# Should atonal music have become a separate genre?



## mud (May 17, 2012)

So how is jazz/swing not considered classical, when it seems more related than what the cutting edge of classical became in recent history?


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

Well, considering "classical" isn't a genre, there ya go :3


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## pendereckiobsessed (Sep 21, 2012)

I think the answer is no. Schoenberg believed that as music progressed, that it would become more chromatic until it became atonal. He basically accelerated that movement WITHOUT getting rid of traditional forms..

Most Jazz/swing was essentially influenced by popular music styles.



(Please correct me if I'm incorrect on the music history.)


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

Should atonal music have become a separate genre? I do not know.

I am familiar with many tonal works that employ atonal or serial segments. _I. E._ "Cool" from _West Side Story_ employs a tone row in part of it.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

pendereckiobsessed said:


> I think the answer is no. Schoenberg believed that as music progressed, that it would become more chromatic until it became atonal. He basically accelerated that movement WITHOUT getting rid of traditional forms..
> 
> Most Jazz/swing was essentially influenced by popular music styles.
> 
> (Please correct me if I'm incorrect on the music history.)


You will find that many here would agree with that statement. Warning, there are some who would disagree.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Jazz more related to classical music than modern classical??????????????????. Seriuously??. This is the most nonsensical thing that I have heard in a while. Most current trends in modern classical music are intrinsically related to the history of classical music. Jazz, on the other hand, is heavily related with african-american popular music. This atonal-tonal "debate" is really boring. I can't believe that there are people that still think that "atonal" music is something "subversive" today. 100 years have passed!!!. Face it!!. Also, the reduction of music to only harmony is something that would not pass any analysis. It's a very one-dimensional and flat way of thinking.


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## Rapide (Oct 11, 2011)

mud said:


> So how is jazz/swing not considered classical, when it seems more related than what the cutting edge of classical became in recent history?


Schoenberg's 12-tone is a means of composition, as much as tonality is. On that basis, no; it is not genre as such.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

pendereckiobsessed said:


> Most Jazz/swing was essentially influenced by popular music styles.


As was much of the secular baroque music. Not "classical" then?

To *most* people's ears, I suspect, pop/rock music is closer to what they consider "classical music" than are the atonal/serial works of the 20th century.


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## kitaro (Mar 6, 2012)

Romantic music was much more "atonal" compared to classical music. Schumann used lots of accords which were never used by Mozart or Haydn. Classical and baroque composers also used accords which were not allowed by renaissance composers. All these styles are however called classical today.


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## mud (May 17, 2012)

BurningDesire said:


> Well, considering "classical" isn't a genre, there ya go :3


It was a cohesive genre before it went atonal, all the way back to early music, in my opinion (to my ear, that is), and has commonly been categorized as such.



pendereckiobsessed said:


> I think the answer is no. Schoenberg believed that as music progressed, that it would become more chromatic until it became atonal. He basically accelerated that movement WITHOUT getting rid of traditional forms..
> 
> Most Jazz/swing was essentially influenced by popular music styles.
> 
> (Please correct me if I'm incorrect on the music history.)


The history of how it became two distinct genres is what you are describing. I use jazz/swing as a comparison because it essentially uses the same instrumentation and has more parallels musically with the former eras of classical music than the latter has with itself, while the modern classical music that has remained true to traditional styles has also incorporated jazz/swing into its motifs, because they are complimentary in some ways.



aleazk said:


> This atonal-tonal "debate" is really boring. I can't believe that there are people that still think that "atonal" music is something "subversive" today. 100 years have passed!!!. Face it!!. Also, the reduction of music to only harmony is something that would not pass any analysis. It's a very one-dimensional and flat way of thinking.


It is called "listening", not thinking. I am not the composer, I am the enthusiast (of classical music). Atonality is no more subversive than any other genre, but it is no longer classical music.



Rapide said:


> Schoenberg's 12-tone is a means of composition, as much as tonality is. On that basis, no; it is not genre as such.


