# Does 'Supper's Ready' by Genesis compare favourably with the best Classical Music?



## janxharris

Supper's Ready by the British progressive rock band Genesis is often cited as their masterpiece; it seems to transcend the 'popular' genre label that is used to describe it and exist somewhere closer to the classical end of the spectrum. It was released in 1972 and became a regular in their stage shows. This live version is from their 'Second's Out' double album.






I think it does compare favourably (though I might cite some pieces that perhaps eclipse it); it's length, complexity and profound good verses evil climax are a remarkable achievement imho.

What do folk think? Are people even familiar with it?


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## Art Rock

Very familiar (as every prog enthusiast should be). I prefer the studio version with Peter gabriel though.

It's a great work, but to my taste not the best in Genesis' prog repertoire (that would be Firth of Fifth, Mad man moon, Carpet crawlers, Dancing with the moonlit knight, Cinema show, Lamia, Entangled).


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## Strange Magic

My view would be that it does compare favorably with the best classical music if at that time it is your wish to listen to some Genesis. Desire, intent, are powerful forces (in my case) in my decision to listen to any music of whatever sort, and I find myself usually deeply satisfied by whatever it is that currently answers my mood.

You are very likely looking for a different sort of answer though, but this is all I can offer.


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## janxharris

Art Rock said:


> Very familiar (as every prog enthusiast should be). I prefer the studio version with Peter gabriel though.
> 
> It's a great work, but to my taste not the best in Genesis' prog repertoire (that would be Firth of Fifth, Mad man moon, Carpet crawlers, Dancing with the moonlit knight, Cinema show, Lamia, Entangled).


All great pieces, particularly Firth of Fifth.


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## janxharris

I guess I am thinking of the unusual chord progressions (for example the very beginning), the often seamless transitions, the restraint show throughout (akin to classical period restraint) and the climax as mentioned.


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## janxharris

I also would aver that I am unable to point to practically any moment in the work that sounds like another piece of music. I would contend that that makes a strong case in favour of it's quality.


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## Jacck

Of course I am familiar with it, as is anyone who listened to prog rock at least a little bit. It is not bad, but I prefer Gentle Giant. It eclipses Genesis in terms of complexity. They often used counterpoint in their music. And if it compares favorably to classical? It is better than some bad classical, but it cannot touch the best and most complex classical pieces.


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## janxharris

Jacck said:


> Of course I am familiar with it, as is anyone who listened to prog rock at least a little bit. It is not bad, but I prefer Gentle Giant. It eclipses Genesis in terms of complexity. They often used counterpoint in their music. And if it compares favorably to classical? It is better than some bad classical, but it cannot touch the best and most complex classical pieces.


Haven't heard of Gentle Giant - will check them out.


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## Mad Cat

Jacck said:


> Of course I am familiar with it, as is anyone who listened to prog rock at least a little bit.


I'm a prog rock fan, but I've never heard Supper's Ready. I knew of its existence, but I've heard other early genesis and some of it is pretty good, but Genesis in general never caught on with me. I'm more of a Yes/ELP/King Crimson fan.

However, I recently discovered Gentle Giant, and they are incredible. If you're a prog fan you should give them a listen.


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## DaveM

The video is blocked where I am 'on copyright grounds'.


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## janxharris

DaveM said:


> The video is blocked where I am 'on copyright grounds'.


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## Art Rock

Studio version here:


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## Art Rock

Alternative version (by Steve Hackett, the guitarist of Genesis in the 70s, with vocals by various guests) for those who prefer modern recordings:


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## janxharris

Art Rock said:


> Alternative version (by Steve Hackett, the guitarist of Genesis in the 70s, with vocals by various guests) for those who prefer modern recordings:


Thanks.

I almost always find the studio versions poor. I guess we all get used to hearing a work in a particular way. It's notable that Genesis modified Supper's Ready quite substantially in bringing it to the stage.


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## Simon Moon

I am a huge Genesis fan, and of so many other prog bands.

If you are asking does it compare favorably with regards to complexity, musicianship, depth of musical theory, then no, it does not. 

But if you are comparing it to classical with regards to the emotional content and creativeness, then yes, it does compare. As do many other prog bands, like: Gently Giant, YES, King Crimson, Van Der Graaf Generator, Happy the Man. And the Italian bands like, PFM, Banco, Le Orme, Il Balletto di Bronzo.

There are other prog bands, most in the avant-garde genres, that do compare more closely to the complexity and depth of musical theory of classical music. Bands like: Henry Cow, Thinking Plague, Aranis, Magma, Univers Zero, Art Zoyd, etc.


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## janxharris

Simon Moon said:


> I am a huge Genesis fan, and of so many other prog bands.
> 
> If you are asking does it compare favorably with regards to complexity, musicianship, depth of musical theory, then no, it does not.
> 
> But if you are comparing it to classical with regards to the emotional content and creativeness, then yes, it does compare. As do many other prog bands, like: Gently Giant, YES, King Crimson, Van Der Graaf Generator, Happy the Man. And the Italian bands like, PFM, Banco, Le Orme, Il Balletto di Bronzo.
> 
> There are other prog bands, most in the avant-garde genres, that do compare more closely to the complexity and depth of musical theory of classical music. Bands like: Henry Cow, Thinking Plague, Aranis, Magma, Univers Zero, Art Zoyd, etc.


Thanks - I will check out the bands I haven't heard of (Happy the Man, PFM, Banco, Le Orme, Il Balletto di Bronzo, Henry Cow, Thinking Plague, Aranis, Magma, Univers Zero, Art Zoyd).


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## janxharris

Simon Moon said:


> If you are asking does it compare favourably with regards to complexity, musicianship, depth of musical theory, then no, it does not.


Perhaps you are thinking of more modern avant-garde classical for comparison? I mean Mozart's 40 symphony, for example, wouldn't compare in terms of complexity, musicianship and theory depth if so. And, of course, as I think you imply, such considerations aren't necessarily the essence of a great work.


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## Jacck

janxharris said:


> Perhaps you are thinking of more modern avant-garde classical for comparison? I mean Mozart's 40 symphony, for example, wouldn't compare in terms of complexity, musicianship and theory depth if so. And, of course, as I think you imply, such considerations aren't necessarily the essence of a great work.


I think a lot of prog rock musicians were inspired by Bartok
https://trickledown.wordpress.com/2...ock-and-math-rock-prog-metal-technical-metal/
but really, no prog rock band comes close to the complexity of his music (string quartets, piano concertos, concerto for orchestra etc), or the music of Shostakovich, Hindemith, Stravinsky, Varese, Ligeti etc. And even Mozart is much more complex than any prog rock. He just seems deceptively simply, but he is not. Listen to his string quartets or quintets or to his string sextet to see how he interweaves the various melodic threads. I am not even mentioning Bach with his mathematical complexity, counterpoint and polyphony.


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## Enthusiast

Forgive me but I am not even sure it compares favourably with much rock music. And I can think of a lot of prog rock I prefer to it. But it takes all sorts, doesn't it?


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## janxharris

Enthusiast said:


> Forgive me but I am not even sure it compares favourably with much rock music. And I can think of a lot of prog rock I prefer to it. But it takes all sorts, doesn't it?


I guess it does.


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## janxharris

Jacck said:


> I think a lot of prog rock musicians were inspired by Bartok
> https://trickledown.wordpress.com/2...ock-and-math-rock-prog-metal-technical-metal/
> but really, no prog rock band comes close to the complexity of his music (string quartets, piano concertos, concerto for orchestra etc), or the music of Shostakovich, Hindemith, Stravinsky, Varese, Ligeti etc. And even Mozart is much more complex than any prog rock. He just seems deceptively simply, but he is not. Listen to his string quartets or quintets or to his string sextet to see how he interweaves the various melodic threads. I am not even mentioning Bach with his mathematical complexity, counterpoint and polyphony.


Okay - but contrapuntal complexity doesn't, per se, necessarily make for great music. I would aver that, chordally, the Genesis exceeds the rather limited harmonic language of the classical period.


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## janxharris

Enthusiast said:


> Forgive me but I am not even sure it compares favourably with much rock music. And I can think of a lot of prog rock I prefer to it. But it takes all sorts, doesn't it?


May I ask how many times you have listened to the Genesis piece?


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## Jacck

janxharris said:


> Okay - but contrapuntal complexity doesn't, per se, necessarily make for great music. I would aver that, chordally, the Genesis exceeds the rather limited harmonic language of the classical period.


nonsense, listen to Bach's chaconne for piano or Bachs toccatas and fugues. Just like the Suppers ready, they are keyboard pieces, so pretty comparable. 




or the breathtaking Liszt transcendental etudes


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## janxharris

Jacck said:


> nonsense, listen to Bach's chaconne for piano or Bachs toccatas and fugues. Just like the Suppers ready, they are keyboard pieces, so pretty comparable.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> or the breathtaking Liszt transcendental etudes


Is that nonsense to counterpoint complexity making for great compositions or relative chordal complexity or both?


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## janxharris

Jacck said:


> nonsense, listen to Bach's chaconne for piano or Bachs toccatas and fugues. Just like the Suppers ready, they are keyboard pieces, so pretty comparable.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> or the breathtaking Liszt transcendental etudes


By the way, I used Classical in the sense of the Classical period - ie 18th century.


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## Jacck

janxharris said:


> By the way, I used Classical in the sense of the Classical period - ie 18th century.


if by classical you mean Mozart, Beethoven, Scarlatti etc, then they all exceed any prog rock in complexity by far. I listened yesterday to Beethovens late string quartets and Beethoven is so fresh and original, his music is never predictable, but always extremely creative. If you've never heard his late quartets (12,13,14,15,16) then listen at least to his Grosse Fugue (it was supposed to be part of the 13th SQ). 




nothing in rock music comes even close. And the same goes for Mozart. Listen to his dissonace quartet


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## Jacck

janxharris said:


> Is that nonsense to counterpoint complexity making for great compositions or relative chordal complexity or both?


it is subjective if you appreciate counterpoint complexity. I do. That is why I like Gentle Giant more then Genesis. Listen for example this song from GG, there is counterpoing and polyphony




or this song from Linda Perhacs, polyphony too





but of course it is nothing compare to Bach




not even mentioning the crazy polyphony is Mass in B minor etc (just listen to the Kyrie at the beginning)

Not saying that I do not Genesis. It is my second favorite prog rock band after GG


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## DaveM

I would put The Strawbs in with Genesis. I don't see a comparison with the best classical music because there is no need and they are so different. Loved that kind of rock on its own terms.

Anyone else see the similarity in styles?


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## janxharris

Jacck said:


> it is subjective if you appreciate counterpoint complexity. I do. That is why I like Gentle Giant more then Genesis. Listen for example this song from GG, there is counterpoing and polyphony
> 
> 
> 
> 
> or this song from Linda Perhacs, polyphony too
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> but of course it is nothing compare to Bach
> 
> 
> 
> 
> not even mentioning the crazy polyphony is Mass in B minor etc (just listen to the Kyrie at the beginning)
> 
> Not saying that I do not Genesis. It is my second favorite prog rock band after GG


Thanks - will probably take a few days to respond.


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## Enthusiast

janxharris said:


> May I ask how many times you have listened to the Genesis piece?


Not for years but I did have quite a thing for Genesis during the time that Peter Gabriel was the vocalist. I was in my teens then but even in those days it never seemed to me that their music came close to the wonder that is Mozart. But like DaveM, above, I never saw a point in trying to compare the two genres. I also was immediately turned off any rock music that I felt was trying to emulate classical music. It just seemed pretentious to me.


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## janxharris

Enthusiast said:


> Not for years but I did have quite a thing for Genesis during the time that Peter Gabriel was the vocalist. I was in my teens then but even in those days it never seemed to me that their music came close to the wonder that is Mozart. But like DaveM, above, I never saw a point in trying to compare the two genres. I also was immediately turned off any rock music that I felt was trying to emulate classical music. It just seemed pretentious to me.


So change the instruments and arrangement and it becomes pretentious. Why is that?

I've always though of the prog Genesis as sounding classical.


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## Enthusiast

janxharris said:


> So change the instruments and arrangement and it becomes pretentious. Why is that?
> 
> I've always though of the prog Genesis as sounding classical.


I don't think I accused anything of being pretentious, did I? But reading through this thread there is a little more I can say on your question. But, I'm sorry, it can only be a little. I am not sure I possess the technical knowledge or language to say what the differences are that I perceive between various genres of music. And I'm not entirely sure it is about genres - that might just be a lazy use of the term for differences I perceive or even for prejudice.

One thing is certain, though. It is nothing to do with the instruments used. If there is one thing that drives me mad it is when some tawdry music - it might be perfectly effective as film music, for example - gets termed "classical" simply because it is played by an orchestra. And, yes, I can envisage classical music (music in the classical condition) played on electric guitars and keyboards and drums. I think it is something to do with the development of musical ideas (which can be very simple) but, for me, it is what it does to me, where it takes me. And, unfashionably, I'm afraid I do put "value" on these experiences. There is a lot of rock music (including some that is recent) that I love and that transports me to wonderful places but none of this seems to me to be as wonderful as what the classical music that I love does to me. Some jazz comes closer for me and I think I would not be able to say unequivocally that all great classical music is greater than all great jazz. Of course, this includes jazz that learned from rock (Mahavishnu Orchestra, some Miles and so on) and might even lead into some rock that learned from jazz (Soft Machine, for example, or even some Hendrix). But I can't think of anything that I value that involves rock learning in the same way from classical music, even if avant garde.

One thing I am aware of with rock music of all sorts is the use that is made of rhythm, the use of drums underpinned by bass. I suspect that without this beat holding it up the music would collapse in a heap. The musical invention needs beat to hit you in the heart.

I'm not sure I could ever say any more on this subject and really do, like DaveM, see little value in making these comparisons. In the end, for me, it is what the music does to and for me and the mood I am in at the time.


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## PlaySalieri

Let us collate what people seem to be saying about your points

Is Suppers Ready as complex as Mozart?

NO

nobody agrees with you on that one 

Does suppers ready or indeed any prog rock compare with the best classical music?

NO

the closest anybody agrees is its better than bad classical music.


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## janxharris

stomanek said:


> Let us collate what people seem to be saying about your points
> 
> Is Suppers Ready as complex as Mozart?
> 
> NO
> 
> nobody agrees with you on that one
> 
> Does suppers ready or indeed any prog rock compare with the best classical music?
> 
> NO
> 
> the closest anybody agrees is its better than bad classical music.


Fair enough. As I said in the OP, I would choose a number of orchestral works over the Genesis piece.
I certainly haven't heard the entirety of Mozart's oeuvre but I'm not the only one to have issues with his harmonic language. It may just come down to differing ways in which our brains are wired.


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## PlaySalieri

janxharris said:


> Fair enough. As I said in the OP, I would choose a number of orchestral works over the Genesis piece.
> I certainly haven't heard the entirety of Mozart's oeuvre but I'm not the only one to have issues with his harmonic language. It may just come down to differing ways in which our brains are wired.


I think you started this thread in a futile attempt to diminish Mozart and the classical period.

Put your hands up anyone who has a problem with Mozart's harmonic language.

I'm waiting.

You are on your own


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## Jacck

stomanek said:


> I think you started this thread in a futile attempt to diminish Mozart and the classical period. Put your hands up anyone who has a problem with Mozart's harmonic language. I'm waiting. You are on your own


he is not alone. From what I observed on this site, there are quite a few people who have a problem with Mozart, describing his music as oversweet, full of musical clichés and ornaments etc. Out of all composers, Mozart took me the longest to start enjoying (I found Bartok or Ligeti much easier getting into) and I still do not care for a big fraction of his output, for example most of his symphonies or piano concertos. I mosty enjoy his string quartets, quintets and the sextet (sinfonia concertante). There really is something in his musical language/harmonies that is off-putting to some people.


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## Enthusiast

Jacck said:


> he is not alone. From what I observed on this site, there are quite a few people who have a problem with Mozart, describing his music as oversweet, full of musical clichés and ornaments etc. Out of all composers, Mozart took me the longest to start enjoying (I found Bartok or Ligeti much easier getting into) and I still do not care for a big fraction of his output, for example most of his symphonies or piano concertos. I mosty enjoy his string quartets, quintets and the sextet (sinfonia concertante). There really is something in his musical language/harmonies that is off-putting to some people.


You are certainly right that a lot of people here don't get Mozart. I don't understand why, though. All I know is that among the greatest of the great (say, Bach and Beethoven) it is most difficult with Mozart for me to come down to a few characteristics in his music that go some way towards summing up what his music is about.

And I am also more fussy with Mozart about which performances I like. It isn't about HIP vs old school for me - I feel there are some great Mozartians in both camps - and it isn't even about whether they make Mozart smile or frown (I love both Klemperer and Beecham, and sometimes Harnoncourt and Norrington). Mozart can be played effectively with a lot of sweetness but sweetness is not an essential at all. But there are many performances of Mozart leave me cold and are some that I actively dislike (usually because I hear them as slick - I'm afraid Abbado - a conductor I love in so much music - is in this group). So, I do feel that the greatness of Mozart is harder to grasp. It may be for this reason that I am often tempted to feel that Mozart was the greatest of them all. Mozart was the first classical composer I listened to properly (I was maybe 12) and I have always loved his music.

I have no idea at all whether any of this is about his harmonic language, but if I understand the term correctly I think it is his harmonic language that is one of the main things I love about hsi music. It seems bizarre to me that some don't like it! But I know there are plenty here who know what they are talking about and yet do dislike it.


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## Enthusiast

stomanek said:


> Let us collate what people seem to be saying about your points
> 
> Is Suppers Ready as complex as Mozart?
> 
> NO
> 
> nobody agrees with you on that one
> 
> Does suppers ready or indeed any prog rock compare with the best classical music?
> 
> NO
> 
> the closest anybody agrees is its better than bad classical music.


Well, that cut to the chase! But I am not sure what anyone would expect from a classical music forum!


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## Mal

Mozart's symphonies, at least those written when he was a kid, are problematic. But what about the mature works? For instance, symphonies 25, 29, 31,33-41 in the best modern performances? (Not Pinnock or Marriner! At least not in all of them...)


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## Jacck

Enthusiast said:


> One thing I am aware of with rock music of all sorts is the use that is made of rhythm, the use of drums underpinned by bass. I suspect that without this beat holding it up the music would collapse in a heap. The musical invention needs beat to hit you in the heart..


I have no musical education, but I agree with you that the most important difference between classical and rock music is rythm. Rock music is all about rythm, the drums. Jazz is also about rythm. Classical not so much. Although in the 20th century, some modern classical is rythmic.


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## PlaySalieri

Jacck said:


> I have no musical education, but I agree with you that the most important difference between classical and rock music is rythm. Rock music is all about rythm, the drums. Jazz is also about rythm. *Classical not so much*. Although in the 20th century, some modern classical is rythmic.


hmm, not so sure about that.


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## PlaySalieri

Jacck said:


> he is not alone. From what I observed on this site, there are quite a few people who have a problem with Mozart, describing his music as oversweet, full of musical clichés and ornaments etc. Out of all composers, Mozart took me the longest to start enjoying (I found Bartok or Ligeti much easier getting into) and I still do not care for a big fraction of his output, for example most of his symphonies or piano concertos. I mosty enjoy his string quartets, quintets and the sextet (sinfonia concertante). There really is something in his musical language/harmonies that is off-putting to some people.


I wouldnt say Mozart is full of ornamentation. If you listen to his piano concertos, those he set out the k/b parts for - there is relatively little - and the worst performances of Mozart pcs have ashkenazy, for example - adding ornamentation the way they imagine Mozart would have in performance - and it does sound poor


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## PlaySalieri

Mal said:


> *Mozart's symphonies, at least those written when he was a kid, are problematic.* But what about the mature works? For instance, symphonies 25, 29, 31,33-41 in the best modern performances? (Not Pinnock or Marriner! At least not in all of them...)


In what way are they a problem? He was a child imitating various masters which he did very well.

Many composers destroy their juvenelia.


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## Enthusiast

stomanek said:


> In what way are they a problem? He was a child imitating various masters which he did very well.
> 
> Many composers destroy their juvenelia.


I actually enjoy many of Mozart's early symphonies. Certainly, for 18 or so onwards. And I enjoy his numbered 1st symphony, too!


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## Enthusiast

Mal said:


> Mozart's symphonies, at least those written when he was a kid, are problematic. But what about the mature works? For instance, symphonies 25, 29, 31,33-41 in the best modern performances? (Not Pinnock or Marriner! At least not in all of them...)


I don't greatly enjoy Marriner in Mozart but generally don't have a problem with Pinnock. Indeed I like some Pinnock Mozart a lot. I also enjoy the Krips set (from 21 onwards?) and some of Harnoncourt's early symphonies. I suppose generally you don't get that much choice before 25 but there are many fine symphonies there. But it is true that most truly great Mozart probably comes after the K300s. And it gets better and better.


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## Art Rock

stomanek said:


> Let us collate what people seem to be saying about your points
> 
> Is Suppers Ready as complex as Mozart?
> 
> NO
> 
> nobody agrees with you on that one
> 
> Does suppers ready or indeed any prog rock compare with the best classical music?
> 
> NO
> 
> the closest anybody agrees is its better than bad classical music.


I agree when we discuss complexity, but in terms of pure aural enjoyment, I'll take the best of Genesis (or a number of other pop/rock acts like Pink Floyd, Porcupine Tree, Kate Bush, and so on) over many established classical music works.


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## Enthusiast

Art Rock said:


> I agree when we discuss complexity, but in terms of pure aural enjoyment, I'll take the best of Genesis (or a number of other pop/rock acts like Pink Floyd, Porcupine Tree, Kate Bush, and so on) over many established classical music works.


I suppose this is too general to argue with. Which established works? And are you talking of a personal preference or something more objectively evaluative? I am not sure I could compare rock music I really like with classical music (even pieces I don't like). They seem to serve "different purposes" but, as I write that, I am not at all sure what I mean! Certainly, the music I choose depends on my mood.


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## janxharris

Enthusiast said:


> I suppose this is too general to argue with. Which established works? And are you talking of a personal preference or something more objectively evaluative? I am not sure I could compare rock music I really like with classical music (even pieces I don't like). They seem to serve "different purposes" but, as I write that, I am not at all sure what I mean! Certainly, the music I choose depends on my mood.


I personally draw no distinction between the enjoyment I get from say Beethoven's 5th symphony and the OP piece. I would probably choose the former if I was forced to make an evaluation.


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## janxharris

Art Rock said:


> I agree when we discuss complexity, but in terms of pure aural enjoyment, I'll take the best of Genesis (or a number of other pop/rock acts like Pink Floyd, Porcupine Tree, Kate Bush, and so on) over many established classical music works.


Because of their definition (ie the the degree of distinctness) and emotional strength?


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## Art Rock

Enthusiast said:


> I suppose this is too general to argue with. Which established works? And are you talking of a personal preference or something more objectively evaluative? I am not sure I could compare rock music I really like with classical music (even pieces I don't like). They seem to serve "different purposes" but, as I write that, I am not at all sure what I mean! Certainly, the music I choose depends on my mood.


Personal preference. I'm a firm believer that objective evaluation of any art is nonsense.

Which established works? Too many to mention, but for starters Beethoven's 9th, Handel's Messiah, any Verdi opera and oodles more. Simply talking about personal listening pleasure. Actually, the list of classical compositions that give me more pleasure than the best of prog/rock (again subjective choice) is much smaller. A few dozen.


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## Art Rock

janxharris said:


> Because of their definition (ie the the degree of distinctness) and emotion strength?


I can't say why I love this and do not love that. But what I love, I have loved for decades and will not change anymore, whether it is Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde or Pink FLoyd's Shine on you crazy diamond.


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## janxharris

Art Rock said:


> I agree when we discuss complexity, but in terms of pure aural enjoyment, I'll take the best of Genesis (or a number of other pop/rock acts like Pink Floyd, Porcupine Tree, *Kate Bush*, and so on) over many established classical music works.


This woman's work?


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## janxharris

Art Rock said:


> Personal preference. I'm a firm believer that objective evaluation of any art is nonsense.
> 
> Which established works? Too many to mention, but for starters Beethoven's 9th, Handel's Messiah, any Verdi opera and oodles more. Simply talking about personal listening pleasure. Actually, the list of classical compositions that give me more pleasure than the best of prog/rock (again subjective choice) is much smaller. A few dozen.


I think there are issues with Beethoven's ninth but I feel that the first two movements are pretty special. I feel as though the last movement could have been shortened.


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## janxharris

stomanek said:


> I think you started this thread in a futile attempt to diminish Mozart and the classical period.


That is not the case stomanek.


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## Art Rock

janxharris said:


> This woman's work?


Good but for me far from her best. Try the full album Hounds of love:


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## janxharris

Listening to Beethoven's 9th now and it's quite extraordinary the depth of emotion Beethoven evokes almost immediately - especially at the tutti run down of the notes of the D minor chord. 

We feel that the music is telling us something incredibly profound do we not? - something ineffable...


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## janxharris

Art Rock said:


> Good but for me far from her best. Try the full album Hounds of love:


I know it well. Some great work here.


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## PlaySalieri

janxharris said:


> *I think there are issues with Beethoven's ninth* but I feel that the first two movements are pretty special. I feel as though the last movement could have been shortened.


???

now I've heard everything

Every now and again a rock devotee comes onto this board posing as a classical music lover albeit with some quirky comments (eg Mozart is ridden with cliches and chord progressions and Beethovens 9th has issues, last mvt is too long). Eventually we see a thread attempting to elevate rock to some kind of status whereby it might enjoy parity with the classical masters. You are not the first to do this and wont be the last.

Rock, progressive or otherwise, doesn't need this, and neither does classical.


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## Simon Moon

stomanek said:


> Let us collate what people seem to be saying about your points
> 
> Is Suppers Ready as complex as Mozart?
> 
> NO


I agree with this.



> Does suppers ready or indeed any prog rock compare with the best classical music?
> 
> NO


I disagree with this.

There are many pieces by Genesis, King Crimson, PFM, Magma, Thinking Plague, Banco, and many other prog bands, that I do feel compare to the best classical.

Maybe not in the same ways, but in other ways. Some of them overlap.

When I listen to the best prog, I don't feel I am listening to a music that is inferior to classical. Just with different attributes than classical, that tickles different types of sonic enjoyment in my mind.


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## janxharris

stomanek said:


> ???
> 
> now I've heard everything
> 
> Every now and again a rock devotee comes onto this board posing as a classical music lover albeit with some quirky comments (eg Mozart is ridden with cliches and chord progressions and Beethovens 9th has issues, last mvt is too long). Eventually we see a thread attempting to elevate rock to some kind of status whereby it might enjoy parity with the classical masters. You are not the first to do this and wont be the last.
> 
> Rock, progressive or otherwise, doesn't need this, and neither does classical.


My thread isn't about elevating prog but asking people about a specific piece.

stomanek, there is no need for your seeming offence. There is no way of objectively establishing the superiority of the great classical masters over any other more popular style of music. I, for one, would take a fair number of orchestral pieces over any prog rock piece I have heard, including the OP work.


----------



## Strange Magic

Apples v. oranges. Hawks v. handsaws. Chalk v. cheese. Then there is that scene in the film _Spartacus_ where Laurence Olivier as Crassus asks Tony Curtis, Spartacus' acolyte, whether he prefers snails or oysters. If one is in the mood for _Selling England by the Pound_, Beethoven just won't do.


----------



## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

The best of classical music puts Genesis to shame, if you're only going to look at the technical side of things (even harmony; Mozart's 40th is much more harmonically rich and innovative than Supper's Ready, since it was brought up as an example). But why do you care about that if you like Supper's Ready? Just enjoy it.


----------



## Haydn70

janxharris said:


> There is no way of objectively establishing the superiority of the great classical masters over any other more popular style of music.


If you are of the opinion that there is no way of objectively comparing classical vs. popular why did you create a thread asking folks here to compare this Genesis music with the best of classical? WADR, that does not make sense.


----------



## Haydn70

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> The best of classical music puts Genesis to shame, if you're only going to look at the technical side of things (even harmony; Mozart's 40th is much more harmonically rich and innovative than Supper's Ready, since it was brought up as an example). But why do you care about that if you like Supper's Ready? Just enjoy it.


Spot on!

While Genesis might have used some harmonies not available to Mozart that does not make their music harmonically more sophisticated...it is quite simple in fact, like all popular music when compared to classical.


----------



## Haydn70

Strange Magic said:


> Apples v. oranges. Hawks v. handsaws. Chalk v. cheese. Then there is that scene in the film _Spartacus_ where Laurence Olivier as Crassus asks Tony Curtis, Spartacus' acolyte, whether he prefers snails or oysters. If one is in the mood for _Selling England by the Pound_, Beethoven just won't do.


More like fast food (Genesis) v. gourmet food (Beethoven...or Bach or Dvorak, etc.).


----------



## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

ArsMusica said:


> More like fast food (Genesis) v. gourmet food (Beethoven...or Bach or Dvorak, etc.).


Right. Not that there's anything wrong with fast food. I enjoy my burger as much as anyone.


----------



## Haydn70

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> The best of classical music puts Genesis to shame, if you're only going to look at the technical side of things (even harmony; Mozart's 40th is much more harmonically rich and innovative than Supper's Ready, since it was brought up as an example). But why do you care about that if you like Supper's Ready? Just enjoy it.


Even far-far-less-than-great classical music puts Genesis to shame.


----------



## Haydn70

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Right. Not that there's anything wrong with fast food. I enjoy my burger as much as anyone.


Exactly!! I love fast food (too much in fact!) but I know what I am consuming...I don't kid myself that I am eating any thing other than that.


----------



## Strange Magic

We must always, it seems, compare every bloody thing with every other thing: what's bad, what's good, what's better, what's best. Why listen to Dvořák at all when Beethoven is better (isn't he?)? And isn't Bach best of all--better than Genesis anyway? I feel degraded listening to Genesis when I could/should be listening to Bach . I too know when I'm eating fast food and when I'm eating gourmet food--I feel small and guilty (Not!) when I bite into that Whopper and fries, and so much more good about myself when dining on truffles, caviar, and champagne. Love these threads!


----------



## PlaySalieri

*I mean Mozart's 40 symphony, for example, wouldn't compare in terms of complexity, musicianship and theory depth*

OP you are getting absolutely zero support for ^ statement - zilch - nada - nichevo nyet

now admit you are wrong


----------



## janxharris

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> The best of classical music puts Genesis to shame, if you're only going to look at the technical side of things (even harmony; Mozart's 40th is much more harmonically rich and innovative than Supper's Ready, since it was brought up as an example). But why do you care about that if you like Supper's Ready? Just enjoy it.


I'm simply interested in what other folk think.

I love Mozart's 40 symphony but I don't agree regarding it being above the Genesis piece harmonically and innovatively, though it is difficult to make a reasonable comparison.


----------



## janxharris

ArsMusica said:


> If you are of the opinion that there is no way of objectively comparing classical vs. popular why did you create a thread asking folks here to compare this Genesis music with the best of classical? WADR, that does not make sense.


Just interested in the subjective.


----------



## janxharris

stomanek said:


> *I mean Mozart's 40 symphony, for example, wouldn't compare in terms of complexity, musicianship and theory depth*
> 
> OP you are getting absolutely zero support for ^ statement - zilch - nada - nichevo nyet
> 
> now admit you are wrong


I don't think you have been following all the posts. And it's not about being right or wrong.


----------



## janxharris

Enthusiast said:


> One thing I am aware of with rock music of all sorts is the use that is made of rhythm, the use of drums underpinned by bass. I suspect that without this beat holding it up the music would collapse in a heap. The musical invention needs beat to hit you in the heart.


