Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote:
At 01:57 PM 10/15/04 -0600, Jane Frasier wrote:
I have been asked by some non-musician friends what the definition of classical music is. How is it different from non-classical music.
Ow ow ow. Stop my lips from speaking! Mmewuvdascdjaldlasjlf......
Phew. Just in time.
Anybody else?
Oh heck, it's Friday afternoon, I'll take a stab<G>...
As another poster pointed out, there are periods of art/music history that are already more-or-less agreed upon, such as the baroque period, the romantic period, etc. Based on that timeline classical music is generally agreed upon to be from those periods, which is circular reasoning to a point, but since people like labels it works.
Modern music is a little more difficult to classify simply because we don't have the frame of reference.
One of the things I remember from my junior high school music classes is that classical music was defined, in part, as music that stood the test of time. That is, we were still listening to it hundreds of years later.
But I remember that same teacher explaining to us that very little popular music of the 60s and early 70s would survive that same test of time.
Hmmm...
In college we dug a little deeper, and we looked at the "popular" mechanisms that formed the framework in which "classical" music was created. Which led to another attempt to create a dividing line, the so-called "serious" music vs. popular music. Serious music had some mystical power that we couldn't really define<G>!
For my own meager attempt to categorize my record and cd collection I tend to create the line by whether it is the composer or the artist that gets top billing. Certainly folks like Bernstein and even John Williams are more likely to be the draw than the orchestra that performs them. (Of course there are recordings of certain "classical" pieces I buy specifically because they were performed by the London Symphony Orchestra or the Philadelphia Orchestra or whatever - this doesn't really blur the line because it is still the composition that I am most interested in.)
Conversely, I really don't want to hear a cover of Chicago Transit Authority, I want to hear the boys who created it. The same is true of folk artists, blues artists, pretty much any popular music.
Jazz, of course, makes a mess of that whole theory, since there are both pieces and artists that get the limelight.
However, at least for the purpose of me finding a specific album, my composer vs performer concept helps. I mean you have to have some name by which to alphabetize things... don't you?
In the same line as the serious vs popular, jazz, at least the stuff that the serious jazz magazines write about<G>, is not nearly as accessible as pop. Could there be a dividing line based on accessibility? I don't think so, I think that borders on arrogant. Almost anyone can learn to appreciate classical or jazz music, I'm not certain the same is absolutely true for pop music!
For one example, let's look at artists like the belly baring blondes or the boy bands... they don't write their own music, they don't provide their own backing tracks, and they are not taken particularly seriously by anyone over the age of about 14. (And yes, I am very aware of the history of labels like MoTown... different rant for a different day<G>). Will I ever learn to appreciate the music my 14 year old step-daughter listened to? I'm not sure, but I sort of hope not. Which is not to suggest that I dislike good pop music. I admire anyone who can write a great hook. However, I didn't hear great hooks in that stuff.
For another example, examine rap. I'm not about to argue the social issues, but the general level of anger, hate, etc, present in a lot of the music makes it inaccessible to me. There are rap artists I really like, but they tend to go past the boundaries of anger and hate. Check out "Back on the Block" by Quincy Jones if you want to hear what can be done in this idiom.
As my final example take a look at all the ambient and soft jazz stuff. I love experimental and electronic music, but I don't get the majority of the ambient music I've listened to. (Echoes is produced locally, and I do listen to it, and I even like some of it, but a lot of it gets past me.) And soft jazz? UGH! I just don't get the appeal of that stuff.
So, can any person learn to appreciate any musical form? Is that limited to "serious" music?
Heck if I know<G>!
Have a great weekend...
Bill
-- Bill Thompson Audio Enterprise KB3KJF -- "All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them." Galileo Galilei. --
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