Music of other genres is composed by means of composition other than those developed as classical music. As is atonal music, which is just as different.



kitaro said:


> Romantic music was much more "atonal" compared to classical music. Schumann used lots of accords which were never used by Mozart or Haydn. Classical and baroque composers also used accords which were not allowed by renaissance composers. All these styles are however called classical today.


It was not at all a complete departure from the styles it was built upon in the way atonal music (or whatever you want to call it) has been.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

mud said:


> So how is jazz/swing not considered classical, when it seems more related than what the cutting edge of classical became in recent history?


Think about it as simply as this. If you go into a cd shop (I know they're becoming rarer now than they where, but anyway!) what section would a cd of Schoenberg or the atonalists/serialists be put in? The classical music section, of course. Swing like Count Basie or Duke Ellington would be in the jazz section. Classical music which overlaps with jazz - eg. Gershwin - is more fuzzy. He would be found in many sections, he did purely classical pieces (eg. Rhapsody in Blue) but his songs have been interpreted by everyone from opera singers, to jazz singers, to rock stars, crooners and so on.

So some things may overlap, but atonal music in my mind is classical music, but I suppose after 1945 the boundaries do start to blur a lot. Eg. with electronic music. & some classical 'highbrows' even don't accept film music as 'real' classical music. I disagree with that strongly. But anyway.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

The genre is a fake construction that the man has imposed on your mind to keep us separated bro.


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## mud (May 17, 2012)

Sid James said:


> Think about it as simply as this. If you go into a cd shop (I know they're becoming rarer now than they where, but anyway!) what section would a cd of Schoenberg or the atonalists/serialists be put in? The classical music section, of course. Swing like Count Basie or Duke Ellington would be in the jazz section. Classical music which overlaps with jazz - eg. Gershwin - is more fuzzy. He would be found in many sections, he did purely classical pieces (eg. Rhapsody in Blue) but his songs have been interpreted by everyone from opera singers, to jazz singers, to rock stars, crooners and so on.
> 
> So some things may overlap, but atonal music in my mind is classical music, but I suppose after 1945 the boundaries do start to blur a lot. Eg. with electronic music. & some classical 'highbrows' even don't accept film music as 'real' classical music. I disagree with that strongly. But anyway.


I would say it forked into jazz/swing and atonality, except that atonality was not given a proper distinction as an equally different genre. World and New Age also resemble classical music more so than atonality in many ways.


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## mud (May 17, 2012)

violadude said:


> The genre is a fake construction that the man has imposed on your mind to keep us separated bro.


I would have agreed that it is all music, but one of these things is not like the other...


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

violadude said:


> The genre is a fake construction that the man has imposed on your mind to keep us separated bro.
> 
> View attachment 9316


No, it's a conspiracy of the New World Order!. They want to create discord between classical listeners, in order to weaken their powerful movement!.


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## mud (May 17, 2012)

aleazk said:


> No, it's a conspiracy of the New World Order!. They want to create discord between classical listeners, in order to weaken their powerful movement!.


I had previously likened it to a pissing contest in which the only way to outdo the record holders was to wet onself and claim victory. They may have even shat themselves to make their mark, as it were.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

mud said:


> I would say it forked into jazz/swing and atonality, except that atonality was not given a proper distinction as an equally different genre...


Well its different, but things like 'free jazz' (eg. Ornette Coleman) are also very different to more 'mainstream' type jazz, but 'free jazz' is still considered jazz and not classical.

But these are just boxes. We can go about arguing for ages about boxes.

Another thing is if you go onto online cd selling sites, if you buy a Schoenberg cd, they will recommend you buy other things by him, or other atonalists or serialists, or modern classical composers, etc. They would be unlikely to recommend you jazz, even 'free jazz.' I don't know what exactly their classification system is based on, in the recs they do they have this scrolling section of 'customers who bought that cd also bought these...'

