Classical - (Jazz) - Pop

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I understand it not as a question of personal preference, but of detached "appreciation": a listener is aware of the Musical features that make a piece a valuable (and "valued") cultural artefact, regardless of whether or not they enjoy listening to it. (My own "Messiaen Deafness" - I revel in the imaginative use of rhythm, harmony, and structure; I just can't stand the sound of most of it. It is great Music, regardless of my reaction to it.)

The Grosse Fuge remains one of the greatest achievements of the human imagination, regardless of how many people "like"(or "dislike") it. The B minor Mass is a masterpiece of the Western Classical Tradition - but was it so during the decades that it wasn't performed? If Music is "evaluated" purely on the numbers of people who enjoy it then what do we make of Ed Sheeran's X outselling the total sales of all Beethoven recordings in 2014? (Or Coldplay outselling Beethoven's annual sales in a single week?)

[doversoul1]

NatBalance #209

finding a piece of music I do not like is extremely difficult

I find this hard to comprehend. Is it because;

- you just love every bit of music that you hear whether you are in a lift or listening to Radio 3, or
- you have sixth sense to know whether you like the piece of music or not before you listen to it so you don’t ever have to hear music you don’t like, or
- you have a mental faculty to delete immediately all the memory of the music you heard and did not like?

Also, has it not occurred to you that you have an awful lot to learn? You have a whole world of music (how to appreciate and talk about it) to explore and learn, which is a wonderful thing, and this forum is an excellent place to start if you are prepared to listen and understand what others say.

[Stanfordian]

Ok to make it a bit simpler
putting aside different understandings of the word "value"



Mendelssohn's Octet is a work of greatness and has huge significance in the history of Western Music
I don't "like" it
but it's still wonderful even though I don't "like" it
I've heard it played live by some of the best chamber musicians in the world in a wonderful performance
but I still don't "like" it

I don't see any contradiction

Hiya MrGongGong,

I have heard the Mendelssohn Octet so often it has begun grate; great music as it is. People at Recorded Music Socities elect to play this often as a new discovery and an example of Mendelssohn's genius at a young age so I tend to hear it regularly. String quartets at festivals often come together for the Octet.

[MrGongGong]

NatBalance #209

I find this hard to comprehend. Is it because;

- you just love every bit of music that you hear whether you are in a lift or listening to Radio 3, or
- you have sixth sense to know whether you like the piece of music or not before you listen to it so you don’t ever have to hear music you don’t like, or
- you have a mental faculty to delete immediately all the memory of the music you heard and did not like?

and?

-you decide that the music you don't like isn't music at all and make up another name for it

[Lat-Literal]

Personally, I've been keeping a detailed notebook on all the classical music I have posted and the great pieces of music others have recommended to me. This has been somewhat burdensome at times but I know it will be helpful and rewarding to me. Ultimately I want to do the same with jazz. Elsewhere, I like to think that I can carry most things in my head as there are fairly solid foundations but invariably that is not the case. It is impossible to remember it all. The key difference is I'm needing to draw up a classical music map to really ensure I build on prior knowledge. It's an outline into which I'm placing detail - but I don't do a lot else other than buy food, plant bulbs and, obviously, fantasy football.

NatBalance - Welcome and I genuinely think it's great that you have started a thoughtful thread which has prompted considerable interest but "The Birdie Song"? Surely not - or am I missing something? If you are going to argue it on the basis of dance, may I suggest "Oops Upside Your Head" or that Ping one where we were all on our backs and wiggling our legs in the air? At least with the latter people had the achievement of blagging their way into ULU having left their tickets at home. Whoops........maybe too much information!

Sultans of Ping FC - Where's Me Jumper? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-dl9KTYAVk

[Serial_Apologist]

Ok to be specific about the Octet [...] 4: I don't like the harmonic language

I'd agree with you there and extend it to my non-appreciation of Mendelssohn as a whole. Here was a composer whose generally unchallenging musical language never really developed, therefore making his youthful exuberance insufficient to carry him into the influence league on subsequent music, and also so appealing to the Victorians, for whom anything musically equivalent to an exposed grand piano leg was too shocking for their delicate sensibilities. This was the simple harmonic predictability that has often been erroneously ascribed to Mozart.