How about this string quartet version of 'Paranoid Android' by Radiohead,

Original version here.


----------



## Guest

stomanek said:


> ???
> 
> now I've heard everything
> 
> Every now and again a rock devotee comes onto this board *posing *as a classical music lover albeit with some quirky comments (eg Mozart is ridden with cliches and chord progressions and Beethovens 9th has issues, last mvt is too long). Eventually we see a thread attempting to elevate rock to some kind of status whereby it might enjoy parity with the classical masters. You are not the first to do this and wont be the last.
> 
> Rock, progressive or otherwise, doesn't need this, and neither does classical.


"Posing"? That's quite an assumption.
Of course, rock does not need "elevating" anywhere, but your post still seems to me to betray your instinct which is that classical is on a superior plane, even if they don't need comparing.

Oh, thread duty. _Supper's Ready _was the first Genesis I fell in love with, but you don't find many takers for _Foxtrot _Side 1, which just goes to show that the album is only half successful.

As for comparing it with classical, why bother? It stands up to scrutiny in its own right as rock.


----------



## janxharris

stomanek said:


> ???
> 
> now I've heard everything
> 
> Every now and again a rock devotee comes onto this board posing as a classical music lover albeit with some quirky comments (eg Mozart is ridden with cliches and chord progressions and Beethovens 9th has issues, last mvt is too long). Eventually we see a thread attempting to elevate rock to some kind of status whereby it might enjoy parity with the classical masters. You are not the first to do this and wont be the last.
> 
> Rock, progressive or otherwise, doesn't need this, and neither does classical.


I think you have issues with Brahms - in particular his violin concert #56:



> 1 great movement of a violin concerto (mvts 2 and 3 are 2nd rate by comparison)


I'm interested to hear your criticism of Brahms even though I don't agree - yet, if I dare to criticise Beethoven you come back with 'now I've heard everything'? Compared to some members, my opinion on the 9th is quite mild.


----------



## janxharris

The TC Top 50 Recommended String Concerti
Facilitated by Trout

*1. Brahms - Violin Concerto*
2. Mendelssohn - Violin Concerto
3. Dvořák - Cello Concerto
4. Bach - Double Violin Concerto (BWV 1043)
5. Sibelius - Violin Concerto
6. Bruch - Violin Concerto No. 1
7. Vivaldi - The Four Seasons
8. Beethoven - Violin Concerto
9. Berg - Violin Concerto
10. Elgar - Cello Concerto


----------



## KenOC

The music of Genesis compares with late Mozart as a rotting carp compares with a fine chateaubriand served with tongue, mushroom and truffle. No offense to Genesis fans, of course!


----------



## janxharris

KenOC said:


> The music of Genesis compares with late Mozart as a rotting carp compares with a fine chateaubriand served with tongue, mushroom and truffle. No offense to Genesis fans, of course!


Tell it like it is.

You are familiar with said Genesis piece?


----------



## janxharris

KenOC said:


> The music of Genesis compares with late Mozart as a rotting carp compares with a fine chateaubriand served with tongue, mushroom and truffle. No offense to Genesis fans, of course!


Need the composers of Supper's Ready be particularly aggrieved by your criticism considering your view of Beethoven's finale of the ninth:



KenOC said:


> I'm speaking of course of the finale. The introduction is pure theater with little musical content. The main theme is both trivial and banal; Beethoven could write a good tune from time to time, but not this time. The choral writing is sub-par at best. Worst of all is the episodic and chopped-up structure of the movement, constantly interrupting any forward impetus and preventing any real dramatic development.
> 
> "The fourth movement is, in my opinion, so monstrous and tasteless and, in its grasp of Schiller's Ode, so trivial that I cannot understand how a genius like Beethoven could have written it." So wrote Ludwig Spohr. Clara Schumann had a similar view, writing that the last movement, intended to be "dithyrambic," descends instead into bathos. Another (Fanny Mendelssohn?) remarked that the finale reminded her of nothing so much as a kennel full of barking dogs. These are opinions by progressive and musical people, none of whom were stodgy fools.
> 
> I'm sure that if we hadn't reached our "agreement" to praise this music so highly, our opinions of it would be a lot more variable than they are. And of course this would be true if somebody had written the finale more recently, and we had never forged our unified opinion at all.


----------



## KenOC

janxharris said:


> Need the composers of Supper's Ready be particularly aggrieved by your view considering your view of Beethoven's finale of the ninth:


Beethoven has nothing to do with this, although it is obvious that even the finale to his Choral Symphony is sufficient to shade anything by Genesis into oblivion.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> Beethoven has nothing to do with this, although it is obvious that even the finale to his Choral Symphony is sufficient to shade anything by Genesis into oblivion.


Only insofar as a high quality lawnmower shades a washing machine into oblivion.


----------



## janxharris

For those interested but who might not have time to listen to the whole piece - end section of Supper's Ready (last eight minutes).


----------



## janxharris

KenOC said:


> Beethoven has nothing to do with this, although it is obvious that even the finale to his Choral Symphony is sufficient to shade anything by Genesis into oblivion.


It obvious to most classical fans that the 9th deserves top or near top spot.

The TC Top 150 Recommended Symphonies
Facilitated by emiellucifuge

1. Beethoven - Symphony No. 9 "Choral"
2. Mahler - Symphony No. 2 "Resurrection"
3. Beethoven - Symphony No. 3 "Eroica"
4. Mozart - Symphony No. 41 "Jupiter"
5. Shostakovich - Symphony No. 5
6. Mozart - Symphony No. 40 "Great"
7. Beethoven - Symphony No. 5
8. Beethoven - Symphony No. 7
9. Schubert - Symphony No. 9 "Great"
10. Brahms - Symphony No. 4

Default BBC Music Mag - conductor's poll of symphonies

1. Beethoven 3 
2. Beethoven 9
3. Mozart 41
4. Mahler 9 
5. Mahler 2 
6. Brahms 4 
7. Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique 
8. Brahms Symphony 1 
9. Tchaikovsky 6 
10. Mahler 3


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## janxharris

KenOC said:


> ...it is obvious that even the finale to his Choral Symphony is sufficient to shade anything by Genesis into oblivion.


Obvious to you, that is all.


----------



## Jacck

janxharris said:


> For those interested but who might not have time to listen to the whole piece - end section of Supper's Ready (last eight minutes).


these fanatical Beethoven or Mozart fans, who compare Genesis to a rotting carp, generally lack the brain cells to appreciate prog rock music, or even much of modern music. They are stuck in the past, the best music has already been composed centuries ago and no other music will ever eclipse it. Their loss, because their capacity to appreciate music is pretty limited to a couple of long dead composers.

BTW, if you have not heard it, listen to this. It is instrumental Genesis transcribed for the piano


----------



## janxharris

Jacck said:


> these fanatical Beethoven or Mozart fans, who compare Genesis to a rotting carp, generally lack the brain cells to appreciate prog rock music, or even much of modern music. They are stuck in the past, the best music has already been composed centuries ago and no other music will ever eclipse it. Their loss, because their capacity to appreciate music is pretty limited to a couple of long dead composers.
> 
> BTW, if you have not heard it, listen to this. It is instrumental Genesis transcribed for the piano


Thanks - BTW I'm going to come back to you on those earlier posts.

And don't get me wrong about Beethoven - I love a substantial portion of his 9th, all of the 5th and 6th and some of the Eroica.


----------



## Jacck

BTW, this version of the Supper's Ready might be better suited to present for classic lovers whose brains are not tuned to rock music




it might be on par with Liszt transcendental etudes. (which I listened to yesterday evening)


----------



## Enthusiast

janxharris said:


> How about this string quartet version of 'Paranoid Android' by Radiohead,
> 
> Original version here.


Thanks. Lovely. Like nearly everyone else by now, I really love the original. I don't think having a string quartet playing it adds much of value. It takes a great rock song and uses some relatively recent string quartet language. The result is often beautiful but doesn't it lack the emotional almost ecstatic intensity?


----------



## Enthusiast

janxharris said:


> The TC Top 50 Recommended String Concerti
> Facilitated by Trout
> 
> *1. Brahms - Violin Concerto*
> 2. Mendelssohn - Violin Concerto
> 3. Dvořák - Cello Concerto
> 4. Bach - Double Violin Concerto (BWV 1043)
> 5. Sibelius - Violin Concerto
> 6. Bruch - Violin Concerto No. 1
> 7. Vivaldi - The Four Seasons
> 8. Beethoven - Violin Concerto
> 9. Berg - Violin Concerto
> 10. Elgar - Cello Concerto


Now that top 10 really is ridiculous! Like most Top 10s - even rock ones, I'm sure.


----------



## janxharris

Enthusiast said:


> Thanks. Lovely. Like nearly everyone else by now, I really love the original. I don't think having a string quartet playing it adds much of value. It takes a great rock song and uses some relatively recent string quartet language. The result is often beautiful but doesn't it lack the emotional almost ecstatic intensity?


I like both versions though, to my ears, the quartet version seems a little pitchy.


----------



## janxharris

Enthusiast said:


> Now that top 10 really is ridiculous!



......................................


----------



## Jacck

another prog rock masterpiece: Tarkus - Emerson, Lake & Palmer - a clear Bartok inspiration
original version




piano version




orchestral version


----------



## Enthusiast

I can remember once in my early twenties arguing at some length that the music of Dr Feelgood was as great as Mozart but that was under the influence of a large dose of amphetamine and a good few pints. 

That I remember it is probably a sign of my embarrassment the next day. I do still enjoy Dr Feelgood, though, and do still buy into the idea that prog rock became excessive and bloated.


----------



## Jacck

Enthusiast said:


> I can remember once in my early twenties arguing at some length that the music of Dr Feelgood was as great as Mozart but that was under the influence of a large dose of amphetamine and a good few pints. That I remember it is probably a sign of my embarrassment the next day. I do still enjoy Dr Feelgood, though, and do still buy into the idea that prog rock became excessive and bloated.


that is subjective. For example, I find this Mozart music both trivial and ugly


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> The music of Genesis compares with late Mozart as a rotting carp compares with a fine chateaubriand served with tongue, mushroom and truffle. No offense to Genesis fans, of course!


None taken, they are both dead animals. Perhaps the former died a natural death whilst the latter did not.


----------



## janxharris

dogen said:


> None taken, they are both dead animals. Perhaps the former died a natural death whilst the latter did not.


?

Mozart is a staple of the concert hall and Genesis's music continues with performances from former band member Steve Hackett and numerous tribute acts.


----------



## PlaySalieri

janxharris said:


> I don't think you have been following all the posts. And it's not about being right or wrong.


oh yes I have and nobody has posted a single comment indicating that they agree with your opinion on Moz sy 40.


----------



## Guest

janxharris said:


> ?
> 
> Mozart is a staple of the concert hall and Genesis's music continues with performances from former band member Steve Hackett and numerous tribute acts.





dogen said:


> animals


. .


----------



## janxharris

dogen said:


> . animals .


??????????????????????????


----------



## janxharris

stomanek said:


> oh yes I have and nobody has posted a single comment indicating that they agree with your opinion on Moz sy 40.


My opinion:



> I love Mozart's 40 symphony but I don't agree regarding it being above the Genesis piece harmonically and innovatively, though it is difficult to make a reasonable comparison.


................


----------



## janxharris

Jacck said:


> nothing in rock music comes even close. And the same goes for Mozart. Listen to his dissonace quartet


I've listened a number of times now but all I can hear are repeated cadences (usually some form of IV, V, I but with some variation). I tend to think you need a very strong melody if such cadences are not to become problematic. I thought the introductory rather dissonant section the most interesting.

Just my humble opinion.
(More responses to come to the pieces you suggested).


----------



## Guest

janxharris said:


> ??????????????????????????


I was referring to the animals in K's post, not Mozart and Genesis.


----------



## PlaySalieri

janxharris said:


> I think you have issues with Brahms - in particular his violin concert #56:
> 
> I'm interested to hear your criticism of Brahms even though I don't agree - yet, if I dare to criticise Beethoven you come back with 'now I've heard everything'? Compared to some members, my opinion on the 9th is quite mild.


I have no problem with you saying you dont like the finale of Beethoven's 9th - but when you say it could be cut shorter - that sounds arrogant bordering on the absurd from someone who probably has just a rudimentary understanding of musical theory and composition. What would you cut?

I think Brahms himself was aware he composed 1/3 of a masterpiece - he himself describes his adagio as "miserable".


----------



## janxharris

dogen said:


> I was referring to the animals in K's post, not Mozart and Genesis.


Ah...........


----------



## Enthusiast

Jacck said:


> that is subjective. For example, I find this Mozart music both trivial and ugly


Well, I was referring to a subjective view that had been stimulated in my brain by chemicals and then disowned subjectively when the chemicals were gone.

But, more generally, I really do think that objectivity is theoretically possible in evaluating art. I think our best efforts at achieving this are crude and, no doubt, error prone but they do broadly work, I think. I wasn't greatly taken by the somewhat sentimental performance that you linked to but I feel sure that the music is (objectively) great. That should not mean that someone cannot subjectively dislike it. There is a lot of music that I know to be great but that I, personally, do not currently like. Knowing it to be great, though, encourages me to keep trying. But probably some things are just not for me.


----------



## janxharris

stomanek said:


> ...from someone who probably has just a rudimentary understanding of musical theory and composition...


Based on my criticism of Mozart? This feels like a subtle ad hominem stomanek.


----------



## PlaySalieri

Enthusiast said:


> Well, I was referring to a subjective view that had been stimulated in my brain by chemicals and then disowned subjectively when the chemicals were gone.
> 
> But, more generally, I really do think that objectivity is theoretically possible in evaluating art. I think our best efforts at achieving this are crude and, no doubt, error prone but they do broadly work, I think. I wasn't greatly taken by the somewhat sentimental performance that you linked to but I feel sure that the music is (objectively) great. That should not mean that someone cannot subjectively dislike it. There is a lot of music that I know to be great but that I, personally, do not currently like. Knowing it to be great, though, encourages me to keep trying. But probably some things are just not for me.


the andante mvt 2 of k467 is surely one of the high points in the whole of classical music - a stunningly original conception. Works of art are often, in fact usually derivative - one can trace their sources - but there is nothing in 18th C music from which Mozart could have fused this music.

I would however defend anyone's right to call it trivial and ugly - no matter how crass such an opinion seems to me and probably music lovers in general.


----------



## PlaySalieri

janxharris said:


> Based on my criticism of Mozart? This feels like a subtle ad hominem stomanek.


no from your comments in general - you think you can deconstruct and diminish music of the masters, notably Mozart, by flinging a very small number of music terms around (eg "chord progressions, chords V, IV etc, candences)

this kind of name dropping is really embarrassing.

and your arrogant assessment of the dissonance quartet

" I tend to think you need a very strong melody if such cadences are not to become problematic"

such arrogance is just unbelievable - I'm not offended - just astonished.

are you a composer? present the board with your credentials so that we can understand what lies behind these comments on the art of composition implying you know something about composition Mozart does not.


----------



## janxharris

stomanek said:


> no from your comments in general - you think you can deconstruct and diminish music of the masters, notably Mozart, by flinging a very small number of music terms around (eg "chord progressions, chords V, IV etc, candences)
> 
> this kind of name dropping is really embarrassing.
> 
> and your arrogant assessment of the dissonance quartet
> 
> " I tend to think you need a very strong melody if such cadences are not to become problematic"
> 
> such arrogance is just unbelievable - I'm not offended - just astonished.
> 
> are you a composer? present the board with your credentials so that we can understand what lies behind these comments on the art of composition implying you know something about composition Mozart does not.


I think you wrongly infer that I am attempting some objectivity in my utterances when all I am doing is giving my subjective opinion and offering concrete examples. It doesn't make me right.

Nobody needs to present anyone here with credentials; the fact that René Leibowitz who taught none other than Pierre Boulez descried Sibelius as 'the worst composer in the world' is telling.


----------



## Guest

stomanek said:


> present the board with your credentials


Ha ha! I think "the board" might want want you to provide your credentials as a credentials inspector first!


----------



## Strange Magic

Enthusiast said:


> Well, I was referring to a subjective view that had been stimulated in my brain by chemicals and then disowned subjectively when the chemicals were gone.
> 
> But, more generally, I really do think that objectivity is theoretically possible in evaluating art. I think our best efforts at achieving this are crude and, no doubt, error prone but they do broadly work, I think. I wasn't greatly taken by the somewhat sentimental performance that you linked to but I feel sure that the music is (objectively) great. That should not mean that someone cannot subjectively dislike it. There is a lot of music that I know to be great but that I, personally, do not currently like. Knowing it to be great, though, encourages me to keep trying. But probably some things are just not for me.


No, No, No. There is no--repeat, no--objectivity in evaluating art. All art just sits there, inert. We bring our personal, subjective responses to it, and awaken it thusly, for ourselves. All we can assert is that (maybe) more of my kind of people like my kind of art than your people like your kind of art. Or maybe the Best People like art A more than art B. But if you "know" that some particular piece of art "is great", then by all means keep looking for the objective evidence to support that claim. It will be a way to fill the empty hours .


----------



## Enthusiast

Strange Magic said:


> No, No, No. There is no--repeat, no--objectivity in evaluating art. All art just sits there, inert. We bring our personal, subjective responses to it, and awaken it thusly, for ourselves. All we can assert is that (maybe) more of my kind of people like my kind of art than your people like your kind of art. Or maybe the Best People like art A more than art B. But if you "know" that some particular piece of art "is great", then by all means keep looking for the objective evidence to support that claim. It will be a way to fill the empty hours .


We'll just have to disagree because I am as certain that there is such a thing. I do not subscribe to the modern view that there are no experts and there is no truth. I feel it is a very dangerous view, in fact. Experts are not always right and can be very bad at predicting futures - an enterprise that is enormously complex - but a consensus amongst them about the past can be fairly reliable. This is as near as we can get to objective truth. It doesn't negate people's individual subjective realities but it is important, I think, for people to realise that for what it is.


----------



## janxharris

Enthusiast said:


> We'll just have to disagree because I am as certain that there is such a thing. I do not subscribe to the modern view that there are no experts and there is no truth. I feel it is a very dangerous view, in fact. Experts are not always right and can be very bad at predicting futures - an enterprise that is enormously complex - but a consensus amongst them about the past can be fairly reliable. This is as near as we can get to objective truth. It doesn't negate people's individual subjective realities but it is important, I think, for people to realise that for what it is.


You trust that 'experts' can be relied upon to give unbiased objective evaluations of what constitutes great art music?
Can you expound a little please?


----------



## Enthusiast

janxharris said:


> You trust that 'experts' can be relied upon to give unbiased objective evaluations of what constitutes great art music?
> Can you expound a little please?


I can't talk about technical musical analysis but do believe that there are people who can analyse a piece of music to locate the ways that it is clever and where that cleverness comes from historically. But leave all that aside. Experts will obviously know a lot of music and will have a strong sense of how genius is manifest in some works (and not in others). They can explain why X makes us feel something strong while Y fails to do so. They can explain why some such feelings are more valuable and exalted than others. Of course, what a single expert thinks may still be largely subjective and experts often disagree. This is why what really matters is a consensus of informed opinion. All of this sounds very naive but that is because I lack the language and the expertise to describe it. But I know it to be true because it seems to work - it works roughly and is not precise - in telling us what might be worthwhile and what might be less so. In general I find I get a lot more out of music that is coincidentally recognised by experts as greater. I say coincidentally because I knew absolutely nothing of this when I first started listening to music and when, eventually, I discovered the critical consensus I found it mapped fairly well onto my experience. Since then it has guided me sometimes in where to look and what to listen to and has proved enough times to be a better guide of what might reward me most than, for example, popularity or even my own first inclinations. There are critics who I like and trust more than others but here I am talking about the community of experts rather than individuals and it is the consensus between them that makes me suggest that this is a form of objectivity rather than subjectivity.

I'm sure you will think this a load of tosh! And I am probably unwise to talk of such things. I do know that the consensus changes with fashions over relatively long periods. That is part of the reason why what I am describing only works roughly. But, where fashions are concerned, we can also see that the expert consensus is more reliable than mere popularity. I also know that the expert consensus is at its more unreliable - and most subjective - when it comes to the contemporary.

By the way, I don't think the community of experts can guide us concerning genres that they are not expert in. And I am not sure how much any of this matters - we all know what we like and what we get out of it - but it is just that I do think there is an objective reality to be discovered about the value of a piece of art to us and I have found it worthwhile listening to - but not being ruled by - this.


----------



## Room2201974

Strange Magic said:


> No, No, No. There is no--repeat, no--objectivity in evaluating art. All art just sits there, inert. We bring our personal, subjective responses to it, and awaken it thusly, for ourselves. All we can assert is that (maybe) more of my kind of people like my kind of art than your people like your kind of art. Or maybe the Best People like art A more than art B. But if you "know" that some particular piece of art "is great", then by all means keep looking for the objective evidence to support that claim. It will be a way to fill the empty hours .


This is the correct way at looking at the situation with regards to "art" and it's definition to each of us. At issue is the range of human variability.

Here is a real world example: The "art" of building guitars. I noticed many years ago that the same guitar that Player X dissed would be loved by Player Y. This phenomenon is best attributable to how we each perceive sound. Your skull structure, your ability for the parts of the ear to hear different frequencies differently, your body size; all way too much variability for an absolute consensus of opinion.

With regards to holding the guitar, Segovia stated that one must hold it close to the body so that the vibration of the instrument could be felt in the chest. You're a burly 6 foot player, I'm thin and short, our bodies will feel those vibrations differently. Don't we have whole thread discussions in here centered around pieces in our "favorite" keys?

In the bell curve of our musical experience there is quite a lot of variability between standard deviations on either side. Some in here have dissed Beethoven's Ninth. Others think it sublime. You like the first Brahms piano concerto, I think the second is better.

And so it goes.......and I haven't even brought up the difference in our perceptions of reality.

So what is "art"?????? Art was the name of the dog that sat on Bach's porch and it's descendent now occupies the same position for Lin Manuel Miranda!


----------



## eugeneonagain

Supper's Ready...what a tedious album. A monument to the state of being right up your own jacksy in '70s prog-rock. 'Look at us, we are an educated group of fellows! Three of us are public schoolboys and we want to mix the rebellious world of 'rock' with social commentary-via-curious fantasy.

Oi, Gabriel! Stop dressing up like a twit and fast forward to _Sledgehammer_.


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## janxharris

eugeneonagain said:


> Supper's Ready...what a tedious album. A monument to the state of being right up your own jacksy in '70s prog-rock. 'Look at us, we are an educated group of fellows! Three of us are public schoolboys and we want to mix the rebellious world of 'rock' with social commentary-via-curious fantasy.
> 
> Oi, Gabriel! Stop dressing up like a twit and fast forward to _Sledgehammer_.


You're serious? Criticising someone for being educated at a public school?


----------



## Guest

eugeneonagain said:


> Supper's Ready...what a tedious album.


Small point, but that wasn't the name of the album.


----------



## Strange Magic

Enthusiast said:


> We'll just have to disagree because I am as certain that there is such a thing. I do not subscribe to the modern view that there are no experts and there is no truth. I feel it is a very dangerous view, in fact. Experts are not always right and can be very bad at predicting futures - an enterprise that is enormously complex - but a consensus amongst them about the past can be fairly reliable. This is as near as we can get to objective truth. It doesn't negate people's individual subjective realities but it is important, I think, for people to realise that for what it is.


Neither do I subscribe to the view that there are no experts and there is no truth (or, rather, that some assertions/discoveries/findings have a quite high probability of matching reality--and others a quite low probability). There are experts in art and in human psychology and neurophysiology who can demonstrate that certain sorts of people respond to certain stimuli in certain ways--some more, others less. These sorts of truths are perfectly viable and useful. But tell me a way by which I can objectively rank flavors of ice cream into good, "profound", worse, better, "great", vile. The consensus of experts in matters of personal taste merely tells us what said consensus is; it tells us, really, nothing beyond itself, though much of it represents an _ex post facto_ effort to rationalize and justify a purely subjective reaction to artistic stimuli: "I like it, therefore it must be good and so I shall move heaven and earth to explain to myself (and then to you) why it should be liked."

Perhaps the more dangerous view is to assert that you had better like some art something 'cause experts say it's objectively good and good for you; something wrong with you otherwise.


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## Simon Moon

eugeneonagain said:


> Supper's Ready...what a tedious album. A monument to the state of being right up your own jacksy in '70s prog-rock. 'Look at us, we are an educated group of fellows! Three of us are public schoolboys and we want to mix the rebellious world of 'rock' with social commentary-via-curious fantasy.
> 
> Oi, Gabriel! Stop dressing up like a twit and fast forward to _Sledgehammer_.


Well, then...

That social evaluation of the milieu that Genesis arose from, certainly does completely discredit the quality of the actual music, doesn't it? 

It's decided then.

No more to see here.


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## eugeneonagain

I was joking. I have a copy of that album too. I don't care about comparing it to classical music, or any music.


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## janxharris

Enthusiast said:


> I can't talk about technical musical analysis but do believe that there are people who can analyse a piece of music to locate the ways that it is clever and where that cleverness comes from historically. But leave all that aside. Experts will obviously know a lot of music and will have a strong sense of how genius is manifest in some works (and not in others). They can explain why X makes us feel something strong while Y fails to do so. They can explain why some such feelings are more valuable and exalted than others. Of course, what a single expert thinks may still be largely subjective and experts often disagree. This is why what really matters is a consensus of informed opinion. All of this sounds very naive but that is because I lack the language and the expertise to describe it. But I know it to be true because it seems to work - it works roughly and is not precise - in telling us what might be worthwhile and what might be less so. In general I find I get a lot more out of music that is coincidentally recognised by experts as greater. I say coincidentally because I knew absolutely nothing of this when I first started listening to music and when, eventually, I discovered the critical consensus I found it mapped fairly well onto my experience. Since then it has guided me sometimes in where to look and what to listen to and has proved enough times to be a better guide of what might reward me most than, for example, popularity or even my own first inclinations. There are critics who I like and trust more than others but here I am talking about the community of experts rather than individuals and it is the consensus between them that makes me suggest that this is a form of objectivity rather than subjectivity.
> 
> I'm sure you will think this a load of tosh! And I am probably unwise to talk of such things. I do know that the consensus changes with fashions over relatively long periods. That is part of the reason why what I am describing only works roughly. But, where fashions are concerned, we can also see that the expert consensus is more reliable than mere popularity. I also know that the expert consensus is at its more unreliable - and most subjective - when it comes to the contemporary.
> 
> By the way, I don't think the community of experts can guide us concerning genres that they are not expert in. And I am not sure how much any of this matters - we all know what we like and what we get out of it - but it is just that I do think there is an objective reality to be discovered about the value of a piece of art to us and I have found it worthwhile listening to - but not being ruled by - this.


No, not tosh. What do you think about the fact that Schubert was pretty much totally ignored during his short lifetime? I believe that not one of his symphonies was performed professionally - though they were amongst friends.


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## regenmusic

I have figured out the prog rock/classical dichotomy and why classical will always be different than prog rock by the associations of the two genres. Classical has a history that seems "divinely protected" almost, as once you're considered classical, it dissociates you from the drugs, drinking, lewdness that I think has been in popular music since the troubadours and even earlier. As you can see from the trolls on the prog rock forums, classical does not have the same kind of negativity. There is also the literature associated with classical, with the many meanings of that word. Classical embodies the learning of Western civilization passed down through the medium of music.


----------



## PlaySalieri

Must admit have not listened to this piece but just heard the 1st 2 minutes.

The piano part seems to consist of the same repeated bar up and octave back down up again.

Maybe it gets more complex but the start is not that promising - sure - pleasant to listen to - but so is tons of music.


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## janxharris

Medley of Genesis songs performed on solo piano by Michael Kuhlmann:






Firth of Fifth-Hairless Heart-Mad Man Moon-Quiet Earth-Los Endos...


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## janxharris

Jacck said:


> ....or the breathtaking Liszt transcendental etudes


Wow. Haven't heard it all yet but it sounds magnificent to me so far.

Daniil Trifonov performance.


----------



## janxharris




----------



## Simon Moon

regenmusic said:


> I have figured out the prog rock/classical dichotomy and why classical will always be different than prog rock by the associations of the two genres. Classical has a history that seems "divinely protected" almost, *as once you're considered classical, it dissociates you from the drugs, drinking, lewdness that I think has been in popular music since the troubadours* and even earlier. As you can see from the trolls on the prog rock forums, classical does not have the same kind of negativity. There is also the literature associated with classical, with the many meanings of that word. Classical embodies the learning of Western civilization pass down through the medium of music.


First of all, many musicians in the prog world, come directly from the classical world. So, at least when it comes to prog, the dichotomy is a bit, shall we say, fuzzy.

Rick Wakeman from YES went to the Royal Academy, as did Kerry Minnear from Gentle Giant, Kurt Rongey from Underground Railroad (an American) attended the Royal College of Music in London.

When it comes to the avant-garde forms of prog, the number of musicians that come from classical academies is even more prevalent. And many of them play in avant-prog bands as well as maintaining a professional classical presence.

Just to mention one example, Joris Vanvinckenroye founding member of Belgian band, Aranis, began studying contrabass when he was 16 at the Music Academy of Lier in Belgium. He won Belgium's Axion Classics award in 2000, and continued his studies at the Royal Flemish Conservatoire in Antwerp, where he obtained a master's degree in double bass in 2005.

Other members of the same group, Linde de Groof (violin), Liesbeth Lambrecht (violin) Ward De Vleeschhouwer (piano) have similar classical backgrounds.

Violinist, Alessandro Bonetti, from Italian prog band, Deus Ex Machina, regularly plays in top rated Italian chamber ensembles.

I could go on.

Second of all, commenting on your point about drugs, classical musicians have a pretty long history of drug use.

Berlioz was an opium user. Beethoven regularly abused alcohol. Mozart was an alcohol users.

There is also a well known addiction problem in modern orchestras all over the world. Usually to combat performance nerves.


----------



## Jacck

The Liszt sonata in B minor is also pretty hardcore




another great sonata of the romantic period is from Reubke (pity the guy died so terribly young)





but I guess most prog rock lovers would enjoy more 20th century modernist pieces such as Bartok 3 piano concertos, Prokofiev piano concertos, or the amazing Ligeti piano concerto or Ligeti etudes


----------



## PlaySalieri

Enthusiast said:


> I can't talk about technical musical analysis but do believe that there are people who can analyse a piece of music to locate the ways that it is clever and where that cleverness comes from historically. But leave all that aside. Experts will obviously know a lot of music and will have a strong sense of how genius is manifest in some works (and not in others). They can explain why X makes us feel something strong while Y fails to do so. They can explain why some such feelings are more valuable and exalted than others. Of course, what a single expert thinks may still be largely subjective and experts often disagree. This is why what really matters is a consensus of informed opinion. All of this sounds very naive but that is because I lack the language and the expertise to describe it. But I know it to be true because it seems to work - it works roughly and is not precise - in telling us what might be worthwhile and what might be less so. In general I find I get a lot more out of music that is coincidentally recognised by experts as greater. I say coincidentally because I knew absolutely nothing of this when I first started listening to music and when, eventually, I discovered the critical consensus I found it mapped fairly well onto my experience. Since then it has guided me sometimes in where to look and what to listen to and has proved enough times to be a better guide of what might reward me most than, for example, popularity or even my own first inclinations. There are critics who I like and trust more than others but here I am talking about the community of experts rather than individuals and it is the consensus between them that makes me suggest that this is a form of objectivity rather than subjectivity.
> 
> I'm sure you will think this a load of tosh! And I am probably unwise to talk of such things. I do know that the consensus changes with fashions over relatively long periods. That is part of the reason why what I am describing only works roughly. But, where fashions are concerned, we can also see that the expert consensus is more reliable than mere popularity. I also know that the expert consensus is at its more unreliable - and most subjective - when it comes to the contemporary.
> 
> By the way, I don't think the community of experts can guide us concerning genres that they are not expert in. And I am not sure how much any of this matters - we all know what we like and what we get out of it - but it is just that I do think there is an objective reality to be discovered about the value of a piece of art to us and I have found it worthwhile listening to - but not being ruled by - this.


