Sometimes this is true, M. It is important not to counter one inaccurate musical worldview with another: music is music - there is no such musical concept as “validity”.
As an experienced classical and rock guitarist, I can say that there are some beautiful and simple classical pieces and some incredibly musically interesting rock guitar pieces which are just as technically difficult to play with passion and control. When rock bassist Stuart Hamm plays Beethoven classically well with both his hands all over the fretboard, what kind of music is he playing?
Very few forms of music show the dynamic emotional range of classical, even if some classical (Bach, Mozart) has very little.
To really get your heart pounding and your serotonin levels soaring, it’s hard to cue up anything nonclassical that can stand next to Wagner’s Tannhauser Overture, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C# Minor, Holst’s Mars, the Bringer of War.
To put butterflies in your stomach, your heart in your throat, and tears in your eyes, very litte outside of classical can do it like Vaughn-Williams’ Variations on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, Grieg’s Ase’s Death, Grofé’s Sunrise, Holst’s Neptune the Mystic, Wagner’s Magic Fire Music, or the 2nd Movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.
Furthermore, the ones that can are most likely hard rock compositions, selections from groups like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, U2, Genesis, etc., and their music very much incorporates the kinds of richly textured chord structures, long buildups, transitional passages, dynamic shifts, and recurrent motifs with variations (rather than just straight verse/chorus/verse/chorus) that makes classical what it is.
You are, of course, welcome to take no liking to it nonetheless. Me, I hate top 40, which is usually emotionally dead, irritating, and subsequently forgettable; disco, which is “rhythm class for the musically oblivious” married to top 40 inanity; hiphop, which is disco dumbed down and accompanied by angry cursing people; rap, which is hiphop except without instruments and singing and pitch and melody and stuff like that; … but I still have well-loved and well-played individual tracks in all of these categories that for various reasons stand out and appeal to me anyhow. Which is to say that it is a matter of taste, and of course we all knew that coming in.
I don’t know… I do believe that you’re not being obstinate. But I’m sorry that you can’t hear the horses in “Night Ride and Sunrise”, and I’m sorry that you can’t hear the urgency and drama in “Under Fire”. That’s too bad. Seriously.
If you can find a station that streams its programming, I suggest you find Adventures in Good Music with Karl Haas. It’s a radio program that does a wonderful job explaining music: who composed it, what’s significant about it, why it’s important.
Two more suggestions: Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz. It helps to follow the music along with the story, because it’s a powerful story told by powerful music. And if you don’t hear the blade drop at the end of the fourth movement, you are deaf. When I heard it for the first time, I was expecting it and was still shocked.
The other is Night on the Bald Mountain by Moussorgky. This piece was an attempt to bring to music a scene in which
Lyrics are one aspect of music, but I don’t agree that music has to be relegated to a “supporting role”. Actually, a lot of the stuff you hear on the radio is musically pretty simplistic. Maybe you think of the music as secondary because in a lot of pop music, it’s just not very interesting tonally, melodically, or rhythmically. Buy then if you’re only interested in the words, you might as well just read a book of poetry.
But take J.S. Bach’s music, for example. Even if it is a piece without words, it’s still musically fascinating. He might take a beautiful melody and simultaneously combine it with 3 or 4 counter-melodies. Not only that, but all these parts compliment each other rhythmically, and together form rich and complicated harmonies. When you look at a page of the music, you would think that all these disparate elements would sound chaotic when combined, but in fact when you hear it, it sounds almost like it was inevitable that these sounds should be combined in that way. It really defies description. It’s something you really have to listen to, and not just on the boom box while you’re in the garage replacing your head gasket, but REALLY listening. Sometimes there aren’t words to tell you how to feel, but that’s the whole beauty of it. Sometimes you get to tell yourself how to feel.
And besides that, not all pop music even has words. Or the words may not make much sense. Take Stairway to Heaven, or Hotel California. Both are great rock songs, and both have some theories advanced as to what the hell they’re talking about, but the first time you heard them, did the words themselves really convey any deep meaning to you?
As has been pointed out, that’s simply not true.
But you’re missing the whole point. That’s what art is. The great composers have been able to communicate emotionally through pure music. That’s what makes it art. Any doofus can make an audio recording of gunfire. But how many people can represent it using music? And by the way, when you go to the movies, and you see an emotional scene, a lot of the effectiveness of the scene is due to the background music. And if you are familiar with a lot of Classical and Romantic period music, you will recognize where modern film composers get A LOT of their ideas.
