Your rant would be so much more impressive if you knew how to spell “elite.”
SpazCat, “ugly spelling snob”
Ugly classical music fans? Elitist? Vermin? Absurd air of grandeur?
You hyperbolic tosser Estilicon!
Speaking as a “such-and-such is not relaxing” school of poster, I can tell you that I am not ugly, nor elitist, nor vermin, though I will confess to a moderately absurd air of grandeur.
My motivations here were just to have a bit of chit-chat, share some opinions, receive some insight and possibly have music-with-an-absurd-air-of-grandeur recommendations.
If all you are taking from Jupiter is that “it is relaxing” then the music is already dead (or at least mortally wounded), but (and pay attention here), it’s dead to you, not me – you would do yourself a favour to re-listen to it with the full attention and critical awareness that it deserves.
Classic FM pumps out pap, by and large. Its presentation and unsympathetic editing and editorialising reduces its playlist to the musical equivalent of fast food. I find it difficult to see Classic FM as the saviour of “classical music”, it might more accurately be described as the pall-bearer. Music is being slowly reduced to its 100 Best Moments and anything outside the “mainstream” increasingly marginalised.
I am so far from the most educated person on the subject of things musical, I am however a keen amateur musician and outside of work music is the thing that I spend most time on, either playing or listening. If you knew me, and my musical taste, and the joy and challenges that I receive from music, you would know how truly absurd your accusation of elitism was. If you’d heard Jupiter/Fur Elise/Gymnopedies through my ears you’d feel the same horror that I feel that someone might find “relaxing” the most pertinent adjective.
Your pointless little rant made me think that you hadn’t really read this thread, or perhaps you had, but with the same dulled attention that you give to Holst.
Now, I owe the OP an apology – none of my postings have been strictly on-topic, but I am sure that given your assessment that Mozart could be improved by the addition of drums and electric guitars that Dead Badger would join me in saying thank fuck you’re not programming the music that I listen to.
TGU
On the off-chance you care, Estilicon, it’s also “The Bringer of Jollity”. :wally
Otherwise, I agree with The Great Unwashed. Gosh, there’s nothing remotely condescending or ugly about reducing some of the finest endeavors of mankind of the last 400 years or more to one trivial adjective. :rolleyes: Classic FM, classical music riffs and modern “updates” do more to kill classical music than to save it, transforming it into superficial dreck. There’s much more to classical music than just background music and a few good riffs, in the same way that great paintings are more than just postcard fodder and Shakespeare plays are better appreciated on the stage than as soundbites and ripoffs. I refuse to feel guilty for reminding people of that.
Speaking as the elitist snob that I obviously am, my ultimate goal in life is not to feel smug and superior to the “Classic FM” hoi polloi, but to transform them into serious “Radio 3” classical music aficionados, into people who understand what it is about these works that has enabled them to survive over the centuries in a world where the latest popular entertainment gets discarded with yesterday’s newspapers. Superficial interpretations are an inevitable part of any aesthetic experience, but to assert (as your examples do) that the superficial interpretation is enough is to remove whatever it is that makes these things valuable in the first place.
If you want to live in a world of nothing but superficialities, fine, go ahead. But pardon me for suggesting that maybe there’s more to swimming than wading in the kiddie pool.
Of Course corrections are always welcome that is the only way I am going to improve my english. One point, though, I do know how to spell elite just because you write it the same way in spanish, blame not my grammar but my typing skills.
But I do find it relaxing and again fuck you, again, for daring to criticize me. I am also a classical music lover, an educated one. I know of the complexities, of the shades and of the colours of each composition but I also know that you don’t need an univeristy degree to enjoy it. You just need to listen to love no need to write about it in order to “understand” it. I have the utmost respect for everyone that wants to teach other people to enjoy this magnificent music, I have no respect for condescending nazi idiots that want to impose their views on art.
I praised Classic FM without ever listening to it (How could I? look at my location) but I know that kind of stations. They can serve as introduction to the people that never listened to it. In fact when I was a kid I fell in love with classical music because of a radio program that dedicated itself to “100 best compositions”. Later I discovered Mahler, Stravinsky or Ginastera, then Mozart and Vivaldi were more than enough.
Classic FM or “the ultimate collection of classical music you will ver need to purchase” aren’t for the initiated but are the best thing to those that want to introduce themselves in the genre.