I dont believe it is possible to dissect or reduce pieces down to technical analyses and thereby illuminate why a piece is considered great - and another not. Why? because complex pieces can be dull and simple pieces sensational. How effective a piece of music does not depend solely on technical complexity, innovative structure, tonal experimentation or daring chord progressions etc etc. There is music that seems to be innovative, technically complex, original and tick every box you can imagine and it can still fail to inspire listeners.


----------



## janxharris

Simon Moon said:


> First of all, many musicians in the prog world, come directly from the classical world. So, at least when it comes to prog, the dichotomy is a bit, shall we say, fuzzy.
> 
> Rick Wakeman from YES went to the Royal Academy, as did Kerry Minnear from Gentle Giant, Kurt Rongey from Underground Railroad (an American) attended the Royal College of Music in London.
> 
> When it comes to the avant-garde forms of prog, the number of musicians that come from classical academies is even more prevalent. And many of them play in avant-prog bands as well as maintaining a professional classical presence.
> 
> Just to mention one example, Joris Vanvinckenroye founding member of Belgian band, Aranis, began studying contrabass when he was 16 at the Music Academy of Lier in Belgium. He won Belgium's Axion Classics award in 2000, and continued his studies at the Royal Flemish Conservatoire in Antwerp, where he obtained a master's degree in double bass in 2005.
> 
> Other members of the same group, Linde de Groof (violin), Liesbeth Lambrecht (violin) Ward De Vleeschhouwer (piano) have similar classical backgrounds.
> 
> Violinist, Alessandro Bonetti, from Italian prog band, Deus Ex Machina, regularly plays in top rated Italian chamber ensembles.
> 
> I could go on.
> 
> Second of all, commenting on your point about drugs, classical musicians have a pretty long history of drug use.
> 
> Berlioz was an opium user. Beethoven regularly abused alcohol. Mozart was an alcohol users.
> 
> There is also a well known addiction problem in modern orchestras all over the world. Usually to combat performance nerves.


Not forgetting Sibelius liked a tipple or three.


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## regenmusic

Simon Moon said:


> First of all, many musicians in the prog world, come directly from the classical world. So, at least when it comes to prog, the dichotomy is a bit, shall we say, fuzzy.
> 
> Rick Wakeman from YES went to the Royal Academy, as did Kerry Minnear from Gentle Giant, Kurt Rongey from Underground Railroad (an American) attended the Royal College of Music in London.
> 
> When it comes to the avant-garde forms of prog, the number of musicians that come from classical academies is even more prevalent. And many of them play in avant-prog bands as well as maintaining a professional classical presence.
> 
> Just to mention one example, Joris Vanvinckenroye founding member of Belgian band, Aranis, began studying contrabass when he was 16 at the Music Academy of Lier in Belgium. He won Belgium's Axion Classics award in 2000, and continued his studies at the Royal Flemish Conservatoire in Antwerp, where he obtained a master's degree in double bass in 2005.
> 
> Other members of the same group, Linde de Groof (violin), Liesbeth Lambrecht (violin) Ward De Vleeschhouwer (piano) have similar classical backgrounds.
> 
> Violinist, Alessandro Bonetti, from Italian prog band, Deus Ex Machina, regularly plays in top rated Italian chamber ensembles.
> 
> I could go on.
> 
> Second of all, commenting on your point about drugs, classical musicians have a pretty long history of drug use.
> 
> Berlioz was an opium user. Beethoven regularly abused alcohol. Mozart was an alcohol users.
> 
> There is also a well known addiction problem in modern orchestras all over the world. Usually to combat performance nerves.


Sorry, but your logic isn't very robust here. A few classical musicians having taken drugs on occasion is nothing compared to the thousands of drug deaths associated with rock, if you begin to count the fans. Needless to say, those classically trained people you mentioned didn't go on to compose very important classical music. (now don't go on and pull me into an argument about the value of prog rock, etc.).


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## eugeneonagain

MacLeod said:


> Small point, but that wasn't the name of the album.


You are right. I wanted to say: the album from which the song is taken (Foxtrot), but I was blindly following the thread title.


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## EdwardBast

I find prog rock most interesting when it goes places classical music can't, rather than when it self-consciously draws on or attempts to rival classical music. Its contributions to the genre of the art song are significant but they don't readily cross over to the world of classical music, one of the major impediments being the politics of stage performance. When composing art songs, classical composers were almost always thinking of the song as a work for a featured vocal soloist and an accompanist, with the understanding that one could not leave the vocalist standing idle for very long or let the instrumental elements predominate. Otherwise one would offend sensitive egos (singers) and reduce the chances that vocalists would want to perform ones work. Prog rock ensembles tend to be democratic, especially when the vocalist plays another key instrument. The resulting absence of traditional political constraints allowed the exploration of song forms in which the vocal and lyrical elements are downplayed and instrumental music, with great potential for improvisation, came to the fore. Some of the best prog rock, IMO, is in forms that are a cross between art songs and tone poems, forms which had no close parallels in classical art music. Songs like King Crimson's "Cirkus," "Starless" and "Exiles," Van der Graaf's "Man Erg," or Henry Cow's "Living in the heart of the Beast" are prime examples. In the Crimson songs, for example, sung passages account for less than a quarter of the running time and the instrumental themes are developed in opposition to the lyrics, undercutting their meaning and forcing their reinterpretation. 

In general, Genesis with Peter Gabriel has too much singing for my tastes, but I guess it was better than letting him play the flute.


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## Phil loves classical

janxharris said:


> Okay - but contrapuntal complexity doesn't, per se, necessarily make for great music. I would aver that, chordally, the Genesis exceeds the rather limited harmonic language of the classical period.


I think it may be more adventurous in some ways than the Classical period like the chord combinations, but in terms of structure and form it can't hold a candle to Mozart's or many other composers of the Classical period.


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## Haydn70

A composer’s power/ability as a harmonist must be evaluated based on the harmonic standards/practices of the composer’s time. To mark down Bach or Mozart or Beethoven (or Haydn) as harmonists because they didn’t use harmonies that were not available to them is ridiculous. Rather they must evaluated on what they did with what was available. And in their cases, they were all brilliant and cutting edge with their use of harmony…adventurous, daring, powerful, pushing beyond the usual…far beyond their contemporaries.

And the harmonies used by Genesis are routine and conservative for their time…yes, more adventurous compared to other pop music, but nothing special at all compared to the art music of the time…or of even 50 years before.

That Genesis used harmonies not used in the classical era means nothing.


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## janxharris

Phil loves classical said:


> I think it may be more adventurous in some ways than the Classical period like the chord combinations, but in terms of structure and form it can't hold a candle to Mozart's or many other composers of the Classical period.


How so? The classical forms were largely rejected by the more progressive romantics (Liszt and Wagner) and Richard Strauss's Tone Poems continued this style.


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## janxharris

ArsMusica said:


> A composer's power/ability as a harmonist must be evaluated based on the harmonic standards/practices of the composer's time. To mark down Bach or Mozart or Beethoven (or Haydn) as harmonists because they didn't use harmonies that were not available to them is ridiculous. Rather they must evaluated on what they did with what was available. And in their cases, they were all brilliant and cutting edge with their use of harmony…adventurous, daring, powerful, pushing beyond the usual…far beyond their contemporaries.
> 
> And the harmonies used by Genesis are routine and conservative for their time…yes, more adventurous compared to other pop music, but nothing special at all compared to the art music of the time…or of even 50 years before.
> 
> That Genesis used harmonies not used in the classical era means nothing.


It's a fair point and one that I have been mindful of.

I think Mozart was harmonically adventurous in his 40th symphony, especially the development section of the first movement and some of the phrases in the second. I do love that particular work.

Certainly Beethoven emerged with significant advances in his later works.

I don't think one's harmonic language has to be totally avant-garde to be considered worthwhile - just that it sounds unusual and original. You don't think this medley of Genesis songs (piano by Michael Kuhlmann) demonstrates this:






(Firth of Fifth-Hairless Heart-Mad Man Moon-Quiet Earth-Los Endos)


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## janxharris

It would be interesting to hear Supper's Ready performed on piano as well as Kuhlmann does so with these songs in the above video. I haven't heard a piano version so far that does it justice.


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## Enthusiast

janxharris said:


> No, not tosh. What do you think about the fact that Schubert was pretty much totally ignored during his short lifetime? I believe that not one of his symphonies was performed professionally - though they were amongst friends.


Well, I think I did say that the experts are not to be relied on when it comes to the contemporary (and, earlier, in predicting the future). Schubert was not much of a _commercial _success during his short life but was beginning to to be recognised. His 9th was played quite soon after his death but was poorly understood for quite a while, I believe. If he had lived to a decent age it is likely that he would have enjoyed a much greater reputation.


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## Enthusiast

stomanek said:


> I dont believe it is possible to dissect or reduce pieces down to technical analyses and thereby illuminate why a piece is considered great - and another not. Why? because complex pieces can be dull and simple pieces sensational. How effective a piece of music does not depend solely on technical complexity, innovative structure, tonal experimentation or daring chord progressions etc etc. There is music that seems to be innovative, technically complex, original and tick every box you can imagine and it can still fail to inspire listeners.


I agree. And did not think I was saying otherwise. But I did suspect I was expressing myself badly. My main point was trying to be that the value of music is an objective quality and that the consensus among experts comes as close to any in exposing us to it. I have observed that they often use technical analysis as _part _of their method for doing this. But I agree they cannot do this effectively by technical analysis alone. As someone who has nearly zero technical musical knowledge and not much more than zero interest in gaining it, I can only observe that somehow the community of experts get closer that any other group in identifying the (objective) value of music.


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## Guest

The value of music is what each of us takes from it to our benefit. That is a subjective experience/transaction. The fact that many people might share that experience, or that experts can offer an analysis of the commonalities which can easily be regarded as an objective analysis should not be regarded as meaning that the experience can lead to objective declarations about value.


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## janxharris

MacLeod said:


> The value of music is what each of us takes from it to our benefit. That is a subjective experience/transaction. The fact that many people might share that experience, or that experts can offer an analysis of the commonalities which can easily be regarded as an objective analysis should not be regarded as meaning that the experience can lead to objective declarations about value.


Presumably, no one in the 18th century would have spoken favourably of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring if they could have heard it back then - though I guess it's probably pointless of me saying as much.

If compositional value can be perceived objectively then, theoretically, someone could do so.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

MacLeod said:


> The value of music is what each of us takes from it to our benefit. That is a subjective experience/transaction. The fact that many people might share that experience, or that experts can offer an analysis of the commonalities which can easily be regarded as an objective analysis should not be regarded as meaning that the experience can lead to objective declarations about value.


I understand this perspective but if taken literally then one could argue that the musical value of my banging on the piano randomly cannot be objectively deemed less than the value of say Bach' WTC. This just doesn't feel right.


----------



## janxharris

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> I understand this perspective but if taken literally then one could argue that the musical value of my banging on the piano randomly cannot be objectively deemed less than the value of say Bach' WTC. This just doesn't feel right.


Isn't it the case that one has to just take the said 'banging on the piano randomly' to an audience to test it's value? Many here remain sceptical that modern music isn't that much different.


----------



## Enthusiast

janxharris said:


> Isn't it the case that one has to just take the said 'banging on the piano randomly' to an audience to test it's value? Many here remain sceptical that modern music isn't that much different.


And that can't be right either for if it was then the most popular music would be the best which is hardly ever the case.


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## PlaySalieri

OK well I listened to the whole thing, while working.

I dont know the prog rock scene to really make a good judgement on this piece. It seems to be though that the drummer really underpins the work as a whole - with some fine rythmic belly punching sequences here and there. The synths/elec k/b contribution is less impressive. I probably would need to listen some more to get a sense of the structure - some thing that in classical music feels obvious structurally, to me - either is lacking here or I just didnt get it. The singing - what can i say - if I could understand the lyrics - must go and check them out. I also missed the climax - it seems to fade out like most pieces of similar ilk from this period. But as I say - I am no experienced listener.

What does impress me from the same era is Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.


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## Guest

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> I understand this perspective but if taken literally then one could argue that the musical value of my banging on the piano randomly cannot be objectively deemed less than the value of say Bach' WTC. This just doesn't feel right.


The logic of my post doesn't lead to that conclusion at all. We need to keep separate the idea of the value of music to the individual (you getting a kick out of random banging) and the idea of that value being objectively identifiable for other listeners.


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## Strange Magic

Enthusiast said:


> And that can't be right either for if it was then the most popular music would be the best which is hardly ever the case.


What is the best music? Popularity we can measure; the question then is determining which/what audience is to be invoked to measure popularity. But in the years here on TC, I have yet to find (other than my own patented Goodness Meter) a way of determining what music is good, and what bad.


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## PlaySalieri

MacLeod said:


> *The value of music is what each of us takes from it to our benefit. *That is a subjective experience/transaction. The fact that many people might share that experience, or that experts can offer an analysis of the commonalities which can easily be regarded as an objective analysis should not be regarded as meaning that the experience can lead to objective declarations about value.


how many times have we been down this road


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

MacLeod said:


> The logic of my post doesn't lead to that conclusion at all. We need to keep separate the idea of the value of music to the individual (you getting a kick out of random banging) and the idea of that value being objectively identifiable for other listeners.


I took your post to imply there is no objectively identifiable value in music, which I disagree with. The separation between the value to the individual vs objectively identifiable value wasn't clear to me. I do agree with this statement though.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Strange Magic said:


> What is the best music? Popularity we can measure; the question then is determining which/what audience is to be invoked to measure popularity. But in the years here on TC, I have yet to find (other than my own patented Goodness Meter) a way of determining *what music is good, and what bad*.


Beethoven's 3rd symphony is good.
A random rap song with lots of swearing and no music other than repetitive bass is bad.

Just a couple of examples.


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## Art Rock

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Beethoven's 3rd symphony is good.
> A random rap song with lots of swearing and no music other than repetitive bass is bad.
> 
> Just a couple of examples.


And lots of rap fans would say the opposite.


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## KRoad

I think "comparing" in terms of better/best between and within genres silly. It demonstrates a lack of maturity and sophistication in the listener. Period.

Having said this I went back and had a listen to S.R., having liked this tune in the early 70's. It's pop music (pop, pop, pop - pop music) of the Progressive Rock variety. What more needs to be said? It is for me a good listen. I enjoyed it then and I enjoyed it just now. Lyrically it borders on the pretentious IMO, but, so what, they were just kids. The 9/8 segment is musically interesting and if I were to compare it with anything - which I won't - then oratorio springs to mind for the last five minutes of the track.

Listen and enjoy it for what it is. Why do you need to compare? Its like some of these ridiculous polls e.g. who is better Bach or Handel / Mozart or Beethoven. I mean who _seriously_ gives a F?


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## Strange Magic

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Beethoven's 3rd symphony is good.
> A random rap song with lots of swearing and no music other than repetitive bass is bad.
> 
> Just a couple of examples.


OMG, you have a Goodness Meter also! I feel you may have infringed on my patents. My lawyers will be in touch.


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## Guest

janxharris said:


> If compositional value can be perceived objectively then, theoretically, someone could do so.


I'm not sure what you mean by 'perceived objectively'...and that 'if' is a big 'if'.



stomanek said:


> how many times have we been down this road


I don't know. I'm not counting. But if you and I are going to contin ue to hang around here, we must expect to repeat ourselves as people join and leave the conversation.



TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> I took your post to imply there is no objectively identifiable value in music


It did. It was meant to. But that doesn't mean that all things are equally valuable (assuming we know what we mean when we talk of value). The problem is that those who insist on "objective value" have already made their mind up and simply assert that _this_ music has (predetermined) value and _that _music hasn't because it doesn't have the same attributes (that the objectivists insist are the right criteria by which to judge).

Stomanek says we've been down this road before - and we have, but always inconclusively because those who make the assertion that there is objective value fail to offer any objectively agreed criteria by which to judge, and resort to appeals to the views of experts or numbers - all of which is fine as far as it goes with the easy 'greats', but less fine as far as the lesser composers are concerned, and with the notion of superiority that seems to be implied at the same time.


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## Nereffid

MacLeod said:


> But that doesn't mean that all things are equally valuable (assuming we know what we mean when we talk of value). The problem is that those who insist on "objective value" have already made their mind up and simply assert that _this_ music has (predetermined) value and _that _music hasn't because it doesn't have the same attributes (that the objectivists insist are the right criteria by which to judge).


I'm still hopeful that an objectivist will come along whose personal Venn diagram of "criteria that make a piece of music great" and "criteria that make me like a piece of music" shows little or no overlap. Because in theory that would have to be possible, wouldn't it?


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## Strange Magic

Nereffid said:


> I'm still hopeful that an objectivist will come along whose personal Venn diagram of "criteria that make a piece of music great" and "criteria that make me like a piece of music" shows little or no overlap. Because in theory that would have to be possible, wouldn't it?


As one who values simplicity, my Venn diagram consists only of a single circle enclosing Music I Like. Everything outside the circle is Music I Don't Like or Haven't Heard .


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## janxharris

Enthusiast said:


> Well, I think I did say that the experts are not to be relied on when it comes to the contemporary (and, earlier, in predicting the future). Schubert was not much of a _commercial _success during his short life but was beginning to to be recognised. His 9th was played quite soon after his death but was poorly understood for quite a while, I believe. If he had lived to a decent age it is likely that he would have enjoyed a much greater reputation.


But weren't they the same 'experts' (same city, Vienna) that recognised Beethoven's genius? I love the fact that his patrons paid him _just_ to remain in Vienna.


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## janxharris

MacLeod said:


> I'm not sure what you mean by 'perceived objectively'...and that 'if' is a big 'if'.


If we assume that the Rite of Spring is a masterpiece and no 18th century 'expert' music lover would have found it aurally pleasant that, nevertheless, they could discern objectively that it was a masterpiece.

I think I am rambling...


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## Guest

janxharris said:


> If we assume that the Rite of Spring is a masterpiece and no 18th century 'expert' music lover would have found it aurally pleasant that, nevertheless, they could discern objectively that it was a masterpiece.


OK. I follow that. And affirm that that 'if' is even bigger than I realised!


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## EdwardBast

If we're going down this road again I'll repeat my mantra: Anyone declaring that ______ is objectively better than ________ should specify for what purpose it's better. The Blue Danube is objectively better than The Rite of Spring for those who like waltzing; Mozart's Symphony no. 40 is objectively better than your average rap track for those who value instrumental structures built on subtle tonal tensions. Not very helpful, huh?


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## elgar's ghost

I've never thought of _Supper's Ready_ as anything other than an impressive piece of work by a rock band who were hitting top form after four years of finding their way.


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## Phil loves classical

janxharris said:


> How so? The classical forms were largely rejected by the more progressive romantics (Liszt and Wagner) and Richard Strauss's Tone Poems continued this style.


They still had a strong sense of structure. But the Genesis is quite loose I find.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese

To me there is much better prog albums than Suppers Ready, let alone comparing it with classical works.


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## PlaySalieri

janxharris said:


> How so? The classical forms were largely rejected by the more progressive romantics (Liszt and Wagner) and Richard Strauss's Tone Poems continued this style.


Strange statements.

Wagner was an opera composer and Liszt was primarily a composer for solo piano who also composed some tone poems, not many - he was not a major orchestral composer. Brahms, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky and far more notable composers than Liszt continued with the classical period forms. R Strauss and Wagner also considered Mozart (and in Wagner's case Beethoven too) to be the pinnacle of music.

Your reply to Phil's point that Genesis cant hold a candle to structure and form in Mozart really makes no sense.

I think a lot of pop music will eventually be forgotten - the tribute bands are sustained by baby boomer interest, people of my age - once we are gone, who is going to listen and play? Today's young people? I doubt it. Who listens to Glen Miller these days? Virtually nobody - yet in the 30s he was the big thing in popular big band music - all the people from that generation are dead and interest in Miller's music died with them.

Mozart is much more alive than any pop - it is played around the world in concert halls, opera houses, radio, widely played by amateur and professional musicians, taught in conservatoires and used for soundtracks in countless films.

You cant compare 4 balding deadbeats with beer bellies doing tribute acts in pubs with that.


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## Larkenfield

I've heard the album recording and also this live performance... Genesis is trying to do something big and ambitious here, with what sounds like a deeper subtext, but it's never reminded me harmonically or sonically of CM other than its serious intentions; I think the inspiration came from within the rock genre itself and not outside it... similar to the ambitions of what the Beatles were doing with _St Pepper_ and they got there first... I can't imagine Supper's Ready happening without what the Beatles did before them, but it's still an outstanding album with high aspirations behind it as a performance piece or slice of musical theater. I also like _Foxtrot_. I consider Peter Gabriel a genius blessed with a huge spirit and his music got more real and bigger in scope when he went out on his own and got involved with his humanitarian pursuits. I find his music highly engaging of the listener, even hypnotic, and on _that_ level it can be just as engaging as anything in CM.


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## Enthusiast

stomanek said:


> ...... the tribute bands are sustained by baby boomer interest, people of my age - once we are gone, who is going to listen and play? Today's young people? I doubt it. Who listens to Glen Miller these days? Virtually nobody - yet in the 30s he was the big thing in popular big band music - all the people from that generation are dead and interest in Miller's music died with them.
> 
> Mozart is much more alive than any pop - it is played around the world in concert halls, opera houses, radio, widely played by amateur and professional musicians, taught in conservatoires and used for soundtracks in countless films.
> 
> You cant compare 4 balding deadbeats with beer bellies doing tribute acts in pubs with that.


And also for my generation. But I don't get it at all. Tribute acts and the return (at the age of 70) of once popular bands - usually without the real stars who led them back in the day - ruin the rock music scene in small British towns like the one I live in. Why can't our local venues book something current and alive rather than these dinosaurs and fossils? If they chose well they could really enliven the local rock music scene. And, as for classical music, we barely get any at all. It could really enliven things for us.


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## Jacck

stomanek said:


> Mozart is much more alive than any pop - it is played around the world in concert halls, opera houses, radio, widely played by amateur and professional musicians, taught in conservatoires and used for soundtracks in countless films. You cant compare 4 balding deadbeats with beer bellies doing tribute acts in pubs with that.


Mozart is quite fashionable now thanks to Miloš Forman. But there were times when he was obscure. I personally recognize his talent, but am not a fan of his music. It seems to lack depth and emotion. Most of it seems like superficial entertainment music to amuse the nobles at their teaparties and in their saloons. It is all so cheerful, playful and hence superficial. There are no dark themes and emotions which could lend the music some emotional depth. And it is not a problem with the era. I do not have these feelings towards Haydn, whose music sounds more mature and deeper to me.

concerning rock, there is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, whose purpose is to preserve rock music for future generations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_and_Roll_Hall_of_Fame
you also do not recognize how much the internet is reshaping our musical culture. Future generations will have all the music of humankind and of all ages only a couple of clicks away. Rock and prog rock is gaining new fans all the time even among the youngest generations.


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## Jacck

a great explanation by a Mozart fan, why Mozart music feels to some people as it feels
http://themusicalvoice.net/?p=13
I am glad I can finally convey in words what disturbs me with Mozart music


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## PlaySalieri

Jacck;1446296[B said:


> ]Mozart is quite fashionable now thanks to Miloš Forman. But there were times when he was obscure.[/B] I personally recognize his talent, but am not a fan of his music. It seems to lack depth and emotion. Most of it seems like superficial entertainment music to amuse the nobles at their teaparties and in their saloons. It is all so cheerful, playful and hence superficial. There are no dark themes and emotions which could lend the music some emotional depth. And it is not a problem with the era. I do not have these feelings towards Haydn, whose music sounds more mature and deeper to me.
> 
> concerning rock, there is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, whose purpose is to preserve rock music for future generations
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_and_Roll_Hall_of_Fame
> you also do not recognize how much the internet is reshaping our musical culture. Future generations will have all the music of humankind and of all ages only a couple of clicks away. Rock and prog rock is gaining new fans all the time even among the youngest generations.


Nonsense - what I wrote about Mozart was true before Amadeus (1984). The film had little long term impact on Mozart's reputation which was and remains supreme.


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## Enthusiast

Jacck said:


> Mozart is quite fashionable now thanks to Miloš Forman. But there were times when he was obscure. I personally recognize his talent, but am not a fan of his music. It seems to lack depth and emotion. Most of it seems like superficial entertainment music to amuse the nobles at their teaparties and in their saloons. It is all so cheerful, playful and hence superficial. There are no dark themes and emotions which could lend the music some emotional depth. And it is not a problem with the era. I do not have these feelings towards Haydn, whose music sounds more mature and deeper to me.


It always seems that those who dis Mozart have so little idea of what is in his music. Why talk about things so definitively when you have so little knowledge of them? It is fine not to like it - and do please continue to ignore his music - but we don't need ill-informed theories about what is wrong with it. You even get the comparison with (the very great) Haydn wrong.


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## Star

Jacck said:


> Mozart is quite fashionable now thanks to Miloš Forman. But there were times when he was obscure. I personally recognize his talent, but am not a fan of his music. *It seems to lack depth and emotion. Most of it seems like superficial entertainment music to amuse the nobles at their teaparties and in their saloons.* It is all so cheerful, playful and hence superficial. There are no dark themes and emotions which could lend the music some emotional depth. And it is not a problem with the era. I do not have these feelings towards Haydn, whose music sounds more mature and deeper to me.
> 
> concerning rock, there is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, whose purpose is to preserve rock music for future generations
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_and_Roll_Hall_of_Fame
> you also do not recognize how much the internet is reshaping our musical culture. Future generations will have all the music of humankind and of all ages only a couple of clicks away. Rock and prog rock is gaining new fans all the time even among the youngest generations.


Amadeus certainly brought Mozart to peopke's attention although most of it was historical nonsense, based on theories which are completely bogus. I just wonder in writing such things how much you have heard of Mozart and whether your own listening to him he's not superficial in itself . Of course some of the music was written to amuse the nobles at their tea-parties, but Haydn wrote A stack of eminently forgettable music for his employer to play some weird instrument. We simply do not judge composers by these things. Just listen to the statue scene of Don Giovanni and you'll see there is nothing superficial about it.


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## janxharris

Phil loves classical said:


> They still had a strong sense of structure. But the Genesis is quite loose I find.


Certainly the 'Willow Farm' section was a different song altogether that they found worked at that point in the piece - but is this any different from symphonies with four movements all of which aren't particularly related? Of course, Beethoven, in his fifth, did relate the material (if only rhythmically).


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## Jacck

Enthusiast said:


> It always seems that those who dis Mozart have so little idea of what is in his music. Why talk about things so definitively when you have so little knowledge of them? It is fine not to like it - and do please continue to ignore his music - but we don't need ill-informed theories about what is wrong with it. You even get the comparison with (the very great) Haydn wrong.


I think it is obvious that I talk from a subjective perspective, that is how his music effects me and that it creates little emotions in me. And I attribute this fact to the lack of emotional content within the music itself. And I am not the only one who thinks that
http://themusicalvoice.net/?p=13


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## janxharris

Star said:


> Amadeus certainly brought Mozart to peopke's attention although most of it was historical nonsense, based on theories which are completely bogus. I just wonder in writing such things how much you have heard of Mozart and whether your own listening to him he's not superficial in itself . Of course some of the music was written to amuse the nobles at their tea-parties, but Haydn wrote A stack of eminently forgettable music for his employer to play some weird instrument. We simply do not judge composers by these things. Just listen to the statue scene of Don Giovanni and you'll see there is nothing superficial about it.


Do you mean this?


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## Enthusiast

Jacck said:


> concerning rock, there is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, whose purpose is to preserve rock music for future generations
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_and_Roll_Hall_of_Fame
> you also do not recognize how much the internet is reshaping our musical culture. Future generations will have all the music of humankind and of all ages only a couple of clicks away. Rock and prog rock is gaining new fans all the time even among the youngest generations.


It is true, I think, that some rock music will survive but I am not convinced that much prog rock will. The problem for the survival of much of the rock music from the 60s, 70s and 80s is that it will just be recordings. Rock was always at its best as a live experience (IMO). It does seem to me, though, that a lot of the top young bands of today are mostly recycling old ideas. The best of them do so in very convincing and original ways and I think that is how rock music is surviving. It seems there will always be a need for music that does what good rock does for young people ... and for old people like me who sometimes want to feel young again for a few hours. People come to the great rock of 30+ years ago via the bands of today - I'm not talking about the tribute acts - and go on the explore the legends of the past via recordings. But is this happening with prog rock? I am not aware that it is, although I acknowledge that some of the old albums do continue to sell.

I wonder, if a lot of prog rock was attempting to achieve something similar to the classical music of a distant past (I think Larkenfield was saying something vaguely similar in a much more appreciative way a few posts back) then might it be the case that the obvious modern live experience of it for many will be to go to classical concerts? I find it hard to imagine such an audience going back to listen to the prog rock legends of the past but, obviously, this thread shows I am wrong! IMO, though, the best prog rock drew more from progressive jazz than from classical music.


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## Enthusiast

Jacck said:


> I think it is obvious that I talk from a subjective perspective, that is how his music effects me and that it creates little emotions in me. And I attribute this fact to the lack of emotional content within the music itself. And I am not the only one who thinks that
> http://themusicalvoice.net/?p=13


Yes, sorry, subjective but oh so wrong! I was thinking that you often post perceptively and interestingly ... so why make a break with that habit?


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## Guest

Reflecting on the notion that 'Mozart lacks emotion/depth/emotional depth', I find that this might only be the case if one's own understanding of the word 'emotion' does not recognise the complete range of emotional states that humans enjoy.

It's all very well being an emotional thrill-seeker - the highs and lows of joy, angst and anger that many find in some of the grand romantic compositions - but we're all in some kind of emotional state at all times - even if it's calm, reflective, alert, attentive, somnolent, playful. There's a long list of emotional states, and composers like Haydn and Mozart explore some of these to the satisfaction of many listeners, just as Mahler and Wagner explored sorrow, power and desolation, and just as Genesis' works move from melancholy to mania, reflection to rage.

It's one of the reasons why both pop/rock and classical are, taken together, so satisfying. There's probably music for every mood in the A-Z - from Abba and Alkan to Zappa and Zemlinsky.


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## janxharris

Jacck said:


> It seems to lack depth and emotion.


You must recognise many exceptions surely? The depth of emotion Mozart evokes in the second movement of his 23rd Piano Concerto is second to none I'd say. Astonishing and sublime music.


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## janxharris

And how refreshing to hear a composer write a piece without waffling on ad infinitum.


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## Jacck

janxharris said:


> You must recognise many exceptions surely? The depth of emotion Mozart evokes in the second movement of his 23rd Piano Concerto is second to none I'd say. Astonishing and sublime music.


yes, this is emotional. I do not hate all of Mozart. There are pieces I like quite a lot, for example the Divertimento for strings or Sinfonia concertante. But I mostly distaste his too sweet and light music. I like music with a little darkness in it, or even dissonace and chaos, not the sublime perfection of Mozart. Take for example any piano sonata by Mozart, how light and sweet music it is, and compare it to Liszt, Schumann, Beethoven or any other composer, which creates emotional tension by having dark themes alternating with light/melodic themes. The Liszt sonata that I linked a couple of pages back is a perfect example, dark/chaotic/fast motifs alternate with a beautiful melody. Or my recent discovery Alkan is another example


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## janxharris

Jacck said:


> yes, this is emotional. I do not hate all of Mozart. There are pieces I like quite a lot, for example the Divertimento for strings or Sinfonia concertante. But I mostly distaste his too sweet and light music. I like music with a little darkness in it, or even dissonace and chaos, not the sublime perfection of Mozart. Take for example any piano sonata by Mozart, how light and sweet music it is, and compare it to Liszt, Schumann, Beethoven or any other composer, which creates emotional tension by having dark themes alternating with light/melodic themes. The Liszt sonata that I linked a couple of pages back is a perfect example, dark/chaotic/fast motifs alternate with a beautiful melody. Or my recent discovery Alkan is another example


Still working my way through your suggestions..


