of music, music for the fact that it can not be suppressed, for the fact that it has always been and always will be for as long as there are ears to hear it.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

To paraphrase science fiction writer Ted Sturgeon, classical music is whatever we point to and call classical. However I like to think of it as descended directly from western academic musical traditions as opposed to popular or folk music traditions. Yes, it can be inspired by folk or jazz or whatever, but it should be descended from the academic tradition rather than an outsider tradition. That is really the biggest difference, though there are still exceptions (i.e. Charles Ives who might be considered and outsider).

None of that implies that classical is better in any way (though it quite often is). It's just a particular broad branch of the musical evolutionary tree.


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## Guest (May 18, 2011)

Ives was an academically trained musician. His first symphony was composed while he was studying at Yale.

As opposed to someone like, say, Mozart....


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

some guy said:


> Ives was an academically trained musician. His first symphony was composed while he was studying at Yale.
> 
> As opposed to someone like, say, Mozart....


It seems the further we go back in music history, the more greats we love were often either born with the gift and or largely self-taught, as opposed to modern folks these days who go to "music schools" to be taught on how to write "good" music.


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## Iforgotmypassword (May 16, 2011)

Weston said:


> To paraphrase science fiction writer Ted Sturgeon, classical music is whatever we point to and call classical. However I like to think of it as descended directly from western academic musical traditions as opposed to popular or folk music traditions. Yes, it can be inspired by folk or jazz or whatever, but it should be descended from the academic tradition rather than an outsider tradition. That is really the biggest difference, though there are still exceptions (i.e. Charles Ives who might be considered and outsider).
> 
> None of that implies that classical is better in any way (though it quite often is). It's just a particular broad branch of the musical evolutionary tree.


I can see what you're saying, my problem is that what came before that tradition? Music is music in the end, especially when looking into the past and peering into the future of musical composition. Contemporary classical seems to be all about breaking from tradition and trying new things (which results much of the time in gratuitous noise), where does it stop being called classical in that case? I still think that these generic terms are just limiting our perception and appreciation for music by labeling it and thus placing restrictions on it.

By the way my grandpa knew Charles Ives from what I understand, though perhaps not intimately. Just thought that was kind of cool...


some guy said:


> Ives was an academically trained musician. His first symphony was composed while he was studying at Yale.
> 
> As opposed to someone like, say, Mozart....





HarpsichordConcerto said:


> It seems the further we go back in music history, the more greats we love were often either born with the gift and or largely self-taught, as opposed to modern folks these days who go to "music schools" to be taught on how to write "good" music.


Exactly, though I'm not trying to demonize music school. I would actually like to study music in the future and take some composition courses and I believe that it is important to have a well rounded education if one wishes to maximize their abilities. 
Mozart, however set the stage for future composition as opposed to learning how to write "classical music" a term which didn't exist at the time since music was simply music.


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## Edward Elgar (Mar 22, 2006)

Contemporary classical music is that which actively separates itself from commercial music.

Classical music is music written by dead, white, German males.


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## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

One needs to remember that nearly all the labels attached to music nowadays were only coined around 100 years ago. We need to make a distinction between 'classical' music (small 'c'), meaning western art music of the common practice and 'Classical' music (large 'C'), which refers to the retrospectively-labelled Classical period of approximately 1740 to 1830 (-ish). Of course, neither Mozart nor Haydn thought of themselves as 'Classical' composers (they wouldn't have even understood the term), just as JS Bach would not have known he would be later labelled a 'Baroque' one. The genres of 'ragtime' and 'jazz' arose (with their names intact) around the turn of the 19th/20th centuries and can be seen to have precipitated the 'need' to classify other genres of music.

Are these genres necessary? Well, yes and no (excuse me while I prise myself off the fence!). Ultimately, there is only 'good music' and 'bad music' (although making the judgement can get you into a lot of trouble!). However, we have SO much music on our hands from the last thousand years that it is useful (necessary?) to categorise and organise it - rather like one needs to organise books in a library to enable people to find what they are looking for. 

Before the age of broadcast and recordings, people would have been exposed to very little music in comparison to us (we forget, I think, how lucky we are!) and, therefore, it was probably not necessary to pigeon-hole music owing to how little people would experience. Now we have hundreds of thousands (probably millions) of recordings of every sort of music imaginable, including from parts of the world that 18th-century folk didn't even know existed.

