Extremely interesting discussion on the various merits of Rock, classical and Jazz, and that's just

Thats what I was taught but what about that classical movement which is meant to be devoid of any emotion- can't remember what its called but I think Bernard Hermann was supposed to have started it on the psycho theme so I change it to 'using sound to produce a feeling' rather than emotion.

 

My arguement about record/cd sales wasnt to do with artistic worth, but emotional attachment formed by the listener.

If we accept that a person (any person) buys a piece of music because it brings out emotion for them, then simply put the artist with the greatest sales has been the most successfull at providing emotional attachment to the listening demographic.

In the case of Britney Spears - if she outsells Beethoven to the 13-18 year olds of this world, then hard as it may be to accept, Britney Spears is more successful at providing music with which this age group can form an emotional attachment than Beethoven.

Likewise, if we discover that Led Zepplin outsell Beethoven to 25-40 year olds, again we have to accept that Led Zepplin outsell Beethoven because Led Zepplin more successfully produced music with which this demographic could attach emotional significance.


The ONLY way to dismiss this arguement is to say that people buy music that they has NO emotional significance to them. I think that would be a ridiculous viewpoint.

Chris

 

Why do teenagers buy music? I suspect that it is not for any intrinsic musical value, but in order to belong to their "group". We live in complicated societies, so there is not one single teenage group to belong to, which rather complicates the question.
I don't think emotions have much to do with the purchase of Britney records, any more than they do with the purchase of pink metallic lip gloss or Von Dutch T shirts. It's about belonging, not listening.

 

Well that's fighting talk

Classical music ultimately comes from the split between sacred and secular music that has existed since medieval times. Classical music can also be called art music and as such in the 1000 years or so it has been on the scope has always been striving to reach the pinnacle of art. The best classical composers have always been the best improvisers of their day, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Saint-Saens were known to have been able to drop a complicated fugue or suchlike at the drop of a hat. The essential thing about classical music is that so much is open to the interpreter but equally there are no get outs. The dots are there to be interpreted but not changed. This still leaves great latitude for artistic input. My penchant was always for playing the Bach Cello suites on my viola, and hours could be spent finding ways of playing phrases I was happy with. Classical music is about an individual creating a 3 dimensional representation from something that is essentially a 2 dimensionalal copy.
I personally think that little classical music comes from academic leanings. People always justify their music by explaining how clever they were to write it, take Mingus for instance! But most composers from Mozart on wrote it to give pleasure to others first. Remember his operas all appeared at the equivalent of the local music hall.
An upper/middle class white tradition I agree with you on that, but sadly that is the history of the Western world. Why were most of the important discoveries made by white males? We can't escape our history no matter how unpalletable. I also agree to some extent that classical music has lost it's way rather, but possibly we haven't got the benefit of sufficient hindsight to be able to see the wood from the trees.

Jazz is in many ways similair to classical music (I can see those flames now!!!!) It sprung from an ancient tradition, this time of African music and went through what is probably the quickest period of mutation of any music. From spiritual and gospel to ragtime, eventually splitting into the blues and the bop/hard bop merchants. To my mind we'll be playing Ellington and Gerswhin long after we've stopped listening to Knussens and John Adams. It was however again about men really pursuing their art, and really pushing the boundaries. Follow the sequence of Coltrane albums through and listen to how he develops. Listen to Ornette Colemans Free Jazz and tell me he's not got some of his ideas from composers as varied as Stravinsky and Stockhausen. Mingus was massively influenced by Bartok and Debussy, and wanted to create music to match theirs. From jazz culture music albums like The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady are the equivalent of Wagners Ring an exhausting effort to push back the boundaries as far as they will go.

Where do Led Zep fit into this, well as I see it When black African/American music started to mutate into Jazz and the Blues, they took up the blues baton and ran with that.

 

Good post. You can definitely visit.

 

looking forward to it

 

As I said re Bach and Jack Loussier! A piece of classical music may have been composed as the most way- out music of it's time - it's just the rigidity with which it's performed in later years tthat kind of lets the composer down!

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 sense that classical music as a whole is somehow sacred rather makes me laugh, I'm afraid..


*By classical establishment, I mean 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. They couldn't see that we wanted to go because we liked the music!

 

Well, there are undoubtedly several million teenagers who would disagree with you!!

Unfortunately they arent a part of Zerogain...

Ask any teenager if they buy music because they want to join a social group rather than because of any emotional attachment to the music and you'll get a pretty acidic response..