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## Enthusiast

Jacck said:


> Take for example any piano sonata by Mozart, how light and sweet music it is


Do listen to some of Friedrich Gulda's recordings as a gateway to help get over that prejudice! I would recommend K576 as an example. Gulda does this in a live performance on YouTube - 



 - but his commercially available recording is perhaps even better (despite some distortion in his - self-made - recordings of the sonatas). If it seems like cheating to offer up such a late work then try, also, the Sonata Semplice (also late - K545 - but one that probably exemplifies the type of thing you hate) or K310 or K332 or K457. Or ... so many others! Programme all the ones I list and let it sink into your mind! You may have a wonderful period of new discovery ahead of you!

Gulda made his recordings of the Mozart sonatas after returning to playing classical music following a long rejection of it because he hated the polite trappings of the classical music scene. During this period he had a career as a fairly distinguished jazz musician. His use of a Bosendorfer piano for his Mozart (rather than the more usual Steinway) may also help to distance his Mozart from the sort of thing you seem to deplore.


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## PlaySalieri

Jacck said:


> yes, this is emotional. I do not hate all of Mozart. There are pieces I like quite a lot, for example the Divertimento for strings or Sinfonia concertante. But I mostly distaste his too sweet and light music. I like music with a little darkness in it, or even dissonace and chaos, not the sublime perfection of Mozart. *Take for example any piano sonata by Mozart, how light and sweet music it is, *and compare it to Liszt, Schumann, Beethoven or any other composer, which creates emotional tension by having dark themes alternating with light/melodic themes. The Liszt sonata that I linked a couple of pages back is a perfect example, dark/chaotic/fast motifs alternate with a beautiful melody. Or my recent discovery Alkan is another example


sweeping generalisation disproven by the minor key sonatas

contrasting dark and light themes - Mozart did it before any of the composers you name - in fact even in the major key works tension of the music is often driven by this technique - lofty and pompous theme followed by something seemingly trivial - as in the jupiter sy. or darkness and light - as in the don giovanni overture or menance and melancholy - as in the d minor pc.


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## janxharris

stomanek said:


> Strange statements.
> 
> Wagner was an opera composer and Liszt was primarily a composer for solo piano who also composed some tone poems, not many - he was not a major orchestral composer. Brahms, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky and far more notable composers than Liszt continued with the classical period forms. R Strauss and Wagner also considered Mozart (and in Wagner's case Beethoven too) to be the pinnacle of music.


I guess, yes, I should said in the context of works of the symphonic poem type. I was suggesting that the Genesis piece was more in this loose style where the poetic idea is the formative element.



> Your reply to Phil's point that Genesis cant hold a candle to structure and form in Mozart really makes no sense.
> 
> I think a lot of pop music will eventually be forgotten - the tribute bands are sustained by baby boomer interest, people of my age - once we are gone, who is going to listen and play? Today's young people? I doubt it. Who listens to Glen Miller these days? Virtually nobody - yet in the 30s he was the big thing in popular big band music - all the people from that generation are dead and interest in Miller's music died with them.


Well, I can't imaging Supper's Ready not becoming a classic - but I could be wrong. Have seen plenty of very young tribute acts (see youtube) inspired by the music of bands like 'Rush' for example.



> Mozart is much more alive than any pop - it is played around the world in concert halls, opera houses, radio, widely played by amateur and professional musicians, taught in conservatoires and used for soundtracks in countless films.


I don't really actually consider the Genesis piece as pop - though it is classified as such.



> You cant compare 4 balding deadbeats with beer bellies doing tribute acts in pubs with that.


I believe there a lot of tribute acts touring theatres.


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## janxharris

Speaking of Rush - this song, inspired by the Coleridge poem, is very beautiful and atmospheric and has symphonic potential I'd say:


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## Haydn70

stomanek said:


> I think a lot of pop music will eventually be forgotten - the tribute bands are sustained by baby boomer interest, people of my age - once we are gone, who is going to listen and play? Today's young people? I doubt it. Who listens to Glen Miller these days? Virtually nobody - yet in the 30s he was the big thing in popular big band music - all the people from that generation are dead and interest in Miller's music died with them.


Exactly. The only thing I would change in the above-post is to say that VIRTUALLY ALL pop music will be forgotten.

Very VERY few products of popular culture transcend their own time, their own time defined by the lifespan of the people who grew up with and consumed the particular product. True, there are people in their 20s and 30s who like 60s and 70s music--usually because their parents grew up with it, love it and play it and they (the children) grow to love it--but with each passing generation, the music fades out and is eventually of no interest to anyone.

Sirius XM radio offers various stations playing popular music from specific decades: "80s on 8", "70s on 7", "60s on 6", etc. There is no "20s on 2" or "30s on 3". Why not? Because the generations that listened to that music are gone or just about gone. No demand for it.

And the same will happen to 60s, 70s, 80s, etc., popular music. I have friends who love the Beatles and think their music will forever. Ridiculous. In 50 years virtually no one will be listening to it. And they certainly won't be listening to Genesis.

So those of you that might disagree...do you have any interest in the popular music from 1918?

The only popular music that survives tends to be utilitarian stuff, specifically holiday music.


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## Nereffid

ArsMusica said:


> So those of you that might disagree...do you have any interest in the popular music from 1918?


That's a fair point, but as to how soon the Beatles and their best-loved peers will fade from memory, I think it's too early to tell. The popular music of 1918 had gone the way of the dodo by 1968, but the same can't be said of the popular music of 1968, 50 years later. The classical music audience became increasingly backward-looking over the course of the 19th and especially the 20th centuries, and I wouldn't be too quick to rule out something similar happening with some older popular music.

One should probably note that virtually all _classical_ music has also been forgotten (how many orchestras have Pleyel's symphonies in their repertoire these days?). And, for added complication, many classical fans turn their noses up at much of the classical music of the past century.


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## Haydn70

Nereffid said:


> The popular music of 1918 had gone the way of the dodo by 1968, but the same can't be said of the popular music of 1968, 50 years later.


And that is because the people that grew up with the music of the Beatles ARE STILL ALIVE! (Which was central to the point I was making in my previous post.) By the year 2068 "Hey Jude" will have suffered the same fate as "I Want To Shimmy" or "Somebody Stole My Gal".


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## Art Rock

Your calculations are off by 50 years.... you're comparing 1918/1968 and 1968/2068.


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## Jacck

ArsMusica said:


> And that is because the people that grew up with the music of the Beatles ARE STILL ALIVE! (Which was central to the point I was making in my previous post.)


the crucial difference is the recording technology. There was no recording technology in the 19th or early 20th century, hence the music disappeared forever. Had the music been preserved in the form of recordings, I bet some people would be listening to it today. The main reason why classical survives is the musical notation. But people in 2100 will be able to play music from 1970 and experience it and it will no doubt find some fans. Of course only the best of the best works will be remembered.


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## Bluecrab

stomanek said:


> Mozart is much more alive than any pop - it is played around the world in concert halls, opera houses, radio, widely played by amateur and professional musicians, taught in conservatoires and used for soundtracks in countless films.


This comment is ambiguous to me ("more alive than any pop" - what is that supposed to mean?). But if you're trying to say that there will be more Mozart than pop music playing tonight across all of the venues in the major cities of the world, I'm afraid you're sadly mistaken. Let's take New York City as an example. If you want to find Mozart live, you have a handful of choices: Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Miller Theater, Symphony Space, and a couple of others. Of course, there's no guarantee that Mozart will be on tonight's program in any of these places. Now, think of all of the rock and jazz clubs in Manhattan alone. There are dozens. Then consider that if you go to any bar or informal restaurant, you're going to hear some form of pop music (could be live, jukebox, streaming radio, or some other format). Mozart's music won't be found in any of those venues - it would run away the customers. I'm willing to wager that the same will hold true in any other major city in North America or Europe.

More popular music that classical music is played by amateur and professional musicians. More popular music (Philip Glass, anyone?) is played in film scores than that of Mozart.

You're indulging in wishful thinking.


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## Haydn70

I wrote: "I have friends who love the Beatles and think their music will forever. Ridiculous. In 50 years virtually no one will be listening to it. And they certainly won't be listening to Genesis." So that would be 2018 + 50 = 2068 which I comparing to 1968.

My other comparison was today vs. 1918.

Nowhere did I compare 1918/1968.


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## Art Rock

No but nereffid, whose post you countered, did. Read again, your argument is off in #191.


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## Haydn70

Jacck said:


> the crucial difference is the recording technology. There was no recording technology in the 19th or early 20th century, hence the music disappeared forever. Had the music been preserved in the form of recordings, I bet some people would be listening to it today. The main reason why classical survives is the musical notation. But people in 2100 will be able to play music from 1970 and experience it and it will no doubt find some fans. Of course only the best of the best works will be remembered.


Recording technology has nothing to do with it. There are plenty of CDs of music ofrom the 40s and 50s and 60s currently available which are ignored by the 20 and 30-something crowd. They didn't grow up with it and couldn't care less about it.

Thought experiment: A record company decides to release a multi-CD set of the greatest popular music hits of America or Germany or England or France or fill in your country, from 1900-1920. Well, no company would do that because there is virtually no interest in that music anywhere!

No one in 2100 is going to care about 1970s popular music even if there are hundreds of thousands of CD around.


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## Jacck

ArsMusica said:


> Recording technology has nothing to do with it. There are CDs of music of the 40s and 50s and 60s which are ignored by the 20 and 30-something crowd. They didn't grow up with it and couldn't care less about it. Thought experiment: A record company decides to release a multi-CD set of the greatest popular music hits of America or Germany or England or France or fill in your country, from 1900-1920. Well, no company would do that because there is virtually no interest in that music anywhere! No one in 2100 is going to care about 1970s popular music even if there are hundreds of thousands of CD around.


CDs wont be around in 2100. They are dead even now. Everything will be digital and everything will be available online via streaming. Any rights for music recorded in 1970 will be long expired and the music will be public domain. The beginning of good quality recording technology are the 1960's. Most stuff recorded before this period is noisy and that is the main reason why it is avoided. I am not that old myself (late thirties) and switched to classical later, after a period of enjoying mostly rock and live music (concerti) in my youth. The current young ones will evolve their listening preferences too.


----------



## Haydn70

Jacck said:


> CDs wont be around in 2100. They are dead even now. Everything will be digital and everything will be available online via streaming. Any rights for music recorded in 1970 will be long expired and the music will be public domain. The beginning of good quality recording technology are the 1960's. Most stuff recorded before this period is noisy and that is the main reason why it is avoided. I am not that old myself (late thirties) and switched to classical later, after a period of enjoying mostly rock and live music (concerti) in my youth. The current young ones will evolve their listening preferences too.


Very good points about CDs and digital...my mistake there.

But that doesn't change my view at all. It doesn't make any difference in what format popular music from the 1970s or 1960s or 1990s will be available. And the popular domain issue is also irrelevant. A 20-year old in 2100 will be listening to the popular music of his time and have zero interest in popular music that is 100 years old, just like 99.99% of people have done for years.

Let me ask you Jacck, and answer honestly: if the popular music of 1900-1920 was readily available do you REALLY think you would have serious interest in it?


----------



## Art Rock

The popular music of the 20s and 30s is still very much alive, even though most people who enjoyed it then are gone. The Great American Songbook, anybody?


----------



## Jacck

ArsMusica said:


> But that doesn't change my view at all. It doesn't make any difference in what format popular music from the 1970s or 1960s or 1990s will be available. And the popular domain issue is also irrelevant. A 20-year old in 2100 will be listening to the popular music of his time and have zero interest in popular music that is 100 years old, just like 99.99% of people have done for years. Let me ask you Jacck, and answer honestly: if the popular music of 1900-1920 was readily available do you REALLY think you would have serious interest in it?


I would definitely explore the music of that period and if I enjoyed it, I would listen to it. That is happening even today. Let us be honest, the pop music of the 1990's, 2000's and 2010's is mosty crap and will disappear in most likelihood. I find myself turning to the music of the 1960's and 1970's because the music then was superior and I am not the only one. Just read the comments under youtube videos of music from 1970's, there are plenty of old and also young people who are discovering this music thanks to streaming and ready availability. So people of the future, who will have this huge pool of music from all periods will taste all of it and pick what they like. And so the rock from 1970 will survive because it is a good quality music.


----------



## Guest

ArsMusica said:


> if the popular music of 1900-1920 was readily available do you REALLY think you would have serious interest in it?


I still listen to music in the style of the 20s and 30s...The Temperance Seven anyone?

Predicting the music that will be carried into the future is a risky business, especially if you base it only on the past.


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## Haydn70

MacLeod said:


> Predicting the music that will be carried into the future is a risky business, especially if you base it only on the past.


Not a risky business at all.


----------



## Haydn70

Jacck said:


> And so the rock from 1970 will survive because it is a good quality music.


No it won't. 50s 60 70s...none of it will. But if I had to pick a decade as a candidate for survival it certainly wouldn't be the 1970s! Disco??????? Haha!!


----------



## EdwardBast

ArsMusica said:


> I wrote: "I have friends who love the Beatles and think their music will forever. Ridiculous. In 50 years virtually no one will be listening to it. And they certainly won't be listening to Genesis." So that would be 2018 + 50 = 2068 which I comparing to 1968.
> 
> My other comparison was today vs. 1918.
> 
> Nowhere did I compare 1918/1968.


There are a couple of dubious assumptions underlying your argument. First, that Genesis, that under discussion in this thread at least, is popular music. Some prog rock was composed and is listened to today as art music. Some music schools have even begun to support and facilitate ensembles to perform music in this genre. The music of the Beatles has been fully notated and is available to anyone who wants to perform it. Moreover, the concept of a definitive, authentic text in the classical sense has taken hold more broadly in the world of alternative art music. Much music by Zappa, King Crimson, Henry Cow, etc., exists--or existed--in notated form. I could easily envision concerts decades hence performed by professional prog rock ensembles devoted to this kind of music. Popular music of the past meeting the criteria I have outlined above (definitive texts and musicians trained to perform it), like Johann Strauss waltzes, is still performed today. To assume that the more ambitious alternative art music of the late 20thc will fall into oblivion is presumptuous.


----------



## Jacck

ArsMusica said:


> No it won't. 50s 60 70s...none of it will. But if I had to pick a decade as a candidate for survival it certainly wouldn't be the 1970s! Disco??????? Haha!!


1970's disco? You do not know much about rock music, do you? 
the 1970's is the best decade for non-classical music of the 20'th century
https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/news/a15896/best-decade-music-history/
here you have some samples of the awesome music from the 1970's. And this music was composed before I was born and my parents did not listen to it


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## Haydn70

Jacck said:


> 1970's disco? You do not know much about rock music, do you?
> the 1970's is the best decade for non-classical music of the 20'th century
> https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/news/a15896/best-decade-music-history/
> here you have some samples of the awesome music from the 1970's. And this music was composed before I was born and my parents did not listen to it


In fact I was born in 1952 and played in rock bands all through the 70s...playing Moody Blues, The Band, Neil Young, Doobie Bros., Frampton, Elton John, Eagles, etc. etc. As such I don't need any education about the popular music of the decade from you.


----------



## janxharris

ArsMusica said:


> In fact I was born in 1952 and played in rock bands all through the 70s...playing Moody Blues, The Band, Neil Young, Doobie Bros., Frampton, Elton John, Eagles, etc. etc. As such I don't need any education about the popular music of the decade from you.


Have you listened to the OP piece?


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## Bluecrab

ArsMusica said:


> In fact I was born in 1952 and played in rock bands all through the 70s...playing Moody Blues, The Band, Neil Young, Doobie Bros., Frampton, Elton John, Eagles, etc. etc. As such I don't need any education about the popular music of the decade from you.


No Allman Brothers covers? Just curious.


----------



## PlaySalieri

EdwardBast said:


> There are a couple of dubious assumptions underlying your argument. First, that Genesis, that under discussion in this thread at least, is popular music. Some prog rock was composed and is listened to today as art music. Some music schools have even begun to support and facilitate ensembles to perform music in this genre. The music of the Beatles has been fully notated and is available to anyone who wants to perform it. Moreover, the concept of a definitive, authentic text in the classical sense has taken hold more broadly in the world of alternative art music. Much music by Zappa, King Crimson, Henry Cow, etc., exists--or existed--in notated form. I could easily envision concerts decades hence performed by professional prog rock ensembles devoted to this kind of music. Popular music of the past meeting the criteria I have outlined above (definitive texts and musicians trained to perform it), like Johann Strauss waltzes, is still performed today. To assume that the more ambitious alternative art music of the late 20thc will fall into oblivion is presumptuous.


I think its pretty much irrelevant whether prog rock is pop or not - but that said it has many of the characteristics of pop - a small group of players with bass guitar, drum set, lead singer - it falls within the broad definition of pop. It is at any rate popular music if not pop.
GCSE and A level courses feature popular music modules - and some music schools may offer the opportunity to perform popular music and many pop musicians have had their music notated. But none of these facts means that interest in popular music of the 50s-70s will not decline over time. The evidence seems to point towards a decline - as has been noted - popular music from the 20s and 30s has little interest in it today - but classical music from the 20s and 30s is still recorded and played in concert halls - and provide staple repertoire for soloists and orchestras in conservatoires.


----------



## Nereffid

stomanek said:


> The evidence seems to point towards a decline - as has been noted - popular music from the 20s and 30s has little interest in it today - but classical music from the 20s and 30s is still recorded and played in concert halls - and provide staple repertoire for soloists and orchestras in conservatoires.


But still I'm not convinced about how valuable an example the 10s/20s/30s provide as regards the survival of 60s and 70s music. Undoubtedly most popular music will vanish from public memory; that's inevitable and it happens to classical music too (_what proportion_ of classical music from the 20s and 30s is still played in concert halls?). But technological and social changes since the 50s & 60s have altered how the public at large engages with music, making it harder (I think) to extrapolate from earlier decades. The music of the past is more available now than it was 50 or 100 years ago and it seems to be preserving more of an audience. So it's harder to judge how things will play now; certainly a flat assertion that X happened before, and therefore X will happen again in the same way is hard to support. Especially given what's already happened in classical music: Audiences 200 years ago expected new music all the time, but gradually they became more backward-looking - to the extent that the classical music of the past 60+ years is rejected by most of the classical audience.


----------



## janxharris

Jacck said:


> not even mentioning the crazy polyphony is Mass in B minor etc (just listen to the Kyrie at the beginning)


I have listened to this Kyrie a number of times now but it just doesn't work for me.


----------



## Larkenfield

ArsMusica said:


> No it won't. 50s 60 70s...none of it will. But if I had to pick a decade as a candidate for survival it certainly wouldn't be the 1970s! Disco??????? Haha!!


You're right. After almost 40 years, Disco has been almost entirely forgotten.  ... So much for surefire predictions.

On the other hand, if it's been recorded it will be remembered even if it's never popular again. Even early Edison cylinders from the turn of the 20th century, over 120 years ago, are still being listened to, and that means the music will survive and still available to be heard. Recordings changed everything from the 19th century. No one can predict what won't survive.


----------



## Jacck

janxharris said:


> I have listened to this Kyrie a number of times now but it just doesn't work for me.


it's OK, everybody is different. Out of the holy BBM trinity, Bach was for me the easiest to get into, then Beethoven and least accessible is Mozart. I listened to the whole Mass B Minor 2 times in its entirety and even following the Latin text (which is frankly trivial) and I quite like it. Buch the polyphony definitely did not originate with Bach. It originated in the Middle Ages and reached its pinnacle in the Renaissance with Joasquin Desprez etc. Just look at this short video




at the pinnacle of the art, they had masses for 60 voices




so Bach was only building on a much older tradition and in this respect his achievements do not look that original. He mostly built on the shoulders of those who came before him. But maybe try his Brandenburg concerti. It was my first encounter with Bach. 3 listenings and it will get under your skin. It is almost prog-rocky


----------



## janxharris

Jacck said:


> it's OK, everybody is different. Out of the holy BBM trinity, Bach was for me the easiest to get into, then Beethoven and least accessible is Mozart. I listened to the whole Mass B Minor 2 times in its entirety and even following the Latin text (which is frankly trivial) and I quite like it. Buch the polyphony definitely did not originate with Bach. It originated in the Middle Ages and reached its pinnacle in the Renaissance with Joasquin Desprez etc. Just look at this short video
> 
> 
> 
> 
> at the pinnacle of the art, they had masses for 60 voices
> 
> 
> 
> 
> so Bach was only building on a much older tradition and in this respect his achievements do not look that original. He mostly built on the shoulders of those who came before him. But maybe try his Brandenburg concerti. It was my first encounter with Bach. 3 listenings and it will get under your skin. It is almost prog-rocky


Ta. I'm pretty familiar with the Brandenburg Concertos and remember enjoying them.

To be fair to Bach and his mass I often find the style of singing extremely off-putting.


----------



## PlaySalieri

Larkenfield said:


> You're right. After almost 40 years, Disco has been almost entirely forgotten.  ... So much for surefire predictions.
> 
> On the other hand, if it's been recorded it will be remembered even if it's never popular again. Even early Edison cylinders from the turn of the 20th century, over 120 years ago, are still being listened to, and that means the music will survive and still available to be heard. Recordings changed everything from the 19th century. No one can predict what won't survive.


Edison cylinders are recalled because they are the first recordings.

why would anyone, in 50 years - bother listening to 70s disco pap?

Well we will have to see - You Tube is certainly a great historical resource for music of all kinds and I do find myself watching vids of various groups and artists from those times (70s/80s)


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## Strange Magic

The fact that everything is now recorded and preserved, and that the sheer volume/quantity of everything so recorded grows exponentially, ensures both that nothing will be forgotten and nothing will be paramount. 500 years from now, someone will be listening to disco, someone to flamenco, someone to Genesis, someone to the Semuta Music of Dune. Even Bach will be heard, a tiny individual sound in the white noise....


----------



## starthrower

stomanek said:


> why would anyone, in 50 years - bother listening to 70s disco pap?


People like to dance to this stuff. It's not sit down listening music. 90 + percent of the world doesn't give a hoot about Mozart or Genesis.


----------



## EdwardBast

stomanek said:


> I think its pretty much irrelevant whether prog rock is pop or not - but that said it has many of the characteristics of pop - a small group of players with bass guitar, drum set, lead singer - it falls within the broad definition of pop. It is at any rate popular music if not pop.
> GCSE and A level courses feature popular music modules - and some music schools may offer the opportunity to perform popular music and many pop musicians have had their music notated. But none of these facts means that interest in popular music of the 50s-70s will not decline over time. The evidence seems to point towards a decline - as has been noted - popular music from the 20s and 30s has little interest in it today - but classical music from the 20s and 30s is still recorded and played in concert halls - and provide staple repertoire for soloists and orchestras in conservatoires.


You are emphasizing the wrong criteria. "Popular music" that is notated and performed by standardized ensembles or keyboard survives. Scott Joplin, Johann Strauss and Donizetti, for example, are still performed. Songs from Broadway musicals are still going strong after nearly a century. Folk songs from the 19thc and earlier are still regularly performed. The lyrics of the popular music to which you refer from the 20s and 30s generally treats trivial subject matter. Popular music with serious content often survives. "Strange Fruit" and "Fables of Faubus" will be known 100 years from now because they reflect crucial social history. So does a considerable body of prog rock--Genesis, not so much. 



stomanek said:


> why would anyone, in 50 years - bother listening to 70s disco pap?


This thread has nothing to do with disco or other popular dance music.


----------



## Haydn70

Bluecrab said:


> No Allman Brothers covers? Just curious.


Just one song: Blue Sky.


----------



## Haydn70

EdwardBast said:


> Scott Joplin, Johann Strauss and Donizetti, for example, are still performed.


Donizetti does NOT fall under the classification of popular music. It is Western art music from the early Romantic period. The popular music of that time was folk music.

Strauss is considered light music. A certain popular appeal? Yes. But popular music in the sense of 3-chord or 4-chord rock, no.


----------



## janxharris

ArsMusica said:


> Donizetti does NOT fall under the classification of popular music. It is Western art music from the early Romantic period. The popular music of that time was folk music.
> 
> Strauss is considered light music. A certain popular appeal? Yes. But popular music in the sense of 3-chord or 4-chord rock, no.


The OP is about one piece in particular which isn't 3 chord rock.


----------



## Haydn70

I will say it once more: it is irrelevant how much music may be available in, let's say, 100 years. Virtually no one will be listening to the popular music of today or 1968 or 1918. Sure, there will be an extremely small number of people listening to this or that particular song, but none of that music will be playing an active or even semi-active role in the cultural life. That music will no be "alive" in any important way. It will not be "alive" in the way that the music of Monteverdi, Bach, Haydn, etc. is today.

There are millions of listeners alive TODAY who couldn't care less about the Beatles and their music is still highly present in the current music scene. Highly present in many ways but still ignored by many! And it is present because that generation is still alive and kicking, participating in the music industry and, more to the point, in the TV and movie industry. And those industries are continually using their music. In 30 years a different generation will be running those industries and those people will be using the music *they *grew up with.

Back to the Beatles: if their music can be ignored by so many at this time, when it is readily available and so 'in our faces', so to speak, what will happen when that is not the case?


----------



## Haydn70

janxharris said:


> Have you listened to the OP piece?


Yes, I did.

A bandmate of mine in the early 70s was a huge prog rock fan. He played for me large doses of ELP, Genesis, Gentle Giant, Yes, Premiata Forneria Marconi, etc. While my knowledge of prog rock is far from encyclopedic I believe it is good enough for me to discuss it intelligently.


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## DaveM

You can't talk about disco without mentioning:


----------



## Haydn70

Jacck said:


> it's OK, everybody is different. Out of the holy BBM trinity, Bach was for me the easiest to get into, then Beethoven and least accessible is Mozart. I listened to the whole Mass B Minor 2 times in its entirety and even following the Latin text (which is frankly trivial) and I quite like it. Buch the polyphony definitely did not originate with Bach. It originated in the Middle Ages and reached its pinnacle in the Renaissance with Joasquin Desprez etc. Just look at this short video
> 
> 
> 
> 
> at the pinnacle of the art, they had masses for 60 voices
> 
> 
> 
> 
> so Bach was only building on a much older tradition and in this respect his achievements do not look that original. He mostly built on the shoulders of those who came before him. But maybe try his Brandenburg concerti. It was my first encounter with Bach. 3 listenings and it will get under your skin. It is almost prog-rocky


Counterpoint reached its pinnacle with J.S. Bach. Josquin was a very great composer but nothing he, or any other composer, wrote matched Bach's _Art of the Fugue_. THAT work is the pinnacle of counterpoint.

And it can be argued that as far as Renaissance polyphony Palestrina was the greatest.


----------



## PlaySalieri

EdwardBast said:


> You are emphasizing the wrong criteria. "Popular music" that is notated and performed by standardized ensembles or keyboard survives. Scott Joplin, Johann Strauss and Donizetti, for example, are still performed. Songs from Broadway musicals are still going strong after nearly a century. Folk songs from the 19thc and earlier are still regularly performed. The lyrics of the popular music to which you refer from the 20s and 30s generally treats trivial subject matter. Popular music with serious content often survives. "Strange Fruit" and "Fables of Faubus" will be known 100 years from now because they reflect crucial social history. So does a considerable body of prog rock--Genesis, not so much.
> 
> This thread has nothing to do with disco or other popular dance music.


I would dispute some of what you say here. J Strauss was a classical composer - his pieces - though often light, belong in the domain of classical music. Donizetti composed serious operas (ie Lucia) as well as lighter pieces. Scott Joplin I grant you was ragtime and therefore fall into the popular music category.
Broadway musicals? A handful are still performed but the music is becoming more obscure with each passing decade.
Folk music does seem to have survived.


----------



## Haydn70

stomanek said:


> I would dispute some of what you say here. J Strauss was a classical composer - his pieces - though often light, belong in the domain of classical music.


Exactly.

The sleight of hand Mr. Bast tried, i.e., calling lighter classical music popular music, is a trick I have encountered many times through the years when having 'classical music vs. popular music' discussions. Sorry Mr. Bast, I doesn't work.


----------



## DaveM

Disco was a fun era, but much (not all -Saturday Night Fever stuff was a classic) of the music was thin. It stopped as though dropped off a cliff much as the styles of the '70s:


----------



## Haydn70

DaveM said:


> Disco was a fun era, but much (not all -Saturday Night Fever stuff was a classic) of the music was thin. It stopped as though dropped off a cliff much as the styles of the '70s


Disco music was very thin...but even the best of popular music is not much "thicker".


----------



## Strange Magic

DaveM said:


> Disco was a fun era, but much (not all -Saturday Night Fever stuff was a classic) of the music was thin. It stopped as though dropped off a cliff much as the styles of the '70s.


Disco "died" only in the sense that it subtly morphed into several other genres in the 1980s, with other artists taking up the basic premise--Madonna, Billy Idol, Laura Branigan, so many others. It continued on through the 1990s and beyond, and under the generic label "Dance" continues alive and well today. It will die when no one dances anymore, and maybe not even then.


----------



## KenOC

Disco will never die!


----------



## Room2201974

ArsMusica said:


> Disco music was very thin...but even the best of popular music is not much "thicker".


_The Expanding Waistlines Of Meatloaf vs. Rossini As The Soul Function Of Musical Quality_, the failed Ph.D dissertation of Peter Schickele. Suppers ready!


----------



## DaveM

Strange Magic said:


> Disco "died" only in the sense that it subtly morphed into several other genres in the 1980s, with other artists taking up the basic premise--Madonna, Billy Idol, Laura Branigan, so many others. It continued on through the 1990s and beyond, and under the generic label "Dance" continues alive and well today. It will die when no one dances anymore, and maybe not even then.


If it morphs to the point that it's unrecognizable then IMO it's dead. I doubt that anyone thinks of Madonna as having done a variation of disco.


----------



## German Shepherd

Supper's Ready is a very great song, I have much respect for early Genesis


----------



## Strange Magic

DaveM said:


> If it morphs to the point that it's unrecognizable then IMO it's dead. I doubt that anyone thinks of Madonna as having done a variation of disco.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_on_a_Dance_Floor


----------



## EdwardBast

stomanek said:


> I would dispute some of what you say here. J Strauss was a classical composer - his pieces - though often light, belong in the domain of classical music. Donizetti composed serious operas (ie Lucia) as well as lighter pieces. Scott Joplin I grant you was ragtime and therefore fall into the popular music category.
> Broadway musicals? A handful are still performed but the music is becoming more obscure with each passing decade.
> Folk music does seem to have survived.


J Strauss is performed only at Pops concerts. That makes it pop music. Tunes from musicals are now standards which have been recorded and transformed by jazz players for close to a century.

Why are we talking about disco? It doesn't fit the thread and it wasn't even created by human beings.  It was created by an industrial combine unable to deal with the risks of promoting independent creative artists.


