And listening to his music, it becomes obvious at times that he only played on the black keys.
Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap! “Lick my Love Pump”
Nigel’s life work. Mozart and Bach-influenced arrangement under development “for a few months now” when Nigel is interviewed by DiBergi in 1982 for “This is Spinal Tap.” Part of a musical trilogy the guitarist was working on in D Minor, “the saddest of all keys.” The piece would later appear on his solo album, “Nigel Tufnel’s Clam Caravan.” The guitarist envisioned “Lick My Love Pump” as the first part of a four- or five-hour work to be played by a full symphony orchestra. The theme would be evolution. “We were fish, and then the fish crawled out on the beach, and he became a monkey. Then the monkey, he went back into the water, because it was too hot. Then he started developing gills-like a fish-and started swimming in the ocean. Then he came back out again, and was then just a monkey, and then a man, and then a monkey again, I think, and then a man. So it’s based on that.” On the commentary for the Special Edition DVD, Nigel reported that he was still working on the piece. “It’s like a Sherlock Holmes story-a lot of fog and pipes.”
This is definitely the best answer in the thread. I can’t believe I forgot his Mach work.
It seems to me that we’re giving musicians like McCartney (and others) kind of a pass when we say they “compose classical music.”
I’ve listened to some of McCartney’s “classical” music. Absolutely, he has a Tchaikovsky-like gift for melody. But in the classical world, orchestration is just as important as melody.
It’s fair to say that McCartney has collaborated on some orchestral music. But that he composed classical music? I don’t think so.
Also, I think we’re too quick to call any music with a full orchestra “classical” music. Orchestral, sure. Classical, maybe not.
That gets into a very interesting debate, one on which I’ve thought about starting a separate thread on, but is such a large topic I’m still having trouble formulating into a good OP. Basically there’s Classical music (from the Classical period, like WA Mozart, Franz Haydn, early Beethoven) and those from other periods which get lumped into the classical label, whether Baroque (Vivaldi, J.S. Bach), Romantic (Chopin, late Beethoven, Paganini, Liszt), modern (Gershwin, Rachmaninoff, Holst), and contemporary (of which I’ve listened to very little, Jennifer Higdon is the only name off the top of my head I can add to this category).
The debate gets more complicated because if we categorize some music as orchestral music but not classical music, where then should it go? I hesitate to lump in something like the music John Williams composed for the Star Wars movies into the Pop category, but it also doesn’t quite feel like it should be lumped in with the other composers I mentioned above. It’s a difficult question to answer, and I’ll leave it at that for others to debate or not.
Agreed. And I was using the word “classical” as it’s been used in this thread. I didn’t mean to restrict it to art music composed during the late eighteenth-early nineteenth century. I mean, I’d include Stravinsky and Webern and Wuorinen and Ades.
I’m comfortable with Wikipedia’s definition, which says:
In a more general sense classical music refers to Western musical traditions considered to be apart from or a refinement of western folk music traditions and encompasses the broad span of time from before the 6th century AD to the present day, which includes the Classical period and various other periods. The central norms of this tradition became codified between 1650 and 1900, which is known as the common-practice period.
Which is, I think, how the term has been used in this thread.
But what a good deal of “classical” music composed by rock and pop artists lacks that’s almost a sine qua non for “classical” music is complexity of form and harmony.
It’s different. Just because something is arranged for an orchestra doesn’t make it classical, any more than arranging a pop tune for, say, a piano trio makes it jazz.
And film scores are a whole other thing.
Not all orchestral music is classical music, but also, not all classical music is orchestral music. There’s tons of classical music for solo piano (and other sub-orchestral instrument combinations), so it’s not orchestration that defines classical composition. I think it’s fair to say that Billy Joel was writing classical music, in the sense we’re talking about here, when he wrote works like what the OP mentions.
And some classical music was originally written for solo piano but later orchestrated. Mussorgsky is identified as the composer of “Pictures At An Exhibition,” even though it’s most commonly heard in the version orchestrated by Ravel.
Would you say that George Gershwin composed classical music? If so, does “Rhapsody In Blue” count, even though it was orchestrated by someone else; or do you only count works that he orchestrated himself, like his Piano Concerto in F?
All of which is to agree that it’s not a simple question, what does or does not count as composing classical music.
Absolutely true, of course. I didn’t mean to exclude works for solo instruments, or small ensembles, from what I mean by “classical music.”
I haven’t heard Joel’s non-pop music, so I can’t say.
No, I wouldn’t say that Gershwin is a composer of classical music (to the extent I’m familiar with his music). Parenthetically, I wish my local classical music radio station would stop playing "Rhapsody in Blue’ every goddamn day. I’m sick of it. I haven’t heard his Piano Concerto in F, so I can’t say anything about it.