I think the poster of this question is mistaken for trying to suggest that there are only two genres. And they seem to be very ill-defined. How would Iforgotmypassword catagorise jazz? Or carefully thought-out progressive rock (such as Pink Floyd, just for example)? I don't have the answers; I only warn against trying to over-simplify what has now become a very complex and multi-facetted artform.


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## Iforgotmypassword (May 16, 2011)

Delicious Manager said:


> One needs to remember that nearly all the labels attached to music nowadays were only coined around 100 years ago. We need to make a distinction between 'classical' music (small 'c'), meaning western art music of the common practice and 'Classical' music (large 'C'), which refers to the retrospectively-labelled Classical period of approximately 1740 to 1830 (-ish). Of course, neither Mozart nor Haydn thought of themselves as 'Classical' composers (they wouldn't have even understood the term), just as JS Bach would not have known he would be later labelled a 'Baroque' one. The genres of 'ragtime' and 'jazz' arose (with their names intact) around the turn of the 19th/20th centuries and can be seen to have precipitated the 'need' to classify other genres of music.
> 
> Are these genres necessary? Well, yes and no (excuse me while I prise myself off the fence!). Ultimately, there is only 'good music' and 'bad music' (although making the judgement can get you into a lot of trouble!). However, we have SO much music on our hands from the last thousand years that it is useful (necessary?) to categorise and organise it - rather like one needs to organise books in a library to enable people to find what they are looking for.
> 
> ...


A good argument, and I do understand at least to a degree the human need to categorize things in order to make sense of them.

To address your last paragraph, I would personally not place every work of Jazz in the same category and the same goes for any other rock band or folk group. I think you slightly misconstrued my meaning when I described the "two branches" of music. I dont think that everything dubbed classical belongs in the second group or that every Rock, Jazz and Folk group belongs in the first. I think that music is music and that in the end, the intent of the composer or musician is really all that counts for anything. For instance the latest pop artists are simply faces, used to relay incredibly ignorant and offensive lyrics to the masses over a terribly simplistic and shallow beat that they didnt have the first thing to do with creating and probably took a total of about 5 minutes to write. I do not believe that this counts as music and certainly not good music because there is no reality to it. On the other side, there are many rock groups out there that are attempting to trancend genre, not for the sake of trancendance or to impress anyone but because the music within them insists upon itself and they are open to art. I think that this would fall under the second group.


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## Stasou (Apr 23, 2011)

The problem I have with the OP's theory is that classifications into one of the two categories is impossible. I would say that nothing is purely one or the other, but everything is a mix. Contemporary classical composers are perhaps striving for complete purity, yet they must at the same time put a limit on it for the sake of business and the sanity of the audience.


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## Iforgotmypassword (May 16, 2011)

True, it is impossible for anything to contain perfection, which is what it would require to fit into the second category theoretically I suppose. I guess that in the end it is up to the listener to decide whether the piece is truly in pursuit of ultimate purity or whether it is in the interest of other factors and if this is true then it truly is impossible to categorize any music in any way because it is left completely up to subjective perception. 
That said, perhaps everyone's own reality is just as valid as the next person's and if this is so then we really just come down to the old argument "there is only good music and bad music and noone can decide which is which for anyone but themselves" and this isn't particularly fulfilling to anyone who wants to push their own opinions on others... I'm rambling but I think my point is that while no, there is no perfect composition perfectly and purely composed there can be the pursuit of that (perhaps in letting the composer be the audience in question) and in that pulling from the depths of a composer's or musicians being there can be that which is called true music.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Wikipedia defines classical music as: "Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times. The central norms of this tradition became codified between 1550 and 1900, which is known as the common practice period."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_music).

where art music is: "Art music is an umbrella term used to refer to musical traditions implying advanced structural and theoretical considerations and a written musical tradition." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_music).

Of course these definitions don't really settle the question. I'm reminded of the attempt to define pornography as "I know it when I see it." Perhaps classical music for those of us here is best defined as "that music which we collectively designate as classical." This definition may sound silly or useless, but I doubt there is a significantly better one.


