Flamenco is classical music? 
Which anyway brings up something else: “classical music” is a very wide range. I suspect whomever first came up with that idea of indicating notes as dots on a set of lines would have been extremely surprised if he could hear Horst’s Planets. It certainly isn’t something I’d be wanting to listen to during breakfast when my brain is still half awake but then, neither is Aserejé.
Saintly Loser @117: “The Met, in NYC, is pretentious.”
Hey! They’re giving us Porgy and Bess next month! You callin’ my boy Georgie “pretentious?”
And the last time I attended was for Parsifal.. The cast did the entire second act ankle-deep in the blood covering the stage. Cool beans!
Why does classical music always have the same instruments and structure? As if through out time, only violins, cellos and flutes existed.
Where are the jams Richard the Lion-Hearted grooved too? Why isn’t Platos favorite song considered classical?
I’m primarily interested in *what *the music does to me, not *how *it does it.
All the aspects you mention are open to study and analysis, as would be the ingredients of a fine meal or the aromatics given off by a fine wine but knowing more about them doesn’t make it taste any better to me.
Um. Please don’t take this the wrong way. Why do you then like hanging around a message board devoted to fighting ignorance?
If you acknowledge that knowing more about an art or science or whatever would increase enjoyment, why state proudly that you prefer not to learn?
I think you’ve misread me. I say that knowing more about the music has not increased my enjoyment of it.
And I am a scientist. My job actually demands that I explore and understand complex situations in order to develop understanding and solutions. Knowledge and learning is a wonderful thing.
Some people do experience things differently when they know how the different parts interact to create the whole. Some do not.
If you appreciate music form, and take the time to study it, the difference when listening is that you think to yourself, that’s neat how they transitioned from this to that, I like how this instrument in this movement reminds me of X, this is an unusual scale with a haunted theme, etcetera. It is like identifying with lyrics or being awed by vocal range versus simply liking the sound of the singer’s voice. It is the same difference between saying you like music, and being able to point out which specific series of sounds you appreciate. For some people, the ability to identify what exactly you like about something, or to appreciate the inner workings of a thing, in fact heighten the experience.
I am not saying that learning music theory is necessary or even that it makes listening better. This is all subjective. Different people like different things, for example I am perfectly happy appreciating automobiles without any want or will to understand all of the inner workings. I love pretty cars, but I’m no car lover. Some people call that ignorance, but they’re snoots. I think it’s bliss.
~Max
Which is all fine, it may well heighten the experience that they personally would otherwise have had but I don’t think it means they extract any *greater *enjoyment overall than the person who does none of that. Nor is one approach in any way “superior” to the other or evidence of greater intellect. It was phrasing that suggested as much that I originally objected to.
I take it you’re not familiar with Historically Informed Performance.
It doesn’t. Different ensembles used different instrumentation. Chamber music (say, a string quartet) is still classical music.
And even the full symphony orchestra evolved between the Baroque and Romantic periods as instrument technology advanced. The clarinet, for example, did not really exist before 1700, and only was adopted as a standard orchestral instrument in Beethoven’s time.
Musical notation was an innovation of the Middle Ages, so we have little record of what music Ancient Greeks listened to. But music that’s “considered classical” has always been “art” music – ballads and other “popular” tunes such as would be played by wandering minstrels is old, but not usually considered “classical”.
Powers &8^]
How about a good old Beethoven march? Michael Haydn? Strauss?
Is classical music, just orchestral music that hasn’t reached a certain age yet?
There’s also polyphonic choral music, with usually 4-8 different voice parts and perhaps an organ. There were many great 16th and 17th century composers of polyphonic music such as Palestrina, Monteverdi, Allegri, Gabrieli, Lotti, Victoria, Tallis, Gibbons, Byrd, etc. Some of Bach’s choral work. Composers have never really stopped composing music like this, mainly sacred music, and some contemporary classical composers still continue to do so.
No, it has nothing to do with age. There are many contemporary classical composers.
And classical music isn’t only orchestral music, it includes chamber music, opera, and choral music.
Rats. You picked the few I actually like. 
And I have an unreasonable fondness for the song El Paso.
Re: opera. I saw an old movie when I was a kid where Lily Pons sang The Bell Song from Lakme. It gave me shivers…I loved it so much. I must admit I often prefer some isolated arias vs. the entire opera, but I don’t hate opera. Got to see a beautifully sung staging of Turandot at the L.A. Music Center at least ten years ago. Weird staging and costuming though. I leaned over to my companion to say that Calaf looked like John Travolta in Battlefield Earth. He laughed and said the woman next to him just told her husband that he looked like a Klingon.
Who doesn’t love Nessun Dorma?
@Novelty Bobble - If you know more about the internal structure of a piece of music, you hear more. And if you hear more, you enjoy more.
I hear all the audible sounds that are available, same as you do.
The analysis of the music may give you pleasure but it is purely a subjective claim that you make for you yourself and no further.
I think you’re either deluding yourself, or arguing for the sake of arguing. But I’ll leave it at that.
Either that or perhaps you are simply unable to accept that some people experience art in different ways to you, that people can indeed gain their maximum enjoyment from music without the need to analyse it deeply?
Yeah - I doubt any reasonably intelligent person with a relatively open mind could reject an entire category of music. (Of course, there is the added difficulty of “categorizing” artists.)
Hell, in the right mood and setting, I can imagine the right opera - or even rap - impressing me positively. But I can safely say the majority of those types of music that I have heard do not appeal to me.