Hmmm…listen to the Mozart Requiem or Bach’s B Minor Mass, and then tell me you didn’t feel any emotions.
For one thing, he just doesn’t understand. And that’s OK. To each his own. For another thing, he knows that if he expresses his views on this subject in real life, he will (as I warned him on the other thread) get people looking at him like he is from Mars. So he already knows, I am sure, that his opinion isn’t popular. I don’t think he’s fighting the idea (that his opinion isn’t popular) tooth-and-nail. And I don’t think he’s being mean-spirited about it.
For a third thing, don’t you feel bad for him, that he can’t hear the riding in Nightride and Sunrise, or the tension and drama in Under Fire? Because I think that’s terribly, terribly sad. Though I’m sure he doesn’t need our pity, or anything. No big deal if he doesn’t like Classical music, after all, he likes other kinds of music and I’m sure he has a full life and all that.
But still–to not be able to hear the horses in “Nightride and Sunrise”–I think that’s too bad.
So, I’m at home now. The job interview seemed to go well, so now I can return to the important things in life.
Last things first:
Yosemitebabe, I hear that something is moving in the first piece you mentioned. It comes and goes, but for all I can tell it might be a flock of seagulls. I just don’t hear horses in it.
That’s not quite what I mean. What I mean is stylized, as in using abstract symbols to represent things that can’t be reproduced directly within the constrainst of the system you are using. These are symbols whose appearance (or sound) does not match the actual appearance or sound, but which are agreed upon (in the case of music, informally) by the viewers or listeners as representing something else. A musical instrument is not a cannon. The sound produced by a musical instrument played a certain way can be agreed up on as representing the sound of cannon being fired, but it is not the same and won’t necessarily be recognized as such by someone not party to the agreement. The agreement is not formally made, but still certain symbols make their way into the “lexicon” over time - and others fall out of use, too.
Your analogy with the haystack doesn’t fit well at all. If you’ve seen a haystack, then you can most likely recognize a painted representation of one - unless it has been stylized in the extreme, which is what music does to a great many things it must try to represent. In that respect, I must say that I rather like the paintings (reproductions of paintings) that I have seen by Monet. Abstract, but clear. Indistinct but unambiguos, if you know what I’m trying to say. It may be a fuzzy haystack, but it is readily recognized as such.
No, I don’t find old paintings irrelevant. To a large degree, they explain themselves. Between the title and the appearance I find enough to tell me the minimum necessary to appreciate the picture. More information can deepen the experience, but the minimum is already there. Not so with the classical music I’ve been exposed to. The title tells me next to nothing, and somehow I don’t hear what others seem to hear.
I see lots of folks telling me to read this or listen to that radio program, and that seems to support what I’ve been trying to say: Classical music is not intuitive. It needs explanations to make it comprehensible. Not that that in and of itself is a bad thing. I personally think that in a lot of cases, it helps if a thing is not directly intuitive. That forces you to think about what you are doing and understand things before you begin. On the other hand, if you’ve got to explain a joke, it doesn’t go over very well at all. The same with music. I listen to music for enjoyment. If I need a guide book to explain it all, I might just as well go back to work.
I’ve not been including operas and such in my thoughts on classical music. I know that, and some of you have reminded me of it. Right you are. I’m personally in a very poor position to enjoy operas. I don’t speak Italian at all. I am not proposing that they all be translated to english or some such silliness. It just seems to me, though, that I would need to understand the text in order to understand the opera. I’d probably do better with Wagner’s operas, since I do speak fluent German. It’d be kind of tough, though. What pieces I’ve heard of operas (including some from Wagner) indicates that they prefer a singing style that is. ahem, not conducive to comprehension. From the pieces I’ve heard, it would seem that the emphasis is on celebrating the human voice as a musical instrument rather than in singing clear, comprehensible text. A fine thing, I’m sure. My wife sings in a choir here, and they do classical pieces. I’m quite aware of what goes into that type of singing, and how difficult can be to reach and hold a pure tone. It still doesn’t make the music any easier to understand.