----------



## PlaySalieri

EdwardBast said:


> J Strauss is performed only at Pops concerts. That makes it pop music. Tunes from musicals are now standards which have been recorded and transformed by jazz players for close to a century.
> 
> Why are we talking about disco? It doesn't fit the thread and it wasn't even created by human beings.  It was created by an industrial combine unable to deal with the risks of promoting independent creative artists.


So the Vienna NYC is a pop concert then? Why is Strauss recorded on DG, Decca EMI Classical labels by Karajan et al - all classical conductors.

Jazz?

Jazz is already in the coffin waiting for someone to put the cover on - if that is your claim for the longevity of musicals music.

I grant you though the strongest musicals like 42nd st, sound of music, sth pacific, My Fair Lady, Oliver etc will go on for some time as there is a market in Broadway and the West End theatres.


----------



## Nereffid

Of course, classical music has been dead for 60 years, so there's that.


----------



## janxharris

Nereffid said:


> Of course, classical music has been dead for 60 years, so there's that.


Special definition of 'dead'.


----------



## janxharris

Just in case some missed it - Michael Kuhlmann plays Genesis:





To my ears, the harmony is incredibly interesting and unique; tonal, yes, but I cannot confuse any of the songs Kuhlmann plays with any other piece of music. He plays: Firth of Fifth-Hairless Heart-Mad Man Moon-Quiet Earth-Los Endos. This music would not sound out of place at a classic recital I would humbly aver. Shame he didn't include Supper's Ready as, for me, his performance is the only one on youtube I have found aesthetically satisfying.


----------



## Jacck

janxharris said:


> Just in case some missed it - Michael Kuhlmann plays Genesis:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> To my ears, the harmony is incredibly interesting and unique; tonal, yes, but I cannot confuse any of the songs Kuhlmann plays with any other piece of music. He plays: Firth of Fifth-Hairless Heart-Mad Man Moon-Quiet Earth-Los Endos. This music would not sound out of place at a classic recital I would humbly aver. Shame he didn't include Supper's Ready as, for me, his performance is the only one on youtube I have found aesthetically satisfying.


the classical ultraconservatives will frown upon it, just like they smirk at movie soundtracks etc.


----------



## DavidA

MacLeod said:


> *Reflecting on the notion that 'Mozart lacks emotion/depth/emotional depth', I find that this might only be the case if one's own understanding of the word 'emotion' does not recognise the complete range of emotional states that humans enjoy.*
> 
> It's all very well being an emotional thrill-seeker - the highs and lows of joy, angst and anger that many find in some of the grand romantic compositions - but we're all in some kind of emotional state at all times - even if it's calm, reflective, alert, attentive, somnolent, playful. There's a long list of emotional states, and composers like Haydn and Mozart explore some of these to the satisfaction of many listeners, just as Mahler and Wagner explored sorrow, power and desolation, and just as Genesis' works move from melancholy to mania, reflection to rage.
> 
> It's one of the reasons why both pop/rock and classical are, taken together, so satisfying. There's probably music for every mood in the A-Z - from Abba and Alkan to Zappa and Zemlinsky.


There is certainly a huge depth of emotion in Mozart - just take the ending of Figaro with the Count's repentance and the Countesses forgiveness is highly emotionally charged. It is, however, extremely subtly framed so those who like emotion of the 'let's hang our feelings all out' might feel short changed. But Mozart moves me more than any crash-bang-wallop type of emotion even though I like romantic music too


----------



## Enthusiast

Jacck said:


> the classical ultraconservatives will frown upon it, just like they smirk at movie soundtracks etc.


I have no doubt that I can qualify _by your definition_ as an ultra conservative and perhaps that what you feel to be smirking is included in what I intend as reasoned posts that try somehow to make sense of what I feel when I listen to music. But if you really feel that movie soundtracks are classical music then I fear we have very different ideas about what classical music is. It can't be summed up as being a product (any product) of people who were classically trained or simply music played by an orchestra or certain instruments. The thing is, though, that it is film music and most prog rock that is - in any meaningful sense of the word when applied to music for listening to - conservative. Good film music does what it is supposed to do - underlines and supports the drama - and can do so with interesting (but often derivative) soundscapes. As for playing old Genesis on a piano: why not? But doesn't it expose its thinness as music? Is it really much better than those soundtracks of orchestras playing Beatles songs that used to be used as background sound in some department stores.

There! I did manage to smirk.


----------



## Enthusiast

regenmusic said:


> I have figured out the prog rock/classical dichotomy and why classical will always be different than prog rock by the associations of the two genres. Classical has a history that seems "divinely protected" almost, as once you're considered classical, it dissociates you from the drugs, drinking, lewdness that I think has been in popular music since the troubadours and even earlier. As you can see from the trolls on the prog rock forums, classical does not have the same kind of negativity. There is also the literature associated with classical, with the many meanings of that word. Classical embodies the learning of Western civilization passed down through the medium of music.


This post has been responded to quite a bit already and this is partly a response to some of those responses as well. But, first, classical music trolls. Did you ever look at the now defunct UK Amazon classical discussion forum? It ended up with about five contributors after trolls led to the slow exodus of the rest. The punter reviews on that site also show good examples of trolling as well as plenty of aggressively smug reviews, some of which deserve to be trolled.

As for drugs (including alcohol) and rock vs classical music. I think the difference - how destructive drugs have been for rock musicians but not for classical ones - is not really down to genres. It is partly because in rock you can become very very well known when you are still very young and there will always be a good few young people who destroy themselves with or without the help chemicals. With classical musicians this might happen before we have heard of them. And it is partly because of the pressure of being enormously popular while almost constantly touring - the pressure can be immense - rather than because rock musicians like to be intoxicated more than the rest of us.


----------



## janxharris

Enthusiast said:


> I have no doubt that I can qualify _by your definition_ as an ultra conservative and perhaps that what you feel to be smirking is included in what I intend as reasoned posts that try somehow to make sense of what I feel when I listen to music. But if you really feel that movie soundtracks are classical music then I fear we have very different ideas about what classical music is. It can't be summed up as being a product (any product) of people who were classically trained or simply music played by an orchestra or certain instruments. The thing is, though, that it is film music and most prog rock that is - in any meaningful sense of the word when applied to music for listening to - conservative. Good film music does what it is supposed to do - underlines and supports the drama - and can do so with interesting (but derivative) soundscapes. As for playing old Genesis on a piano: why not. But doesn't it expose its thinness as music? Is it really much better than those soundtracks of orchestras playing Beatles songs that used to be used as background sound in some department stores.
> 
> There! I did manage to smirk.


Enthusiast, you honestly would describe the final eight minutes of Supper's Ready as thin? I find it incredibly exciting and as dramatic as, say, the 'Of joys and passions' section of Zarathustra.

Of course, I respect your opinion if you disagree.


----------



## janxharris

For me, it would be tragic if this music was lost to the world. I can't imagine it happening. So, too, if Beethoven's symphonies disappeared and Sibelius's late orchestral works etc.


----------



## Enthusiast

janxharris said:


> Enthusiast, you honestly would describe the final eight minutes of Supper's Ready as thin? I find it incredibly exciting and as dramatic as, say, the 'Of joys and passions' section of Zarathustra.
> 
> Of course, I respect your opinion if you disagree.


I'm afraid I do disagree - but, equally, respect your enjoyment of it. I did quite like this piece as a teenager - I liked Genesis up to Foxtrot, which was my favourite of their albums. I saw them twice. The second time was in a huge venue, an experience that killed their music for me. I hated everything that followed followed Foxtrot - including that double album that came next and that I had eagerly awaited (The Lamb Lies Down ...) and that I have often seen since described as "their masterpiece". I also became bored of the Genesis albums I had enjoyed. I retained some enjoyment for some other prog rock that I had liked but in general I had no trouble buying into the pub rock and punk rock that was growing in popularity or into the concurrent critique of the excesses of prog rock. Their alleged "classical pretensions" were part of that critique but that wasn't what the the problem was for me.

Despite all this history I had never felt that prog rock could do what classical music did for me. The enjoyment I got from it was in the same vein as the enjoyment I later got from the pub and punk rock that "replaced it" for us kids or had also been getting from the great rock from the late 60s and early 70s (Hendrix, Doors, Santana, Van Morrison, Neil Young etc.). But my personal history shows that I was never going to agree with the OP. If it had claimed that Electric Ladyland (Hendrix) was the equal of great classical music I would have had a much harder job saying "no, it's not".

I do (sincerely) admire your enthusiasm and persistence on this question. Enjoy that music! It obviously inspires you a lot and what more can you ask for?


----------



## Guest

Enthusiast said:


> But if you really feel that movie soundtracks are classical music then I fear we have very different ideas about what classical music is. It can't be summed up as being a product (any product) of people who were classically trained or simply music played by an orchestra or certain instruments.
> 
> Good film music does what it is supposed to do - underlines and supports the drama - and can do so with interesting (but derivative) soundscapes.


I feel this is rather unfair on composers such as Shostakovich and Takemitsu, who composed music for films.

(this topic was covered quite recently)


----------



## Strange Magic

dogen said:


> I feel this is rather unfair on composers such as Shostakovich and Takemitsu, who composed music for films.
> 
> (this topic was covered quite recently)


Don't forget Prokofiev, the patriarch of them all!


----------



## Enthusiast

dogen said:


> I feel this is rather unfair on composers such as Shostakovich and Takemitsu, who composed music for films.
> 
> (this topic was covered quite recently)


And Prokofiev and Walton and many others, yes. But do those works stand on their own? Some were reworked as concert pieces but then they weren't "film music".

(I missed the earlier coverage of this question so sorry if I am repeating stuff)


----------



## spleenandcigars

janxharris said:


> it's length, complexity and profound good verses evil climax are a remarkable achievement imho.


If that's a parameter for classical, then a lot of compositions from the 70s progressive rock genre can be included.


----------



## janxharris

spleenandcigars said:


> If that's a parameter for classical, then a lot of compositions from the 70s progressive rock genre can be included.


I guess it should be admitted that neither length, complexity nor the presence of a 'climax' are per se parameters to judge by. I would say that if one _can_ compose a piece that has those elements and remains interesting then it can make for a more impressive musical experience.

Of course, Elgar's _Nimrod_ is considered very impressive on it's own- without being lengthy or overly complex.


----------



## PlaySalieri

janxharris said:


> Just in case some missed it - Michael Kuhlmann plays Genesis:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> To my ears, the harmony is incredibly interesting and unique; tonal, yes, but I cannot confuse any of the songs Kuhlmann plays with any other piece of music. He plays: Firth of Fifth-Hairless Heart-Mad Man Moon-Quiet Earth-Los Endos. This music would not sound out of place at a classic recital I would humbly aver. Shame he didn't include Supper's Ready as, for me, his performance is the only one on youtube I have found aesthetically satisfying.


I havent listened to this but I understand it is an arrangement by the pianist - based on original material of Genesis. Many in the comments seem to think it is played way too fast.


----------



## Guest

Enthusiast said:


> And Prokofiev and Walton and many others, yes. But do those works stand on their own? Some were reworked as concert pieces but then they weren't "film music".
> 
> (I missed the earlier coverage of this question so sorry if I am repeating stuff)


Personally, I think the significant point is that such composers _chose_ to compose for films and obviously took it seriously, or else why work in that area?


----------



## janxharris

stomanek said:


> I havent listened to this but I understand it is an arrangement by the pianist - based on original material of Genesis. Many in the comments seem to think it is played way too fast.


A little fast for me too and with some errors.


----------



## Enthusiast

dogen said:


> Personally, I think the significant point is that such composers _chose_ to compose for films and obviously took it seriously, or else why work in that area?


Yes, definitely. And also those who composed incidental music for theatre. I certainly don't "look down on" composers of film music. When they get it right they can add an enormous amount to a good film.


----------



## Enthusiast

janxharris said:


> A little fast for me too and with some errors.


Do the errors improve it?


----------



## Jacck

Enthusiast said:


> Yes, definitely. And also those who composed incidental music for theatre. I certainly don't "look down on" composers of film music. When they get it right they can add an enormous amount to a good film.


some of the soundtracks can stand perfectly on their own and many are better than many symphonies. Prokofievs Ivan the Terrible and Alexander Nevsky scores are some of the best things he composed.


----------



## janxharris

I think this is genius:


----------



## Jacck

And Shostakovich film music. This is seriously impressive, my first time hearing




I will need to listen more to his film music. Film music of today seems to be degenerating compared to the past (compare Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Herrmann, Rozsa, Newman, Rota, Goldmith - all orchestral composers - to the likes of Hans Zimmer using synthetizers and 3 repeated chords).


----------



## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

janxharris said:


> Enthusiast, you honestly would describe the final eight minutes of Supper's Ready as thin? I find it incredibly exciting and as dramatic as, say, the 'Of joys and passions' section of Zarathustra.
> 
> Of course, I respect your opinion if you disagree.


I too find it thin, compared to good classical music. Still enjoyable but on a different, musically shallower, level.


----------



## Strange Magic

There are several remarks about people having listened to Genesis or whatever as teenagers, and then moving on--outgrowing the music or some such thing. This may be a caution about one's recollection of the music of one's youth: as a certified Old (or elder) Person, I first heard Genesis--and everything since--as a mature adult well past my teen years and thus lacking the specific emotional volatility of those years and that mindset. I like to think that, thus, my enjoyment of Genesis was and is less filtered through the distorting(?) lens of youthful enthusiasm or contempt.


----------



## janxharris

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> I too find it thin, compared to good classical music. Still enjoyable but on a different, musically shallower, level.


That's fair enough.


----------



## Enthusiast

Jacck said:


> some of the soundtracks can stand perfectly on their own and many are better than many symphonies. Prokofievs Ivan the Terrible and Alexander Nevsky scores are some of the best things he composed.


As pure music, I am not convinced that his Ivan the Terrible score stands on its own but it does include a lot of great music and is really great film music. A concert cantata has been drawn from it but not, I think, by Prokofiev. Alexander Nevsky - the cantata is great. I am not sure I would want to listen to the full score without the great film it was written for. As I write, though, I am struck with doubt. I wonder about the case of the complete ballets written by Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev? As far as concert music is concerned these are similar cases (in as far as they are music that is intended to go with a visual experience, albeit with dialogue in the case of films) - although I think the music comes first for ballets??? Hmm. I'll have to think about this! Thank you for prodding at what may be partly a prejudice of mine.


----------



## Jacck

Enthusiast said:


> I wonder about the case of the complete ballets written by Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev? As far as concert music is concerned these are similar cases (in as far as they are music that is intended to go with a visual experience, albeit with dialogue in the case of films) - although I think the music comes first for ballets??? Hmm. I'll have to think about this! Thank you for prodding at what may be partly a prejudice of mine.


yes, ballets are similar to movie scores. But when the movie score is good, it can stand perfectly on its own and you can listen to it like to a symphony. I see no reason to require the visual accompaniment. Just try to listen to this as a tone poem or symphony, observing the atmospheres that it evokes


----------



## EdwardBast

Nereffid said:


> Of course, classical music has been dead for 60 years, so there's that.


Undead?  ____________


----------



## PlaySalieri

Jacck said:


> yes, ballets are similar to movie scores. But when the movie score is good, it can stand perfectly on its own and you can listen to it like to a symphony. I see no reason to require the visual accompaniment. Just try to listen to this as a tone poem or symphony, observing the atmospheres that it evokes


I can listen to snippets of ballets and film scores - but not the whole thing.


----------



## EdwardBast

stomanek said:


> I can listen to snippets of ballets and film scores - but not the whole thing.


Yes. The organizing force for ballets and film scores is dramatic and scenic and in instrumental performance this is missing, as opposed to self-sufficient works actually composed to stand alone. A different animal entirely to my ears.


----------



## Guest

Jacck said:


> But when the movie score is good, it can stand perfectly on its own and you can listen to it like to a symphony.


In my opinion, a _good _score is one that is inseparable from the visual. That doesn't mean there is no pleasure to be derived from listening to it without watching the movie, but it does not achieve its full potential without the complementary pictures.


----------



## EdwardBast

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> I too find it thin, compared to good classical music. Still enjoyable but on a different, musically shallower, level.


Thin compared to what? The genre here is presumably the art song, or song cycle as in the case of the OP, so the comparison should be to classical works in the same genre. Is the Genesis thin compared to Schubert lieder or Debussy songs? Of course Janx isn't helping his case by comparing it to _Thus Spake Zarathustra_, but we should be careful to compare like to like, not grapes to watermelons.


----------



## DaveM

MacLeod said:


> In my opinion, a _good _score is one that is inseparable from the visual. That doesn't mean there is no pleasure to be derived from listening to it without watching the movie, but it does not achieve its full potential without the complementary pictures.


There are some movie scores that can act as stand alone works though they don't occur as often these days. The following from a time when Hans Zimmer composed fully fleshed out works:


----------



## PlaySalieri

EdwardBast said:


> Thin compared to what? The genre here is presumably the art song, or song cycle as in the case of the OP, so the comparison should be to classical works in the same genre. Is the Genesis thin compared to Schubert lieder or Debussy songs? Of course Janx isn't helping *his case by comparing it to Thus Spake Zarathustra,* but we should be careful to compare like to like, not grapes to watermelons.


he first compares it to Mozart sy 40

yes it is thin compared to Schubert lieder


----------



## EdwardBast

stomanek said:


> he first compares it to Mozart sy 40
> 
> yes it is thin compared to Schubert lieder


Thin in what sense?


----------



## janxharris

EdwardBast said:


> Thin compared to what? The genre here is presumably the art song, or song cycle as in the case of the OP, so the comparison should be to classical works in the same genre. Is the Genesis thin compared to Schubert lieder or Debussy songs? Of course Janx isn't helping his case by comparing it to _Thus Spake Zarathustra_, but we should be careful to compare like to like, not grapes to watermelons.


I was comparing the drama and excitement of both.


----------



## PlaySalieri

EdwardBast said:


> Thin in what sense?


musically thin - I am no fan of lieder, but with a Schubert song I can hear the work of a master - everything seems to be in the right place - every note makes an impact - there is purpose, direction, meaning and 100% musical sense to the piece.

with the Genesis all of the above is incomplete or absent

does that answer your question?


----------



## janxharris

stomanek said:


> musically thin - I am no fan of lieder, but with a Schubert song I can hear the work of a master - everything seems to be in the right place - every note makes an impact - there is purpose, direction, meaning and 100% musical sense to the piece.
> 
> with the Genesis all of the above is incomplete or absent
> 
> does that answer your question?


Would you describe works like The Rite of Spring, Bartók's Concerto For Orchestra and Webern's Symphony as you do the Schubert?


----------



## Guest

stomanek said:


> musically thin - I am no fan of lieder, but with a Schubert song I can hear the work of a master - everything seems to be in the right place - every note makes an impact - there is purpose, direction, meaning and 100% musical sense to the piece.
> 
> with the Genesis all of the above is incomplete or absent
> 
> does that answer your question?


When I listen to _Supper's Ready_, everything seems to be in the right place - every note makes an impact - there is purpose, direction, meaning and 100% musical sense to the piece. It's just not CM and can't be compared to it.


----------



## janxharris

MacLeod said:


> When I listen to _Supper's Ready_, everything seems to be in the right place - every note makes an impact - there is purpose, direction, meaning and 100% musical sense to the piece. It's just not CM and can't be compared to it.


I haven't heard a great arrangement of the piece that makes it sound 'classical', but thought Kuhlmann did a good job with some other Genesis songs (in case you didn't hear it).


----------



## Guest

janxharris said:


> I haven't heard a great arrangement of the piece that makes it sound 'classical', but thought Kuhlmann did a good job with some other Genesis songs (in case you didn't hear it).


Why would I want it to 'sound' classical? I like it sounding like rock!


----------



## janxharris

MacLeod said:


> Why would I want it to 'sound' classical? I like it sounding like rock!


 
...............................


----------



## janxharris

Michael Kuhlmann plays 'Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers/In That Quiet Earth' arranged for piano, but here is the original:


----------



## janxharris




----------



## janxharris

Ludwig van Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata - 3rd Movement


----------



## PlaySalieri

MacLeod said:


> When I listen to _Supper's Ready_, everything seems to be in the right place - every note makes an impact - there is purpose, direction, meaning and 100% musical sense to the piece. It's just not CM and can't be compared to it.


Then good for you.


----------



## EdwardBast

stomanek said:


> musically thin - I am no fan of lieder, but with a Schubert song I can hear the work of a master - everything seems to be in the right place - every note makes an impact - there is purpose, direction, meaning and 100% musical sense to the piece.
> 
> with the Genesis all of the above is incomplete or absent
> 
> does that answer your question?


I thought you might mean something literal and tangible, like lacking in countermelodies or harmonically impoverished. Usually "thin" would mean something like that. Sounds to me like you just don't like it - so I guess that answers my question.


----------



## janxharris

Just suppose Beethoven didn't actually write the Moonlight Sonata - well the third movement at least...but some modern rock band did....:






Thoughts? Might we infer that some would say this rock music isn't as good as classical?
I'm not a fan of this version by the way..........


----------



## janxharris

Compare and contrast this:


----------



## janxharris

...................................


----------



## janxharris

And this:


----------



## Guest

janxharris said:


> Just suppose Beethoven didn't actually write the Moonlight Sonata - well the third movement at least...but some modern rock band did....:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Thoughts? Might we infer that some would say this rock music isn't as good as classical?
> I'm not a fan of this version by the way..........


I still reckon Beethoven wrote it, but I enjoyed that performance of it. Seems like a party piece! :

(Who Tina S? Amazing technique)


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

While I'm a huge fan of prog rock and quite like Genesis, Supper's Ready has never struck me as much as many of the genre's/band's other masterpieces. I'd take a handful of tracks by King Crimson, Yes, Rush, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Gentle Giant, et al. over it in a heartbeat. I'd also take most of Genesis's own Selling England by the Pound and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (while granting it's hard to compare entire albums to a single song). 

As for it comparing "favorably to the best classical," that's an impossible question to answer and would entirely depend upon what (ultimately subjective) standards we're using. I've never seen the point of comparing different genres beyond the "what moves me most" standard, and I've been profoundly moved by music from a variety of genres, in part because they all speak to different aspects of humanity. I don't buy into the BS of genre hierarchies and deluded notions of objectivity; it's all nonsense created by people who want to feel their opinions are better than others.


----------



## janxharris

Eva Yojimbo said:


> While I'm a huge fan of prog rock and quite like Genesis, Supper's Ready has never struck me as much as many of the genre's/band's other masterpieces. I'd take a handful of tracks by King Crimson, Yes, Rush, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Gentle Giant, et al. over it in a heartbeat. I'd also take most of Genesis's own Selling England by the Pound and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (while granting it's hard to compare entire albums to a single song).
> 
> As for it comparing "favorably to the best classical," that's an impossible question to answer and would entirely depend upon what (ultimately subjective) standards we're using. I've never seen the point of comparing different genres beyond the "what moves me most" standard, and I've been profoundly moved by music from a variety of genres, in part because they all speak to different aspects of humanity. I don't buy into the BS of genre hierarchies and deluded notions of objectivity; it's all nonsense created by people who want to feel their opinions are better than others.


Indeed - I am purely interested in people's subjective opinions.  Certainly it's hard to compare.


----------



## PlaySalieri

EdwardBast said:


> I thought you might mean something literal and tangible,* like lacking in countermelodies or harmonically impoverished.* Usually "thin" would mean something like that. Sounds to me like you just don't like it - so I guess that answers my question.


actually - now that you mention it - yes these also


----------



## PlaySalieri

janxharris said:


> Indeed - I am purely interested in people's *subjective opinions.*  Certainly it's hard to compare.


opinions are subjective

that's the nature of them


----------



## PlaySalieri

Eva Yojimbo said:


> While I'm a huge fan of prog rock and quite like Genesis, Supper's Ready has never struck me as much as many of the genre's/band's other masterpieces. *I'd take a handful of tracks by King Crimson, Yes, Rush, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Gentle Giant, et al. over it in a heartbeat.* I'd also take most of Genesis's own Selling England by the Pound and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (while granting it's hard to compare entire albums to a single song).
> 
> As for it comparing "favorably to the best classical," that's an impossible question to answer and would entirely depend upon what (ultimately subjective) standards we're using. I've never seen the point of comparing different genres beyond the "what moves me most" standard, and I've been profoundly moved by music from a variety of genres, in part because they all speak to different aspects of humanity. I don't buy into the BS of genre hierarchies and deluded notions of objectivity; it's all nonsense created by people who want to feel their opinions are better than others.


ROFL

OP - not many people seem to rate Suppers Ready - even prog rock fans

I am no prog rock fan, true, but having listened to Suppers Ready - it strikes me as being far inferior to a lot of Pink Floyd's best works. Yes I know it goes 21 minutes but so what.


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

stomanek said:


> ROFL
> 
> OP - not many people seem to rate Suppers Ready - even prog rock fans


That's actually not true; I'm rather in the minority in this respect. It's usually ranked in the top 5 when it comes to lists of the best prog rock songs:

#4: https://festivalpeak.com/the-100-best-classic-progressive-rock-songs-part-five-20-1-e1060540d5ee
#3: http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=98846
#1: https://www.thetoptens.com/best-progressive-rock-songs/

Personally, I always found King Crimson the most interesting of all the prog bands. They seemed to be the band that best integrated jazz and modern classical influences with rock without relying on the cliches of any of the genres. In the Court of the Crimson King, often regarded as the first real prog album, remains not only my favorite prog album but one of my favorite albums ever, and they produced a number of masterpieces after that. Here's one favorite:


----------



## PlaySalieri

Eva Yojimbo said:


> That's actually not true; I'm rather in the minority in this respect. It's usually ranked in the top 5 when it comes to lists of the best prog rock songs:
> 
> #4: https://festivalpeak.com/the-100-best-classic-progressive-rock-songs-part-five-20-1-e1060540d5ee
> #3: http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=98846
> #1: https://www.thetoptens.com/best-progressive-rock-songs/
> 
> Personally, I always found King Crimson the most interesting of all the prog bands. They seemed to be the band that best integrated jazz and modern classical influences with rock without relying on the cliches of any of the genres. In the Court of the Crimson King, often regarded as the first real prog album, remains not only my favorite prog album but one of my favorite albums ever, and they produced a number of masterpieces after that. Here's one favorite:


Ah ok - looks like it's just me then - as I recognise other great tracks in those lists - notably Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Time and Echoes - or I dont like prog rock and am just a Pink Floyd fan. Surpised that "Money" isnt on that list - absolutely stunning track.


----------



## EdwardBast

Eva Yojimbo said:


> That's actually not true; I'm rather in the minority in this respect. It's usually ranked in the top 5 when it comes to lists of the best prog rock songs:
> 
> #4: https://festivalpeak.com/the-100-best-classic-progressive-rock-songs-part-five-20-1-e1060540d5ee
> #3: http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=98846
> #1: https://www.thetoptens.com/best-progressive-rock-songs/
> 
> Personally, I always found King Crimson the most interesting of all the prog bands. They seemed to be the band that best integrated jazz and modern classical influences with rock without relying on the cliches of any of the genres. In the Court of the Crimson King, often regarded as the first real prog album, remains not only my favorite prog album but one of my favorite albums ever, and they produced a number of masterpieces after that. Here's one favorite:


IMO, Larks' Tongues in Aspic is the best thing Crimson ever did. The sound world is sui generis, unprecedented: That cloud of ringing metal and bells in the introduction (2:30ff) is like nothing else I've ever heard. Then in the central section: Glissandos and melody played on autoharp with knitting needles? Is that what that is (9:13ff)? Incredible sound. And what range of expression and dynamics, nightmare and terror one moment, hushed nocturnal delectation the next, a whisper to 130 decibels.

Some of the new stuff is just as good, though completely different. This is from 2017:


----------



## janxharris

stomanek said:


> actually - now that you mention it - yes these also







(counterpoint)


----------



## janxharris

stomanek said:


> actually - now that you mention it - yes these also


Harmony: 




I'm not aware of a single instance of harmonic cliché in the piece.


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

EdwardBast said:


> IMO, Larks' Tongues in Aspic is the best thing Crimson ever did. The sound world is sui generis, unprecedented: That cloud of ringing metal and bells in the introduction (2:30ff) is like nothing else I've ever heard. Then in the central section: Glissandos and melody played on autoharp with knitting needles? Is that what that is (9:13ff)? Incredible sound. And what range of expression and dynamics, nightmare and terror one moment, hushed nocturnal delectation the next, a whisper to 130 decibels.
> 
> Some of the new stuff is just as good, though completely different. This is from 2017:


I can't disagree with you RE Larks' Tongues in Aspic. Court is my favorite in large part because it was my intro to them and to prog in general, and it remains one of the formative experiences of my young musical life; but I like and appreciate Larks' almost equally. If anything, they're 1a and 1b on my list. I have no idea what the sound is at 9:13, but I do love the sound. I also love how the utter percussion chaos at 3:30 finally leads to that pulverizing heavy metal riff at 3:44; as heavy as anything Zeppelin or Sabbath ever wrote. Then you have the jazzed-out funk rock at 5:04. It's good to keep in mind that this was 1973; Miles Davis's On the Corner, one of the pioneering jazz-funk fusion albums, was released in '72, so this was pretty new stuff; and even though heavy metal was about 4 years old by this point, nobody had ever heard it in a context like this. On a final thought, Bill Bruford's percussion throughout the track is just ingenious. This is really the track that established him as one of my favorite drummers. I keep meaning to check out his jazz albums but I've never gotten around to it.

What you say about this song (nightmare and terror... nocturnal delectation) is one thing I love about King Crimson. Their range is nearly unprecedented in rock or prog. They can channel pure hellish chaos one moment, and slip into the most gorgeous sonic lullabies the next, covering a ton of middle ground in the meantime. Matte Kudesai is one of the most ravishingly beautiful songs I know of: 




I feel like Messiaen would've loved the "seagull cries" at 0:23.

I also love their new stuff (I have the Radical Action... blu-ray), but I remember reading that they have no plans to record in the studio again. On the one hand it's a shame we may not ever get to hear the new material consolidated in an official studio album; on the other hand, KC was always really at their best live, so it's very likely their live renditions are as good (if not better) than anything we'd hear in the studio.


----------



## PlaySalieri

janxharris said:


> Harmony:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm not aware of a single instance of harmonic cliché in the piece.


Cliche or not - it's not interesting.

To you it may be - that's a difference in taste.

You are on a classical music forum so dont be too surprised if the vast majority of listeners on here find your suppers ready nothing more than a worthless piece of pop.

Out of hundreds of posters here on TC you have a found a small number that also listen to prog rock - of those - a few rate suppers ready - some think its not that good compared to other examples of prog rock - some dont think it's good at all and the consensus, among those prepared to compare prog rock with classical, seems to be it is inferior to even mediocre classical music.

There's probably not one poster here though that would place suppers ready in the top 1000 pieces in all genres. I suspect the vast majority wouldnt place it in the top 10,000 - even if they knew it.

Go to a jazz forum with suppers ready and look for some validation of your taste - you might have better luck there - or better still - a prog rock forum.


----------



## janxharris

stomanek said:


> Cliche or not - it's not interesting.
> 
> To you it may be - that's a difference in taste.
> 
> You are on a classical music forum so dont be too surprised if the vast majority of listeners on here find your suppers ready nothing more than a worthless piece of pop.


All opinion is welcome.



> Out of hundreds of posters here on TC you have a found a small number that also listen to prog rock - of those - a few rate suppers ready - some think its not that good compared to other examples of prog rock - some dont think it's good at all and the consensus, among those prepared to compare prog rock with classical, seems to be it is inferior to even mediocre classical music.


If this is the case then that's ok.



> There's probably not one poster here though that would place suppers ready in the top 1000 pieces in all genres. I suspect the vast majority wouldnt place it in the top 10,000 - even if they knew it.


