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

[Stereo Mic]

I presume it's a record of some sort, and given the context, I presume it's It-Which-Cannot-be-Named-Without-Stereo-Mic-Getting-His-Knickers-In-A-Knot.

Just to clarify, it's got nothing to do with Led Zep. If you were to be such a pompous ass about Lena Zavaroni I would come out swinging in the same manner.

 

[The Devil]

I thought I'd just quickly interject here to say that I thought bottleneck hit the nail on the head when he talked about emotional involvement with classical music.

If & when you visit, I'll play you some things which will alter your perspective.

 

[michaelab]

I thought I'd just quickly interject here to say that I thought bottleneck hit the nail on the head when he talked about emotional involvement with classical music.

There are many pieces of classical music that I can get far more emotionally involved with than any piece of rock - or even jazz for that matter. I like a lot of rock music but it's appeal is very transient and superficial. It's like a newspaper cartoon to classical music's well written novel.

Michael.

 

[The Devil]

Rachmaninoff's "Isle of the Dead" is a good starting point. If the hairs don't rise, you are actually dead.

 

[kennyk]

Rachmaninoff's "Isle of the Dead" is a good starting point. If the hairs don't rise, you are actually dead.

A new pulse test. that must be interesting on the operating table.

"Nurse, put on Rachmaninoff's Isle of the dead"

 

[tones]

Just to clarify, it's got nothing to do with Led Zep. If you were to be such a pompous ass about Lena Zavaroni I would come out swinging in the same manner.

Lena! Of course, good ol' Lena! That was

Lena, pretty ballerina

and stuff like that, wasn't it? Very cute, if a bit childish. Or is he/she/it/they the one(s) with a tower of pizza?

 

[lordsummit]

Just thought I'd dig out Free Jazz by Ornette Coleman. Bub I think it's just the thing to cure you of your jazz phobia :JOEL:

 

[tones]

tones, have you heard "Since I've been loving you", from III?

James, the answer is now, yes. I was in a record shop tonight, and as I found myself adjacent to the section "Hell", er "L", I selected the abovementioned III from the rack and played not only that track but some others too. And my general reaction? Many of them went well - until Mr. Plant opened his mouth. Now I realise that rock singers are generally completely deficient in the singing department, and that this is disguised by their making a loud, raucous noise and calling it "emotion" or some such cover-up, but Mr. Plant seems to me to be particularly bad in this department.

Mr. Page, while clearly not being the modern-day Bach of Mr. Saab's wildest imaginings, is equally clearly a competent puller of strings, and some things start off well. I liked the start of the jolly little number "Gallows pole", until Mr. Plant started wailing with the dimensions usually associated with Moby Dick. Similarly Bron-Y-Somethingorother Stomp started off in a promising fashion, only for Mr. Plant to open his mouth and spoil it all. As for your named number, it starts off in a pleasantly bluesy way, but...and you know the rest.

I'm afraid I find the noise made by Mr. Plant (which varies between a stuck pig and an iguana on heat) unlistenable, at least on what I heard on this disc. Normally, I find something in everyone's repertoire I like. Sir Michael Philip Jagger is similarly endowed with an almost total lack of singing ability, but I do like some Stones (I'm particularly fond of "Brown Sugar", for reasons I've never quite understood - perhaps it's Keith Richards's riffs and the nice saxophone solo in the middle, which helps disguise the voice and/or compensate for its deficiencies). Perhaps there's a bit of LedZed somewhere that I'll like. But I didn't hear it tonight.

Do you know Schubert Lieder, for example "Winterreise"? I guess I tend to think of that as singing. The beauty of the voices, the notes like strings of pearls, the perfectly gauged accompaniment underlining the words and bringing out their meaning. I put on something like that and curl up in sheer pleasure. This is why it's hard for me to accept the vastly lower standards of rock. And I regard the alleged greater emotion as mostly sham. So, although I might like the occasional rock track (I have a small collection of rock, usually bought on sale for one track), it simply doesn't reach the parts of me that classical does. Now, if only LedZed were an instrumental group...

 

[Saab]

Actually,teh BBC Sessions Since I've Been Loving You is their best rendition imho.Page is indeed a fine puller of strings.

How The West Was Won has some of Pages best work,as does the box set,which Page put together from bits he found under his bed.

I actually sort of agree with you re Plant,he was a better blues singer than rock,Coverdale was/is a better singer (they hate each other which doesn't help).But then again Plant wrote most of the Zep lyrics and most if what Coverdale wrote was trash in comparison.

 

[joel]

Please look at the context in which I made that comment

I thought emotional content can be delivered through the music itself stood up pretty well on its own. Apparently not.

Most teenagers don't belong to a 'group'

Very, very few humans do not belong to social groups (class, family, peer, interest). Teenagers are particularly group-oriented, although they will often express that through forms of opposition. Watching identikit goth and other sub-genre teenagers "being individual" en masse is always illuminating.

What is interesting to me about the Shakespeare/classical music analogy is that it sort of asks about the relationships between music and speech. This seems to be a really interesting area.

As far as improvisation goes, most musicians who are thought to be improvising are not, or not exactly. Flamenco guitarist Tomatito commented that as far as he was concerned what he does is not improvisation. He has a stock of phrases and approaches approriate for each situation which he can apply "on the fly" as the dance unfolds.

