Remember the Harry Nilsson song with the lyric, “you put the lime in the coconut and drink 'em both up?”, etc? There are no chord changes in the song and it’s played over a C7th chord all the way through. Contrast this with, say, a Mahler symphony, with multiple chords, key changes, modulations, etc. Now, as many times as I heard the Coconut Song growing up, it was only recently that I learned about its one and only chord. Listening to it again, I appreciated it on a different level. It keeps its interest to the listener despite its relatively simple structure. In the same vein, I appreciate a Mahler symphony apart from the music itself as to it’s chordal structure, modulations, etc as mentioned. To some, this double-enjoyment is a big thing, but to others, it is not. For me, I like knowing these sorts of things, but they don’t make the music more appealing emotionally to me. Why does this idea seem to be a requirement for some people here vis a vis Novelty Bobble?
It doesn’t all have the same structure. Not even close.
Far less so than rock music, that’s for sure, which is all pretty simple. Pentatonic scales, three or maybe four chord harmonization. Simple chords too.
As to instrumentation, the range of instruments used in classical music is far, far wider than the range of instruments used in any kind of pop music. Or even jazz.
It is the musicians I would expect to have at least a journeyman’s knowledge of music theory (if only so they can proceed to break the rules), not the listeners. How many people would take up listening to music if it required a couple of years’ study before you could hear it? (And you can’t appreciate music before sitting down and listening to loads of it.)
Well, in western music history, and I hope I didn’t get any of this wrong:
Ancient Music
(before 800 CE)
Tonal music as we know it did not exist during the time of Plato. Ancient Greek “songs” were really monophonic chants: poems sung on and accompanied by instruments playing on a single mode. Lyre-players usually fixed the cross-bar for the duration of the poem, so that the instrument only played one mode, like a guitar without a fretboard. They would use one hand to mute certain strings, then strum all of the strings at once, producing a tetrachord and probably copying the vocal melody note for note. Pan flutes were crafted for a single mode as well, and flautists would carry a set of eg: Dorian and Phrygian pipes. The aulos was a double-reed instrument that might accompany Dionysian chants. You can find an example of ancient Greek music (as we understand it) near the end of this video.
Medieval Music
(1200 CE - 1500 CE in England
800 CE - 1400 CE for the rest of Europe)
[SPOILER]Until the late medieval ages, western music was mostly the human voice. At first it was plainchants, which means a single monk or bard singing a single melody line, or a group all singing the same exact note. Children’s songs are plainchants, like “Ring around the Rosie” or “Pop goes the Weasel”. Sometimes, in folk settings, they would have a musical instrument doubling the chant (as in ancient times).
Sometimes they added a second voice singing the same melody in parallel, either a perfect fifth or full octave above the main voice. This is called organum. Organum was probably developed after rediscovering ancient Greek culture. This is still considered monophony but it was a new and important development in western music theory. English musicians preferred thirds to fifths though.
Also around 900 CE monks realized that changing pitch more than once while singing a single syllable sounds nice, and thus introduced the melisma into western music theory. Think of the “Glo-[SUP]o[/SUP]o-o[SUB]o[/SUB]o-[SUP]o[/SUP]o-o[SUB]o[/SUB]o-[SUP]o[/SUP]o-o[SUB]o[/SUB]o-ria” from “Angels We Have Heard on High”. Earlier compositions drew upon syllabic meter, which means one pitch per syllable. People also started using new instruments such as the fiddle (a bowed lute) which could reproduce that sliding pitch.
It wasn’t until the twelfth century that French composers (such as Léonin and Pérotin) developed polyphony from melismatic organum. In English, it wasn’t until the 1100s that French composers listening to the male choir singing one single note in a deep voice, and the female choire singing a melody that starts each stanza exactly one octave or perfect fifth higher than the men, realized “hey, what if we had them singing different melodies at the same time?” The movement away from monophonic chants to polyphonic music is called Ars Nova. But Ars Nova didn’t reach England until the mid 1200s because England is far away and musical notation at the time did not convey enough information to recreate a song without hearing it first. I’m guessing it took some time for a guy from England to learn polyphony in France and bring it back to England.
I think the ecclesiastical music of England by the time of Richard I (c. 1200 CE) would have been Roman Gregorian chants, which would have recently replaced older Celtic chants. Folk music has not survived (only the monks would know how to write it down), although we know it existed and probably involved monophony.
And polyphony was a revolutionary idea, despite having existed for hundreds of years in virtually every other part of the world. Suddenly all that boring church music became less boring. I think the pope banned polyphony at one point, possibly because it was so pleasing that it distracted people from the religious nature of prayer. Further, having two voices makes it more difficult to understand the words being said. Later popes liked it and by the fourteenth century people were writing polyphonic masses and developing new technology such as the chromatic keyboard for the pipe organ. Lute players stopped strumming with quills as plectrums and started plucking individual notes, which is now called finger picking.
