Hi Dark,
Perhaps. However, there is a good reason why most people put Stravinsky,
Holst, or Korsikov. in one category and John Williams, James Horner, or
John Turner in another. The reason is that someone like John Williams
is considered to be modern or contemporary classical music where someone
like Stravinsky is considered to be romantic classical music. That may
not sound like a big difference, but all musical genres are divided up
this way and just because an artist fits into a general category like
classical orchestral music doesn't mean they fall into the exact same
genre as artist x.
For example, let's take rock music. At one time, say the 1950's, all
rock music was considered to be one category or genre. However, as the
genre evolved there have been various new categories created such as
alternative rock, pop rock, new wave, heavy metal, rhythm and blues,
etc. Therefore we can no longer say rock music is all one category,and
we certainly can't say if a person likes artists from one rock genre
then they would like artists from another rock genre. That isn't always
necessarily true.
In the 1980's I grew up with AC-DC, Guns n' Roses, Kiss, Metallica, Pat
Benatar, etc. Today that is considered to be hard rock or heavy metal.
That style of music is very different from Elvis, buddy Holly, or the
Beatles that my parents listened to growing up. It so happens I was
exposed to both growing up, therefore like a bit of everything, but I do
tend to listen to hard rock more than I do classic rock from the 50's
and 60's. That's because I grew up listening to a certain style of rock
music and just prefer that unique style or genre over other flavors of
rock because that was what was available for my generation.
That said, I certainly can see the origins of heavy metal, and the fact
of the matter is it had evolved in tact by the late 60's. In the 50's
there were groups like Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, Everly Brothers, the
Platters, etc who sang songs obviously targeted for people in their
teens. Perhaps high school age, and was pretty tame compared to what
would come a decade later.
By the late 60's the entire nature of rock music had changed. Artists
like Cream, Jimmy Hendrix, the Yard Birds, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin,
etc were leading a new style of rock music known as Psychedelic Rock. It
was a radical departure from the light rock bands like the Supremes who
were singing songs like Cant' Hurry Love, Reflections, Stop in the Name
of Love, etc which was similar to the music of the 50's. This new style
of rock was dubbed psychedelic rock which is the origins for alternative
and heavy metal, but wasn't called that in the 60's.
One thing is for sure Jimmy Hendrix definitely didn't sound like the
artists from a decade earlier and is still well known for his rock power
ballads like Foxy Lady and Purple Haze, because they were such a radical
departure from the norm. Buddy Holly, Elvis, Chuck Berry, or any other
artists you can think of who got their start in the 50's didn't sound
anything like Jimmy Hendrix, nor the light rock bands from the 60's such
as the Four Seasons, Supremes, Beatles, Drifters, Lesley Gore, etc sound
like Jimmy Hendrix either. That's why they ended up having to split rock
music up into categories, because there was no longer a single category
per say.
Anyway, getting back to my point. There may be some similarities between
John Williams and Stravinsky, but most people tend to think of those as
separate styles of classical music. The same way someone today would put
Alanis Morissette in alternative rock and Madonna in Pop rock. We do
not see them as the same thing. Plus another way to look at this is that
music stores don't shelve film scores next to classical artists either.
If I go into any music store here in the USA all the music is divided up
between genre. John Williams' works such as Star Wars, Superman, Indiana
Jones, etc would be down the movie and show tunes aisle. Stravinsky on
the other hand would be down the classical music aisle. Faith Hill would
be located in the Country and Western aisle, and Alanis Morissette over
in the pop and rock section. Basically, everything is separated
according to genre and category so its easier to locate, but at the same
time its clear that Williams, Turner, and Horners film scores aren't
considered to be classical music by most people.
Cheers!
On 5/29/2012 7:23 AM, dark wrote:
Hi Tom.
Actually my point here was more about music, particularly "classical"
music (though I prefer the term orchestral music myself), is presented
to people.
A lot of classical musicians are extremely unpleasant and exclusivist,
and reffuse to acknolidge that orchestral music is used in other
contexts, or can be enjoyed for it's emotive quality. yet all the
Orchestral stuff I enjoy is from the romantic, not classical period,
the point when emotion, melody, and all the things known in modern
film score were first coming into practice.
I'm therefore fairly certain that someone who liked john williams,
james horner or John turner, would be pretty likely to enjoy similar
themes, styles and expression in Stravinski, Holst or rimski korsikov.
However most people don't tend to think like this, sinse most people,
---- yourself included it would seem, put "classical" music into one
box, and say "I don't like that" and put film or indeed game score
into an utterly different box.
I was very pleased for instance that in the recent Uk classic fm
charts, an orchestral arrangement of Airis' theme from final fantasy
7, arranged by the conductor Arny roth, actually came 14th in their
yearly hall of fame, a set of 300 peaces chosen by people's votes each
year.
The problem however is that lots of orchestral music is presented
extremely badly, by people with absolutely no idea how to talk to an
audience who would rather be exclusive about what they do and have
fewer people involved, than aknolidge that they work in the same genre
as John williams and the like.
Beware the Grue!
Dark.
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