Musical questions and answers thread

[vinteuil]

Ah, but my question is/was;
When did Western Art Music come to be called Classical Music?

... didn't ferney try to answer this in his #686?

It seems that the earliest date for such a use is in the 1830s -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_music

Nice that the earliest OED entry is in itself in the form of a question -

"1836 Musical Libr. Supp.III.64 (title) What is the meaning of the word 'classical' in a musical sense? "


.

[subcontrabass]

Ah, but my question is/was;
When did Western Art Music come to be called Classical Music?

Literary references indicate the beginning of the twentieth century. Howard's End (1910) seems to be about the earliest.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

.... I remember my father had on his shelves forbidding tomes - 'Der Barock' and 'Das Rokoko'.

But the wiki pages are a good intro, I think :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rococo

Many Thanks, vinty - it's interesting that "Rococo" is still used in the Visual Arts, but has been replaced "Early Classical" in Music Histories, whereas "Baroque" is still used, in spite of its inaccuracies as a description (as S_A points out).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... didn't ferney try to answer this in his #686?

I think dovers was emphasizing the "Western" bit in her initial query in response to MrGG's wider feeling for "Classical".

[subcontrabass]

My question wouldn't so much be "when?" as "why, how and at whose behest?"...

Possibly linked to classification of gramophone records. That seems to be the implication of its use in The Patchwork Girl of Oz by L Frank Baum (1913).

[MrGongGong]

Ah, but my question is/was;
When did Western Art Music come to be called Classical Music?

OK
no problem

I do think it's useful to observe how the term is used to describe other musics

[EdgeleyRob]

JS Bach

2 part and 3 part inventions.
I listened to some of these played by Glenn Gould.

As they are,as I understand it,basically teaching pieces,why are the 3 part ones also known as Sinfonias ?
Isn't that something entirely different ?
If not why aren't the 2 parters also Sinfonias ?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I think this is a matter of etymology, Edgey - "Sin fonia" just means "sounding at the same time" ("phone" - "sound", "syn" as in "synchronized"). So, yes; the two-parters are also "Sinfonias" in this sense, but, as there are more voices sounding at the same time in the three-parters, Bach kept the title for those.

The title "Invention" he took from his Italian contemporary, Francesco Antonio Bonporti (I had to check that on Wiki!) - the sense of "Invention" as meaning a "discovery" rather than the modern sense might also lie behind the Ricercar; a word meaning "to search" (as in "research").

[EdgeleyRob]

I think this is a matter of etymology, Edgey - "Sin fonia" just means "sounding at the same time" ("phone" - "sound", "syn" as in "synchronized"). So, yes; the two-parters are also "Sinfonias" in this sense, but, as there are more voices sounding at the same time in the three-parters, Bach kept the title for those.

The title "Invention" he took from his Italian contemporary, Francesco Antonio Bonporti (I had to check that on Wiki!) - the sense of "Invention" as meaning a "discovery" rather than the modern sense might also lie behind the Ricercar; a word meaning "to search" (as in "research").

Brilliant,many thanks Ferney.

I was thinking Sinfonia as in Symphony,which is why I was puzzled.

[Pabmusic]

JS Bach

2 part and 3 part inventions.
I listened to some of these played by Glenn Gould.

As they are,as I understand it,basically teaching pieces,why are the 3 part ones also known as Sinfonias ?
Isn't that something entirely different ?
If not why aren't the 2 parters also Sinfonias ?

Ferney is quite right. Sinfonia = sounding together. Initially it meant nothing more than the b******g obvious - a number of 'independent' lines played at the same time (as in JSB's case). In other words, it emphasises the contrapuntal nature of something.

Quite quickly, though, it began to be used for any piece for multiple instruments, especially for the instrumental introduction to choral and operatic works. The French had their own word for these - ouverture (opening) - and it wasn't long before the two were synonymous. They also became sylised as three-movement works with the first movement in one of two forms: with a slow introduction that usually returned (the French overture); or getting straight into the action (the Italian). The 18th Century is replete with sinfonias and ouvertures, and there's usually nothing to distinguish them. William Boyce published his Eight Symphonys in Eight Parts and Twelve Overtures in Seven, Nine, Ten and Twelve Parts in 1760 and 1770 respecitively, but he could just as easily have called them all 'symphonys' or 'overtures'. (In fact they were all 'overtures' to choral or stage works.)

But as the second half of the 17th Century progressed, sinfonia (or the German sinfonie) became applied more and more to a stand-alone work based on the earlier sinfonia or ouverture - three or (with the addition of a minuet) four movements. German-speaking composers then used ouverture for stage works.

In truth, it's nothing like as neat as this. Composers (or publishers) had their own preferences anyway, and sometimes the names were used in a deliberately anachronistic way. Stravinsky's 1920 Symphonies of Wind Instruments is an example.

[LeMartinPecheur]

Went to a nice programme of baroque concertos by London Concertante on Fri: three Brandenburgs, a Vivaldi 2-cello concerto, and a Telemann 'Concerto for 4 violins'. Felt a bit short-changed by the latter - we certainly got the 4 violins but no 'orchestra', not even basso continuo, nobody else on the platform but the 4 violins

Is this a case where concerto = concert, or even consort??

Or was Telemann pulling an advertising 'fast one' in his one-movement-at-a-time musical periodical??

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It's a lot to do with what composers started calling pieces in the Seventeenth & Eighteenth Centuries, when people increasingly gave up playing Music themselves and began paying Musicians to play it for them - from consorts of amateurs to concerts given by professionals, a neat differentiation from LMP. Especially with instrumental Music - what do you call a piece that neither includes words nor is meant to be danced to? So we get "Sonata" - a "sounding piece" (for instruments) as distinct from "Cantata" - a "sung piece"; instruments were playing together as a consort, so (as this was all happening in Italy and France) we get "Concerto" (an piece to be played "in [a] concert") and if a large number of players were involved, it would be a "big concerto" (Concerto Grosso) - added to what Pabs has said about "Overture" (the opening to an act of an opera or a section of a vocal/choral work) and "Sinfonia" (the bits in an opera or vocal/choral work played by the instrumentalists) the names were banded around in those early days. Only later did conventions (about the number of movements, the distinction between soloist and orchestra, the structure/"Form" of Movements) become "settled" - all in order to make sense of Music that didn't have words or dance moves involved.

"Orchestra" is another etymological pleasure - it originates in designs of theatres in the Seventeenth Century based on what they thought the ancient Greek stage looked like. The bit at the front of the stage where the dancing took place was called the "orkhestra" - "orkhestei" = "to dance" + "tra" = "place": and as this was the most practical convenient place to put the instrumentalists, that's what they as a group became called. (Three centuries on, and we'd be talking about "the Berlin Philharmonic Disco".)

Or even "the Disco of the Age of the Enlightenment"!)

[ahinton]

Three centuries on, and we'd be talking about "the Berlin Philharmonic Disco".

Or even "the Disco of the Age of the Enlightenment"!)

!!! - or yet "Streng kommen sie Herbert von Karajanstr."...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

!!! - or yet "Streng kommen sie Herbert von Karajanstr."...

Not so much "Keep Dancing" as

https://stephenjacksonmusic.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/karajan-joke.jpg?w=580&h=290

[ahinton]

Not so much "Keep Dancing" as

https://stephenjacksonmusic.files.wo...pg?w=580&h=290

Heard it before, of course, but it bears repeating here!