The Eternal Breakfast Debate in a New Place

[french frank]

The problem with that as I see it being that it leaves what arguably too broadly has been termed classical music for as long as anyone can remember unlabelled amid a sea of musical types, for better or for worse. I can see your argument to an extent, although any assumed category will include varieties, sub-genres, and call for different approaches. What might a solution be? To have no name for "it", or make use of commonly used terms for the differentiated styles - a concert, say, of 19th century Russian orchestral music? a series of talks on how and in what order the Baroque took over from the Late Renaissance? Etc.

I agree. If you are a music specialist, the term 'classical music' is so vague as to be meaningless since the variables are well-known and numerous . If you are a language specialist the variables depend on who is using the term, and who it's directed towards - ultimately the context; just as the meaning of the word 'table' depends on the context in which it's used. Better a vague term which many people understand than a specific one understood by a few.

[smittims]

I was brought up to understand that the 'classical era' was 1750-1828 (i.e. between the baroque and the romantic). But that was in the days when what today is called classical music was just 'music', as in Grove's Dictionary of Music, the Oxford Companion to Music, The Royal College of Music, the Observer's Book of Music (five shillings: I learnt a lot from that) . None of these concerned themselves with Jazz, folk, musicals, barbershop harmony,etc. In the same way British postage stamps were the only ones without the named of the country. It was the other musics that had to be named .

A long time ago I read that several African languages have no word for 'music'. It is so much an integrated part of life that it doesn't need to be separately-described. i think there's a lesson for us there, somehow.

[french frank]

But that was in the days when what today is called classical music was just 'music', as in Grove's Dictionary of Music, the Oxford Companion to Music, The Royal College of Music, the Observer's Book of Music

In linguistics it's called colexification. 'Malo I would rather be, Malo in an apple tree, Malo than a naughty boy, Malo in diversity.' Some languages have no separate words for blue and green. Somehow in general conversation people got by.

[vinteuil]

Some languages have no separate words for blue and green. Somehow in general conversation people got by.

... and in Ancient Greek no word for blue at all.

.

[kernelbogey]

I tried Saturday Breakfast for an hour or so and drifted in and out of sleep. The music selection was not bad - Evaristo Felice Dall'Abaco was new to me - but I found E C's voice sometimes perilously close to her predecessor's nursery-teacher condescension.

[LMcD]

I tried Saturday Breakfast for an hour or so and drifted in and out of sleep. The music selection was not bad - Evaristo Felice Dall'Abaco was new to me - but I found E C's voice sometimes perilously close to her predecessor's nursery-teacher condescension.

I've just bought a 6-CD set by Concerto Köln, and the first disc features music by Dall'Abaco, of whom I hadn't heard until a couple of days ago.