Correction: You don’t, and those in your social circle don’t. I, on the other hand, do. If nobody bought them, they wouldn’t be there. :rolleyes:
There is a lot of 20th century orchestrated music that can connect with people’s emotions:
Aaron Copeland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” - written as a celebration for the foreseen Allied victory in World War II sends chills down my spine. His piece “Hoe-Down” from his ballet “Rodeo” also connects to many people (it’s used in the “Beef: It’s what’s for dinner” ads). Or Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana” which has some unforgettable movements that were later used in the movie “Excalibur” to great effect. Modern technology has forever changed music so new pieces that would have been classified as classical are now classified as new age, world, or folk music or partially ignored due to being used as a film score. So much of today’s non-mainstream music is hard to classify (Enya and Jim Brickman are usually put in the Rock section of music stores?!? WTF?).
Gee, that’ll come as a dreadful surprise to John Adams, William Bolcom, Joan Tower, Esa-Pekka Salonen, John Harbison, Elliott Carter, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, John Corigliano, Milton Babbitt, Peter Lieberson, Leon Kirchner, and Per Norgard. To name a mere dozen composers of contemporary art music.
Hope there’s still time for them to register for the Master Plumbers’ test…
Well that explains a lot. If that is what you are listening for then it stands to reason that the types of music which are not designed to offer social commentary, have no lyrics and are not primarily based on catchy tunes won’t do much for you. There is a lot of music out there, classical and otherwise, that reflects and evokes different aspects of human experience.
How exactly are you defining “classical” music? What is the format of this music? (Your comments above show that your definition of “decent” only accounts for a few of the many aspects of music.) For the sake of simplicity I’ll define “classical” music as the type of music described in a book like Grout’s A History of Western Music. I hesitate to use the term “art music” since that doesn’t really capture the sense of (small “c”) classical music before the 19th century.
I have a part time job cataloguing a collection of 10,000 CDs for a music library. While much of the music is from the past, I am amazed at how much music there is from the 20th century and even since the 1950s in the classical genres. I have seen hundreds of new things already. Composition of art music is hardly dead. But it is rather overwhelmed by the other types of music available – in terms of numbers, not necessarily quality.
It is important to remember that the accessibility of music has changed a lot in the past century. It’s somewhat misleading to conclude from record sales that the relative proportion of classical to popular music has decreased so much and that classical music was dying out through the 20th century. What has changed is the ability to record music, either on paper or in some audio format. Pop music of the past was primarily oral and much of it has been lost. The common folk couldn’t afford to buy much past the basics needed for survival, and so it wasn’t worth the expense to write down or print popular music. What we possess, for the most part, is not the popular music of the masses from past centuries, but the music of the elite or wealthy. Music of those with greater education and/or time on their hands to contemplate more “learned” music. (Some people still didn’t get it. Too many notes, perhaps. :D) Even in the 19th century, when what we now term “classical” music became much more widely available to the growing middle class, the majority of folks still did not have access to it. You had to pay to see concerts or buy sheet music which was relatively much more expensive than CDs are today. No radio, remember.
Which leads to your next question:
I don’t believe that it ever was. Not in the way you’re thinking. You seem to be assuming that what is good or meaningful is what appeals to the largest number of people, which is a faulty assumption to begin with.
We can’t really know if Mozart’s music, for example, would have been widely popular with the young people or their parents in his time either. But I don’t think it would have been. Mozart identified with his audience very well, in fact, and adapted his style depending on his target listeners. With the exception of, say, Singspiel and a few other genres designed for broader consumption, much of Mozart’s music was not written for the general populace in his day. He had a wonderful gift for melody and drama, so his music has reached a wider audience than most. But he wasn’t usually being paid by the pop (middle class, peasant??) audience of the late 18th century and wasn’t specifically writing for them either.
Without taking into account the change in demographics and accessibility of music between the past and today, it’s difficult to make comparisons. The conclusion that “classical” music is dying out or that new art music fails to connect with its target audience, based on the numbers of CDs sold, is pretty simplistic and reflects a lack of understanding about the function of music for different people over time.
rivulus
I used to get all sorts of crap when I was growing up, because I had the audacity to listen to Classical music. My schoolmates and peers were quite put out that I listened to that “boring” Classical music, and wondered what my problem was.