Well it's not a competition. We do know that most classical music lovers probably wouldn't include much serial music in their top however many.



> Go to a jazz forum with suppers ready and look for some validation of your taste - you might have better luck there - or better still - a prog rock forum.


I'm not looking for validation. I think the response has been interesting enough without a need to go elsewhere. I am merely looking beyond genre at the elements that all music shares.


----------



## Art Rock

stomanek said:


> There's probably not one poster here though that would place suppers ready in the top 1000 pieces in all genres.


It might just make it for me. Lots of other prog songs would definitely make it though, some of them would make top 100 (Shine on you crazy diamond by Pink Floyd, Mad man moon and Firth of Fifth by Genesis for instance). There are plenty of people on TC who love other types of music in addition to classical.


----------



## Guest

stomanek said:


> You are on a classical music forum so dont be too surprised if the vast majority of listeners on here find your suppers ready nothing more than a worthless piece of pop.
> 
> There's probably not one poster here though that would place suppers ready in the top 1000 pieces in all genres. I suspect the vast majority wouldnt place it in the top 10,000 - even if they knew it.
> 
> Go to a jazz forum with suppers ready and look for some validation of your taste - you might have better luck there - or better still - a prog rock forum.


From the non-classical music forum it is obvious to me that many members have a varied and broad range of musical tastes and often are not so disparaging of music that they are ignorant of, or does not interest them.

Fans of prog rock (here or anywhere) would undoubtedly not be surprised to find Supper's Ready in a chart of the top 1000 pieces in prog rock. It is as likely to be in it as much as, say, Meddle or Close to the Edge.

Given that Supper's Ready is not a piece of jazz music, the suggestion of going to a jazz forum with it is as perverse as going to a prog rock forum with Take Five.


----------



## PlaySalieri

dogen said:


> From the non-classical music forum it is obvious to me that many members have a varied and broad range of musical tastes and often are not so disparaging of music that they are ignorant of, or does not interest them.
> 
> Fans of prog rock (here or anywhere) would undoubtedly not be surprised to find Supper's Ready in a chart of the top 1000 pieces in prog rock. It is as likely to be in it as much as, say, Meddle or Close to the Edge.
> 
> Given that Supper's Ready is not a piece of jazz music,* the suggestion of going to a jazz forum with it is as perverse as going to a prog rock forum with Take Five.*


neither is suppers ready classical - so why put it in the general discussion?

there is I believe - a sub section here for rock and other genres.


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## science

I've been lurking in this thread occasionally, and as someone who doesn't know much prog rock, I really appreciate y'all's work here!


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## science

stomanek said:


> neither is suppers ready classical - so why put it in the general discussion?
> 
> there is I believe - a sub section here for rock and other genres.


That is a very good point, but it is also possible (re: the "classical music died in 1960" thread) that this will be reclassified as "classical" soon enough!


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## janxharris

stomanek said:


> neither is suppers ready classical - so why put it in the general discussion?
> 
> there is I believe - a sub section here for rock and other genres.


You may have a point but the OP is asking a question that, perhaps, crosses both borders.


----------



## Guest

stomanek said:


> neither is suppers ready classical - so why put it in the general discussion?
> 
> there is I believe - a sub section here for rock and other genres.


You'd have to ask the OP that.


----------



## Guest

science said:


> I've been lurking in this thread occasionally, and as someone who doesn't know much prog rock, I really appreciate y'all's work here!


For some unknown, clearly incorrect, reason I thought you liked a bit of prog. It was my musical life for many years and still holds a place in my listening. I'm going to a King Crimson concert later this year, about 50 years after I heard, and fell in love with, their first album.


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## Eva Yojimbo

dogen said:


> I'm going to a King Crimson concert later this year, about 50 years after I heard, and fell in love with, their first album.


Lucky! I'd love to see them live. Only time I know they came to my hometown was when they played at the state fair in the late 70s, and I only know about this because it was recorded and released on their Road to Red box set! (Imagine my surprise when I got the box set and noticed that date!)


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## Guest

Eva Yojimbo said:


> Lucky! I'd love to see them live. Only time I know they came to my hometown was when they played at the state fair in the late 70s, and I only know about this because it was recorded and released on their Road to Red box set! (Imagine my surprise when I got the box set and noticed that date!)


I've seen them twice before (circa Islands and Discipline) but especially looking forward to this. A fabulous line-up and performing music from all their back catalogue, including older pieces that had been jettisoned since Belew joined.


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## Haydn70

science said:


> That is a very good point, but it is also possible (re: the "classical music died in 1960" thread) that this will be reclassified as "classical" soon enough!


Not possible at all.


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## Simon Moon

stomanek said:


> Cliche or not - it's not interesting.
> 
> To you it may be - that's a difference in taste.
> 
> You are on a classical music forum so dont be too surprised if the vast majority of listeners on here find your suppers ready nothing more than a worthless piece of pop.


While I can understand why some here may find Supper's Ready worthless, pop it is not.

Pop songs are about 4 minutes long, using 3 chords, almost always in 4/4, lyrics about love and relationships, with obvious hooks, and almost always in verse/bridge/chorus (repeat) structure. None of this describes Supper's Ready (or all other prog music).



> Out of hundreds of posters here on TC you have a found a small number that also listen to prog rock - of those - a few rate suppers ready - some think its not that good compared to other examples of prog rock - some dont think it's good at all and the consensus, among those prepared to compare prog rock with classical, seems to be it is inferior to even mediocre classical music.


But almost all prog rock listeners listen to classical.

I rate Supper's Ready fairly highly,

And no, I don't compare Supper's Ready to classical. I am not saying it is inferior, just different.

Classical music scratches certain musical itches, prog scratches others. Some of them overlap.



> There's probably not one poster here though that would place suppers ready in the top 1000 pieces in all genres. I suspect the vast majority wouldnt place it in the top 10,000 - even if they knew it.


I am one of those posters here that would place it in the top 1000.

Avant-garde sub-genres of prog may be closer to (mid 20th century and contemporary) classical, which is where they get most of their influences. Many, if not most, of the musicians of these genres come from the classical world, and some occupy both worlds.


----------



## Madiel

Simon Moon said:


> While I can understand why some here may find Supper's Ready worthless, pop it is not.
> 
> Pop songs are about 4 minutes long, using 3 chords, almost always in 4/4, lyrics about love and relationships, with obvious hooks, and almost always in verse/bridge/chorus (repeat) structure. None of this describes Supper's Ready (or all other prog music).


pop/rock has been graced by many fine songwriters, the way you describe a pop song it is an insult to their art (and what you have written about chords and time signature is nothing more than a stereotype).
"4 minutes long" means nothing, what matters is what happens while the music plays, Bartok's Allegro Barbaro is one of the most influential and appreciated pieces for piano ever, performing it usually requires little more than two minutes.


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## Guest

Madiel said:


> pop/rock has been graced by many fine songwriters, the way you describe a pop song it is an insult to their art (and what you have written about chords and time signature is nothing more than a stereotype).
> "4 minutes long" means nothing, what matters is what happens while the music plays, Bartok's Allegro Barbaro is one of the most influential and appreciated pieces for piano ever, performing it usually requires little more than two minutes.


I see no insult. I see a broadly accurate description of much pop, including much that is/was excellent song writing.


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## Madiel

MacLeod said:


> I see no insult. I see a broadly accurate description of much pop, including much that is/was excellent song writing.


it's a stereotype, which may not be an insult, but for sure it isn't a "broadly accurate description of much pop"
how much pop? 5%? 25%? generalizations mean nothing to me.
there are more interesting musical ideas in Strawberry fields forever than in the entire Genesis catalogue (and believe me when I tell you that I am not a John Lennon fan, quite the contrary ).


----------



## janxharris

Madiel said:


> it's a stereotype, which may not be an insult, but for sure it isn't a "broadly accurate description of much pop"
> how much pop? 5%? 25%? generalizations mean nothing to me.
> there are more interesting musical ideas in Strawberry fields forever than in the entire Genesis catalogue (and believe me when I tell you that I am not a John Lennon fan, quite the contrary ).


Seriously?
Play Strawberry Field on the piano and then the entire Genesis catalogue also on the piano and compare. Strawberry Fields is a great piece but your assertion seems rather extreme.


----------



## Madiel

janxharris said:


> Seriously?
> Play Strawberry Field on the piano and then the entire Genesis catalogue also on the piano and compare. Strawberry Fields is a great piece but your assertion seems rather extreme.


they call it a figure of speech, a hyperbole maybe?


----------



## Guest

Madiel said:


> it's a stereotype, which may not be an insult, but for sure it isn't a "broadly accurate description of much pop"
> how much pop? 5%? 25%? generalizations mean nothing to me.
> there are more interesting musical ideas in Strawberry fields forever than in the entire Genesis catalogue (and believe me when I tell you that I am not a John Lennon fan, quite the contrary ).


Oh come on...what's your definition of 'pop'? Mine is more or less the description you're rejecting. Check out much of the Top 20 over the past 50 years, the track lists of best selling albums by pop artists from The Beatles to Westlife, listen to pop radio stations...

If you want to say that there is more sophisticated pop - of course - and pop/rock - by all means - reject the stereotype, but it doesn't invalidate the general point.


----------



## Madiel

MacLeod said:


> Oh come on...what's your definition of 'pop'? Mine is more or less the description you're rejecting.


 "Pop songs are about 4 minutes long, using 3 chords, almost always in 4/4,"

this is a false statement, it is not my opinion versus your and Simon Moon's opinion, its falsity is demonstrated by an enormous catalogue of pop songs that prove the falsity of that definition. How many Beatles songs prove that definition false, their entire studio only career? what about Burt Bacharach?
If the stereotype is rejected - like you say - by the existence of what you call (always dismissive) "more sophisticated pop" then the general point is invalidated too, a stereotype is general point, you arbitrarily decide this is this and this is that and make your point, sorry, but it doesn't work this way.
then there was the "4 minutes" argument versus Supper's Ready 23 minutes, as I have tried to illustrate in my previous post, minutes have no musical value per se, it is how you fill every bar and phrase with musical ideas that makes it good or bad music. Leonard Bernstein was an admirer of the Beach Boys, he said that their songs were three minutes symphonies for the musical inventiveness they had.


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## Eva Yojimbo

Part of the problem here is that, much like "classical music," pop music can either be an extremely broad category that covers anything that's not classical, jazz, avant-garde, or world music; or it can be an extremely narrow genre that covers what's heard on the radio. If we're talking about what's heard on the radio, then, yes, most of it does fit into a pretty limited stereotype in terms of length, form, and content (there are exceptions, but they remain exceptions). If we branch out beyond the radio then there is a great deal of variation in pop music, especially as we get into more niche genres, in which cases the stereotype may not be true at all.


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## PlaySalieri

suppers ready has more in common with the bulk of pop music than it does classical. Chief characteristics are music underpinned by a drumbeat - electric guitars and non operatic vocals - ie non trained pub song night quality singing. Not to say that there are no good singers of pop music - but mostly the singing is poor by comparison with classical singing and this is one feature I have noticed in the bulk of pop music.

prog rock is really a sub division of the huge field of pop music - call it popular music if you will - but to me anything that has the qualities outlined above is pop - it's duration is irrelevant. Jazz is not pop, neither is folk music. Skiffle is pop even though, I think - there are no drums.

I love much pop music (Abba the beatles queen pink floyd to name some) so I have nothing against pop. As I have maintained - I believe pop music of the 20thC will gradually be forgotten while interest, albeit a minority interest - in the golden eras of classical, will continue to flourish down the centuries.


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

stomanek said:


> suppers ready has more in common with the bulk of pop music than it does classical. Chief characteristics are music underpinned by a drumbeat - electric guitars and non operatic vocals - ie non trained pub song night quality singing. Not to say that there are no good singers of pop music - but mostly the singing is poor by comparison with classical singing and this is one feature I have noticed in the bulk of pop music.
> 
> prog rock is really a sub division of the huge field of pop music - call it popular music if you will - but to me anything that has the qualities outlined above is pop - it's duration is irrelevant. Jazz is not pop, neither is folk music. Skiffle is pop even though, I think - there are no drums.


I don't strongly agree or disagree here. Yes, Supper's Ready shares those similarities with pop, but it's also quite dissimilar in terms of length, structure, and instrumental technique (one could also argue melody and harmony). Of course, plenty of jazz from the last 40 years have also used electric guitars and drum beats, though the singing (when there is singing) is quite different.

I'm fine calling prog rock a sub-genre of popular music. On my NAS where I store all my music, I have four main folders: Classical, Jazz, Pop, and Other, and I have all my prog rock under the "Pop" category. I think I'd find it difficult not to include folk music as pop music though, given that folk music basically was the equivalent of pop music through most of history.



stomanek said:


> I love much pop music (Abba the beatles queen pink floyd to name some) so I have nothing against pop. *As I have maintained - I believe pop music of the 20thC will gradually be forgotten* while interest, albeit a minority interest - in the golden eras of classical, will continue to flourish down the centuries.


I find that assertion highly unlikely. I can see 20thC pop becoming a minority interest in the way classical music now is, but I would be surprised if its major names were forgotten. The Beatles and Dylan at least were arguably more influential on 20thC culture than any other musicians and composers, save perhaps Louis Armstrong and Stravinsky.


----------



## Guest

Madiel said:


> "Pop songs are about 4 minutes long, using 3 chords, almost always in 4/4,"
> 
> this is a false statement, it is not my opinion versus your and Simon Moon's opinion, its falsity is demonstrated by an enormous catalogue of pop songs that prove the falsity of that definition. How many Beatles songs prove that definition false, their entire studio only career? what about Burt Bacharach?
> If the stereotype is rejected - like you say - by the existence of what you call (*always dismissive*) "more sophisticated pop" then the general point is invalidated too, a stereotype is general point, you arbitrarily decide this is this and this is that and make your point, sorry, but it doesn't work this way.
> then there was the "4 minutes" argument versus Supper's Ready 23 minutes, as I have tried to illustrate in my previous post, minutes have no musical value per se, it is how you fill every bar and phrase with musical ideas that makes it good or bad music. Leonard Bernstein was an admirer of the Beach Boys, he said that their songs were three minutes symphonies for the musical inventiveness they had.


Dismissive? Offer some evidence that it's dismissive.

Look at the track listing for _Rubber Soul_. None even makes 4 minutes (Simon was being generous). Most (not all) are in 4/4 and are about love/relationships. _Pet Sounds_? Also less than four minutes - most less than three. The three minute 'pop' song is the very definition of the genre, and once it isn't 3 minutes or 4/4 or only about love/sex - take _Living in the Past _(Jethro Tull) it's becoming more adventurous, branching out, exploring other possibilities. Coming up to more recent times, _An Awesome Wave_ (alt-J) still averages around 3 minutes, but the subject matter - still dominated by love - is treated rather differently.

But when it's 23 minutes long and ranges over a number of topics and time signatures, it's not 'pop' at all. It doesn't make it superior to 'pop', but it's morphed into something else.

So what? As you say, it's what happens in the two and a half minutes or hours that counts, whether it's Madonna or Mahler.


----------



## janxharris

stomanek said:


> suppers ready has more in common with the bulk of pop music than it does classical. Chief characteristics are music underpinned by a drumbeat - electric guitars and non operatic vocals - ie non trained pub song night quality singing. Not to say that there are no good singers of pop music - but mostly the singing is poor by comparison with classical singing and this is one feature I have noticed in the bulk of pop music.


Any composition can be arranged with or without drums, electric guitars and non-operatic vocals. I think I already linked Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.

If one only considers the content of the actual notes, then I would say that the piece has little to do with the bulk of regular pop sensibilities. From wikipedia:

_One commentator regarded the structure of "Supper's Ready" as a variation of sonata form-a musicological analysis by Nors Josephson proposes that "section VII may be viewed as a Lisztian, symphonic apotheosis" of the "cyclical fanfares that originated in section II._ (Nors S. Josephson, "Bach Meets Liszt: Traditional Formal Structures and Performance Practices in Progressive Rock", The Musical Quarterly, vol. 76 no. 1 (Spring 1992), pages 84-85.)


----------



## Madiel

MacLeod said:


> Dismissive? Offer some evidence that it's dismissive.


I am sorry, but I am uninterested into this way of reasoning.
I have already offered evidence, but you refuse to see it, your interest seems to be winning an argument, I don't care about that.
I mention the Beatles studio albums and you take the least sophisticated example of that group, but even in Rubber Soul you can find developments that were going to be fundamental - and that were unheard of at the time of its release - (take the instrumental bridge from In My Life) - towards the creation of art pop
I mention Burt Bacharach but you ignore him in your reply, because his originality in terms of chord progressions and time signature would be undeniable I guess. I could mention other artists, the ones usually labeled as art pop (Roxy Music? Talking Heads?) - like it or not the work of The Beatles (Strawberry Fields Forever, A Day in the Life) and the Beach Boys (God Only Knows, Good Vibrations) are musical milestones that have influenced everything that came after them, progressive rock included.
You say, hear what pop radio play but that is irrelevant, it is like to look at bestsellers to evaluate the state of fiction.
btw if Supper's ready is such a masterpiece, how come Peter Gabriel in the last 43 years has shown no interest in performing it?


----------



## elgar's ghost

Madiel said:


> btw if Supper's ready is such a masterpiece, how come Peter Gabriel in the last 43 years has shown no interest in performing it?


Since he went solo Gabriel has shown virtually no interest in performing anything by Genesis period.


----------



## Enthusiast

janxharris said:


> Seriously?
> Play Strawberry Field on the piano and then the entire Genesis catalogue also on the piano and compare. Strawberry Fields is a great piece but your assertion seems rather extreme.


There is more to music - and perhaps especially pop music - than whatever you could learn from playing through something on the piano. Somehow or other Lennon and McCartney produced a large number of exceptional (pop) songs that seem to deserve hyperbole.


----------



## Enthusiast

elgars ghost said:


> Since he went solo Gabriel has shown virtually no interest in performing anything by Genesis period.


Embarrassed? Bored? Been there, done that?


----------



## Art Rock

... did not want to pay royalties to his ex-colleagues?....


----------



## Madiel

Art Rock said:


> ... did not want to pay royalties to his ex-colleagues?....


shared writing credits, he is losing 20% of it not performing that material, or maybe he doesn't realize how great is that music :devil:


----------



## janxharris

Gabriel in 1976 whilst attending a Genesis concert at the Hammersmith Odeon (after having left the band):

"I loved the concert - they were good and I sang along to all the lyrics of 'Supper's Ready'...it means so much to me."


----------



## Madiel

janxharris said:


> Gabriel in 1976 whilst attending a Genesis concert at the Hammersmith Odeon (after having left the band):
> 
> "I loved the concert - they were good and I sang along to all the lyrics of 'Supper's Ready'...it means so much to me."


so what?
the fact remains that for the first time in history a composer is the champion, the architect of his own oblivion and disappearance from the concert repertoire.


----------



## janxharris

Madiel said:


> so what?
> the fact remains that for the first time in history a composer is the champion, the architect of his own oblivion and disappearance from the concert repertoire.


I'm not following you Madiel.


----------



## Madiel

janxharris said:


> I'm not following you Madiel.


we are in a thread about the sense of "comparing favourably" Supper's ready with the best classical music, am I right?
In my last post I was simply forgetting opinions about this or that and I was simply reporting the peculiar fact that Peter Gabriel (one of the five guys who share the writing credits of that song) since 1974 has renounced the money and the glory of performing this work, Wagner built his own theater to promote his music and from what we know every composer has suffered seeing his music going out of the concert repertoire, that's why I find Peter Gabriel's position bizarre and an unprecedented one.
A Genesis reunion tour - many other bands have done reunions - focusing on their Gabriel era repertoire would have made a lot of money - especially in Europe, they have never done it and what's more the Genesis tour set list even in Rome - much to the displeasure of their older fans - has shown a minor interest toward performing that period of their repertoire.
Are these guys unaware of their place in the history of music?
Please don't read what I have written as sarcasm, it is Genesis' relationship with their own music that imposes this paradox.
The way I see it this is an argument that involves exclusively the fans of the band, the band itself doesn't care, the rest of the world finds the argument laughable or is not interested, in a sense the old story "prog rock is as good as classical music" is only another example of the inferiority complex created in the Sixties at the birth of the pop/rock music press/critics who needed to exalt themselves through their heroes.
Supper's ready is a song which includes an extended instrumental section where some guys - mainly Tony Banks - show that they have studied some classical music, that's it, but it's a song, there are prog bands that ditched the song form, Genesis is not one of them. 
I was raised a Catholic, but dressing à la Bergoglio and showing myself at a window to bless people would not make me a Pope - am I a lesser person for that? The Pope once performed at Yankee Stadium, is it enough to consider him a ballplayer? 
every musical genre has its own dignity and can be happily enjoyed without comparisons to other genres


----------



## janxharris

Madiel said:


> we are in a thread about the sense of "comparing favourably" Supper's ready with the best classical music, am I right?
> In my last post I was simply forgetting opinions about this or that and I was simply reporting the peculiar fact that Peter Gabriel (one of the five guys who share the writing credits of that song) since 1974 has renounced the money and the glory of performing this work, Wagner built his own theater to promote his music and from what we know every composer has suffered seeing his music going out of the concert repertoire, that's why I find Peter Gabriel's position bizarre and an unprecedented one.
> A Genesis reunion tour - many other bands have done reunions - focusing on their Gabriel era repertoire would have made a lot of money - especially in Europe, they have never done it and what's more the Genesis tour set list even in Rome - much to the displeasure of their older fans - has shown a minor interest toward performing that period of their repertoire.
> Are these guys unaware of their place in the history of music?
> Please don't read what I have written as sarcasm, it is Genesis' relationship with their own music that imposes this paradox.
> The way I see it this is an argument that involves exclusively the fans of the band, the band itself doesn't care, the rest of the world finds the argument laughable or is not interested, in a sense the old story "prog rock is as good as classical music" is only another example of the inferiority complex created in the Sixties at the birth of the pop/rock music press/critics who needed to exalt themselves through their heroes.
> Supper's ready is a song which includes an extended instrumental section where some guys - mainly Tony Banks - show that they have studied some classical music, that's it, but it's a song, there are prog bands that ditched the song form, Genesis is not one of them.
> I was raised a Catholic, but dressing à la Bergoglio and showing myself at a window to bless people would not make me a Pope - am I a lesser person for that? The Pope once performed at Yankee Stadium, is it enough to consider him a ballplayer?
> every musical genre has its own dignity and can be happily enjoyed without comparisons to other genres


The song was performed by the bad following Gabriel's departure and by Steve Hackett recently with his own band. I can't see the the relevance of it's non-performance by Gabriel.

The band doesn't care? - well, you haven't established that; I quoted Gabriel.

If you don't wish to compare the song with classical music then nobody is stopping you.


----------



## janxharris

The band considered Supper's Ready to contain some of their strongest material - especially the section called 'Apocalypse in 9/8'.


----------



## PlaySalieri

Eva Yojimbo said:


> I don't strongly agree or disagree here. Yes, Supper's Ready shares those similarities with pop, but it's also quite dissimilar in terms of length, structure, and instrumental technique (one could also argue melody and harmony). Of course, plenty of jazz from the last 40 years have also used electric guitars and drum beats, though the singing (when there is singing) is quite different.
> 
> I'm fine calling prog rock a sub-genre of popular music. On my NAS where I store all my music, I have four main folders: Classical, Jazz, Pop, and Other, and I have all my prog rock under the "Pop" category. I think I'd find it difficult not to include folk music as pop music though, given that folk music basically was the equivalent of pop music through most of history.
> 
> *I find that assertion* highly unlikely. I can see 20thC pop becoming a minority interest in the way classical music now is, but I would be surprised if its major names were forgotten. The Beatles and Dylan at least were arguably more influential on 20thC culture than any other musicians and composers, save perhaps Louis Armstrong and Stravinsky.


Except it's not an assertion - but a belief (see original quote).

I grant you though - that figures like The Beatles and Bob Dylan were such major figures in world culture in the 60s - it is hard to imagine that distant posterity will not have an interest in them. Whether that will entail actually listening to the music is hard to say - probably more likely in the case of the Beatles - I would be amazed if anyone in 100 years will understand Bob Dylan's vocals.


----------



## elgar's ghost

Enthusiast said:


> Embarrassed? Bored? Been there, done that?


Maybe a combo of all three but probably a classic case of wanting to move on - on his first post-Genesis tours in the late 70s I bet more than a few people went to see Gabriel in the hope of hearing some Genesis songs so back then I admired him for his decision to either stand or fall by his solo stuff rather than being a semi-tribute act to himself.


----------



## Enthusiast

stomanek said:


> Except it's not an assertion - but a belief (see original quote).
> 
> I would be amazed if anyone in 100 years will understand Bob Dylan's vocals.


And I would be amazed if you lived to be amazed by this.

I don't see why Dylan's lyrics shouldn't live on. I don't know if they will or not but there is lots of literature that I feel will die out before Dylan's lyrics will.


----------



## Haydn70

Enthusiast said:


> And I would be amazed if you lived to be amazed by this.
> 
> I don't see why Dylan's lyrics shouldn't live on. I don't know if they will or not but there is lots of literature that I feel will die out before Dylan's lyrics will.


I will quote a previous post of mine:

"One hundred years from now people may KNOW of Bob Dylan (to an extent) but an EXTREMELY small percentage of people, if any, will actually be listening to his music...or any popular music from 20th century or early 21st century for that matter.

Very few products of popular culture transcend their own time, their own time defined by the lifespan of the people who grew up with the particular product. True, there are people in their 20s and 30s who like 60s and 70s music--usually because their parents grew up with it, love it and play it and they (the children) grow to love it--but with each passing generation, the music fades out and is eventually of no interest to anyone."

Anyone on this site *REALLY *interested in the popular music of 1918? Probably one or two, I wouldn't doubt, but the mass of today's listeners couldn't care less about it. And folks in 2118 won't give a damn about the popular music of 1968...or 2018 for that matter.


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

stomanek said:


> Except it's not an assertion - but a belief (see original quote).
> 
> I grant you though - that figures like The Beatles and Bob Dylan were such major figures in world culture in the 60s - it is hard to imagine that distant posterity will not have an interest in them. Whether that will entail actually listening to the music is hard to say - probably more likely in the case of the Beatles - I would be amazed if anyone in 100 years will understand Bob Dylan's vocals.


Duly noted, so "I find that belief highly unlikely (to end up being true)." 

I wouldn't be amazed at anyone listening to Dylan in 100 years. I'm not sure if by "understand(ing) (his) vocals" you mean their intelligibility or quality; if the former, I would be surprised if the language changed THAT much within a century, and if the latter then I'd only argue that the quality of Dylan's vocals has always been controversial. People either find that his songwriting and ability to "sell" the lyrics makes up for its typically un-beautiful qualities or they don't. I don't see that changing much.


----------



## PlaySalieri

Eva Yojimbo said:


> Duly noted, so "I find that belief highly unlikely (to end up being true)."
> 
> I wouldn't be amazed at anyone listening to Dylan in 100 years. I'm not sure if by "understand(ing) (his) vocals" you mean their intelligibility or quality; if the former, I would be surprised if the language changed THAT much within a century, and if the latter then I'd only argue that the quality of Dylan's vocals has always been controversial. People either find that his songwriting and ability to "sell" the lyrics makes up for its typically un-beautiful qualities or they don't. I don't see that changing much.


I think that Dylan's voice and style belongs to an era - people who did not live in that era, as far as I am aware - really dont listen to his music. On youtube you will find young people discovering abba and the beatles - but not Dylan. One man with a guitar and cheesy free love peace not war message is not really going to have much appeal to future generations. the fact he's alive and still doing tours does help his cause of course - and the travesty of the nobel prize will make people look back and wonder how great 20thC writers - giants of literary art - never won the nobel prize but Bob Dylan did. But lets not open that can of worms.


----------



## Haydn70

stomanek said:


> I think that Dylan's voice and style belongs to an era - people who did not live in that era, as far as I am aware - really dont listen to his music. On youtube you will find young people discovering abba and the beatles - but not Dylan. One man with a guitar and cheesy free love peace not war message is not really going to have much appeal to future generations. the fact he's alive and still doing tours does help his cause of course - and the travesty of the nobel prize will make people look back and wonder how great 20thC writers - giants of literary art - never won the nobel prize but Bob Dylan did. But lets not open that can of worms.


Exactly...spot on.


----------



## Guest

Madiel said:


> I am sorry, but I am uninterested into this way of reasoning.
> *I have already offered evidence,* but you refuse to see it, *your interest seems to be winning an argument, I don't care about that.*
> I mention the Beatles studio albums and *you take the least sophisticated example of that group,* but even in Rubber Soul you can find developments that were going to be fundamental - and that were unheard of at the time of its release - (take the instrumental bridge from In My Life) - towards the creation of art pop
> I mention Burt Bacharach but you ignore him in your reply, because his originality in terms of chord progressions and time signature would be undeniable I guess. I could mention other artists, the ones usually labeled as art pop (Roxy Music? Talking Heads?) - *like it or not the work of The Beatles (Strawberry Fields Forever, A Day in the Life) and the Beach Boys (God Only Knows, Good Vibrations) are musical milestones* that have influenced everything that came after them, progressive rock included.
> You say, hear *what pop radio play but that is irrelevant*, it is like to look at bestsellers to evaluate the state of fiction.
> btw if Supper's ready is such a masterpiece, how come Peter Gabriel in the last 43 years has shown no interest in performing it?


Taking each item in bold in order:


You haven't offered evidence of where I was dismissive. 
My interest is arguing for my point of view, which differs from yours, and you are interested in arguing for yours - otherwise, you wouldn't have bothered to reply again, surely? 
The least sophisticated example might be considered _Please Please Me_. _Rubber Soul _is alleged to have been so inspiring to the Beach Boys that they produced _Pet Sounds_! 
Like it or not? What makes you think I don't like it? 
I actually said that you should look at several sources, not just pop radio. If one (perhaps me, it seems not you) wants to get a sense of what constitutes 'pop', one might be expected to survey all sources, indicators, outlets. 



Madiel said:


> every musical genre has its own dignity and can be happily enjoyed without comparisons to other genres


Spot on. I said as much on p5 of this thread, #75


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

ArsMusica said:


> I will quote a previous post of mine:
> 
> "One hundred years from now people may KNOW of Bob Dylan (to an extent) but an EXTREMELY small percentage of people, if any, will actually be listening to his music...or any popular music from 20th century or early 21st century for that matter.
> 
> Very few products of popular culture transcend their own time, their own time defined by the lifespan of the people who grew up with the particular product. True, there are people in their 20s and 30s who like 60s and 70s music--usually because their parents grew up with it, love it and play it and they (the children) grow to love it--but with each passing generation, the music fades out and is eventually of no interest to anyone."
> 
> Anyone on this site *REALLY *interested in the popular music of 1918? Probably one or two, I wouldn't doubt, but the mass of today's listeners couldn't care less about it.


The same thing you said about Bob Dylan and popular culture applies to classical music (and painting, and literature, and probably film) as well. An incredibly small portion of any art-form survives, and an incredibly small portion of future audiences care at all about art of the past. It's generally only the people that are truly passionate about art that care to explore past art.


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

Enthusiast said:


> I don't see why Dylan's lyrics shouldn't live on. I don't know if they will or not but there is lots of literature that I feel will die out before Dylan's lyrics will.


Thing is, I don't think Dylan's lyrics work all that well as standalone poetry. They're quintessential song lyrics in that they often read rather flat on the page so that Dylan can color and shade their meaning in performance. I even wrote an essay on this back when I was studying poetry (my textbook had a section devoted to the difference between song lyrics and written poetry).


