# What are today's fashions in music?



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Looking at the past, it's easy to see music passing in and out of fashion -- Mozart, Haydn, Raff, Anton Rubenstein, Mahler, even Bach have all been subject to fashion's whims. It's pretty sure that today is the same, and that we have our fashions as well, all subject to change.

What currently popular composers and styles will fade in the future? What will be revived? Any ideas?


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

Everything fades, nothing last.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

Pastels, pipestem legs, big hair.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

One must first know what is currently popular. I can't answer even that. 

However of your list, can we really say Mahler's popularity has faded? I'm not seeing it. I know he rose in popularity somewhat in the 50s and 60s with the advent hi-fi equipment that needed a workout, but I'd say he has staying power far beyond that.

I don't see Mozart's popularity waning much either. 

I could name quite a few I'd like to see rise in popularity and one or two I'd rather hear less of, but my desires have often been unfashionable themselves.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Weston said:


> However of your list, can we really say Mahler's popularity has faded?.


Not at all. He was out of fashion and then came back into fashion, where he remains for the time being. The composers I named are some who have been subject to whims of fashion, not necessarily out of fashion now. I clarified the OP.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

Elvis sucks. He died on the toilet too.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

If you're talking about strictly Classical, then I think everything from Medieval to Modern Avant Garde is wonderfully alive. If you're talking about mainstream music in general… well, that's just a cesspool to keep the flies off the good stuff.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

I don't think that with an increasingly broadening and deepening understanding of all music that things can really go "out of fashion," perhaps a greater diversity of tastes among the classical music audience will grow more significant.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I think one of the big things right now is cross-cultural syncretism and fusion across genres (jazz/folk/classical), and that's probably got a solid shelf life as long as globalization remains a force that we can see actively changing our lives. Eventually there'll be a reaction of course, but maybe not for a couple of decades.

The post-Soviet minimalist-ish sacred music fashion is just about spent. It had a good run, though.

A trend that I see coming - the revivals of old musicals being treated as classical music. Of course more recent and contemporary musicals will have to be scorned unremittingly, but the old classics like _Show Boat_ can now be considered as a kind of classical music, and I suspect that increasingly they will be.

We're in a golden age of Renaissance music recordings, with more and more groups like Cinquecento and the Brabant Ensemble recording works by composers like Cipriano de Rore, Jean Mouton, Adrian Willaert, Jacob Obrecht - composers that almost no one but scholars in that field had heard of fifty years ago. I assume this trend has a good ways to go, as there is a lot more music to be recorded and it is the kind of thing people like to listen to to get over the stresses of modern life.


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## mirepoix (Feb 1, 2014)

GGluek said:


> Pastels, pipestem legs, big hair.


And an arched back.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

One contemporary trend is so obvious that I'm a little disappointed in myself for not remembering it for my previous post: new complexity.


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## trazom (Apr 13, 2009)

Video game and film soundtracks, according to classical fm. To suggest there is no difference is "elitist."


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Video game music is a really interesting example. I'm thrilled to find that it aspires to be high art, and I really look forward to seeing whether it can gain that recognition. Considering that video games probably aren't going anywhere for a generation or two, this could really turn into something. But I'm sure that video game music composers cannot resist the temptations of electricity, so the question, no matter how good the music is, is whether our community can accept a redefinition of classical music that explicitly embraces electric music. I know that Babbitt and Oliveros and others have tried and have gone on trying, but it appears that they've only been embraced by a particular subculture among us, rather than by the community as a whole. But if that changes, then another question arises: since a lot of electronic music out there has had aspirations to high art, how much of it, if any, do we embrace retroactively; and if so, which works?


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

We're living an age that glorifies futurism and neglects its own history and culture.

In the past 'classical' music was considered _the_ music, now its regarded as a niche.


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## techniquest (Aug 3, 2012)

I think that one of the current 'classical' music trends is for stuff that's easy on the ear where the performer is more important than the composer. I'm thinking people like Andre Rieu, Katherine Jenkins, Alfie Boe, Andrea Bocelli, and even Lang Lang. This trend started with 'The Three Tenors' and Nigel Kennedy and hasn't looked back since; little wonder really when celebrity is so important today.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

It seems that a current fashion among conductors and performers is to dress like a priest...



















Go figure...


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Jobis said:


> We're living an age that glorifies futurism and neglects its own history and culture.
> 
> In the past 'classical' music was considered _the_ music, now its regarded as a niche.


You realize that this is almost entirely a reflection of class power, right?

Until the 19th century, classical music was commissioned by aristocrats and their ecclesiastical representatives. In the 19th century, the bourgeois gradually rose to power, but as a class (~ on the whole, generally) they adopted classical music (and other types of artistic patronage) as they struggled to prove their equality to the old aristocracy. The proletariat did not yet dare to question their place or the inferiority of their own music. In the 20th century the proletariat finally declared independence and embraced folk-ish music almost unapologetically. Upwardly mobile bourgeois around the world have continued to embrace classical music as an aspect of their social pretensions, but we no longer control the material culture, and our pretensions tend to generate more resentment than respect.

A story that simple certainly neglects an awful lot of interesting complications and exceptions, all important and deserving of consideration, but on the whole that's what happened.

And understanding that is absolutely the single most crucial key to understanding almost everyone's attitude to classical music.