Reading over some of the posts, I see some of you have the impression that I like pop music. I’d suggest you come take a look in my CD rack. No “Backstreet Boys” or similar stuff to be found. I’ve got a truly strange taste in music that ranges from Zydeco to old country music (Doug Kershaw,) to Americana to Led Zepelin to Juda Priest. The one thing that all of my favorite songs have in common is that they all have a story to tell, some message to get across. The message may be banal (or run into the ground by later artists,) or it may be profound (have you ever really listened to “Ride on” by AC/DC?) Some of it is just entertaining fun (hey, Sha Na Na is about as brainless as you can get and still tell a story.) Interested in the nature of humanity? Listen to “Meanstreak” from Zodiac Mindwarp sometime - the text will give you pause.
I’ve as little use for most pop-music as I do for most classical music. The one has nothing to say, and the other seems to be encoded in a way that I can’t relate to. Either one will do to break up the silence, but I’d never purchase an album whose only recommendation is “well, at least it isn’t silence.”
I don’t think so. Or, perhaps I’m not understanding what you mean.
I used to bring my tape player into art class, and play my music. No one knew what music I played; no one asked what the music was, who the composer was. But when I played “Under Fire” or some of my other favorites, I sometimes got people coming up to me afterwards and asking me, “What is that beautiful music?” They just responded to it, without knowing anything about it.
When my dad first played Sibelius’ “Our Native Land” to me, I had the same reaction–“What is that music!!!” By the way, “Our Native Land” is choral music–all sung in Finnish. But it still “spoke” to me, the first time I heard it.
If you want to hear the sounds of battle, there is the aforementioned 1812 Overture, but a more dramatic example is the battle portion of Beethoven’s Wellington’s Victory. You want a representation of a battle, that’s your piece. Beethoven thought it was pretty bad, most classical fans think it’s mediocre at best, but it was one of his most popular pieces when he was alive. It has the armies marching around, the trumpet calls, and finally the battle with an overwhelming amount of gunfire. The 1812 Overture has nothing on Wellington’s Overture from a volume standpoint. Plus, it was first.
You would need to be certain, of course, to find a recording with real guns instead of snare drum substitutes – otherwise it’s not really worth it (the music itself is pretty blah).
Lyrics are important, quite important. I want to know what was on the composer’s mind, not what I think was on his mind. The most direct way to this is by listening to the words he uses convey his message. If he doesn’t use words, then I’m down to guessing his meaning through the cues he’s implanted in his music - cues that change with time and place, and which don’t seem to convey as much to me as they do to you.
As for not all pop music even having lyrics, I’d agree with you there. A great many of them that do have lyrics are devoid of meaning, too. I’ll tell you, though. The lyrics to “Stairway to Heaven” made a great deal of sense to me the first time I heard them. In part they seemed to me to tell the story of a girl I knew at the time. I know that the guys from Led Zeppelin never heard of this girl, but, still, the words seemed to capture her essence. Not that this is a good thing - the essence was that of a dope taking gold digger and the part about “and as we wind on down the road … yada yada … to be a rock and not to roll” seemed to be telling me that I needed to simultaneously move (away from her) and become solid (like the rock, but more in a personailty kind of way than physically.) All of that probably has nothing to do with what the guys were thinking when they put it together - but without those lyrics, it’d just be an excercise in guitar playing to me.
That does bring me back to the theme of this thread, though. That song made sense to me because of the lyrics, and because I’m part of the society that produced it. The symbols it uses are symbols I know. What connection is there for you to the symbols used in classical music? I apparently don’t havethat connection, and I don’t know quite how you got yours.
Yes, any doofus can make a recording of gunfire (well, almost. Do you have any idea what kind of dynamic range and technique it takes to capture both the explosion of the shell as it is fired and the “pling” as ejected the case hits the ground?) It still takes an artist to make use of it for anything but banalities. Dig up “Hoodlum Thunder” somewhere. It states quite clearly the feelings of Zodiac Mindwarp with regards to US policies regarding the first Gulf War. As you say, it takes an artist to represent gunfire without using a recording. At the very start, the guitarist does just that - stylized, and hard to recognize as such if you’ve not heard the sound effects used in movies to represent all manner of weapons. Then at the very end come the real sound effects of weapons firing and people screaming - to underscore the the very things that the song is about. The effect is chilling, and causes one (or at least it causes me) to ask myself it war is worth the supposed end results. This is then followed up by “Meanstreak,” a one-two punch that will give anyone (in our western, christianized, society) pause and make them think about himself very hard - and probably not like those thoughts worth a damn because they are damnable. That is artistry, artistry that I’d like to hear classical music match. Maybe it can, maybe I just haven’t heard the right pieces. Lacking that experience, I don’t know how it can be done non-verbally.
