Mr.Know, a Beethoven symphony can sound very different from one group to the next, if you’re a good listener.
And you don’t have to be a good listener to tell the difference between Jascha Heifetz and Joshua Bell playing a concerto, just as you don’t have to be a good listener to tell the difference between Elvis’s voice and Frank Sinatra’s voice, if they were to sing the same song.
I don’t know who first said “everyone’s a critic,” but I think it’s a really stupid saying.
I think the main downfall of classical music
(these days) is that there are no words.
I read a rock auto-bio that noted “don’t be clever, get to the chorus.”
That “hook” is what places the music into people’s mind and allows retention. (and enjoyment)
Do you also think that there’s something to the fact that classical music has been raised to a point where you must “dress up” to see a concert? It a formal deal rather than something you’d do for kick on the weekend.
Just an opinion…
Carl: There’s “popular music” and “classical”, which must be “unpopular”. I posted a comment in Yahoo under classical. A reply came two weeks later. And it was of no interest to me. Those folks have such varied tastes that nobody agrees much. You need to consume all music to get a discussion going.
I sing in a choir that performs all types of classical music. That having been said, I like to listen to classical music fairly rarely. I find that it often fails to fit my mood, unlike some of the other more popular music that I listen to. I also find that I am sometimes unwilling to put in the effort of listening that is required for classical music.
I think there are several reasons classical music is not more popular. I think what people have been saying about the length of the pieces is valid. I also think that one needs to have a certain amount of experience listening to classical music before one can really appreciate it.
Finally, I take issue with your statement that only classical music is “serious”. I listen to a very wide variety of music and every different kind has its own merits. To claim that only one kind of music is worthwhile to listen to betrays as much ignorance and closed-mindedness as the kid who says that classical music is boring.
TheDude
I, too, find fault with the premise that only classical music is serious. But after reviewing the message board for AOL “Best Song of the Century” & seeing it crammed with teeny-bop songs from the last 2 years, I can see where someone could get the idea that contemporary popular music is a wasteland…I mean Truly, Madly, Deeply is easy to listen to, but Song of the Century? I don’t think so.
I highly recommend that a few adults (if any still use AOL) enter some well-thought-out choices to try to bring some balance… I wish I knew more songs from the first half of the century, but must admit that most of the likely candidates on my list would come from the 60’s, 70’s, & 80’s…
Sue from El Paso
members.aol.com/majormd/index.html
I chose the word “serious” instead of “classical” so as not to scare people. The latter word “freaks out” many!
Pete:
I was speaking about the average music listener. As I said before, the differences will be subtle. If you’re a *good *listener, a piece can be distinguished from one performance to the next, even if performed by the same artist.
Pretty much all that has been said is what i was going to say :). For me, i dont know enough about classical music to find songs that suit my taste. The local classical station here plays really somber “quiet” music. I like my music loud and exciting. I do like some classical but it’s mostly the energetic pieces. For popular music i agree, it’s the lyrics that make the song interesting for the average listener. That explains why a lot of people my age dont like Electronic music, much of it has no lyrics, so the song is just noise to them (they dont like classical for that reason also).
I on the other hand appreciate the talents of DJ’s. For instance, Armand Van Helden, who is the best House music producer out there. I do like music with hard beats, so i gravitate towards music that has those beats (it takes talent to make use of a drum machine).
“Raw to the floor like reservoir dogs”
- A.V. Helden
75% of classical music is boring.
The 25% of classical music worth listening to is still an enormous amount of music.
I think you guys are missing the single most important aspect of the situation: bi-directional snobbishness.
In the U.S., particularly, lo-o-o-o-o-ng before Rock and Roll (or even Pop), an attitude developed that symphonic music could only be enjoyed by the cultural elite. One reaction by hoi polloi was to dismiss symphonic (with its relatives opera and ballet) as stuffy. There are cartoons from the late nineteenth century ridiculing the idea that laborers could possibly “appreciate” what is often called “classical.” If you watch old Fred Astaire movies on AMC, you will see that theme worked over again and again. As a result, people tended to listen to what they were “supposed” to listen to according to their social station. In the 1950’s that sort of thing got a boost as radio stations began looking for “market segment.” From then on, people would tend to only hear certain varieties of music. By the early seventies, this had stratisfied to the point where different stations only played specific sub-genres of an idiom. (In the mid-60’s, your typical Rock and Roll station played Beatles, Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary, Blues Magoos, Cream, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Sinatra, Tia Juana Brass, Dionne Warwick (don’t remember the exact spelling of her name in those pre-numerology days), the Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet, and others–try getting that variety even from an oldies station, today.)
As kids grew up listening to a limited range of genres, they began to listen to only music they found comfortable–meaning they were used to it.
I notice that my kids (12 and 9) really get into the stuff that is on the currently popular Rock station that they hear their child-care workers play after school and summers. However, they also really get into a lot of the “Classic Rock” that I play on the car radio. In addition, they enjoy Celtic music, Symphonic Music, and show tunes which they hear at home from CDs or on the local Symphonic station. The sounds that they don’t seem to enjoy are tunes from Cream, The Doors, Iron Butterfly, and a whole slew of late sixties stuff that I have only a few recordings of and that don’t tend to get played on “Classic Rock.”
In other words, everything they hear regularly, they have developed an ear for, while everything that is rarely heard they tend to reject.
I do not believe that there is any technical aspect that puts people off from any genre. I suspect that if you hear it enough, (provided you aren’t nauseated by it and refuse to “get used” to it), you can appeciate most forms of music. In the last couple of years, I have gotten to where I can distinguish enjoyable from hated Zydeco tunes, where ten years ago I’d have run screaming into the night at the mention of Beau Soleil or any similar group.