 

Why do kids buy Music mostly because until the age of 14 they buy what they are told they like. Most of them make a lifestyle choice, at the school I work at they become Scallies, Moshers, or girly girls. As a 'lover' of certain kinds of music, they hang round with friends who like the same kind of music. Some of my year 11's (16 year olds) were in my room the other day listening to music, you know what they had on, the sisters of mercy and the pixies. Cool

 

I'm with Joel on this one. My folks gave me a classical background, but I was twenty and some when LedZed were at their best and swore by it. It was our culture, our time, part of it was probably also the "peer pressure" effect. We smoked joints and made love on their music. It meant something to us, and I still occasionally enjoy Stairway to heaven tremendously, although my record collection is 100-to-one classical.

Let's keep in mind that some classical tracks have become best sellers because they were used as film soundtracks (2001, a space odyssey, Barry Lyndon to name just two). And became pop in the process. And we have all heard customers in the classical section asking the sales attendant for the Mercedes Benz commercial music. Good for them

 

Most teenagers don't belong to a 'group' (what's the definitive definition here, other than a sociological perception, anyway) and if they do they still follow their feelings/emotions. Youngsters might change feelings/emotions more often or sooner than adults but that doesn't impact their drive.

 

tones,

I am glad to defer to your Bach expertise, and it's good to have you about for advice, but you are not a totally reliable opinion on rock. It could easily be argued that Led Zeppelin are the greatest rock band ever, and will quite possibly never be surpassed. Their music ranges from folk & country to blues and mystic rock ballady things.

 

I confess to a certain bias, James, because I have never heard a single thing of LedZed that I liked. Had I heard such a thing, I would own up immediately, but everything I've heard ranged (IMO, of course) from the completely mundane to the excruciatingly awful. I haven't heard it all, of course, but at a certain point, like hi-fi tweaking, you've had enough and could no longer be bothered chasing the alleged pot of gold at the end of the equally alleged rainbow.

 

Do you like any other blues, folk, or country?

 

Thanks Tony - mirrors my definition too.

Seems to make Tone's comments as pompous and inaccurate as I tried to intimate. I would not be surprised if there was evidence to suggest that the young find it easier to connect emotionally with music than the cynical old crusties either?

 

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

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.

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.

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?

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!"

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?

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.

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.

 

Dear oh Dear, My name sake up to his old tricks again.
Classical music has its place in the picture as does Rock, Jazz (god forbid), Disco,Soul.
Different strokes for different fokes.
However Classical and to some extent a fair few of its Baton Wavers are pretentious, snobs who will attempt to 'Steven fry' it at most oppotunities.
I know of 4 genuine lovers of classical music, (I mean 20 years plus, regular concert/opera goes and have at least 600+ pieces of vinyl/CD in the collection) these guys are enthusiats and genuine followers of the Genre ands don't wave their intellectual willies about.
They are also partial to a spot of Rock/pop too.
Doesn't make them any the less worthy to listen to classical music.
OH and they do get at the intellectual level, 2 of them are lecturers in Music.
They find this sort off guff highly amusing.
I do like some classical, even went to see the WNO Riggaletto the other day @ The new theatre Oxford, great production expect for the pretentious fawning everyone was doing to the conductor .
Anyway, just thought I'd chip in here. Wm

 

Ok, I was gently trolling, but the point is valid to a degree – I do honestly believe classical music to be a diversion, a music that is the by-product of western upper class academia. It does not seem to be a development from cavemen beating a rhythm out of a hollow log in the way that all other music I'm aware of is - it's a different thing entirely and therefore can not really be compared. It has no basis in immediate gratification, and for that reason is IMHO slightly disconnected and odd. Don't get me wrong, I really like the stuff, but I don't think it can be compared to rock or jazz as the rules are so profoundly different, i.e. what makes a truly great classical musician makes a truly awful rock one and vice versa – I would site Paul McCartney and Nigel Kennedy as examples of people who should really stay within their skillsets.

Jazz and Krautrock.

Tony.

 

:chunder: Nigel Kennedy :chunder:

 

The choice of Led Zeppelin as the bad rock guy is unfortunate. Coldplay, no argument...

But an equally awful lot is far more complex. Without wanting to degeneric too far try just the drum beat at the start of 'Like a Rolling Stone' or the entire original arrangement of 'This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us'. Sublime to sublime...

Paul