Ah, I’m beginning to see – for you, music must convey some sort of story, or some tangible message that must be able to be expressed in words. What’s wrong with enjoying the medium itself? Not every note must, by necessity, convey some element of a story. Sometimes a note is just a note. When you listen to a hot guitar solo, do you automatically insist that it must reflect the story of the song, or can you just appreciate it for the well-played solo that it is? Can you enjoy an abstract painting without reading the plot first?
Finally, do you enjoy the song Louie Louie? If so, can you finally divulge to an eagerly waiting world what that song is about?
No, there is not some secret language that you must decode in order to enjoy classical music. It’s accessable on a visceral level.
I don’t think most posters on this thread would do that either. Obviously most, even those uneducated about Brahms, seem to be rather selective about how they fill the void.
Finally, to those (not to target the OP) that think classical music is a great way to fall asleep have yet to be lulled into slumberland by the gentle, snugglybear lullabies of Le Sacre du Printemps.
There is no way to tell a specific story like Bob Marley’s Buffalo Soldiers without lyrics. Take the “hearing the horses” example being used above. So maybe you can hear the horses, but who is riding them, and why? Impossible to convey with just music.
But that’s not really what (instrumental) classical music is setting out to do. It is intellectual, but in a different way.
I, too, have to find fault with the “Classical music is not intuitive. It needs explanations to make it comprehensible.”
Picture this - there I was, getting a degree in music, singing everywhere they’d let me. I honestly felt that if music didn’t have words, it wasn’t worth listening to - a typical arrogant 19 year old. Mine HAD to be better. So, I’m part of a large orchestra chorus and we learn Brahm’s “German Requiem” which isn’t long enough to fill the symphonic performance. So the maestro chooses Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” as the lead in. As the chorus, we never hear the orchestra rehearse anything but the Requiem.
So, night of the performance, we’re told that we’re going to be sitting on stage during the entire night. (It takes too long moving 300 people on and off the stage.) Great, then what are we supposed to do during the Adagio? Emote, says the maestro.
I had never heard it and it ripped my heart apart. I was changed. Just sit and listen. Don’t read or talk or make grocery lists. Just concentrate on the music. Hopefully, it will change you too.
I must respectfully disagree. Classical can be just as raw and emotional as any art. Sure, one may hear Procession of the Elders (Le Sacre) and think “Well, it’s about these village elders overseeing the sacrifice of a virgin, yada yada yada”, or “Igor intended the marriage of viola to bassoon as a new method of evoking a nasal sound, bla bla bla.” I usually think “Damn, them drums is loud. Awesome, dood!”
Umm. No galloping. Could you describe it to me? There is a possibilty (at least in this case) that there were technical difficulties. I was posting from work, and the speakers are pretty rinky-dink on my computer there.
OK. I tried it again here at home, and definitely no horses - no galloping. If I were pushed, I’d say it sounded like an attempt at a flock of birds flying to and fro over head. Not to be insulting, but more than anything else it reminds me of the Wizard of Oz - the scene of Dorothy in the house in the tornado and the witch riding her bicycle around the house in the storm. Sorry. That’s what I hear and there’s not a horse within reach. Honestly.
tdn:
Yes, that’s pretty much right. A piece of music should say something to me, just as a picture should represent something visible. Not every note is directly involved in it, but it sure would sound strange if a couple of licks from “The Hell Patrol” by Judas Priest were to slip into Chuck Berry’s “Havana Moon.”
For me, the most visceral reaction I get to classical music is “Huh? Wazzat?” I just don’t get it. Lacking the ability to pickup on the cues that everyone else seems to hear and understand, I would seem to need an explanation - and that sort of kills the fun.
Are you folks understanding classical music instinctively, or did you simply hear that kind of music and have the explanations made to you so far back in your childhood that it seems to be something you’ve always known? I’ll repeat it again. Classical music is not “intuitive” to me, and I know that I was not exposed to it as a child.
BTW:
Who needs to understand the words to get chuckle from listening to a drunk mumble his problems to a bartender? (Louie, Louie)
