TonyL said:
Classical music was a white middle / upper class European intellectual phenomenon. Looked at from a historical context it is an insignificant blip on the radar ââ'¬â€œ a strange and uncharacteristic academic branch which ran it's course to it's inevitable conclusion (serialism).
That's rather a curious interpretation of the history of Western musical culture. As lordsummit has dealt with this at length I'm going to assume you're just being provocative for the sake of it and move on
TonyL said:
Classical music is a premeditated musical form with no scope for improvisation...
Well, if you honestly feel that free improvisation is the
sine qua non of musical self-expression, it's not hard to see that you're going to end up preferring jazz to anything else.
TonyL said:
...and remarkably little for personal expression.
With all due respect Tony, that's absolute nonsense. Think of Bolet and Demidenko playing Liszt, or Rachmaninov conducted by Kondrashin, Jansons, Ashkenazy and Pletnev, or the Italian, Alban Berg, Emerson, Busch, Vegh and Lindsay quartets playing late Beethoven, or Vengerov, Heifetz or Perlman playing
anything, and tell me with a straight face that the personality of the performers doesn't shine through distinctly.
TonyL said:
It is IMHO not a 'higher art form' one could easily argue the reverse as it is inevitably removed from the artist, frequently by many generations.
Or in other words "one could easily argue" that the relevance and intrinsic worth of a work of art "inevitably" decreases as its age increases?
joel said:
Since this [emotional content delivery through purely musical means] is apparently not the case with rock music (or the blues or any other music?), what exactly is the secret weapon western art music uses to deliver this emotional payload?
There are several things that tend to hinder useful discussion on the internet - putting up over-the-top strawman arguments is perhaps second only to over-reliance on absurdly overstretched analogies.
Please look at the context in which I made that comment - it was in response to a specific suggestion to the effect that classical music is devoid of emotional content because it's usually instrumental or sung in a funny language. I really, honestly don't know how I could possibly go any further than
I already have to emphasise that there's good stuff outside the "classical" idiom - but the fact remains that, stripped of the lyrics, an awful lot of "pop" music is doing well to deliver as interesting an emotional message as "I'm generically happy!" or "I'm generically angry!"
joel said:
You think western art music posesses some form of "absolute" artistic expression in the same way that Mbuti pygmy hunters (a favourite of mine, sorry ) think certain chants give them superhuman powers in the hunt or in war. Both sets of beliefs are, I would suggest, manifestations of highly ritualised and specific social functions.
You've already posted some links to discussions of a musicological nature. I subscribe to the mainstream, generally-accepted musicological distinction Tony has outlined above, which recognises the differences between folk and functional music - which essentially works to instil a sense of community, or has a specific cultural function like the pygmy chants - and art music, whether Western or otherwise (I'm led to believe the Indian classical tradition is comparable to an extent, though I know nothing about it
) which has no purpose other than the communication of emotional, spiritual and intellectual states between a composer and an audience via the medium of a performer. Are you suggesting that this distinction is the culturally appropriate equivalent of a superstition? That there is, in effect, no useful distinction to be made between
Jerusalem,
Happy Birthday and
The Dream of Gerontius, and that all three should be evaluated on the same terms as English-language vocal works?
leonard smalls said:
those types who used to look down their noses at a friend and I when we went to the lunchtime concerts at Leeds University - it only seemed to be based on the fact that I had a mohican, and my m8 was a skinhead complete with 18 hole Docs.
Those people are tw*ts (insert vowel of your choice
), but (as I also said in the "Myths" post) they're not confined to classical music.
leonard smalls said:
I never said classical music was dead or outdated - it's just that evolution often seems to pass it, or at least the classical establishment (*), by.
The "establishment" moves slowly to be sure, but it still moves - recent highlights for me would include Corigliano's Violin Concerto at the Proms season which has just finished and Adams'
On the Transmigration of Souls.
.