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

stomanek said:


> I think that Dylan's voice and style belongs to an era - people who did not live in that era, as far as I am aware - really dont listen to his music. On youtube you will find young people discovering abba and the beatles - but not Dylan. One man with a guitar and cheesy free love peace not war message is not really going to have much appeal to future generations. the fact he's alive and still doing tours does help his cause of course - and the travesty of the nobel prize will make people look back and wonder how great 20thC writers - giants of literary art - never won the nobel prize but Bob Dylan did. But lets not open that can of worms.


Lots to address here:

I rather disagree about Dylan's voice/style belonging to an era. Of all the great 60s artists he's the one that seems most universal and out of time, perhaps because of his deep connection with folk music. I remember first hearing Blowin' in the Wind in grade school and initially thinking it was probably a 19th century song; it felt that old, as if it had been around forever and just become part of the fabric of American culture. Even when he engaged in contemporary styles it never really sounded like anything anyone else was doing, and unlike The Beatles he had very few direct copycats so his style hasn't become dulled by his influence.

I was born in '85 and Dylan is my favorite pop artist by a good distance. I've been apart of many music forums over the years and I can attest that many people my age (and younger) adore Dylan. YouTube isn't a good yardstick because there's little of Dylan's music (or The Beatles) on there; their labels don't allow it.

Reducing Dylan to "one man with a guitar and cheesy free love peace not war message" is insultingly and inaccurately reductive. The vast majority of Dylan's output is neither "one man with a guitar" nor "free love peace not war" lyrics. Dylan's "one man with a guitar" folk period lasted for the first two(!) years of his career. The only album he released that could be remotely classified as anti-war was The Times They Are a-Changin'. Later that same year he released "Another Side of Bob Dylan" which was, as the title suggests, completely different, and he never looked back. He embraced electric rock n' roll next year on Bringing It All Back Home and it's really his next two albums--Highway '61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde--where he garnered his most critical acclaim. After that he became a musical chameleon like Bowie, changing styles every few albums or so, and continues to do so. His lyrics have been as diverse as his musical styles.

Finally, about the Nobel Prize, I will say there's only a handful of literary critics that I highly respect and regularly learn from; Christopher Ricks is one of them, and he wrote an entire book about Bob Dylan. So if Dylan gets Ricks's stamp of approval, that's enough for me.


----------



## PlaySalieri

Eva Yojimbo said:


> Lots to address here:
> 
> I rather disagree about Dylan's voice/style belonging to an era. Of all the great 60s artists he's the one that seems most universal and out of time, perhaps because of his deep connection with folk music. I remember first hearing Blowin' in the Wind in grade school and initially thinking it was probably a 19th century song; it felt that old, as if it had been around forever and just become part of the fabric of American culture. Even when he engaged in contemporary styles it never really sounded like anything anyone else was doing, and unlike The Beatles he had very few direct copycats so his style hasn't become dulled by his influence.
> 
> I was born in '85 and Dylan is my favorite pop artist by a good distance. I've been apart of many music forums over the years and I can attest that many people my age (and younger) adore Dylan. YouTube isn't a good yardstick because there's little of Dylan's music (or The Beatles) on there; their labels don't allow it.
> 
> Reducing Dylan to "one man with a guitar and cheesy free love peace not war message" is insultingly and inaccurately reductive. The vast majority of Dylan's output is neither "one man with a guitar" nor "free love peace not war" lyrics. Dylan's "one man with a guitar" folk period lasted for the first two(!) years of his career. The only album he released that could be remotely classified as anti-war was The Times They Are a-Changin'. Later that same year he released "Another Side of Bob Dylan" which was, as the title suggests, completely different, and he never looked back. He embraced electric rock n' roll next year on Bringing It All Back Home and it's really his next two albums--Highway '61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde--where he garnered his most critical acclaim. After that he became a musical chameleon like Bowie, changing styles every few albums or so, and continues to do so. His lyrics have been as diverse as his musical styles.
> 
> Finally, about the Nobel Prize, I will say there's only a handful of literary critics that I highly respect and regularly learn from; Christopher Ricks is one of them, and he wrote an entire book about Bob Dylan. So if Dylan gets Ricks's stamp of approval, that's enough for me.


I accept your points, obviously you are a huge fan of Dylan and I am not - so we are bound to have differing views.

No need for appeal to authority though - one Oxford educated scholar writing a book about Dylan doesn't prove anything as such - only that a scholar who happened to be a huge fan of Dylan employed conventional literary analysis on his lyrics.


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

stomanek said:


> I accept your points, obviously you are a huge fan of Dylan and I am not - so we are bound to have differing views.
> 
> No need for appeal to authority though - one Oxford educated scholar writing a book about Dylan doesn't prove anything as such - only that a scholar who happened to be a huge fan of Dylan employed conventional literary analysis on his lyrics.


:tiphat:

I only mention Ricks because he's one of a handful of critics I have immense respect for. I've never read an article or book by him without learning something, and I find him consistently and piercingly insightful (though surprisingly I've yet to read his Dylan book!).


----------



## PlaySalieri

Eva Yojimbo said:


> :tiphat:
> 
> I only mention Ricks because he's one of a handful of critics I have immense respect for. I've never read an article or book by him without learning something, and I find him consistently and piercingly insightful (though surprisingly *I've yet to read his Dylan book!*).


ah ha - so ......


----------



## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

Supper's Ready is a masterpiece, in the sense that it's at the level of music where I think it's not really fair to try and compare it to other pieces in terms of quality (a distinction I usually reserve for classical pieces, although there are probably thousands of pieces, even smaller ones, that I feel this way about. I guess in general I'm very hesitant about comparing music on any metric other than "what do I enjoy most / what is my favorite"). If you dislike it then that's perfectly fine of course.

I think that every ALBUM from Trespass to ATOTT (maybe Wind too) is a "masterpiece" when considered as a whole, and I would say this about many of their individual songs as well. I think this group was very good at creating albums that function as a whole.

Some other masterpieces that I am particularly fond of

Watcher of the Skies
Firth of Fifth
The Cinema Show
Dancing with the Moonlit Knight
The Battle of Epping Forest (this one gets too much criticism... I don't really think much of it is fair. It's witty, amusing, and quite magical)
The Lamia
Mad Mad Moon
Entangled
Ripples
One for the Vine
Looking for Someone

Firth of Fifth and The Cinema Show are probably my favorites

I generally enjoy rock music in a different way from how I enjoy classical which are both different from how I enjoy jazz, so I don't really think it's fair to compare, say, Supper's Ready to a Mozart symphony in terms of quality. I suppose you could in terms of complexity, but that's pointless and rather stupid. To be fair, if pressed for an answer, I'd probably answer the Mozart symphony, but really they just explored entirely different aspects of music. If anyone wants more specific music theory regarding this, I'd be happy to go into it.

Honestly whether or not it compares favorably depends on what I am listening to / want to listen to at any moment. If I'm listening to Apocalypse in 9/8 then it compares favorably with any other piece from any genre, just as if I am listening to Mozart's 41st Symphony then that piece does. If I don't want to listen to either piece then most likely neither one compares favorably to the other (it's just music after all, as wonderful and magical as it can be). While this approach to evaluating music may not be the best possible one, it is MUCH better than what I see most people trying to do on this forum and many other similar forums.

*In general, I think trying to compare one piece that you really like favorably to another piece that you really like, especially if you like them for different reasons, is doing no good to yourself and, assuming this is not for the purpose of genuine recommendation, to anyone else either.*

This is one problem I've always had with the online classical community (and the online prog community!!), and I'm not going to deny that I'm guilty of it. People seem to prefer ranking things pointlessly, debating those rankings without real substance for hours on end, and elevating their own tastes to the point of objectivity, to genuine discussion about music. I suppose much of that follows as a result of the nature of Internet interactions (I'd hope most people don't really think like this IRL), and I guess a lot of it is just that I'm not always looking in the right places (some TC threads, for instance, are awesome and I've learned a lot taking people's listening recommendations!).

I'm not inherently against comparisons of music, even more "objective" ones (especially when the criteria by which you are evaluating them are at least somewhat specified, e.g. personal favorite), especially when the arguments made are not too forceful and are explained. and I honestly think that such comparisons, if delivered appropriately, can help people discover new genres of music that appeal to them in new ways. However, this is not what I've found to be the case.

My musical stances are constantly shifting, but that is one I think (and hope) I'll always hold. Sorry for the rant and the subtle hypocrisy


----------



## PlaySalieri

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> Supper's Ready is a masterpiece, in the sense that it's at the level of music where I think it's not really fair to try and compare it to other pieces in terms of quality (a distinction I usually reserve for classical pieces, although there are probably thousands of pieces, even smaller ones, that I feel this way about. I guess in general I'm very hesitant about comparing music on any metric other than "what do I enjoy most / what is my favorite"). If you dislike it then that's perfectly fine of course.
> 
> I think that every ALBUM from Trespass to ATOTT (maybe Wind too) is a "masterpiece" when considered as a whole, and I would say this about many of their individual songs as well. I think this group was very good at creating albums that function as a whole.
> 
> Some other masterpieces that I am particularly fond of
> 
> Watcher of the Skies
> Firth of Fifth
> The Cinema Show
> Dancing with the Moonlit Knight
> The Battle of Epping Forest (this one gets too much criticism... I don't really think much of it is fair. It's witty, amusing, and quite magical)
> The Lamia
> Mad Mad Moon
> Entangled
> Ripples
> One for the Vine
> Looking for Someone
> 
> Firth of Fifth and The Cinema Show are probably my favorites
> 
> I generally enjoy rock music in a different way from how I enjoy classical which are both different from how I enjoy jazz, so I don't really think it's fair to compare, say, Supper's Ready to a Mozart symphony in terms of quality. I suppose you could in terms of complexity, but that's pointless and rather stupid. To be fair, if pressed for an answer, I'd probably answer the Mozart symphony, but really they just explored entirely different aspects of music. If anyone wants more specific music theory regarding this, I'd be happy to go into it.
> 
> Honestly whether or not it compares favorably depends on what I am listening to / want to listen to at any moment. If I'm listening to Apocalypse in 9/8 then it compares favorably with any other piece from any genre, just as if I am listening to Mozart's 41st Symphony then that piece does. If I don't want to listen to either piece then most likely neither one compares favorably to the other (it's just music after all, as wonderful and magical as it can be). While this approach to evaluating music may not be the best possible one, it is MUCH better than what I see most people trying to do on this forum and many other similar forums.
> 
> *In general, I think trying to compare one piece that you really like favorably to another piece that you really like, especially if you like them for different reasons, is doing no good to yourself and, assuming this is not for the purpose of genuine recommendation, to anyone else either.*
> 
> This is one problem I've always had with the online classical community (and the online prog community!!), and I'm not going to deny that I'm guilty of it. People seem to prefer ranking things pointlessly, debating those rankings without real substance for hours on end, and elevating their own tastes to the point of objectivity, to genuine discussion about music. I suppose much of that follows as a result of the nature of Internet interactions (I'd hope most people don't really think like this IRL), and I guess a lot of it is just that I'm not always looking in the right places (some TC threads, for instance, are awesome and I've learned a lot taking people's listening recommendations!).
> 
> I'm not inherently against comparisons of music, even more "objective" ones (especially when the criteria by which you are evaluating them are at least somewhat specified, e.g. personal favorite), especially when the arguments made are not too forceful and are explained. and I honestly think that such comparisons, if delivered appropriately, can help people discover new genres of music that appeal to them in new ways. However, this is not what I've found to be the case.
> 
> My musical stances are constantly shifting, but that is one I think (and hope) I'll always hold. Sorry for the rant and the subtle hypocrisy


It seems that the world is awash with masterpieces and geniuses

and why not

I was going through some of my 70s and 80s hits on youtube a few days ago - Gary Numan for example - and people were saying about his pleasure principle album - its a masterpiece and he is a genius. Same story with Elvis Costello - same comments. The only time I could agree with those comments was when I was listening to some P Floyds stuff DSOTM The Wall Meddle etc.

If you really do like a work a lot then it is bound to be a masterpiece and the artist a genius.

which makes this who discussion pretty much pointless


----------



## Bwv 1080

janxharris said:


> Supper's Ready by the British progressive rock band Genesis is often cited as their masterpiece; it seems to transcend the 'popular' genre label that is used to describe it and exist somewhere closer to the classical end of the spectrum. It was released in 1972 and became a regular in their stage shows. This live version is from their 'Second's Out' double album.
> 
> I think it does compare favourably (though I might cite some pieces that perhaps eclipse it); it's length, complexity and profound good verses evil climax are a remarkable achievement imho.
> 
> What do folk think? Are people even familiar with it?


Guess I am the only one who thinks Genesis way overrated. Black Sabbath Vol 4 came out the same year and was much more innovative and influential music. And a good way to see if rock music sucks is if you can make ask the question 'is it as good as this other genre?' if its good its good on its own merits.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

Bwv 1080 said:


> And a good way to see if rock music sucks is if you can make ask the question 'is it as good as this other genre?' if its good its good on its own merits.


Yes, but Genesis is.


----------



## Bwv 1080

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> One of the most close-minded statements I've heard in a while. I'm sorry you feel this way.


Quite the opposite, closed minded is measuring rock, or any other genre, against the aesthetics of common practice Western Classical Music. Dont set a standard where Genesis (or any other band) is 'better' because it is more like some 19th century classical composer's music.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

Bwv 1080 said:


> Quite the opposite, closed minded is measuring rock, or any other genre, against the aesthetics of common practice Western Classical Music. Dont set a standard where Genesis (or any other band) is 'better' because it is more like some 19th century classical composer's music.


Oh, my bad! I'm stupid. I thought you were saying the exact opposite of what you actually meant, and I thought you were criticizing rock as a whole haha. I agree with you then on this point (in fact this is exactly what I was saying in my first post "I generally enjoy rock music in a different way from how I enjoy classical which are both different from how I enjoy jazz, so I don't really think it's fair to compare, say, Supper's Ready to a Mozart symphony in terms of quality."). However, Genesis is still my favorite band. I don't compare them to classical standards and I generally don't like rock music that aspires to be great in the same way as classical music.


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## starthrower

It doesn't really matter. No need to make these comparisons. I can enjoy both, but you can't fairly compare a rock quintet to a great symphony or even a classical quintet.


----------



## janxharris

GENESIS - FIRTH OF FIFTH- Harp Cover


----------



## janxharris




----------



## Jacck

it sounds watered down compared to classical music


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## Red Terror

Meh.

12345677777777777777777


----------



## janxharris

Red Terror said:


> Meh.
> 
> 12345677777777777777777


You dislike something, but we know not what.


----------



## regenmusic

Eva Yojimbo said:


> Thing is, I don't think Dylan's lyrics work all that well as standalone poetry. They're quintessential song lyrics in that they often read rather flat on the page so that Dylan can color and shade their meaning in performance. I even wrote an essay on this back when I was studying poetry (my textbook had a section devoted to the difference between song lyrics and written poetry).


It used to be that poets were next in line to Kings. They were the most respected people of their countries. The poetry they wrote before the 20th Century was epic in scope. Check out Young's Night Thoughts or Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy. There really is no substitute for good poetry. Rock and pop lyrics or rap doesn't cut it. People probably yearn in their souls for good real poetry and so someone like Dylan in a book is better than nothing to them. It's like that Genesis thread, the piece sounds like classical music, good lyrics seem like real poetry, but they have too much "form" for lack of a better word, where classical music and real poetic works have complete freedom. The form of rock is what the rock audience can bear, the form for a book of rock star's poetry is what the rock audience can bear.


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## Strange Magic

Worth repeating.......

We must always, it seems, compare every bloody thing with every other thing: what's bad, what's good, what's better, what's best. Why listen to Dvořák at all when Beethoven is better (isn't he?)? And isn't Bach best of all--better than Genesis anyway? I feel degraded listening to Genesis when I could/should be listening to Bach . I too know when I'm eating fast food and when I'm eating gourmet food--I feel small and guilty (Not!) when I bite into that Whopper and fries, and so much more good about myself when dining on truffles, caviar, and champagne. Love these threads!


----------



## starthrower

Strange Magic said:


> Worth repeating.......
> 
> We must always, it seems, compare every bloody thing with every other thing: what's bad, what's good, what's better, what's best. Why listen to Dvořák at all when Beethoven is better (isn't he?)? And isn't Bach best of all--better than Genesis anyway? I feel degraded listening to Genesis when I could/should be listening to Bach . I too know when I'm eating fast food and when I'm eating gourmet food--I feel small and guilty (Not!) when I bite into that Whopper and fries, and so much more good about myself when dining on truffles, caviar, and champagne. Love these threads!


Nobody has these discussions in real life. It's a cyberspace phenomenon.


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## elgar's ghost

Perhaps just for tonight we should call it _Burns Supper's Ready_.

I'll get my coat...


----------



## eugeneonagain

Are truffles, caviar and champagne the only alternative to burger and fries? 

Which most resembles burger and fries, Bach or Genesis?


----------



## Red Terror

eugeneonagain said:


> Are truffles, caviar and champagne the only alternative to burger and fries?
> 
> Which most resembles burger and fries, Bach or Genesis?


I love a good burger with fries ... but I cannot stomach Genesis.


----------



## Strange Magic

eugeneonagain said:


> Are truffles, caviar and champagne the only alternative to burger and fries?
> 
> Which most resembles burger and fries, Bach or Genesis?


It all depends upon one's appetite, at the moment of choice. The question is: who is to be master of one's aesthetic (or gastronomic) priorities; one's self? The Crowd? The Experts? The Best People?


----------



## Jacck

Red Terror said:


> I love a good burger with fries ... but I cannot stomach Genesis.


and do you enjoy other prog rock or is you indigestion limited exclusively to Genesis? I like the Gentle Giant. They are the best prog rock band for me.


----------



## Red Terror

Jacck said:


> and do you enjoy other prog rock or is you indigestion limited exclusively to Genesis? I like the Gentle Giant. They are the best prog rock band for me.


I like Gentle Giant.


----------



## eugeneonagain

Strange Magic said:


> It all depends upon one's appetite, at the moment of choice. The question is: who is to be master of one's aesthetic (or gastronomic) priorities; one's self? The Crowd? The Experts? The Best People?


Gastronomically speaking, your doctor. He should be dissuading you from fast food. Musically speaking it probably doesn't matter as much health-wise, but my health suffers a bit when my neighbours play horrible music, which I'm not allowed to judge as horrible for fear of being branded 'elitist'.

It's a cruel world.


----------



## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

Why did I revive this thread? 

I agree with starthrower and Strange Magic for the most part though; obviously Beethoven and Genesis can't really be compared, and while you can say that one's "better", it's really a meaningless and valueless statement if you appreciate both for different reasons.

Can't really get into that harp cover though... it does sorta make it sound like "watered down classical", I suppose, whereas in the actual song its majestic and awesome.

Gentle Giant is great; almost redeems you for your bad taste of not liking Genesis 

OK thread, you can go to bed now.


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## Strange Magic

eugeneonagain said:


> Gastronomically speaking, your doctor. He should be dissuading you from fast food. Musically speaking it probably doesn't matter as much health-wise, but my health suffers a bit when my neighbours play horrible music, which I'm not allowed to judge as horrible for fear of being branded 'elitist'.
> 
> It's a cruel world.


I eat a balanced diet. My listening is similarly balanced.


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## Haydn70

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> ...obviously Beethoven and Genesis can't really be compared, and while you can say that one's "better", it's really a meaningless and valueless statement if you appreciate both for different reasons.


Yes, they can be compared. And Beethoven is *immeasurably *better...and that is a meaningful and valuable statement.


----------



## hammeredklavier

Beethoven 5th symphony follows the golden ratio in its structure: _"In 1978, Derek Haylock argued about the presence of the golden section in the first movement of Beethoven's fifth. Claiming that the opening motto occurs exactly at the golden mean point of 0.618, namely in bar 372 of 601. What's more, the coda is 129 bars long, and, if you divide it using the golden section, you get 49:80. After the first 49 bars of the coda, Beethoven actually introduces a completely new tune that has not appeared in the movement so far, a real first in the history of classical music composition."_

the whole Mozart Requiem is built around its DNA motif which is the Lutheran hymn, "When my final hour is at hand" D-C#-D-E-F (even the Amen Fugue sketch uses the inversion)

Fantasy in C minor, K. 475, And the Generalization of the Lydian Principle Through Motivic Thorough-Composition https://archive.schillerinstitute.com/fid_97-01/984_sub_moral_appen_PDFs/chapter-5.PDF

What structural or motivic unity is there in Supper's Ready by Genesis?
Just because you pick random pop-like songs, add some more random harmonic progressions, and combine them to form 20 minute long medley doesn't make it as complex as classical. "Length" is not necessarily what gives classical music its complexity.


----------



## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

I'll respond to both of you guys later. But there is a sense of overarching structure pervasive throughout "Supper's Ready". And I wouldn't say any of the sections really count as "pop" songs, other than maybe "Willow Farm".

"Supper's Ready" isn't unique in this regard. Other "medleys" of comparable length also have a sense of structure, such as "Close to the Edge" or "The Medley" on Abbey Road.

And though I agree Beethoven's music is far more complex and intricate than that of any rock band, I still stand by my opinion that it's not really fair to compare the two (though, to be fair, I really don't think it's fair draw comparisons between most music I consider "good").


----------



## Simon Moon

As a huge fan of progressive music (and Supper's Ready), I will state, that the comparison is ridiculous.

Not because I feel one is superior to the other, but they both fulfill different, but equal, emotional and intellectual desires, for me.

Yes, an argument can be made that classical music is more complex (something I look for in music), but there is just something about the best prog, still pushes most of the same buttons for me that classical does, but to different degrees.

Let me add, that most of my prog tastes now tend to be mostly in the avant garde subgenres of music (Henry Cow, Thinking Plague, Magma, Aranis, etc), where the complexity is higher than most of the more famous prog bands.


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## Simon Moon

hammeredklavier said:


> What structural or motivic unity is there in Supper's Ready by Genesis?
> Just because you pick random pop-like songs, add some more random harmonic progressions, and combine them to form 20 minute long medley doesn't make it as complex as classical. "Length" is not necessarily what gives classical music its complexity.


I would hardly call Supper's Ready, 'pop-like'. I don't think there is much in the way of 4/4, or only 3 chords, or verse-bridge-chorus-repeat, to Supper's Ready. So, is Supper's Ready as complex as classical, no, much more complex than pop, I think so.


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## Haydn70

Art Rock said:


> And lots of rap fans would say the opposite.


Who cares what they would say? They are musical ignoramuses.


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## hammeredklavier

janxharris said:


> You trust that 'experts' can be relied upon to give unbiased objective evaluations of what constitutes great art music?
> Can you expound a little please?


I think there's no need for us to explain. History will decide what they'll be remembered as.
Watch what progressive rock can do in centuries of time. I'll be remembering this discussion and looking forward to seeing Genesis becoming known and considered as the "Beethoven" of this era by the future generations.

http://blogs.springeropen.com/sprin...ata-reveals-classical-music-creation-secrets/





"Quality in art "is not merely a matter of personal opinion but to a high degree objectively traceable." -Jacob Rosenberg


----------



## Haydn70

hammeredklavier said:


> I think there's no need for us to explain. History will decide what they'll be remembered as.
> Watch what progressive rock can do in centuries of time. I'll be remembering this discussion and looking forward to seeing Genesis becoming known and considered as the "Beethoven" of this era by the future generations.
> 
> http://blogs.springeropen.com/sprin...ata-reveals-classical-music-creation-secrets/
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> "Quality in art "is not merely a matter of personal opinion but to a high degree objectively traceable." -Jacob Rosenberg


An excellent post and an excellent video.


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## regenmusic

It might sound farfetched but I think modern art is so bad because it's an investment scheme, not an example of true art. You get people (dealers) who get behind these "artists" and they make millions from them. Yes, there is "theory" behind much of it but there is theory behind a lot of crazy and even criminal things. It's not very good theory.


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## Strange Magic

Haydn70 said:


> Yes, they can be compared. And Beethoven is *immeasurably *better...and that is a meaningful and valuable statement.


This is what is known as an assertion. Such assertions are standard fodder on this site. It is very important--even essential--that they be made by their authors, as it legitimatizes and validates the absolutely inerrancy of their taste, and the degraded state of the tastes of others. It's best to just let them pass by, as they come by with metronomic regularity.


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## Haydn70

Strange Magic said:


> ...the absolutely inerrancy of their taste...


Yes, my taste *is *superb. Many thanks SM.


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## Haydn70

Strange Magic said:


> This is what is known as an assertion. Such assertions are standard fodder on this site. It is very important--even essential--that they be made by their authors, as it legitimatizes and validates the absolutely inerrancy of their taste, and the degraded state of the tastes of others. * It's best to just let them pass by*, as they come by with metronomic regularity.


Just as I let your relativism, which is very important--even essential to you--pass by.


----------



## hammeredklavier

Strange Magic said:


> This is what is known as an assertion. Such assertions are standard fodder on this site. It is very important--even essential--that they be made by their authors, as it legitimatizes and validates the absolutely inerrancy of their taste, and the degraded state of the tastes of others. It's best to just let them pass by, as they come by with metronomic regularity.


The key is not just to write complexity, but to write complexity in a way that would *inspire* hundreds of thousands of other serious music-makers (people who actually make "music" and able to think clearly about "music") rather than a fandom of half-braindead teenagers who daydream thinking about their idol pop stars "whose music takes no actual musical talent or skills to write", believing they're actually "musicians".









Sure, music is subjective, anybody can listen to whatever they like, but there are bad tastes in music. (like thinking that certain pieces of classical are more banal than pop based on the excuse "music is subjective" all the time) And importance and significance (in terms of influence into later age) various music-makers had in history are all different. I'll accept your opinions "the music of Genesis has the same value as Beethoven" only if you honestly think Genesis will become influential in music creation in the same way Beethoven has been. Refusing to acknowledge what led to the creation of art we enjoy today and blindly claiming "there are no standards of art" just seems like shallow anti-intellectualism to me. A band like Genesis learns more chord progressions and incorporates them in their music--Will they become "immortal" like Beethoven? Who knows. History will decide.


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## PeterFromLA

My pressing of the LP has the same music on both sides. It took me a while to realize I was hearing the same music when I flipped the record over.

Or is that the way it's supposed to sound?


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## Guest

Haydn70 said:


> Yes, they can be compared. And Beethoven is *immeasurably *better...and that is a meaningful and valuable statement.


No, it isn't. My counter is as meaningful and valuable as your assertion.


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## Haydn70

.........................................................................................


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

@hammeredklavier, sure, some "pop" music doesn't have anything going into it, and I suppose you can make a fair argument that it's "objectively" crap or "anti-intellectual". But it's unfair to ascribe theses qualities to all non-classical music, especially a piece like "Supper's Ready".


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## Haydn70

MacLeod said:


> No, it isn't. My counter is as meaningful and valuable as your assertion.


And yet another of TC leading relativists heard from...you guys crack me up!


----------



## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

PeterFromLA said:


> My pressing of the LP has the same music on both sides. It took me a while to realize I was hearing the same music when I flipped the record over.
> 
> Or is that the way it's supposed to sound?


Wait, do you mean that your copy of Foxtrot has two Side 2's? I've actually heard that from someone else (online). Really weird.

Or did it have 2 Side 1's?


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## KenOC

It's obvious (to me at least) that Ludwig van Beethoven, struggling with those late quartets, would have done well to spare the time to write something like _My Sharona_.


----------



## janxharris

hammeredklavier said:


> Beethoven 5th symphony follows the golden ratio in its structure: _"In 1978, Derek Haylock argued about the presence of the golden section in the first movement of Beethoven's fifth. Claiming that the opening motto occurs exactly at the golden mean point of 0.618, namely in bar 372 of 601. What's more, the coda is 129 bars long, and, if you divide it using the golden section, you get 49:80. After the first 49 bars of the coda, Beethoven actually introduces a completely new tune that has not appeared in the movement so far, a real first in the history of classical music composition."_


Why any of this has relevance would actually need further explanation. Are you suggesting that no successful classical symphony exists that does not employ the ratio mentioned?



> the whole Mozart Requiem is built around its DNA motif which is the Lutheran hymn, "When my final hour is at hand" D-C#-D-E-F (even the Amen Fugue sketch uses the inversion)


So the fact that most classical era symphonies are works of thematically distinct movements is reason to doubt their structural integrity?



> Fantasy in C minor, K. 475, And the Generalization of the Lydian Principle Through Motivic Thorough-Composition https://archive.schillerinstitute.com/fid_97-01/984_sub_moral_appen_PDFs/chapter-5.PDF
> 
> What structural or motivic unity is there in Supper's Ready by Genesis?
> Just because you pick random pop-like songs, add some more random harmonic progressions, and combine them to form 20 minute long medley doesn't make it as complex as classical. "Length" is not necessarily what gives classical music its complexity.


For me, the music flows very well - each section leading into the next - with the exception (by their own admission) that 'Willow Farm' is an abrupt digression, where the music comes to a halt and this completely different song is introduced.

If you consider strict sonata form as in some sense structural perfection then presumably you rubbish all the 19th - 20th century tone poems built on literary or historical themes?


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

Thanks for that @janxharris, and at the risk of sounding like a fanboy I'd like to add that the abrupt transition into "Willow Farm" (which is pretty much a measure of a descending Phrygian g# minor (or actually it might be a-flat minor according to them) scale from the 5th to the 2nd degree) serves the structure of the whole piece, as it highlights the contrast between the material that came before it and the material that comes after it, which have very different characters from one another. It is also repeated later in the transition to "Apocalypse in 9/8", but rather than resolving to the tonic it goes to this super cool C7 chord... and what happens in the following minutes is just... sooooo cool.


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## Guest

Haydn70 said:


> And yet another of TC leading relativists heard from...you guys crack me up!


Can you explain what you mean by "a relativist" and why it "cracks you up"?


----------



## janxharris

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> Thanks for that @janxharris, and at the risk of sounding like a fanboy I'd like to add that the abrupt transition into "Willow Farm" (which is pretty much a measure of a descending Phrygian g# minor (or actually it might be a-flat minor according to them) scale from the 5th to the 2nd degree) serves the structure of the whole piece, as it highlights the contrast between the material that came before it and the material that comes after it, which have very different characters from one another. It is also repeated later in the transition to "Apocalypse in 9/8", but rather than resolving to the tonic it goes to this super cool C7 chord... and what happens in the following minutes is just... sooooo cool.


That's quite an analysis - though I don't fully follow. Apologies.

Phrygian is a scale that can be represented by the white notes on a piano beginning at 'e' isn't it?


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## hammeredklavier

janxharris said:


> So the fact that most classical era symphonies are works of thematically distinct movements is reason to doubt their structural integrity?


No, symphonies, string quartets, "sonatas", especially the best ones are not composed of irrelevant movements.
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lecture/transcript/print/mozart-quartet-in-c-major-k465-dissonance/
otherwise you could rearrange Beethoven symphony movements putting all the 'best movements' in one, but that won't sound good. One time, Schumann criticized Chopin second sonata containing movements that seemed 'irrelevant' to him. So clearly, classical composers in composing their best works had ideas of unity in mind. There are tons of academic papers written all around the world about elements of unity (that are not readily apparent across movements) in classical works. 
And speaking of what motifs, can you show us what motivic development is there in Genesis. You can actually analyze Shostakovich, Shoenberg, Bruckner, Mahler, Stravinsky in the same way you do Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven in this respect. https://www.youtube.com/user/richardatkinson2108/videos



janxharris said:


> Why any of this has relevance would actually need further explanation. Are you suggesting that no successful classical symphony exists that does not employ the ratio mentioned?


Golden ratio is just one of many elements that can give sense of structural completeness.