But, I grew up listening to it, therefore I grew up loving it. At 14 years old, my favorite music was Copland’s “Rodeo”. Why was this? All my friends were listening to rock. All their parents listened to rock. What made me different? I was the same age as my rock-loving friends, after all.
I was exposed to it. My mom played the piano (lots of Chopin), my dad was an absolute Classical fanatic, and was so enthusiastic about it. So of course I liked it! I completely agree that developing a taste for Classical takes time, and effort. And since I was exposed to so much of it, and educated about it, of COURSE I loved it at a young age. And most people will, if they take the time. But many don’t, and therefore they end up thinking (in their ignorance) that classical music is “boring”. It usually isn’t. It just takes more time to appreciate the absolute brilliance that is there. I think when I first heard Sibelius’ 4th Symphony, I didn’t totally appreciate it. Now I think it is a frickin’ genius masterpiece. It is so evocative. It speaks to me.
As far as the question of who is composing music now - I have to admit, I am a big film music fan. I know that not all of these film composers are up there with Mozart, but damn. They are good. I am blown away by some of John Williams’ theme in this latest “Star Wars” film. And I never can pass up an opportunity to mention my all-time favorite, Jerry Goldsmith. (Ah! “The Shadow”! “The Mummy”! And let’s not forget the evocative “Patton” and “Alien”!) I am firmly convinced that if Goldsmith or Williams were born 100 or 200 years ago, they’d be composing symphonies instead of soundtracks. But - both these composers have composed original Classical works. And they both have concerts. I was at a Goldsmith concert at the Hollywood Bowl a few years ago. The place was packed. And not with all “old fogies” either. All the Classical concerts I’ve been to have been well-attended.
Star Wars IS a symphony. Each piece tells a story.
OK, I last night I went out and got Schubert’s Unfinished 8th and Vivaldi Four Seasons.
It is good in its own way. It DOES have its merits.
I know that someone once said “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.” That it is something you have to feel and cannot adequately explain. Has a challenge like that ever stopped me before? Here goes:
Here is my interpretation of the Unfinished 8th:
I feel as though the stately-ness of it (is that a word?) is overwhelming. When I close my eyes as I listen, the music feels encompassing and empty at the same time; as if I’m floating in space and these giant sweeping sounds and short bursts of fly around me. IMHO, it feels large, impersonal, with moments of tenderness and warmth. But on the whole, the experience is disconnected, background. At the end I may give a polite golf clap. I can appreciate the mix of themes in the piece, but I can’t help but feel as if the music is dictated to me… cold.
At times I’m trying to take in a 3-ring circus all at once; other times I’m lying in wait in the “darkness” of it all. I did hear a certain amount of repetition and certain parts being enforced and reinforced, there was melody present… but many of you are right ----> it is work! One has to really concentrate and listen for everything.
However, there are certain modern songs which I hear and I’m certain that the feelings cannot be conveyed any truer or more precisely. There is a true connection made between song and listener - (What can beat attending a concert of your favorite band and singing along to the songs with 80,000 other fans?.. THAT is a connection.) Or lying in bed taking in a song which puts into words and melody the feelings that you are unable to express so poetically and precisely?
(disclaimer: I’m not at any moment referring to a cookie-cutter, invention-of-a pop music factory assembly line, but real songs performed by the artists who wrote them)
Many have noted that the “self-imposed restrictions” of modern music (prevalence of common time, 3 chords, lack of variety of instruments, 4-minute length, repetition) somehow make it boring.
I argue that this makes the music more focused and powerful. Many of these ideas represent the very building blocks of music theory, and are found in all types of music… they are just exploited in modern music more so than in classical.
The drums reinforce the beat which drives the music, the vocal aspect carries the melody and focuses the meaning of the song… the bass and guitars enforce the rhythm and fuel the melody. Also, there are many bands today which break the mold and use different time signatures and instumentation, along with the (sometimes horrible) addition of electronic elements.
Just to reiterate:
Whereas classical is clean, sterile and impersonal, rock, jazz, and other types of “popular” music are sweaty, gritty, personal and focused, in-your-face clear and truthful. Modern music works you into an emotionally-charged frenzy, and the sense of release is genuine. Classical music, IMHO cannot offer such a raw emotional connection with its audience. Please, I KNOW there are exceptions to the rule, so don’t give them. Instead, discuss the emotional response you derive from either type of music… I believe most people would agree with me, but I might be an outlier.