So yeah it can be based on things that might not match yours or mine experience (eg. what other people buy). Its just going by how most people think. I mean if you say Schoenberg or Boulez to someone, they're seen as being classical composers/musicians. At that simple level, I mean. Similar to other modern era or recent composers.



> ...World and New Age also resemble classical music more so than atonality in many ways.


They certainly resemble certain styles of classical, esp. Holy Minimalism. Its certainly marketed as such.


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## mud (May 17, 2012)

Genres have meaning, they are not arbitrary distinctions, just as the subgenres of classical, or its eras, have meaning. If you want to call them boxes, then every genre is a subgenre of classical. But that is not the case, and the atonal style was "outside the box". It may have developed as a thought process based on classical music but it resulted in something else.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

mud said:


> Genres have meaning, they are not arbitrary distinctions, just as the subgenres of classical, or its eras, have meaning. If you want to call them boxes, then every genre is a subgenre of classical. But that is not the case, and the atonal style was "outside the box". It may have developed as a thought process based on classical music but it resulted in something else.


Well I don't know what can be done even if we agree atonal music should be a different genre. Its too late. Eg. as I said about cd shops or cd selling websites. Maybe more importantly, in books on 20th century classical music (or even just general histories/books on classical music), people like Schoenberg are written about extensively in these types of books. Schoenberg's music is performed in classical concerts. His opera_ Moses und Aron _is in a classical genre, so too his concertos and string quartets.

If anything, its not atonality or serialism, but things coming after 1945 that are harder to put in categories. I mean look at John Cage or Harry Partch. They have influenced music beyond classical music. Rock musicians today know these guys, at least their names (esp. Cage). Music after 1945 has had many trends, there's a lot of overlap (eg. Ravi Shankar worked with guys as diverse as Philip Glass, Yehudi Menuhin and rock musicians too). But there's also a good deal of splitting up of audiences of different musics into various camps and cliques. Its a complex period. If anything, its categories after Schoenberg, things that came in his wake, that are harder to pin down in terms of where they belong. Not the stuff he did, but what some people did after him (& there are links, Cage studied with Arnie!).


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

mud said:


> Genres have meaning, they are not arbitrary distinctions, just as the subgenres of classical, or its eras, have meaning. If you want to call them boxes, then every genre is a subgenre of classical. But that is not the case, and the atonal style was "outside the box". It may have developed as a thought process based on classical music but it resulted in something else.


Genres tend to operate on playing on stereotypes about certain kinds of music. They are categorical assumptions, but for the most part, they really are extremely vague, even in the case of some that seem rather specific like rock, jazz, and hip hop. I am not a fan of "genres" because they are often an excuse for people to avoid music without even giving it a chance. Like somebody hearing Mozart and deciding they find classical music to be boring, and haven't even heard Tchaikovsky or Bach or Debussy or Beethoven or Schoenberg, and they assume they won't like it because they don't like Mozart. And then how about the many many pieces that sit between or outside the genres? For example: Elenor Rigby by the Beatles. Is this a rock song, or a classical song? It doesn't have the standard instrumentation of rock music, but its composed by members of a "rock" band, and recorded by that band with assistance from a string quartet. I don't really buy the "cross-over" nonsense. It is a cheap answer to the issue, which is that the categorical walls of genre really make little sense in many ways.


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## mud (May 17, 2012)

Sid James said:


> Well I don't know what can be done even if we agree atonal music should be a different genre. Its too late. Eg. as I said about cd shops or cd selling websites. Maybe more importantly, in books on 20th century classical music (or even just general histories/books on classical music), people like Schoenberg are written about extensively in these types of books. Schoenberg's music is performed in classical concerts. His opera_ Moses und Aron _is in a classical genre, so too his concertos and string quartets.
> 
> If anything, its not atonality or serialism, but things coming after 1945 that are harder to put in categories. I mean look at John Cage or Harry Partch. They have influenced music beyond classical music. Rock musicians today know these guys, at least their names (esp. Cage). Music after 1945 has had many trends, there's a lot of overlap (eg. Ravi Shankar worked with guys as diverse as Philip Glass, Yehudi Menuhin and rock musicians too). But there's also a good deal of splitting up of audiences of different musics into various camps and cliques. Its a complex period. If anything, its categories after Schoenberg, things that came in his wake, that are harder to pin down in terms of where they belong. Not the stuff he did, but what some people did after him (& there are links, Cage studied with Arnie!).