Wasn’t Rhapsody in Blue commissioned by Paul Whiteman, and arranged/orchestrated by him (or whoever did the arrangements for Whiteman’s band)? Can’t remember, I’ll have to look into that.
Which brings me to another point. It kind of demeans non-classical composers (like pop and jazz writers) to say that they can write “classical” music, when they’re not actually writing classical music. Why is that a standard to be aspired to?
I hear jazz, all too often, described as “America’s classical music.” That’s nonsense. It’s not classical music. It’s a whole different thing. And jazz musicians (writers and performers, and that line is blurry in jazz) are not lesser musicians than classical musicians. And jazz is not a lesser form than classical music.
I listen to a wonderful classical station, WCLV, and they do add film (and Broadway) music into the mix. They even featured an album by the Red Clay Ramblers once. Not sure what their thinking was, but I bought (and enjoyed) the album.
I recall them rarely playing Rhapsody in Blue, which I believe was orchestrated by Ferde Grofé. Gershwin is always listed as the composer.
I agree that jazz is it’s own different thing, and doesn’t fit into either the classical or pop category. WRT composers writing music for categories they aren’t primarily known for, IMHO a large part of the interest is the novelty of it. Pop musicians tend to be more well known than classical musicians, so the pop musicians playing classical would generate more interest. There would probably be more interest in say, Elton John or Billy Joel playing the piano in a performance of one of Mozart’s piano concertos than there would be in Lang Lang or Murray Perahia playing Piano Man or Crocodile Rock.
As far as classical being the “standard to be aspired to” IMHO it’s because of the complexity of classical and jazz compared to pop music. This complexity of both jazz and classical music is probably why jazz is called “America’s classical music.” There’s even been studies using EEG comparing the brain activity of jazz and classical pianists. Presumably the authors of the study didn’t include pop musicians because they felt that classical and jazz are more similar to each other than pop, with the complexity of jazz and classical compared to pop being the key difference.
I’m not saying that classical and jazz are better than pop music, just different, with complexity being a key difference, and jazz being more like classical than pop when it comes to complexity.
Kip Winger.
FWIW, I think anything that is described by critics as belonging to the “classical” genre counts. If you go into a store, is it going to be under classical as opposed to rock or jazz? If it charted, did it chart as classical? That sort of thing.
~Max
Clint Mansell probably fits the bill. He was one of the core members of Pop Will Eat Itself, then went on to write movie scores, including for Black Swan.
As far as I’m concerned, he does. In 1995, I sang with the Pacific Chorale as we recorded Fire, Water, Paper: a Vietnam Oratorio, by Elliot Goldenthal. While we were rehearsing the piece, I was struck by how much the music reminded me of the score of Edward Scissorhands.
I call it “orchestral music” if it’s an orchestra, and “chamber music” if it’s a smaller group. If I’m talking to someone who I think won’t know what I mean by it I might call it “Bugs Bunny music.” I thought McCartney’s orchestral things were absolutely horrible, far worse than “Ebony & Ivory”. I don’t have it in me to forgive Billy Joel for “We Didn’t Start the Fire” so if his were around I’d use his to correct a wobbly table leg. I haven’t heard the Waters one but I’m thinking more “Final Cut” like stuff but without the rock band. I love Pink Floyd but on his own Waters bores me to absolute tears. I’ve been listening to the Zappa ones for years to the point that it doesn’t strike me that it’s orchestral, because he’s closest to what I prefer in the orchestral or chamber music realm anyway, which is stuff like George Crumb, Georgy Ligeti, Iannis Xenakis, and so on. The best “rock musician composes orchestral music” project that I’ve ever heard was Zappa’s 200 Motels the Suites, with all the music written for the movie and the album including some that didn’t make it. I like Keith Emerson’s piano concerto too, but almost everything else I’ve ever heard was very rudimentary and showed a lack of orchestrational ideas.
I couldn’t agree more strongly. The soundtrack album for 200 Motels is by far the best “Rock/Classical Fusion” I’ve ever heard, and IMO is one of FZ’s five best efforts. Too bad the film was and always will be unwatchable, a crystalization of Frank’s egotistical self indulgence.
No, no, not the soundtrack. That one is nice as well. I’m talking about official release #100, by the Los Angeles Philharmonic & the Los Angeles Master Chorale, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, recorded in 2013. It’s the only place you can hear “I Have Seen the Pleated Gazelle” in its entirety, not chopped up. There’s a lot of stuff on this album that didn’t make the movie or the soundtrack, the rock songs from the movie are missing, and it’s (almost) completely orchestral.
[quote=“larsvsnapster, post:37, topic:944365”]
No, no, not the soundtrack. That one is nice as well. I’m talking about official release #100…[/quote]
Sounds even better. Thanks for making me aware of it. 
Thomas Andrew Doyle, aka Tad of the influential grunge band Tad. For comparison, here is “Stumbling Man” by Tad
And this is “Desire”