Oh, so it’s okay for you to criticize us out of nowhere, but when we criticize you based on your post, that’s not okay? Tell me, what color is the sky in your little world?
I don’t have a degree in music, or, indeed, any lesser qualification in the field … does this, perversely, qualify me to hold an opinion?
jr8 has eloquently addressed the problem with Classic FM and its ilk … it’s intrinsically limiting, it’s all about restricting the classical genre (and, as others have pointed out, there’s a whole world of different genres imprefectly hidden under the ubiquitously-misapplied “classical” label). It’s trying to reduce classical music to an easily-handled, easily-packaged, gimmick-ridden marketing niche. And, to those of us (even iggerant oiks like what I am) who love this sort of music … that is doing it a vast disservice.
We may be snobs, Estilicon, but you sure sound like a grade-A asshat.
Esprix
[ahem] I’d like to speak here as a composer…
I’d much rather have five people turning off the lights and focusing all their attention onto a piece of mine than to have that piece reduced to a ripple in a continuous flow of supposedly relaxing background noise - though heard by millions.
I believe that music is, if not sacred, at least something special. Classical FM (and really you have to listen to it to hear what it does) through inane editing, presentation, dynamic processing, selection and repetition devalorises the pieces it presents. Listening to, say, a Mozart aria, only for the sake of relaxation is like drinking Château Pétrus as though it were orange juice - it’s a terrible waste because there is so much more to the experience than just “it tastes good” or “it’s pruty music”.
Yes, I am an elitist, I believe that education is necessary to fully enjoy classical, or any music for that matter. However, I don’t mean schooling; the education I speak of is merely that which you gain by listening to the music rather than just hearing it.
Ferde Grofe’s Grand Canyon Suite always puts a smile on my face.
Fair enough. I also think Holst may have been the only person in the entire 20th century to actually use the word “jollity” (although it is in the dictionary).
**
I refer you to my first post in this thread:
[Note: the “you” in that statement was generic, and did not refer to Estilicon]
As I said, I don’t have any problem with people relaxing to classical music – it’s the categorization of classical music as “relaxing” that I object to, because it suggests (nay, states rather definitively) that it’s not worth actually listening to.
**
There has been a lot of discussion about whether popular approaches to classical music do serve as a “gateway” to more serious listening, and the early conclusion seems to be generally “no”. This is not to say that there aren’t many people whose interest developed in the same way yours (and, to an extent, mine) did, but by and large it seems that most people, presented with classical music only as light entertainment or as a background track to a movie or advertisement, never consider that it might be more than that. This is why listeners don’t tend to move from Classic FM to Radio 3.
And why should they? If (to borrow jovan’s example) you’re given bottles of fine wine and told “Hey, this stuff is great for getting you drunk” and nothing else, a few people might notice the qualitative aspects of the wine but most won’t look beyond its use for <ahem> mass consumption.
I’d almost – almost – rather have people put classical music up on a pedestal without understanding why (as they did not so long ago, and some still do) than this strict utilitarian approach. After all, it’s easier to come down from a pedestal than up from the gutter.
Huh. About a year ago, I was pulling into the parking lot at work and listening to a little of the creative anarchy ** Godspeed You! Black Emperor** brings to the masses. “Moya” to be specific. A co-worker parked next to me as I was doing the “find my stuff, roll up windows, and turn off car” routine. Said fellow employee STILL thinks I’m the “guy who listens to classical music”…
Now I know why.
I take it that these comments are directed at me personally, and particularly. I really can’t take it seriously – you’ve been so quick to mouth off that I find you laughable, not offensive.
I think that just about sums up the quality of your arguments here. I see elsewhere that you claim to be a lawyer, I trust you represent your clients better than you represent yourself.
I respectfully ask that you re-read the many posts that you feel are deserving of your bile, I think you may find that none of it is deserved and that there’s much there that you as “a classical music lover, an educated one” would agree with.
** The Great unwashed ** please if you will quote me in the future at least have the courtesy of quoting the entire sentence. Taking things out of context is no way to win a discussion.
** Jr8 **
You actually said a few. If a few of the listeners of Classic Fm (or similar radio stations in argentina) move from there to more serious stations then I praise once again that radio.