In the early fifteenth century, English composers such as Dunstaple and Power created polyphonic music using triads based on thirds and sixths instead of then-customary fifths and octaves. This contenance anglaise was influential in central Europe as England’s armies (and music) marched across France, and marked the beginning of the Renaissance era in western music.[/SPOILER]
Renaissance Music
(1400 CE - 1600 CE)
[SPOILER]Influenced by contenance anglaise, contemporary Flemish musicians such as DuFay and Ockeghem used many triads when they developed and spread the motet form. The motet is where two voices sing different parts, but the Flemish motet has them singing different words in contrapuntal form. Originally one person (or group) would repeat the same word or phrase at one pitch, for example the first words in a stanza, and the second person (or group) sings a different melody with different words at another pitch. By the mid-to-late 1400s rich Italian nobles had attracted Franco-Flemish musicians such as Josquin de Perez to Italy, who would later dominate the music scene. This Franco-Flemish school of music was disseminated via the newly invented printing press, and their secular (chansons) and ecclesiastical works (masses) nearly define the early Renaissance in music.
Now the early 1500s, religious people started objecting to how complicated church music was becoming (again). With all the stuff going on, with ten people saying one word and ten people saying a different word, you can’t really understand what is being said. Josquin, Palestrina, and others (now the “Roman” school) dropped the repetition from the motet form, so that one group sings very slowly to one melody while the other sings words to a faster melody. This technique is known as a suspension, and is not limited to choral music; in choral music, this made it easier to understand the religious text being recited. The Council of Trent (mid-1500s) agreed and ordered the Church to cut down on complex polyphony. As a result, ecclesiastic composers started developing harmophony, which is where a single melody is accompanied by chords as opposed to an independent contrapuntal melody. After that, churches started to sound like modern Roman Catholic churches do now, what with the organs playing a chord to accompany a single choral melody for important verses, and maybe splitting the choir and organ into multiple parts for the less essential verses.
In secular music, more and more complex polyphony made it impossible to understand the words. For the first time, composers developed wholly instrumental works. This coincides with advances in metalworking, trade, and manufacture that allowed for the invention or discovery of new instruments such as the recorder, natural trumpet, the cornetto (no modern equivalent), the viol (precursor to violin), clavicord, citthern (like a guitar), shawm (an oboe with holes instead of valves), etc. Still, you wouldn’t expect to see more than a few instruments playing together (called a consort), and music was not yet written for any particular instrument.
Meanwhile, Italians adapted polyphony to secular poems and thus developed the madrigal form (eg: Luzzaschi or Marenzio), which is sung a capella (unaccompanied, in the chapel). This became very popular and quickly spread to Germany and England.
Rome was sacked in 1587 and musicians fled to Venice, founding the Venetian school (these schools are not physical establishments, by the way). Probably inspired by the opposing choir lofts in St. Mark’s Bascilica, the Venician school under Willaert and Zarlino started to develop antiphony, which is a sort of call and respond approach. One half of the choir might sing, then the other half sings back at the first half, and the organ played alongside both, much like a congregation and preacher do today, but with music. Venician antiphony inspired the secular concertato, an instrumental form of choral antiphony developed by the Gabrielis in St. Mark’s. One group of instruments would play, and another group would respond.
At the end of the sixteenth century and early seventeenth century, musicians especially in Florence started looking back at ancient Greek culture and developed the monady. A monady is where you have one vocalist singing a melody over an instrumental bass line or basso continuo, provided by the lute, harpsichord, or organ. A similar form emerged in France from the older medieval chansons. This development of the bass against the treble is important. Similarly, people started to realize that music can in and of itself produce an emotional response in people; previously, it was thought that the (sacred) words did so. Mixed with the existing musical forms, these developments introduces the musical solo and tonality to western classical music.
Finally we have the invention of orchestration, which really brings the Renaissance era of music to an end and ushers in the Baroque or early classical music. (Well, some people say Renaissance music is classical, too.) The concertato style developed at St. Mark’s Bascilica in Venice, and improved upon by those such as Claudio Monteverdei, prompted composers to write for different groups of instruments. They might say “we will have the trumpets call out first, and the strings will respond, and then have everybody play at once.” This kind of thinking lead to larger musical ensembles such as chamber ensembles and, much later, orchestras. It also lead to “classical” forms such as the concerto grosso made popular by Corelli, the concerto championed by Vivaldi, and later the (vocal) cantata by Rossi, and much later the instrumental cantatas you may recognize by Bach. The monady in turn evolved into oratory such as those of Carissimi, and opera such as those of Cavalli.[/SPOILER]
I’m going to stop there. I hope you learned as much as I did. 
~Max
While your father probably had a terrific sound system a vinyl record is limited to about 70 db of dynamic range vs a CD with a dynamic range in the 90’s.
But to your point. It’s hard to grasp the full dynamic range of most any music. I don’t think it matters in the bigger scheme of things when judging whether or not it’s pleasing to listen to. At most, a good sound system enhances what you already like.