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## Guest (Apr 23, 2014)

On the whole, that neglects an awful lot of interesting complications, one of which is that before the nineteenth century, there was no classical music at all. Zero. There was an awful lot of music, sure. And some of it came to be referred to, later, as classical. Some of it came to be called classical before some other of it, too. Songs and opera, for instance, were at first not considered to be classical.

Whatever else the aristocrats and ecclesiasticals were doing, commissioning classical music was not one of them. (It's probably not even worth pointing out a couple of "interesting complications" about commissioning, one being that composers compose, with or without commissions, the other being that even if all the music written from 1200 AD to 1900 AD were commissioned by either aristocrats or ecclesiasticals, those are not the only two groups that attend concerts or go to church.)

As for the inferiority of proletariat music, look at a concert programme or two from the 18th century. Apparently, what we would consider a wild mix of popular and serious music was just business as usual for those pre-19th century aristocrats (and whoever else was attending the concerts).

As for what proletariat's dared or didn't dare, well the whole history of the nineteenth century is one long string of rebellions by those timid folk.

And as for why anyone listens to one type of music or another, leaving out the palpable reality that maybe they do it because they like it does seem to be not quite the thing, eh? When I was nine, just starting out listening to "classical" music (and jazz and broadway, too, just by the way), I certainly had no pretensions. I just liked what I heard. My parents and other relatives, who did not share that love, were convinced that I was doing it because I was being pretentious. One example: I talked my mother into taking me to the Sacramento Symphony once, shortly before I was old enough to drive but long after my love affair with classical music had started. I was overwhelmed. The rich basses and quirky rhythms of Beethoven's overture to _Egmont,_ the smooth curves of Dvorak's violin concerto, the thrilling contrasts of Mussorgsky's _Pictures at an Exhibition_ (as filtered through Mr. Ravel's imagination). It was my first live concert after five years or so of tinny radio shows and scratchy lps played on the cheapest of cheap players, and I was thrilled out of my tiny little mind.

As we left the hall, my mom turned to me and said, "I guess we got our culture for the evening."

Wow.


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

science said:


> You realize that this is almost entirely a reflection of class power, right?
> 
> Until the 19th century, classical music was commissioned by aristocrats and their ecclesiastical representatives. In the 19th century, the bourgeois gradually rose to power, but as a class (~ on the whole, generally) they adopted classical music (and other types of artistic patronage) as they struggled to prove their equality to the old aristocracy. The proletariat did not yet dare to question their place or the inferiority of their own music. In the 20th century the proletariat finally declared independence and embraced folk-ish music almost unapologetically. Upwardly mobile bourgeois around the world have continued to embrace classical music as an aspect of their social pretensions, but we no longer control the material culture, and our pretensions tend to generate more resentment than respect.
> 
> ...


The apparent elitism and complications regarding classical music have been rendered irrelevant in the 21st century. Its incredibly easy to hear classical music via youtube and itunes etc. and I am someone who has discovered this independent of education or upbringing.

There's no excuse not to educate oneself when the materials are so readily available. The modern attitude towards classical music is a distrust generated through disinformation by greedy record companies. The modern music industry (a contradiction in terms imo) is more a capitalist's wet dream than it is a chance for artistic progress.

I don't blame people who avoid classical music, rather I resent the environment that creates such a prejudice around it; that it's outdated, bourgeois or quaint.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

aleazk said:


> It seems that a current fashion among conductors and performers is to dress like a priest...
> 
> 
> 
> ...


That's preferable to wearing coattails. I don't mind the priestly looking garb, it has an ascetic and timeless quality.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

to wear no clothes, but a feather in your hair.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

PetrB said:


> to wear no clothes, but a feather in your hair.


Your fashion sense is outdated. No clothes and two feathers in one's rear end is 'en vogue'.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Lope de Aguirre said:


> Your fashion sense is outdated. No clothes and two feathers in one's rear end is 'en vogue'.


Evidently then, it is also out of vogue to sit down at any social gathering.

Hmmmm.

Stand up audiences, and applause replaced by 'wagging of tails.' -- then one would have to decide whether the tail-wagging was to be with the meaning of either dog or cat tail-wagging language


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

PetrB said:


> Evidently then, it is also out of vogue to sit down at any social gathering.
> 
> Hmmmm.
> 
> Stand up audiences, and applause replaced by 'wagging of tails.' -- then one would have to decide whether the tail-wagging was to be with the meaning of either dog or cat tail-wagging language


One would pull the feathers out one's rear end, hold them in one's left hand and then sit down. The 'wagging of tails' is a fine idea.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

some guy said:


> On the whole, that neglects an awful lot of interesting complications, one of which is that before the nineteenth century, there was no classical music at all. Zero. There was an awful lot of music, sure. And some of it came to be referred to, later, as classical. Some of it came to be called classical before some other of it, too. Songs and opera, for instance, were at first not considered to be classical.


Semantics and nothing more.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Jobis said:


> I don't blame people who avoid classical music, rather I resent the environment that creates such a prejudice around it


Me too. On this at least we agree.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

science said:


> Semantics and nothing more.


Agree. Semantics indeed. Would be clearer if member some guy got his history right. They may not have used the word "classical" but England did use the words "ancient music". Quote a fact: _The original Academy of Ancient Music was founded in London, England in 1726 for the purpose of studying and performing "old" music - defined initially as anything composed at least a century earlier. _


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