I think that classical music is dying, of all my friends (most of them in college) I am the only one that listen to the genre. Names like Shostakovich or Glinka are not known to them, I think it is sad. For that, everything that does anything to promote this genre is ok for me. I won’t be listening to it, of course, but perhaps someone somewhere will enjoy the experience.
Perhaps my rants were out of line but that morning I was listenging Tango and the composer created a very good piece out of Mozart’s Symphonie 40. I think it was not only very funny but actually pretty good. The title as something like “Your pardon I beg, Don Mozart”. Imagine a tango cover from perhaps the greatest musician ever. Those kind of experiments I fully support. That was why I was angry.
You need to relax with some nice classical music. Maybe Copland’s “Fanfare For The Out-Of-Control Bozo”.**
Aha! **SNOB!!!
You vill listen. And you vill LIKE it!
Have to admit, I really like this line:**
It sounds like a combination of Shakespeare and the Fugs.
By the way, check out streaming audio on the web. You can pick up lousy radio stations from all over the world.
Estilicon,
You have done your very best to persuade me that you are a fuckwit of the first fucking order. Congratulations! I now concede the point – you have your head so far up your own arse you can’t hear what you or what anyone else is saying.
'nuff said.
Oh for FUCK’S sake!
I do NOT find Adagio “relaxing” at all!
Sarcasm, people.
SARCASM SARCASM SARCASM!!!
runs out of the thread tearing her hair out
(I do, however, enjoy certain pieces that aren’t supposed to be relaxing, simply because I like them, and that, in and of itself, tends to relax me.)
Also, I don’t think the point is how one should react to this piece or that. It’s all very personal.
But that some ignorant people, tend to dismiss classical music as “boring, slow, light, dainty intrumentals”, without realizing that just like rock music, for example, it has its fast tempos, slow ones, loud booming crashes, soft melodies, etc.
It’s very diverse.
People who merely say, “Classical music is so relaxing” are ignorant of classical music. They most likely have not bothered to pay attention to pieces like Montagues and the Capulets or Marche Slav.
Am I correct here, or am I talking out of my ass again?
(::can’t help but be amused - forsees that for now and evermore, Guin will also be known as "She who finds the Adagio relaxing. . . ":
Here:
GUIN WAS WHOOSHING US: SHE DOES NOT ACTUALLY FIND THE ADAGIO RELAXING.
(that was for those who didn’t appreciate the classical subtlties of guin’s post, those who need to be pounded over the head with a mallet to notice anything)
I think ignorant is a good word, though y’gotta be carefull of the connotations. Ignorant meaning: “shallow knowledge or interest in” is objectively accurate. Ignorant meaning: “Brain-dead yokel” is where counter-accusations of elitism set in.
The crux is that anyone can have a subjective opinion of any art, but art’s value is not purely subjective. If someone wants to describe Classical as relaxing, or Rock as simplistic, or Country as corny, then they have a right to spout their opinion. But we all know about opinions, and they have no bearing on the reality of the music form.
If someone finds classical to be dull, boring, or merely “relaxing” - then fine. We have been given a measure of how much time they’ve bothered to spend on classical music, and their depth of understanding of it. And the same can be said of anyone who makes a general statement about any art form, really.
I can only say that you are only proving that I am a great at debates. After all I convince you of something without even trying to do so
I find orchestral music (not “classical” music) relaxing.
Wait! Wait! Let me explain!
I like to listen to it as I commute to and from work in the morning and afternoon. I do not listen to it to turn off my brain; I listen to it to engage my brain. Whether it’s Brahms or Stravinsky, I concentrate almost my full attention on the music, and drive automatically.
Simply by contrast with the stress of bumper-to-bumper freeway traffic, orchestral music is, to me, relaxing, because instead of giving my full attention to the fuckwits who don’t know about turn signals or following distance or who can’t understand it’s a bad idea to change lanes six inches in front of a cement truck and slam on the brakes… pant pant pant… Um, instead of that, I’m concentrating on melody, harmony, structure, and everything else that makes good orchestral music worthwhile.
It’s irrelevant to me whether it’s blood and thunder by Mahler or elaborate intellectualism by Chopin or pure impressionism by Debussy. It transports me, and the simple mental focus, which I find very relaxing, is aside and apart from the emotional reaction.
(Now, sitting at home with headphones and listening to orchestral music while doing nothing else… that’s a different story. Just try listening to Holst’s Mercury movement and sitting motionless and disengaged. Can’t be done.)