There is nothing you can do to opera that would make me despise it any less. I fully understand the skill involved but to me it’s like listening to the best barking dog. It will never be anything beyond intensely annoying. More power to the people who like it.
Absolutely. That’s why I was a bit annoyed at other people trying to tell Novelty Bobble how to approach and appreciate music.
Are you fucking crazy? Do you know how many different instruments are in a symphony orchestra, not counting the violins, cellos and flutes? And how many different ways they can perform in solos or smaller ensembles without any violins, cellos or flutes?
On the other hand, how many instruments are in a rock band?
Does a synthesizer count as one, or… 
If you think of classical music as the original Phil Specter “wall of sound” they are conceptually similar. Many of the instruments are playing the same music to give it a richer sound that fills a music hall. Otherwise it would be music chaos.
If you listen to Santanayou will notice that they bring instruments in and out of the foreground so there is a grouping of music and not an Indy 500 race to the finish with each instrument fighting for the lead.
Virtually every piece of music I like follows this principle and that includes orchestral.
I don’t know enough about music to even join a conversation about pantatonic scales or identify rhythms. But I wouldn’t think the above comment that rock music “is all pretty simple” or only uses simple chord is true. What about many songs and albums by Frank Zappa, Yes, Rush, King Krimson, Jethro Tull, Queen, Pink Floyd?
“Classical music” covers everything from Gregorian chants to post-WW2 Holocaust-inspired Eastern European symphonies, so the term is so broad to be almost meaningless.
Think of it the same way as beer or bread. Some of it is light and bland, some of it is hearty and satisfying, and some of it is so heavy and complex you can barely get it down.
I got a lot more enjoyment from understanding what was going on.
Now, reading a biography of Beethoven was interesting, but didn’t affect my appreciation of the music. But understanding that the Fourth Movement of Beethoven’s Ninth begins with the rejection of the themes from the other three movements did. Having the differences between the first half and second half of the first movement of the Eroica did too. Understanding that the Fourth Movement of the Second Symphony was inspired by Beethoven’s intestinal difficulties did also.
I heard the same notes before and after I learned these things - but I didn’t really hear the same notes.
And it didn’t take a year, or any real music theory or composition. I can’t hear the notes well enough to hear the more sophisticated structure. But understanding the basics still helps.
Oh, I am. Weird that isn’t considered classical.
You can see why others would consider that specificity pretentious right?
Are rock fans pretentious snobs because they don’t consider country and western music to be rock?
Funny that you should mention some bands that a lot of “true rock fans” (whatever that means) consider bloated and pretentious. Heck, there’re the very reason punk, with it “back to the roots” ethics, happened.
Besides these bands are a tiny minority of what constitutes “rock music”. The overwhelming majority of it in indeed very simple harmonically and formulaic structurally : (intro) - verse 1 - chorus - verse 2 - chorus - (bridge) - guitar solo - verse 3 - chorus / 3 minutes. And there’s nothing wrong with that. However, I’ve noticed that a lot of people get defensive when it’s mentioned (not you in particular). Rock is perfect at doing what it does and there are dozens of rocks song I enjoy tremendously for this reason. I also happen to look for other things in music… and that’s what Classical music is for. Is that pretentious ? No.
I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean (but then, I wasn’t sure I really understood your first message).
No, not at all. Some people want to write music that people can immediately dance to, others, music that is full of little suprises that take time to be discovered, while still being enjoyed on an immediate, sensual level. If that’s pretentious to you, then we disagree.
Which is fine, that works for you. What you can’t say is that you got *more *enjoyment than someone who immerses themselves purely in the sensory nature of the music. And you can’t say that because there is absolutely no way of employing a shared index.
nicely done.
No, but then rock fans also don’t use the word ‘art’ to describe Pour Some Sugar on Me.
I was in a youth symphony, I listened almost exclusively to classical music in my teen years. At some point I really got into pop music and haven’t looked back.
I took an art education course in college, and the instructor explained that a lot of modern pop music shares an ethos with the minimalism movement from the art world at the same time. That made me realize a lot. Classical music came from a period of ostentatious wealth, when art and architecture was all overwrought and gilded and flowery. There’s no reason that classic symphony is any “better” than a modern pop song, just like there’s no reason an Elizabethan palace is better than a Frank Lloyd Wright house.
Or, you know, Western art music from between approximately 1730 to 1820, but we can leave that to one side. It isn’t common practice, after all.
Classical music (sorry) has gone the way of jazz, which is to say that it’s still there and still vital, but it only pops up into the mainstream when it’s raided by the more musically literate types to buoy pieces in the current idiom; in short, progressive rock was progressive precisely because it further back than usual, all the way back to pre-rock pop in the form of jazz and Classical [sic] influences, in order to make something later generations could use in their own interestingly different works. Never mind the stuff that is mostly understood by people who talk about reticulated nineteenths and plagiarized cadences, all you need to know about how interesting this unpopular music is how often it’s steadfastly refused to die.