Yeah, it was more a question of knowing what you know now... I consider it to be a separate genre myself, obviously. But who would admit to it being so wrong as having caused the classical genre to be at odds with itself?


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## mud (May 17, 2012)

BurningDesire said:


> Genres tend to operate on playing on stereotypes about certain kinds of music. They are categorical assumptions, but for the most part, they really are extremely vague, even in the case of some that seem rather specific like rock, jazz, and hip hop. I am not a fan of "genres" because they are often an excuse for people to avoid music without even giving it a chance. Like somebody hearing Mozart and deciding they find classical music to be boring, and haven't even heard Tchaikovsky or Bach or Debussy or Beethoven or Schoenberg, and they assume they won't like it because they don't like Mozart. And then how about the many many pieces that sit between or outside the genres? For example: Elenor Rigby by the Beatles. Is this a rock song, or a classical song? It doesn't have the standard instrumentation of rock music, but its composed by members of a "rock" band, and recorded by that band with assistance from a string quartet. I don't really buy the "cross-over" nonsense. It is a cheap answer to the issue, which is that the categorical walls of genre really make little sense in many ways.


I disagree completely. The same thing happened with "art". It is only a confusing term to people because it is not qualified into enough categories to keep it from being compared irrationally. Categorization really is a scientific approach, a taxonomy that allows us to reason and communicate about art and music as much as nature.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

mud said:


> Yeah, it was more a question of knowing what you know now... I consider it to be a separate genre myself, obviously. But who would admit to it being so wrong as causing the classical genre to be at odds with itself?


Its okay to ask questions. Maybe if you asked me this when I first joined this forum, I would maybe get emotional about the issue, then peeved off that you asked this question. Or raised the issue, etc. Now I try just to go by what you're saying. I try to avoid getting emotional about atonal or other types of new/newer music. I would say it is different to a lot of music coming before it, but there are also many commonalities. But the more and more we get close to our own time, to today, I think that's when distinctions, genres, boxes - call them what you will - start to blur. & sometimes, with post 1945 things, I see no need to put things in a box. I mean Ravi Shankar - as I said - worked with many 'categories' of musicians. So you can be that sort of fusion to be an entirely separate genre or no 'strict' genre or maybe something in between.

But Leonard Bernstein actually said he saw little need to distinguish between 'high' and 'low' art, for his purposes as a composer. Eg. putting serialism into West Side Story and there's many other examples in his music.


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

mud said:


> I disagree completely. The same thing happened with "art". It is only a confusing term to people because it is not qualified into enough categories to keep it from being compared irrationally. It really is a scientific approach, a taxonomy that allows us to reason and communicate about it.


Maybe in an ideal world, but in practice genres are arbitrary in music. Some are categorized by placing importance on instrumentation used, some on when the music was written, some one where it was written, some on form, some on the tempo or the meter. And there is so much that exists comfortably in many of the vague categories, or outside of them. If you maybe created some sophisticated system for categorization of music, then maybe that could work, but the one that's actually used is basically a load of nonsense.


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## mud (May 17, 2012)

Well, classical music only became a load of nonsense after atonality took over, so I think it is weird that it was not recognized as a new genre at the time. But nowdays mis- and disinformation is considered good business practice, so it ends up being unethical to suggest otherwise.

By the way, I have nothing against atonality, beyond it being miscategorized. It seems to parallel movie music and sound effects or whatever else is interesting to that end.