 

[bottleneck]

There are many pieces of classical music that I can get far more emotionally involved with than any piece of rock - or even jazz for that matter. I like a lot of rock music but it's appeal is very transient and superficial. It's like a newspaper cartoon to classical music's well written novel.

Michael.

I think this is something you have to love classical music to understand. If I play any classical music (absolutely any) for more than about 20 minutes my eyes glass over, and my mind wanders - it becomes background music.

The only exception to that for me, is when classical music is used as a film soundtrack. The film director dictates the mood of the scene and uses the classical music to suppliment that. When the emotional cues are given by the movie itself, I find classical music to be far more fantastically effective than any other genre at conveying mood in a film...

..takeaway the film and just play the same piece of music, and its dishwater dull all over again..

 

[The Devil]

And my general reaction? Many of them went well - until Mr. Plant opened his mouth. Now I realise that rock singers are generally completely deficient in the singing department, and that this is disguised by their making a loud, raucous noise and calling it "emotion" or some such cover-up, but Mr. Plant seems to me to be particularly bad in this department.

Oh well, at least you tried. If you don't like his voice, there's not much anyone can do. SIBLY has one of the most blissful guitar riffs...

 

[PeteH]

Accuracy, not being to the fore of the discussion so far.

Please do point out the inaccuracies and correct them so we can all learn something

What I've found most intensely annoying, is the reference to 'western art music', or 'classical art music'. I've never before heard classical music referred to in this way.

It's standard terminology used in musicological discussion. I don't know who coined the term, but I'm afraid you'd more-or-less be arguing against the English language on this one.

Classical music is a genre, distinct from other musical genre's, but, nevertheless, recognisable as one among other musical genre's.

Tony has pointed out - in a pejorative context - the fact that what we now call "classical" music is not derived from various kinds of folk music in the same way that modern pop music generally is. There is a useful distinction there, whether or not you choose to recognise it.

I see no such distinction between classical music and other musical genre's. All are overtly commercial, and with a few honourable exceptions, pursue a not particularly challenging emotional/nutritional content.

That's a very odd statement indeed. "Overtly commercial"? "Not particularly challenging"? Have you heard any classical music? Charlotte Church's Tissues and Issues doesn't count BTW .

I suspect that those posting a love for classical music in this thread, are referring to a canon of music that largely ended with the nineteenth century...for many lover's of classical music, it is a genre that probably ended with Mahler

Yes, I'd imagine most of the classical people in this thread have barely even heard of Prokofiev, Ravel, Shostakovich, Vaughan Williams, Tippett, Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Sibelius, Dutilleux, Lutoslawski, Gorecki, Britten, Walton, Martinu, Berg, ....

In this world, the twentieth century never happpened, the debate between Picasso, the artist as a genius, and Duchamp, art as a concept, has never taken place.

Musicology tends to lag behind other fields of aesthetic study a bit, but I can say with a fair degree of certainty that it's got some way beyond Picasso by now

In this world, the relationship of art to technological innovation is invisible, the sharing of ideas between musical and visual elements non-existent, and the intellectual practices and thinking of this century, a necessary absence.

I don't think I really understand this paragraph . Are you saying that to "progress" music should be assimilating non-musical artforms? That music isn't enough in itself without "visual elements"? As I've already said, music is often a little bit tardy in jumping on aesthetic bandwagons, but it's always got there in the end...

 

[PeteH]

What about an interesting light show? Amplification (shock, horror!)?

It's already been said, but: why bother?

Imagine a world where a violin concerto didn't need huge pauses for the violin to be heard, because it was amplified?

I'm living in that world right now .

I am a devout atheist, in fact I go beyond atheism into antitheism - I feel religion to be a massively dangerous and destructive force in the world. I fear nothing more than the religious. As a result I find much classical music alienating in a remarkably creepy and odd way due entirely to it's subject matter.

CAN YOU HEAR ME DOWN THERE TONY?

Music as an abstract artform deals in moods and emotions rather than concepts as concrete as "religion". Great works of religious music are essentially about the human response - if you're capable of feeling awe, terror, serenity, humility, exultation, etc. then you can respond to Verdi's Requiem or whatever. You don't have to be religious, any more than you have to be Christian to find the Sistine Chapel impressive - in fact this is more the case with music because it's correspondingly more abstract and less "literal".

I thought "emotional content can be delivered through the music" itself stood up pretty well on its own. Apparently not.

It was a mild exaggeration for effect, an indulgence in rhetoric, and not intended to be interpreted in as bloody-mindedly literal a fashion as you appear to have chosen to do. As I've said several times, emotional content is of course present in pop music too - it's usually just desperately crude and not terribly interesting by comparison, largely because the range of compositional and musical devices typically employed in pop to convey emotion is very conservative and restricted.

 

[leonard smalls]

Just thought I'd dig out Free Jazz by Ornette Coleman. Bub I think it's just the thing to cure you of your jazz phobia :JOEL:

Aye, a proper racket!
I'd recommend "Of Human Feeling" - with Jamaaladeen on bass.
But if you want a proper introduction to real jazz, with no possible accustations of "nice" or "plinque" try:

Previews HERE