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## Stasou (Apr 23, 2011)

Iforgotmypassword said:


> True, it is impossible for anything to contain perfection, which is what it would require to fit into the second category theoretically I suppose. I guess that in the end it is up to the listener to decide whether the piece is truly in pursuit of ultimate purity or whether it is in the interest of other factors...


Ahh, that makes much more sense. However, I would argue that Bach and Mozart were able to compose absolutely perfect music. After listening to something like Mozart's Concerto for Flute and Harp, it's hard to believe that music can get any closer to perfection.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Before the 19th century composers of music were born, some of them got famous and all of them were soon forgotten as soon as they were buried. The 19th century public however had a self-obsessed mania of adoring 'the Genius'. Ludwig van Beethoven was hallowed as such a godsent messiah and the label they invented to attach to the Genius was: 'Classical'. From this time on people started to speak about 'Classical Music' (having Beethoven's music in mind). With Mendelssohn's discovery of Bach the ears of 19th century public were all of a sudden opened for composers and compositions that were not part of their contemporary times of Great Revolutions, Great Explorations, Great... etc. Next to Bach the 'Genius' of the 'Classical Music' composer Beethoven shows, well, some one-minded shallowness. I'm glad that we got rid of the bigotry of the 19th century and that 'Classical Music' nowadays encompasses a lot more than the prejudiced devotion to Ludwig and Ludwig alone. Still however the memory lingers on of Classical Music being sooo Great...


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## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

I think that, unfortunately, the most basic view of classical music for the masses is a music that contains the instruments (violin, cello, flute, etc.) most associated with classical music. We who know this music a little better know that there is a whole lot more to classical than just the instrumentation. For instance, Bach's Tocatta & Fugue in d minor as performed by Don Dorsey on Midi keyboards is not only true classical but in my opinion the finest keyboard performance of this piece ever to grace the lines of a cd, above all organworks...on the same frequency, we can enter a church and play 'who let the dogs out' on the grand organ and there's no way that could be called classical. Still, the hoi polloi most commonly think of it when they hear certain instruments and not really at what is being played through them.


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## pjang23 (Oct 8, 2009)

To put it shortly, classical music is the classic literature of music.

It's *not a single genre* (sadly it often gets treated as one out of ignorance) but it draws from the best works of many many genres. You wouldn't call Shakespeare, Dickens, and Tolstoy as part of a single genre, but they are all "classic literature". The same reasoning applies to Bach and Rachmaninoff.


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## Iforgotmypassword (May 16, 2011)

mcamacho said:


> I think that, unfortunately, the most basic view of classical music for the masses is a music that contains the instruments (violin, cello, flute, etc.) most associated with classical music. We who know this music a little better know that there is a whole lot more to classical than just the instrumentation. For instance, Bach's Tocatta & Fugue in d minor as performed by Don Dorsey on Midi keyboards is not only true classical but in my opinion the finest keyboard performance of this piece ever to grace the lines of a cd, above all organworks...on the same frequency, *we can enter a church and play 'who let the dogs out' on the grand organ and there's no way that could be called classical.* Still, the hoi polloi most commonly think of it when they hear certain instruments and not really at what is being played through them.


Haha, oh god forbid. I think I would probably die a little bit somewhere in the depths of my soul if ever subjected to such a thing.


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## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

In music no one is right and no one is wrong...this is a collection of sounds; sounds we create as human beings...we're fortunate enough to be capable of such creation...while i do believe there are genres, it's simply a nice way to separate these sounds so that we can more easily find what we're looking for at the record store...you can call it whatever you want...the important thing is that one can appreciate and experience it


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## pjang23 (Oct 8, 2009)

mcamacho said:


> *In music no one is right and no one is wrong*...this is a collection of sounds; sounds we create as human beings...we're fortunate enough to be capable of such creation...while i do believe there are genres, it's simply a nice way to separate these sounds so that we can more easily find what we're looking for at the record store...you can call it whatever you want...the important thing is that one can appreciate and experience it


Well, I wouldn't go so far to say no one can be wrong. If there is anything that is objective in music, it is the real physical phenomena at work (such as overtones and combination tones) in the physics of sound. It explains for example why certain intervals are more dissonant than others in the 12 tone scale, or how the root of a triad is physically reinforced by combination tones.


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