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## pendereckiobsessed (Sep 21, 2012)

violadude said:


> The genre is a fake construction that the man has imposed on your mind to keep us separated bro.
> 
> View attachment 9316





aleazk said:


> No, it's a conspiracy of the New World Order!. They want to create discord between classical listeners, in order to weaken their powerful movement!.


Sorry to interupt this disscussion, but these two comments by violadude and aleazk made my day!


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## mud (May 17, 2012)

I am going to propose that there be a separate forum for atonal discussion. Then everyone will be that much closer to knowing what they are talking about in regard to the classical musics.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

mud said:


> I am going to propose that there be a separate forum for atonal discussion. Then everyone will be that much closer to knowing what they are talking about in regard to classical musics.


Good luck with your "crusade" then. :lol:


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## mud (May 17, 2012)

It isn't a crusade, it is a point of departure.


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

Safe flights.


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## mud (May 17, 2012)

quack said:


> Safe flights.


You are the ones spinning in circles, but I digress.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

mud said:


> It isn't a crusade, it is a point of departure.


No, , it's the quixotic crusade of someone who thinks that his arbitrary "definition" of classical music should be imposed for everyone, even if it's obvious that the mentioned definition is really designed for being functional to the flat and one-dimensional thinking of this someone. 
Have care with the mills!. :lol:
I propose the creation of a subforum for people with flat and one-dimensional thinking and taste, in that way, you can vomit there all your nonsense without soiling the main forum.


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## mud (May 17, 2012)

aleazk said:


> No, , it's the quixotic crusade of someone who thinks that his arbitrary "definition" of classical music should be imposed for everyone, even if it's obvious that the mentioned definition is really designed for being functional to the flat and one-dimensional thinking of this someone.
> Have care with the mills!. :lol:


No, I said nothing of the kind. You are the one who is crusading on that note. It would be a more meaningful discussion on its own terms, which it rarely is in this forum. Why would you not want to consider it by itself... does it not hold up? I am simply advocating for more rational converations based on sound categorization.


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

I'm not sure how i'm spinning in circles. Genres are mostly a marketing tool: you like pop? here's more pop, buy more pop. As atonal (whatever it quite is) seems to be a very small share of the all ready niche market of classical, I don't think it is worth anyone's time making it a genre. And as there's no International Committee for the Elucidation, Branding, Enforcement and Registration of Genres (ice Berg for short) you'll probably have to live with it enlivening classical.


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## mud (May 17, 2012)

Like I said, the concept of a genre is akin to scientific taxonomy. Do you think that is merely a marketing tool as well?

The irony here is that atonal music is supposed to be a technical advancement. So categorize it as such and talk about it separately. You can't have it both ways.

Besides, this forum is to some extent categorized by subgenres. Do you disagree with all of those too? Should all of their topics fall on classical music discussion then?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Of course not! classical music (lower case 'c') _Is A Genre_, and serial (tonal and atonal) and other forms of atonal classical music should all be lumped together under 'classical music,' _because that is what it is._

[I first thought the OP was a deliberately disingenuous set-up, but now believe it literally sincere, and just 'confused.']

It is just one other 'manner' of composing, as was modal, musica ficta, and all the other developments of harmonic vocabulary in the over one thousand years of western 'classical' music. It is not isolated in music history books, but falls in when it arrived on the time-line, just as 'classical' arrived after baroque, as 'romantic' arrived after classical.

There is no legitimate argument for an apart category for it, imho.


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## mud (May 17, 2012)

PetrB said:


> Of course not! classical music (lower case 'c') _Is A Genre_, and serial (tonal and atonal) and other forms of atonal classical music should all be lumped together under 'classical music,' _because that is what it is._
> 
> [I first thought the OP was a deliberately disingenuous set-up, but now believe it literally sincere, and just 'confused.']
> 
> ...


No I am not confused, the genre is.