Tom~
The classical=symphonic assumtion is mostly correct. It’s even harder to market small classical groups. Exceptions are travelling soloists(Marsalis…) and a few others: Modern mandolin quartet,the Baltimore Consort-who do sing, one string quartet that plays stuff like “Pieces of Africa”, folk-classical type of groups. But it’s difficult when the group has no singer to make an impression. Same with World Music groups who have a language barrier to deal with.
Baroque ensembles don’t make a living playing live, they need to sell CDs worlwide to succeed.
I appreciated Carl’s use of “serious music” on the original post…no insult intended to serious musicians like Lou Reed or Duke Ellington or Mike Seeger. “Classical” always bugs the hell out of me, since it should be used to define a small subset of serious music (to oversimplify, the Haydn/Mozart/early Beethoven era)…how can you call J.S. Bach or Anton Webern or Edgard Varese a classical composer? What’s “classical” about their styles? “Symphonic” doesn’t work for me either; it leaves out the entire chamber music tradition and all those nice sonatas.
I use “serious” because it means “not pop,” IOW the composer didn’t give a rat’s ass whether his piece would get radio play or the Leipzig Gewandhaus would slip it into a Sunday afternoon pops concert in 1804.
Maybe “art music” would be a better term?
What depresses me is the downfall of popular music. I enjoy classical (especially baroque), rock, show tunes, and pop music from the past 100 years or so. But “pop” music has taken a horrible downward spiral, beginning in the 1950s or so. Previously, composers like Cohan, Berlin, Gershwin, Porter, etc., wrote tunes for shows and movies that anyone could hum or sing; they became huge hits that we still know today. But the death of the B’way musical and the musical film put an end to that–now we only have Top 40 as our “pop music,” and no one can hum that crap! So while Limp Biskit and Lenny Kravitz please the teeny-boppers, the rest of us are left with classical and the hummable oldies we can still find. I feel sorry for thiese kids who will have no worthwhile music to remember their youth by when they get old . . .
Ukelele Ike, I use symphonic because it is music that is played on instruments generally associated among hoi polloi with the symphony, not because I exclude other related works. I’m not married to the term: obviously, “show tunes” are usually played on the same instruments.
On the other hand, I reject “serious” because it fails both of the claims you have made for it: There is no legitimate way to claim that the body of John Lennon’s work is “less serious” than that of (for example) the Strauss’s. He worked in a medium that was more accessible (needing only a radio to hear, not the presence of a group of musicians), but he has produced work as sublime as either Strauss. He also produced ear candy and throw-away pieces; do you have proof (or even evidence) that every piece presented by the Strauss’s was “serious”?
As to your comment that the composers of “serious” music simply created for art’s sake without regard to the popularity of their efforts, it leads me to believe that you haven’t read many biographies of those “serious” artists. For starters, try Arthur Sullivan and Piotr Tschaikovsky. Their letters and memoirs are filled with complaints that they had to write things for public consumption that they didn’t enjoy. (And Tchaikovsky had a patron!)
The whole concept of patrons raises another issue. Most of the older composers worked hard to find a patron. As long as they didn’t offend the patron, they could, indeed, write what they wanted, but they still had to produce enough music that the patron liked to stay in the patron’s good graces.
I don’t know about the term “art music.” I am not in favor of anything that tries to make a genre look better or superior to another. (And yes, I accept that the majority of the symphonic/serious/art music that we hear is superior to the majority of the Rock, Country, and Hip-Hop that is currently played. However, that is simply Sturgeon’s Law at work. We never hear the 90% of the symphonic/serious/art music that was crud and has been left behind. (Try listening to the works of Arthur Sullivan that he considered great and then compare them to his Savoy Operas that he thought were detracting from his goal of producing “art”–and that he wrote in order to finance his “art.”)
Tom~
Tom,
No, obviously I cannot provide proof that every string quartet or whatnot was created because the composer was providing the world with deathless music. And I agree with you about the patron thing…Haydn & Mozart were trying to please, although being quite creative within the perameters of what would make the boss happy.
Art for Art’s Sake really originated during the Romantic Period…starving artist in the garret producing brilliant symphonies, paintings, poems, etc., with no regard for the man in the street.
Nonetheless, what Old Bach created for use in church, what Mozart wrote to make the Archbishop of Salzburg happy at parties, transcended the crapola that other composers may have been making at the same time for the same pecuniary reasons.
So, okay, “art music” isn’t the best term either. But “symphonic,” I’m sorry, still says “symphony” to me…a small part of the (ahem) serious canon. And if I see a piano, I’m just as likely to whomp out a dirty blues as play a transcription of Beethoven’s Seventh.
Hey, should this thread be in the Debate Forum?
Frank Zappa said, “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.”
Actually, he said “WRITING about music…”
Uke
“Concert Music” was a term often used instead of “Classical” or “Serious” until the 60’s, Then “concert” started to be used to discribe any performance in front of an audiance. Even stand up comedians had “concerts”! As a kid, it was called “Long Hair” then the Beatles appeared. Since then there is no general word for it. It appears that there is no word for it that is inoffenseive to everyone.
I think it would be a good thing if one could attend the symphony in nothing more formal than one might wear to a movie theatre. Perhaps there could be formal and informal nights, so that people who enjoyed the formal dress could still do it, while making it easier for the rest of us.
k0myers
I don’t have a problem with the “classical” term. It’s pretty neutral. The music stores sure don’t know how to file the stuff WITHIN the classical section. If they don’t have an artist or composer (which they also mix up)they have no idea where to file it. And most artists/ensembles don’t have their own bin.
Complicated? Yes.
My earlier post referred to the Kronos quartet.