In rock/pop shows the songs are often much longer or different than the recorded version because of various solos, and “jamming” and so on.
I don’t think this happens in classical music does it ?
Nope. It is note-for-note the same. Every time.
Thus why classical music is dead.
No. Not at all. Pieces of music on the program for a given concert are played as written.
Actually, come to think of it, there are might be some very slight exceptions. In earlier times (I’m thinking of baroque music in particular), performers might improvise some parts of the piece, but even then it would have been for a specified number of bars, so any improvisation wouldn’t affect the duration of the piece. It may be that some ensembles carry on this tradition, although I’ve never seen it.
The above is, of course, subject to correction by anyone more knowledgeable about classical music performance than I am.
Also, classical music performances always start on time. Or nearly always – I was at the Met two seasons ago, and the start of the opera (I forget which one) was delayed. The conductor, James Levine, uses a wheelchair, and the Met has built an elevator platform to raise him up to the podium. It was malfunctioning that night, and the start was delayed by about ten minutes.
Classical music is, of course, not dead. There’s new music being written all the time.
Also, there’s plenty of room for the performer(s) to interpret the music, even playing note for note. I can tell the difference between Glenn Gould playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations and Charles Rosen playing the same piece in the first couple of bars.
Opera is even less dead. Every singer brings his or her interpretation and personality to a role. Every performance is different.
Not usually. It’s a little more difficult to jam when you have 100 instruments involved. Also, classical music is extremely complex, with musicians having to play their parts at set times; things could get messy if someone decides to extend things a few measures.
I have heard it, though. The National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba did a wonderful version of “Rhapsody in Blue” where the soloist, Nachito Herrera, did a lot of improvising on the piano part. But “Rhapsody” is a special case: there are large portions where the pianist is the only one playing, it is based on jazz (which is more improvisational), and the piano part wasn’t even written down when Gershwin performed it first. (Here is part of the performance, though it got more improvisational later).
A soloist does have some room for interpretation and even a little improvisation, since they are usually given times when they play alone. It’s not done often, and when it is, only someone thoroughly familiar with the score might notice.
A smaller group – like a string quartet – could improvise, but their music often involves the instruments doing specific things at specific moments, which will throw off the rest.
Time for Three is a classical group (members of the Philadelphia orchestra) that does classical works in a far more rock/jazz style. Here’s some Bach and Csardas
Of course some solos I think are just there to let the other band members get a drink or smoke. 
Not dead, but moribund. Think of how it would be if Broadway theater only did performances of Shakespeare and revivals, with a new musical or play every ten years.
I like opera, but to pretend it’s a living and vibrant art form ignores the reality.
Many classical concertos include one or more cadenzas, which are sort of like the classcal-music version of a guitar solo: they’re—theoretically, at least—an opportunity for the soloist to improvise, play around, and/or show off his/her chops. In practice, it’s not uncommon for a modern classical concert or recording of a concerto by a long-dead composer to include a cadenza written for that piece by some other long-dead composer. I don’t know how often nowadays the cadenza is the creation, improvised or pre-planned, of the performer.
There’s a very basic reason for that: the orchestra is unionized, and overtime starts three hours after the published start time. That’s also why there are standard cuts in a lot of operas that smaller houses will routinely take.
If you’re only paying attention to the Met, Lyric, and the other large repertoire houses. The smaller, regional companies are regularly premiering new works or at least producing recent works that haven’t become tired and cliched (I’m a fan of those tired and cliched shows, but I can understand how they can become tedious). Those smaller regional companies are also, surprise surprise, thriving, while the Met faces massive budget crisis after crisis.
Wow. It’s a whoosh, right?
As Saintly Loser has explained, there’s a huge room for interpretation in classical works. Tempo, dynamics, vibrato, emphasising mico-events or the over-arching structure of the piece. No two classical musicians play the same work the same way. That’s why one of classical music fans’ favourite game is blind-tests.
Now of course, for people who think that aimless noodling on two chords - sorry - “improvising” is the only sign that a musical form is well and thriving :rolleyes:.
And yeah, plenty of new operas have been premiered in recent years. Actually some consider the past 3-4 decades as a new (mini) golden age for the form. Pascal Dusapin’s new opera (his 7th) will premiere in a couple of days 30 minutes from where I live. It’s a big deal. Wolfgang Rihm has also written several which are performed throughout the world regularly and so has John Adams. George Benjamin’s Written on Skin was a huge success just a couple of years ago. I’d argue that opera’s doing all right at the moment.
Might be a dumb question knowing unions, but if there is a technical issue like a power outage, does the 3 hour rule still apply for overtime?
I honestly don’t know. I’m in the singer’s union (although currently lapsed), but we have different rules regarding performance; there’s no overtime for us for dress rehearsals and performances, we’re just expected to be there until the end (there are overtime rules regarding maximum work time during a performance week in terms of how many performances can be expected and maximum rehearsal time on performance days).
Classical music will still be very much alive, after you and I are dead.
Speaking of start time, I went to a rock show that started early. They had 3 bands and the first band was allotted 30 mins. They wanted to play 45 so they started 15 mins early. I knew about the early start but very few people did. It was a big surprise when the lights went down at 7:15 rather than 7:30.
You can play me any version of Copland’s Clarinet Concerto and I can tell you within a few minutes who is the soloist: Richard Stoltzman, Martin Frost, Charles Niedich, Jon Manasse, Benny Goodman, Robert Marcellus, Sabine Meyer, etc.
But, it is still the same piece. Same cadenza. The individualism is simply muted compared to more modern genres. Two jazz players may play the same tune in such contrasting ways that the listener couldn’t tell it was the same tune.
Or, heaven forbid, they wrote their own music and were truly original.
You want improv in classical music? I got yer improv right here.
Today soloists in opera and baroque works sometimes add a bit of ornamentation here and there. There’s also this single large spot where fairly long improv in the baroque style is often heard: Brandenburg Concertos - Wikipedia
OK, I see your point.
But would you really want some pianist to add some notes to Beethoven’s late sonatas? Now, that would be creative. Would it be good, though? Or would it completely ruin the structure of the piece? The latter I think. And structure is crucial in classical music. Millions of people can come up with good melodies. Inserting them in a complex structure is something that few are capable of. Don’t mess with it.
If I understand you correctly, I guess we can also add a few chapters to Dickens’s novels. Or paint some new houses in a Botticelli landscape.
And the parallel with jazz doesn’t work because the essence of jazz is actually improvisation. What works with one destroys the other.
In the baroque era improvisation was considered a core competency of any musician worth his salt. JS Bach was reknowned for his ability to improvise. I know Mozart was as well (although he obviously wasn’t part of the baroque). Someone upthread metioned two versions of the Goldbergs as being instantly distinct. One reason for that particular case is that the Aria as it is notated is extremely sparse and needs to be fleshed out significantly by ornamentation. So much so that two different version are as different as two different takes on a set of jazz changes. The expectation back then was that performers could improvise entire fugues on the spot. A favourite trick was the performer would ask a member of the audience to provide a fugue theme that the keyboardist would then extemporaneously build a fugue upon.
Some contemporary composers have also tried to reintroduce some form of improvisation into Classical Music.
Sometimes, the music is fully written but in some sections the musicians can play their notes at the speed and with the dynamics they want as long as they start and end the section at the same time (Lutoslawski). Or the movements can be placed in any order during performace (Boulez, Rautavaara). And of course, there’s pure chance writing (Cage).