Given, I’ve just listened to a limited amount of classical music, but this is my interpretation of the difference between the two types…
NOW, I’m just trying to figure out how I can dance about my architectural likings…
Good for you!
Seriously, expose yourself to classical. Listen to samples on Amazon.com You’d be surprised how radical this stuff can be.
1812, when performed authentically, has CANNONS! Actual CANNONS!
Meh. Stanislav Gorkovenko conducting the St Petersburg Radio and TV Symphony Orchestra is the way to go.
Calvin: What’s this music?
Hobbes: It’s “The 1812 Overture.”
Calvin: I kinda like it. Interesting percussion section.
Hobbes: Those are cannons.
Calvin: And they perform this in crowded concert halls?? Gee, I thought classical music was boring!
Acco, I thought of an idea that might give you a little bit more appreciation for classical music. (N.B. I defer to our American habit of using “classical” as a catch-all word for music of this type regardless of the era in which it was written.)
If you have a DVD or DVD-ROM player, go rent some movies that have “Isolated Music Track” options. Doesn’t matter if you like the movies or not – just watch and listen, and pay attention to how the composer has scored the scenes and tried to complement the action. Listen for recurring musical themes that appear to be tied in to situations, locations or characters.
Then, pick up some more classical recordings – maybe even something with a definite theme or story behind it. (The Russians are particularly good for this.) Read a little bit about the composition and why the composer wrote it; the historical context, the inspiration, etc. Then listen, and try to picture the “movie” that the composer had in his head when he wrote it. One of my recommendations would be Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G Minor. It was written near the end of Mozart’s life during very difficult times, and is one of only two symphonies written by him in a minor key.
Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Scott of the Antarctic (1948) had scores so good they were worked over into concert pieces by their composers (Sergei Prokofiev and Ralph Vaughn Williams, respectively).
As a bonus, the former flick is a bona fide Classic. The latter features some truly stinky acting, but the cool music makes up for it.
Like you said - it’s work. To really appreciate much of the music of the time, it is not enough to close your eyes and listen (although that’s an excellent start) - you have to understand a bit more about the time period, why it was written the way it was, a little something about the author, etc. As people have pointed out, there were political and social ramifications of large pieces of work at almost every point in history.
And, far from cold, I cry whenever I hear the “Lacrymosa” from Mozart’s “Requiem,” and if a soprano does a really fine job of holding the suspension in “In Truitina” from Orff’s “Carmina Burana,” expect me to weep openly. Maybe it’s because I was a music major, maybe it’s because I performed these pieces, but nonetheless, they truly move me, regardless of the fact that they are in languages I do not speak.
If you know there are exceptions, avoid making such sweeping generalizations. I, of course, wholeheartedly disagree with your limited, biased conclusions. Is there popular music that I emotionally identify with? Of course - I am in the modern age, and therefore its music is relevant. But music from previous centuries can be equally moving, perhaps in different ways, if one takes the time to understand them.
Esprix
It has alot to do with perceptions. How things are percieved by you, expecially art like music, are colored by past experiences and are sorted by your mind in ways that are easily digested. Things like taste in music and art, literature and such are a “mindset”.
If you read a book about a character that is say, an opposite sex of you, a different ethiniticity, and say, living 1500 years ago, do you allow your own biases and perceptions color your reading experience? Or do you try to “get into the character”?
Sure, its harder to get into music than into a book, The author works with a medium that is easier to get things across(to most people anyhow)and manipulate how they feel. It takes work to clear your mind, and achieve a mindset that will allow the most satifaction of the music, more than it takes most to read a book.
The modern music is easier for you to get into, more personal, and warm and inviting because they are all things that are familiar to you, not something you have to set your mind into. Give it time and any music can become just as personal. Just like that song you heard on the radio that you hated, but it started growing on you after you heard it 20 times in a single week.
It doesn’t have to be work. Well, it may be work to find something to appreciate in a piece that doesn’t really turn you on otherwise. It’s that “they do what they do very well but it just doesn’t do it for me” sort of thing. The classical pieces that blow me away are the ones where I’m at work or messing about the apartment and a melody or string passage finds it’s way into my ear and it’s like a great new discovery. I have the same experience with other types of music as well.