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## Guest (Oct 29, 2012)

I would like to get from mud his definition of "genre."

It doesn't seem to be anything like mine, nor of others who have posted here.

Indeed, I would like to get from mud his definition of "atonal."

And a sense, any sense, that he knows the history of the term "classical music," when it was first used, what it referred to, what it came to refer to by the twentieth century, stuff like that.

Might help sharpen the focus of this very blurry thread, which does indeed seem, through the fuzziness, to be just another attempt to denigrate a whole body of work, whole bodies of works I should say.

Jazz, just by the way, includes a large body itself of things that other people besides myself have called "atonal."


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

some guy said:


> Jazz, just by the way, includes a large body itself of things that other people besides myself have called "atonal."


Or very close. Just so!


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## mud (May 17, 2012)

some guy said:


> I would like to get from mud his definition of "genre."
> 
> It doesn't seem to be anything like mine, nor of others who have posted here.
> 
> ...


Let's start over by undefining everything. No.


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## Guest (Oct 29, 2012)

Well, calling "atonal" music a genre makes about as much sense, speaking of taxonomies, as calling all non-canine animals a species.

I was asking that we start over by defining everything. There haven't been any definitions so far.

And what about that history of the term "classical music"?


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## mud (May 17, 2012)

"A type of modern music in which the traditional tonal structures are abandoned..." well, like I said, it may have been based on classical music but the result was something else. Why go to such lengths to make something different only to pretend it is the same thing? You may have another definition in mind, but it obviously sounds different enough to occupy another genre. Is the Kronos quartet playing classical music when they recite Hendrix on classical instruments? No. And I do not think that all the so-called jazz music should be a single genre either.


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## Jaws (Jun 4, 2011)

mud said:


> So how is jazz/swing not considered classical, when it seems more related than what the cutting edge of classical became in recent history?


"Should atonal music have become a separate genre?"

I have no idea but it should definitely be played in a separate building!


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

My local record store has a sub-section in their classical music department called Neue Musik (new music), which is a standard German term for what might be otherwise called modern or contemporary classical music. The term, however, is rather flexible, as is can refer to anything from Stravinsky to Stockhausen. Basically, it's everything post-fin-de-siècle.

In that record store, though, the Neue Musik section only includes the more obscure, experimental composers. All those atonal composers who've become part of the mainstream - Schoenberg, Boulez, Ligeti, early Penderecki, etc. - are put together with the Bachs, Beethovens and Mahlers. Kind of where they actually belong, in a way.

I've read somewhere that for some people who love baroque, taking the step from Bach to Beethoven might be as radical as, say, from Brahms to Schoenberg. It sounds funny, but there might be something to it. I remember sometime ago I listened to Josquin for a couple of hours, and then I put on some Mendelssohn, and the contrast was quite violent.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

One good thing about modernism is that, to a great extent, it transcends nationalities. Tonality cannot make such a claim, in view of Wagner, military marching-music, folk music, etc.

A complete return to tonality would bring with it a return of nationalism; John Williams' newest music for the movie "Lincoln" is evidence of this, with titles like "The American Process" and "Freedom's Call." 

Personally, I find this to have potentially sinister implications...


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

millionrainbows said:


> One good thing about modernism is that, to a great extent, it transcends nationalities. Tonality cannot make such a claim, in view of Wagner, military marching-music, folk music, etc.


Surely that's a strength isn't it? The wonderful 'spanish flavour' of D.Scarlatti's keyboard sonatas with their guitar-like effects and rhythms.


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## neoshredder (Nov 7, 2011)

Nope. It fits right in with Classical Music.


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## Guest (Nov 7, 2012)

> *Should atonal music have become a separate genre?*


Maybe it should have - but it didn't. At least - not on TC.



mud said:


> So how is jazz/swing not considered classical, when it seems more related than what the cutting edge of classical became in recent history?


I don't know. Perhaps jazz arose from a different tradition. Of course, you'd have to define jazz in the first place!


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