As I said, you can keep indulging in the delusion Genesis will eventually be recognized as the next Beethoven. Keep imagining that the hidden 'artistic merit' and 'superb craftsmanship' of Genesis will somehow be 'rediscovered' and become appreciated by the future generations and it will only be a matter of time Genesis gets their place beside Beethoven. -- Why should I even bother explaining why this simply won't happen. As I said, history will do it, in time.


----------



## janxharris

I wonder - those questioning the merits of the Genesis piece - have you truly given it a proper hearing? Take, for example, the instrumental section of the Apocalypse in 9/8:






For me, it's extraordinary writing.


----------



## janxharris

hammeredklavier said:


> No, symphonies, string quartets, "sonatas", especially the best ones are not composed of irrelevant movements.
> https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lecture/transcript/print/mozart-quartet-in-c-major-k465-dissonance/
> otherwise you could rearrange Beethoven symphony movements putting all the 'best movements' in one, but that won't sound good. One time, Schumann criticized Chopin second sonata containing movements that seemed 'irrelevant' to him. So clearly, classical composers in composing their best works had ideas of unity in mind. There are tons of academic papers written all around the world about elements of unity (that are not readily apparent across movements) in classical works.
> And speaking of what motifs, can you show us what motivic development is there in Genesis. You can actually analyze Shostakovich, Shoenberg, Bruckner, Mahler, Stravinsky in the same way you do Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven in this respect. https://www.youtube.com/user/richardatkinson2108/videos
> 
> Golden ratio is just one of many elements that can give sense of structural completeness.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> As I said, you can keep indulging in the delusion Genesis will eventually be recognized as the next Beethoven. Keep imagining that the hidden 'artistic merit' and 'superb craftsmanship' of Genesis will somehow be 'rediscovered' and become appreciated by the future generations and it will only be a matter of time Genesis gets their place beside Beethoven. -- Why should I even bother explaining why this simply won't happen. As I said, history will do it, in time.


Will take me a while to respond to this.


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## ZJovicic

I'm late to the party when it comes to this thread! But despite such comparisons being silly, I enjoy them!

However, if I wanted to compare popular music with classical, I'd choose a different popular piece. And I think it's only fair to compare pieces of the similar lenght.

Let's see an example:

THIS:




I think it compares favorably to a great bunch of classical pieces under 4 minutes.


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## ZJovicic

Another candidate would be this:






No matter how popular this song is I think it deserves every ounce of attention it gets.

It has all: fantastic riff, power, energy, passion, emotion, great solo, and everything fits perfectly with the rest of the song.


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## Jacck

it is unclear to me, how you want to compare this pretty generic pop based on repeated rythms and simple tunes, to something like the Swan of Tuonela


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## janxharris

Jacck said:


> it is unclear to me, how you want to compare this pretty generic pop based on repeated rythms and simple tunes, to something like the Swan of Tuonela


Not generic and not simple. The harmony is complex and ever-transitioning. Can you name a piece of music that sounds like Supper's Ready'? Compare that to the same-sounding classical era which has been discussed elsewhere.

EDIT: Perhaps you meant the 'Guns and Roses' song? - in which case ignore my post.


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## ZJovicic

Sweet Child O' Mine and Good Vibration are better than a great deal of classical pieces of the similar length, but they fall short of the best stuff. For example nothing comes close to this:


----------



## janxharris

ZJovicic said:


> Sweet Child O' Mine and Good Vibration are better than a great deal of classical pieces of the similar length, but they fall short of the best stuff. For example nothing comes close to this:


it's a great piece.


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## Strange Magic

Strange Magic said:


> My view would be that it does compare favorably with the best classical music if at that time it is your wish to listen to some Genesis. Desire, intent, are powerful forces (in my case) in my decision to listen to any music of whatever sort, and I find myself usually deeply satisfied by whatever it is that currently answers my mood.
> 
> You are very likely looking for a different sort of answer though, but this is all I can offer.


I'll stick with my initial post in this thread. Once people feel sufficiently comfortable with the authenticity and validity of their own tastes in music and art--in other words, once they realize (like being kicked by a mule, or struck on the head by a Zen Master) that all aesthetics is personal--they then become free of the compulsion to endlessly disparage the tastes of others.


----------



## Jacck

janxharris said:


> Not generic and not simple. The harmony is complex and ever-transitioning. Can you name a piece of music that sounds like Supper's Ready'? Compare that to the same-sounding classical era which has been discussed elsewhere.
> 
> EDIT: Perhaps you meant the 'Guns and Roses' song? - in which case ignore my post.


yes, I meant the Guns and Roses song, but the Supper's Ready is a mediocre classical at best (if you want to conceive it that way). Better leave it as supreme rock than mediocre classical. These cross-genre comparisons are pointless. It is a different music with different style, different technique, different purpose


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## janxharris

Jacck said:


> yes, I meant the Guns and Roses song, but the Supper's Ready is a mediocre classical at best (if you want to conceive it that way). Better leave it as supreme rock than mediocre classical. These cross-genre comparisons are pointless. It is a different music with different style, different technique, different purpose


Okay - well I don't agree...but that's no problem.


----------



## Jacck

SWEET CHILD O' MINE (Guns N' Roses) Harp Twins
do these simple melodies and rythms really compare to classical music? They contain only a very few musical ideas, the structure is very loose, there is a lot of repetition. 
compare it to 
Hovhaness " The Spirit of the Trees"
it is clear even to my musically untrained amateur ears that the Hovhaness is the richer and more interesting music


----------



## ZJovicic

Jacck said:


> SWEET CHILD O' MINE (Guns N' Roses) Harp Twins
> do these simple melodies and rythms really compare to classical music? They contain only a very few musical ideas, the structure is very loose, there is a lot of repetition.
> compare it to
> Hovhaness " The Spirit of the Trees"
> it is clear even to my musically untrained amateur ears that the Hovhaness is the richer and more interesting music


The song is not intended to played on harp. It has diametrically opposite attitude.

Regarding repetition, it's true, but the main riff is not repeated verbatim throughout the song, but it's varied. It's kind of similar to minimalism.

However the greatness of this song is in its passion and emotion that's expressed in a unique and very powerful way. This song is extremely memorable. And the opening riff is so powerful that can awaken you anytime and make you feel alive and want to dance, or run...

Also combining minimalist variation of riff with organically progressing music of the rest of the song is not easy to achieve.
And the solo is good too. Not to mention very touching lyrics and beautiful vocal melody.

Just search on YouTube how many times has this song been covered by pretty much any type of musicians.
Full orchestras, string quartets, acoustic guitars, piano, and yes, even harp.

This piano version is quite good:


----------



## ZJovicic

Another candidate:






Orchestra version:






Analysis:






Now tell me that THIS can't measure up to classical pieces lasting just 5-6 minutes???


----------



## Haydn70

ZJovicic said:


> Another candidate:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Orchestra version:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Analysis:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Now tell me that THIS can't measure up to classical pieces lasting just 5-6 minutes???


OK, THAT can't measure up to classical pieces lasting just 5-6 minutes...or any number of minutes for that matter.

Once again we have a piece of popular music arranged for orchestra...which results in....a piece of popular music. As ArsMusica wrote in another thread:

"A pop or rock or folk or heavy metal or what-have-you song arranged for cello/piano duo or string quartet or brass quintet or full orchestra is still just a pop or rock or folk or heavy metal or what-have-you song…the result is NOT classical music."

And to further try to legitimize the proposition with an analysis! Too funny.


----------



## ZJovicic

Haydn70 said:


> OK, THAT can't measure up to classical pieces lasting just 5-6 minutes...or any number of minutes for that matter.
> 
> Once again we have a piece of popular music arranged for orchestra...which results in....a piece of popular music. As ArsMusica wrote in another thread:
> 
> "A pop or rock or folk or heavy metal or what-have-you song arranged for cello/piano duo or string quartet or brass quintet or full orchestra is still just a pop or rock or folk or heavy metal or what-have-you song…the result is NOT classical music."
> 
> And to further try to legitimize the proposition with an analysis! Too funny.


I didn't claim that Bohemian rhapsody IS classical music, because obviously it's not.

*I did claim* that it can measure up with a lot of classical pieces of the same length in terms of quality, artistic merit, originality, creativity etc.


----------



## Haydn70

ZJovicic said:


> I didn't claim that Bohemian rhapsody IS classical music, because obviously it's not.


My apologies; that is true.

I will put it another way then: it *doesn't *measure up to any classical pieces of the same length in terms of quality, artistic merit, originality, creativity etc.


----------



## ZJovicic

Haydn70 said:


> My apologies; that is true.
> 
> I will put it another way then: it *doesn't *measure up to any classical pieces of the same length in terms of quality, artistic merit, originality, creativity etc.


OK this is your opinion.
In my opinion it's better than majority of art songs out there.
It's better than some operatic arias.
It's even better than some less remarkable symphonies, sonatas, etc...


----------



## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

"In my opinion it's better than majority of art songs out there." - Yes
"It's better than some operatic arias." - Can't compare
"It's even better than some less remarkable symphonies, sonatas, etc..." - Can't compare, and there's no point in stating this


----------



## Phil loves classical

Here is my analysis, which may not entirely right. I won't get into the lyrics. The music is very different from Classical, that part is obvious.

First of all the music is not very complex. You can see by this piano score (there is also a band score on Scribd, but you can only preview without a membership). But it is more unconventional in harmony and rhythm than a lot of music up to the late-19th century, and doesn't resolve in traditional ways (the melody ends often in non triadic notes, which gives a feeling the lines are left hanging ), and modulates freely without much preparation at all. The chord progressions are unconventional. It is also looser in form.

Traditional Classical has tighter form, and more constraints (or established parameters), and builds a lot more within those constraints.

It is closer to Modern Classical, but is still looser in form, and less ambitious musically in scope or detail. It is a like a crude chunk of music made by a cross section in 20th century music, and exists like an isolated island, not really related to anything else, even in regards to other music with a similar sort of approach. Each song is a unique sort of creation.

http://www.marcello-online.com/gf.pdf


----------



## hammeredklavier

ZJovicic said:


> OK this is your opinion.
> In my opinion it's better than majority of art songs out there.
> It's better than some operatic arias.
> It's even better than some less remarkable symphonies, sonatas, etc...


I'd say even compositional jazz is better than this one in terms of instrumental color, variety, texture etc


----------



## janxharris

Haydn70 said:


> My apologies; that is true.
> 
> I will put it another way then: it *doesn't *measure up to any classical pieces of the same length in terms of quality, artistic merit, originality, creativity etc.


I could not disagree more - especially with your use of 'any classical pieces'.


----------



## janxharris

a bit pitchy but...


----------



## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

janxharris said:


> That's quite an analysis - though I don't fully follow. Apologies.
> 
> Phrygian is a scale that can be represented by the white notes on a piano beginning at 'e' isn't it?


It's not really much of an analysis (I haven't actually ever intentionally put effort into theoretically analyzing this piece or any other piece by Genesis, though I've played a lot of it on the piano), but that is correct.

So Phrygian is basically a minor mode with a flat second (so e minor without the f-sharp (all white keys!), a minor with a b-flat, etc)... in g-sharp minor this would be:

g#
a NATURAL (capitalized because this is the note that deviates from the natural minor scale)
b natural
c#
d#
e
f#

Phrygian is certainly not the most common mode to encounter, but a famous example of it is at the beginning of the 2nd movement of Brahms's 4th.


----------



## janxharris

hammeredklavier said:


> Beethoven 5th symphony follows the golden ratio in its structure: _"In 1978, Derek Haylock argued about the presence of the golden section in the first movement of Beethoven's fifth. Claiming that the opening motto occurs exactly at the golden mean point of 0.618, namely in bar 372 of 601. What's more, the coda is 129 bars long, and, if you divide it using the golden section, you get 49:80. After the first 49 bars of the coda, Beethoven actually introduces a completely new tune that has not appeared in the movement so far, a real first in the history of classical music composition."_


Are you suggesting that all the great symphonies have the recapitulation arriving at the golden ratio? If not what is your point?

The score to Beethoven's 5th symphony is available online and I counted 626 bars - not 601.

Further, if the golden ration is relevant as you suggest then it would only be so temporally would it not? - Baremboim's Prom performance (2012) has the recapitulation occurring at the none golden ratio of 1.72 - so is it a subpar performance?

I thought it better to deal with you post point by point - so more to come.


----------



## hammeredklavier

janxharris said:


> Are you suggesting that all the great symphonies have the recapitulation arriving at the golden ratio? If not what is your point?


Did you forget talked about this already? Go back 2 pages and look.



hammeredklavier said:


> Golden ratio is just one of many elements that can give sense of structural completeness.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> As I said, you can keep indulging in the delusion Genesis will eventually be recognized as the next Beethoven. Keep imagining that the hidden 'artistic merit' and 'superb craftsmanship' of Genesis will somehow be 'rediscovered' and become appreciated by the future generations and it will only be a matter of time Genesis gets their place beside Beethoven. -- Why should I even bother explaining why this simply won't happen. As I said, history will do it, in time.


----------



## janxharris

hammeredklavier said:


> Did you forget talked about this already? Go back 2 pages and look.


Well if your suggesting that the Genesis piece does not have any 'structural completeness' then I think you are wrong. The first section reappears as an instrumental and abbreviated towards the end (before the finale). It's initial Am6 chord is used in the section for piano (modified piano) and vocal ('Wandering in the chaos the battle has left...'). Apart from the jump at 'Willow Farm', each section flows seamless into the next. I'd say the transition are quite breathtaking.

If you have an issue with through composed music then perhaps you should say

As regards Mozart's 40th symphony - I have no issues with the piece. It's a work of genius - but clearly, the movements are thematically distinct, so I wonder what you are seeking to demonstrate with your criticism of 'Supper's Ready'? Sure, Mozart employs, as Bernstein puts it, 'diatonic containment of chromaticism' and often uses circles of fifths to do so - but, as I am sure you know, this was commonly in employed in much music of the time.


----------



## janxharris

hammeredklavier said:


> Did you forget talked about this already? Go back 2 pages and look.


If you listen to the 'You, can't you see he's fooled you all...' section and compare it with the finale you will notice the later references the former in its harmony and melody - Gmaj, Fmaj/G which is the same as the former Amaj, Gmaj/A (transposed down a tone).


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## Guest

hammeredklavier said:


> As I said, you can keep indulging in the delusion Genesis will eventually be recognized as the next Beethoven. Keep imagining that the hidden 'artistic merit' and 'superb craftsmanship' of Genesis will somehow be 'rediscovered' and become appreciated by the future generations and it will only be a matter of time Genesis gets their place beside Beethoven. -- Why should I even bother explaining why this simply won't happen. As I said, history will do it, in time.


I don't think that is what janxharris was arguing - merely that Supper's Ready has its own merit which partly derives from a number features that it has in common with other longer, more complex composed works, including some classical. The reverse is also true: some classical pieces are short and simple; not all can be classified as the greatest musical compositions ever to have flowed from a composer's pen in the last 500 years.

I'd much rather listen to _Supper's Ready _than The Ring Cycle - but that says nothing about the merits of either. Nor do claims that Genesis can be dismissed as falling far below the standards set by Beethoven.


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## Enthusiast

ZJovicic said:


> OK this is your opinion.
> In my opinion it's better than majority of art songs out there.
> It's better than some operatic arias.
> It's even better than some less remarkable symphonies, sonatas, etc...


Well, it is more than his opinion. It is an opinion that is shared by the majority of people who love classical music, even including those who also enjoy some prog rock. The aesthetics are just so different.


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## janxharris

Actually, the recapitulation mentioned above is more extensive:

Finale - Gmaj, Fmaj/G, Gmaj, Fmaj/G, Bmin(sus4), C#min/A, Cmaj, Dmaj

This is exactly the same (apart from one bass note) as the former mentioned section if you transpose it down a tone.


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## janxharris

MacLeod said:


> I don't think that is what janxharris was arguing - merely that Supper's Ready has its own merit which partly derives from a number features that it has in common with other longer, more complex composed works, including some classical. The reverse is also true: some classical pieces are short and simple; not all can be classified as the greatest musical compositions ever to have flowed from a composer's pen in the last 500 years.
> 
> I'd much rather listen to _Supper's Ready _than The Ring Cycle - but that says nothing about the merits of either. Nor do claims that Genesis can be dismissed as falling far below the standards set by Beethoven.


Indeed MacLeod - and I must check out that Wagner piece.


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## EdwardBast

Do you remember that old quip, usually mistakenly attributed to John Lennon?: "Ringo isn't the best drummer in the world. He wasn't even the best drummer in the Beatles." In that spirit, I would ask what I think is a more apt question than the OP: Does "Supper's Ready" compare favorably with the best _prog rock _music?


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## Guest

EdwardBast said:


> Do you remember that old quip, usually mistakenly attributed to John Lennon?: "Ringo isn't the best drummer in the world. He wasn't even the best drummer in the Beatles." In that spirit, I would ask what I think is a more apt question than the OP: Does "Supper's Ready" compare favorably with the best _prog rock _music?


Well, making some assumptions about what we're referring to by the term, I'd say, "Yes, it does."


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

janxharris said:


> If you listen to the 'You, can't you see he's fooled you all...' section and compare it with the finale you will notice the later references the former in its harmony and melody - Gmaj, Fmaj/G which is the same as the former Amaj, Gmaj/A (transposed down a tone).


In the Foxtrot version, Peter sings "As sure as Eggs is Eggs" in A (same key as in "Guaranteed Eternal Sanctuary Man"). They may have transposed the section down a whole step in live performances mainly because it's easier to sing... Peter is also in G here:


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> Supper's Ready is a masterpiece...
> 
> Firth of Fifth and The Cinema Show are probably my favorites


To clarify, Supper's Ready is also one of my absolute favorites of the group; I somehow forgot to include it in that short list haha.


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## hammeredklavier

janxharris said:


> Well if your suggesting that the Genesis piece does not have any 'structural completeness' then I think you are wrong. The first section reappears as an instrumental and abbreviated towards the end (before the finale). It's initial Am6 chord is used in the section for piano (modified piano) and vocal ('Wandering in the chaos the battle has left...'). Apart from the jump at 'Willow Farm', each section flows seamless into the next. I'd say the transition are quite breathtaking.


You can keep whining about how your beloved rock artist is not getting the respect you think he deserves, but the fact remains, the major classical music giants established a whole tradition that spanned hundreds of years into their future http://blogs.springeropen.com/sprin...ata-reveals-classical-music-creation-secrets/ and that's why their music is still remembered to this day as classical. No matter how much you go about whining here, it won't get your beloved rock artist become part of the classical canon. Can you discuss what's so exemplary about Genesis that will motivate 100,000 later artists to analyze their work and not be forgotten or neglected by them? 
Why are you so insecure about a non-classical artist not being respected in a classical music forum? I suppose this was your motive in going around the forum calling some pieces of classical music "pleasant background music"? To provoke classical music enthusiasts to reconsider their view on your favorite genre?



janxharris said:


> As regards Mozart's 40th symphony - I have no issues with the piece. It's a work of genius - but clearly, the movements are thematically distinct, so I wonder what you are seeking to demonstrate with your criticism of 'Supper's Ready'? Sure, Mozart employs, as Bernstein puts it, 'diatonic containment of chromaticism' and often uses circles of fifths to do so - but, as I am sure you know, this was commonly in employed in much music of the time.


http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Wolfgang_Amadeus_Mozart
_"Especially during his last decade, Mozart explored chromatic harmony to a degree rare at the time."_


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## hammeredklavier

MacLeod said:


> I'd much rather listen to _Supper's Ready _than The Ring Cycle - but that says nothing about the merits of either. Nor do claims that Genesis can be dismissed as falling far below the standards set by Beethoven.


As I said many times before, there are types of music that requires no real musical skills or talents to write. If a pop enthusiast says Justin Bieber is an equal of Richard Wagner in terms of artistic value just because he likes Bieber better than Wagner, how much validity is there in his statement?


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## regenmusic

Classical music is the essence of music abstracted to it's root parts which can then be accelerated by geniuses further into extreme complexities. As much as I love that era Genesis, it's still just a bunch of above average guys pretty much, with others, creating a new genre, but which quickly disintegrated into much lower quality music.


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## Red Terror

This thread needs to be put out of its misery.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

regenmusic said:


> Classical music is the essence of music abstracted to it's root parts which can then be accelerated by geniuses further into extreme complexities. As much as I love that era Genesis, it's still just a bunch of above average guys pretty much, with others, creating a new genre, but which quickly disintegrated into much lower quality music.


I would say "above average" isn't quite giving them (and a few other prog bands) enough credit.


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## Guest

hammeredklavier said:


> As I said many times before,


Yes, funny how many times you feel the need to say it. If this music is so beneath you, why bother with it, and its advocates at all? If classical is supreme and unassailable, why feel compelled to defend it so often from worthless attacks?

The OP asks a legitimate question. A number of posters, taking it at face value, are interested in answering it in reasonable ways, from a variety of standpoints, without accusing the OP of "whining".


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## janxharris

hammeredklavier said:


> You can keep whining about how your beloved rock artist is not getting the respect you think he deserves, but the fact remains, the major classical music giants established a whole tradition that spanned hundreds of years into their future http://blogs.springeropen.com/sprin...ata-reveals-classical-music-creation-secrets/ and that's why their music is still remembered to this day as classical. No matter how much you go about whining here, it won't get your beloved rock artist become part of the classical canon. Can you discuss what's so exemplary about Genesis that will motivate 100,000 later artists to analyze their work and not be forgotten or neglected by them?
> Why are you so insecure about a non-classical artist not being respected in a classical music forum? I suppose this was your motive in going around the forum calling some pieces of classical music "pleasant background music"? To provoke classical music enthusiasts to reconsider their view on your favorite genre?


Responding to a poster is whining?

I think you misunderstand my stance. I actually prefer some classical pieces over any other music of any genre (including 'Supper's Ready') but, in a general sense, I do still think it measures up pretty well - in it's complexity, mood shifts and dramatic impact. I'm not denigrating classical music.

There is no insecurity, but I do think some here might find the Genesis song worthy of a hearing.

Your assertion was that the song lacked 'structural completeness' and I posted in some detail - citing the final section using chords heard earlier (but with a contrasting melody in the vocals) - but you have made no response here. If you don't like the work, that's fine - but clearly you aren't refuting my evidence the piece is well crafted.


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## Larkenfield

Heard "Supper's Ready" for the first time and I consider it a work of rock art. It's brilliantly played, tremendous, and superbly recorded with a unifying concept and great voices. It stayed with me after it was over and I consider that a reflection of its quality and everything that went into it that was performed to perfection... Does it have to be compared to classical music to have its ultimate value? No! I keep them separate because both genres come from a different musical vocabulary, a different language, different colors and timbres, different voices, different instruments, different beat, different everything except that both genres use the same 12 notes of the scale. Different worlds! Rock doesn't need to be compared with Classical in order to be viewed as a work of art. Genius can be found in _any_ genre. What a tight group Genesis was... Outstanding.


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## janxharris

Larkenfield said:


> Heard "Supper's Ready" for the first time and I consider it a work of rock art. It's brilliantly played, tremendous, and superbly recorded with a unifying concept and great voices. It stayed with me after it was over and I consider that a reflection of its quality and everything that went into it that was performed to perfection... Does it have to be compared to classical music to have its ultimate value? No! I keep them separate because both genres come from a different musical vocabulary, a different language, different colors and timbres, different voices, different instruments, different beat, different everything except that both genres use the same 12 notes of the scale. Different worlds! Rock doesn't need to be compared with Classical in order to be viewed as a work of art. Genius can be found in _any_ genre. What a tight group Genesis was... Outstanding.


I guess that without a focus on comparing the piece with classical music then the OP wouldn't have been permitted here. Certainly, it doesn't need to be compared to have value - I just thought that lovers of classical would connect with it's developmental propensities - something that's fundamental to most classical music.


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## janxharris

hammeredklavier said:


> As I said many times before, there are types of music that requires no real musical skills or talents to write. If a pop enthusiast says *Justin Bieber is an equal of Richard Wagner* in terms of artistic value just because he likes Bieber better than Wagner, how much validity is there in his statement?


Who's saying this?


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## janxharris

Larkenfield said:


> Heard "Supper's Ready" for the first time and I consider it a work of rock art. It's brilliantly played, tremendous, and superbly recorded with a unifying concept and great voices. It stayed with me after it was over and I consider that a reflection of its quality and everything that went into it that was performed to perfection... Does it have to be compared to classical music to have its ultimate value? No! I keep them separate because both genres come from a different musical vocabulary, a different language, different colors and timbres, different voices, different instruments, different beat, different everything except that both genres use the same 12 notes of the scale. Different worlds! Rock doesn't need to be compared with Classical in order to be viewed as a work of art. Genius can be found in _any_ genre. What a tight group Genesis was... Outstanding.


Check out Firth of Fifth too - it's equally as good as Supper's Ready IMO and very classical sounding - especially the instrumental break:


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## hammeredklavier

janxharris said:


> I guess that without a focus on comparing the piece with classical music then the OP wouldn't have been permitted here. Certainly, it doesn't need to be compared to have value - I just thought that lovers of classical would connect with it's developmental propensities - something that's fundamental to most classical music.





janxharris said:


> Check out Firth of Fifth too - it's equally as good as Supper's Ready IMO and very classical sounding - especially the instrumental break:


you also shouldn't use that as an excuse to recommend or promote non-classical music in a classical music forum. If you really want to do it on this site, there is a section more appropriate for that activity: https://www.talkclassical.com/non-classical-music/ 
Just because some rock songs are put together to form a medley, it doesn't make it classical.


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## janxharris

hammeredklavier said:


> you also shouldn't use that as an excuse to recommend or promote non-classical music in a classical music forum. If you really want to do it on this site, there is a section more appropriate for that activity: https://www.talkclassical.com/non-classical-music/
> Just because some rock songs are put together to form a medley, it doesn't make it classical.


You have a fair point but since the thread itself was permitted then it's moot whether similar style pieces are okay.

I don't really know what classical is...any more.


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## Enthusiast

^^^ I think classical music is like dogs - you recognise that an animal is a dog even though you have never seen one remotely like it before. There are defining features, I guess, but mostly they are not how we recognise music as classical. If we disagree on some outlier - is it or isn't it classical? - we might go to the defining features and they might help to settle the debate. But at the edges we are likely to all have slightly different ideas about whether a given animal is truly a dog or is a barking rabbit.

IMO the music being posted about in this thread has never barked or wagged its tail or looked at its master with love in its eye. I see its link to dog-ness as one of pretense and affectation more than anything else.


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## janxharris

Enthusiast said:


> ^^^ I think classical music is like dogs - you recognise that an animal is a dog even though you have never seen one remotely like it before. There are defining features, I guess, but mostly they are not how we recognise music as classical. If we disagree on some outlier - is it or isn't it classical? - we might go to the defining features and they might help to settle the debate. But at the edges we are likely to all have slightly different ideas about whether a given animal is truly a dog or is a barking rabbit.
> 
> IMO the music being posted about in this thread has never barked or wagged its tail or looked at its master with love in its eye. I see its link to dog-ness as one of pretense and affectation more than anything else.


If one strips away differences in arrangement and just studies the harmonic and melodic content then delineation is difficult IMO.


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## Enthusiast

^^^ I suppose it is a prejudice but I have learned (so its a learned prejudice) not to pay much attention to arguments that are based on analysing the harmonic and melodic content (does that mean anything more than "listen to the music"?). This is obviously partly because I lack the skill and knowledge to undertake an analysis of a score (if there is one in this case) but it seems to me that it is an argument that is often trotted out to make claims that simple listening tells me run counter to common sense.


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## janxharris

Enthusiast said:


> ^^^ I suppose it is a prejudice but I have learned (so its a learned prejudice) not to pay much attention to arguments that are based on analysing the harmonic and melodic content (does that mean anything more than "listen to the music"?). This is obviously partly because I lack the skill and knowledge to undertake an analysis of a score (if there is one in this case) but it seems to me that it is an argument that is often trotted out to make claims that simple listening tells me run counter to common sense.


Firth of Fifth and Supper's Ready have more harmonic interest for me than most classical era music.


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## Enthusiast

^^ No worries. Your taste is your taste. I respect it. But I don't think this example is classical music. As for "classical era" music, it clearly is not that.


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## AeolianStrains

Enthusiast said:


> ^^^ I think classical music is like dogs - you recognise that an animal is a dog even though you have never seen one remotely like it before. There are defining features, I guess, but mostly they are not how we recognise music as classical. If we disagree on some outlier - is it or isn't it classical? - we might go to the defining features and they might help to settle the debate. But at the edges we are likely to all have slightly different ideas about whether a given animal is truly a dog or is a barking rabbit.
> 
> IMO the music being posted about in this thread has never barked or wagged its tail or looked at its master with love in its eye. I see its link to dog-ness as one of pretense and affectation more than anything else.


Which is funny since both dogs and wolves are of the species canis lupus. And what about the dingo? Is it a dog or a separate species? And since coyotes can breed just fine with these "dogs", aren't all these just dogs then?

Classification is good, but it's necessarily murky.


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## Enthusiast

I never said that the members of Genesis couldn't breed with (living) classical composers (female ones, obviously). I'm not sure what they would talk about when their breeding is done, though.


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## janxharris

Enthusiast said:


> ^^ No worries. Your taste is your taste. I respect it. But I don't think this example is classical music. As for "classical era" music, it clearly is not that.


Orchestrated and arranged appropriately, I hazard that some non-classical could pass for classical.


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## Simon Moon

janxharris said:


> Orchestrated and arranged appropriately, I hazard that some non-classical could pass for classical.


I have probably replied to this thread already, being the big Genesis fan I am, but I will have another go at it.

This has already been tried with Genesis, and to my ear, it sounds cheesy.






ELP sounds better orchestrated to me. I am a bigger Genesis fan than ELP, but this sounds so much more legitimately classical than the Genesis orchestral pieces that I've heard.






But, the nonclassical music that is closer to classical to me, is the avant garde subgenre of prog music, if one allows contemporary classical as the comparison. And this doesn't even need to be orchestrated.






Other bands that fit this description: Thinking Plague (USA), Universe Zero (Belgium), Art Zoyd (France), Far Corner (USA), Alamaailman Vasarat (Finland), and others.

Most of the bands of this subgenre have members that are graduates of top classical music schools. Aranis above, has members with training at Royal Flemish Conservatoire, Conservatory in Antwerp, Royal Conservatoire of Ghent.


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## janxharris

Simon Moon said:


> I have probably replied to this thread already, being the big Genesis fan I am, but I will have another go at it.
> 
> This has already been tried with Genesis, and to my ear, it sounds cheesy.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ELP sounds better orchestrated to me. I am a bigger Genesis fan than ELP, but this sounds so much more legitimately classical than the Genesis orchestral pieces that I've heard.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> But, the nonclassical music that is closer to classical to me, is the avant garde subgenre of prog music, if one allows contemporary classical as the comparison. And this doesn't even need to be orchestrated.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Other bands that fit this description: Thinking Plague (USA), Universe Zero (Belgium), Art Zoyd (France), Far Corner (USA), Alamaailman Vasarat (Finland), and others.
> 
> Most of the bands of this subgenre have members that are graduates of top classical music schools. Aranis above, has members with training at Royal Flemish Conservatoire, Conservatory in Antwerp, Royal Conservatoire of Ghent.


I agree with you on the Genesis orchestral arrangement. This might reflect more on the orchestrator (David Palmer?) than the music's suitability.


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## Guest

I've never been a fan of "classicalfying" rock. The idiom is all wrong. Despite superficial resemblance (Banks' piano solos, and the extended nature of Genesis compositions), their music is not classical and need not seek such affirmation. It's great rock and should be appreciated as such.


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