That’s the beauty and the bane of popular music - it conveys one emotion very well. For a while. Then I get sick of it. It’s disposable.
And the beauty and the bane of instrumental music is that the message - if there is one to begin with - may be more vague and open to interpretation if you’re listening for that sort of thing. I typically love it for it’s own sake.
Except for the length part the bigger chunk of ‘classical’ period music uses common time, 3 chords, repitition, and a limited number of instruments. Maybe that’s why I find a lot of it boring.
I’m sure others have noted that this is purely subjective. Any kind of music can work me into an emotional frenzy, and any kind of music can be clean, sterile and impersonal.
This is, IMHO, baloney. Music (no matter what style) becomes ‘classic’ not only because it’s written using a particular method, or only because the person who wrote it is particularly gifted at combining the Italian and German styles, but because it stirs emotions in every new generation of listeners. Like I said before, I’ve had equally intense experiences listening to any type of music I’ve ever gotten into in a big way.
There are many ways into classical music. If you don’t like it now, maybe someday some Bach harpsichord concerto may wiggle it’s way into your ear. Go with it.
Oh and the guy who said “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture” was Kurt Vonnegut.
Here are my comments. I apologize if I’m repeating anything. For the record, I’m over 40 and I listen almost exclusively to classical music. The only contact I have with current rock is through Dr. Demento and Weird Al Yankovic. 
I also listen to some pre-70s musicals, a little 60s rock, and pre-60s pop.
:eek:
I do like the Beatles, but please try listening to some Chopin piano preludes and etudes (they’re short pieces).
I don’t know of any examples for that specific problem. But I think widespread emotional isolation is a modern-day problem. Before modern medicine and agriculture (and even today in the Third World), people had enough to do just avoiding disease and starvation, trying to live past 40! Probably the corresponding issues were despair and fear of death and hell, which are well-represented in classical music. And there we enter deep cultural and philosophical waters.
a)Classical music is long-winded only in comparison to ‘popular’ music. And truly boring and unfocused classical music just doesn’t survive.
b) I disagree, but this is really apples and oranges. You can’t compare ‘popular’ music, which is almost all songs, to a symphony or instrumental suite. The comparison should be to opera arias, which are highly poetic and emotional. Otherwise, you are basically trying to compare vocal music to instrumental.
I agree that vocal music will grab you in a way that instrumental does not. As for a hall full of fans singing, I occasionally go to a sing-along Messiah. It’s great singing this immortal music along with a few hundred other people. Of course, you do have to be an amateur musician to do so.
I would say classical music is clean, ordered, subtle, complex, rich, and exquisitely crafted.
If one who thinks that Chopin has no romance is going to listen to Chopin, that person should listen to the nocturnes first.
Not that I have any bias or anything.
One thing is certain: 200 years from now, scholars will acknowledge that Radiohead peaked with THE BENDS, and then began a slow decline…
I suspect a lot of classical music was never really popular. I don’t see how the peasants could’ve had the time or money to learn much about music or to go to concerts. Not to mention the problem of access; most of them were stuck off in the sticks. I’m guessing they rarely heard any music other than what grandad could play on his fiddle, or the lullabies Mammy sang. Even going to the marketplace wasn’t something that everyone in farmer Jones’ family did every week. In those days, there was no mass market.
It’s like all the other elite culture: not until fairly recently was there an explosion of buying power among the hoi polloi, most of whom aren’t that well educated in the appreciation & understanding of the culture the elites preferred. And over the past few decades, it’s the buying power & mediocre tastes of children & teens that wily businesses are catering to, and so the direction of a lot of pop culture (food, movies, TV, music, etc.) is determined by their tastes. So classical music hasn’t gotten less popular; it’s just that the masses are exerting their power through the almighty dollar.
The fact that pop culture is more popular than elite culture doesn’t mean it’s better. It’s just more popular.
You may argue that it’s a matter of personal taste. But just because you and people you know like it more doesn’t mean that pop culture is better.
And the elites still have the freedom to buy their own music, so there’s no reason for them to get all that sniffy about the mediocre tastes of the hoi polloi. Although it’s fun being a snob.
That’s where folk songs would come in, I imagine.
Like old Irish songs, such as “Black Velvet Band” or “Drowsy Maggie.”