For me - and this is probably where we essentially deviate in our respective takes on music - harmonic language is pretty much an indispensable when it comes to assessing musical quality or value, probably because it came to occupy such a large part in the narrative forms evolved from the early 17th century, coincidental with diatonic harmony usurping the older modes and conditioning all other parameters. My listening is literally habituated in that direction, so for me the "surprises" that come when composers from Gesualdo or Schoenberg expand or deviate from customary harmonic practice, challenging rhythmic and other continuities, and by accretion thereby the larger inherited frameworks of sonata form etc., these acts assume a significance which I think is overlooked by critical perspectives on classical music which are given to downplaying them.

You see, I'm not so sure that it is musical idiom per se that has outlived its innate possibilities when composers operating "in the Euroclassical lineage" choose either to ditch tonal and other post Enlightenment organising principles including serialism or render them incidental, but rather a commercialising factor that has given greatest prominence to music one way or another made up from cherrypicked world traditions which have likewise been diminished thereby.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

But "not liking" doesn't mean that Mendelssohn's Harmonic Language in the Octet isn't new and that the sixteen-year-old composer didn't know how to project this into new ways of using the Tonal and structural procedures of his immediate predecessors (and when Mendelssohn wrote the Octet in 1825, Beethoven hadn't written the last of his String Quartets, nor Schubert his String Quintet). For a start, the Tonic-Dominant chord progressions aren't as prominent - in the first 20 bars, the Tonic chord appears only four times, and the Dominant doesn't appear until bar 8 - Diminished and half-diminished seventh chords are more prevalent). To balance this, the composer presents a new theme with all the characteristics of the traditional "Transition"/"Bridge" section, in which a new thematic figure appears for the first time, in a series of chord & key shifts that give the appearance of moving towards a new Tonal area - but this doesn't happen,, with a Harmonic sleight of hand, the Music returns to the Tonic and the first theme - only THEN to move to the Transitions section. (And Dominant-Tonic perfect cadences are reserved until the Codetta of the Exposition.)

The Second Group also adapts features from "Tradition" to suit Mendelssohn's expressive needs: it begins, as expected, in the Dominant (Bb major) and with a new theme; but within seven bars it moves to another key: G major, where it stays for another eight bars. Now, having a third Tonal region in an Exposition is unusual in itself - but Mendelssohn's originality of thought doesn't end there: G minor would make sense (Relative minor of Bb major) and would neatly compose out the Tonic triad of the home Key (Eb - first group; Bb and G second group). But G major demonstrates an original sense for and use of Tonal/Harmonic relationships. It's a magical shift of Tonal area (from the long-term home area of three flats and the more recent two flats, to a key with one sharp) in its own right - but it's not just for the immediate effect; it has long term implications, also. Not just in the contrast between Exposition (almost exclusively in Major key areas) and Development (in which almost all key areas are in the Minor), but also in the avoidance of G major and insistence on G minor in the rest of the work (resulting in the Tonal ambiguity created by the Plagal cadences at the end of the second movement - but a Plagal cadence with a "Picardy Third"; so f minor to C major creating that Tonal uncertainty : is this a Plagal cadence in C minor, or an Imperfect one in f minor? AND the pivotting of C major at the end of the Second Movement immediately followed by G minor in the Third stretching that subdominant-Tonic relationship one step still further.

The Scherzo also serves to restore the "correct" balance between Bb and G that had been undermined in the First movement - as well as a truly joyous piece in the minor key (no mean feat; and one that was particularly Mendelsssohn's own) - and how many Scherzo/Minuet movements are there which follow the Sonata Principle before this one? (It is an injustice to overlook Mendelssohn's understanding of what Beethoven had done to Tonality even at this early stage in his career.) And the superb melding of Sonata and Fugue in the Finale - to say nothing of the astonishing Harmonic and Thematic twist of reintroducing the first Scherzo theme in the middle of the Finale texture.

And I haven't even commented on the unexpected Harmonic stagnation at the heart (bars 153 - 168) of the Development section of the First Movement (Mendelssohn felt - not merely understood or "appreciated", but genuinely felt - the significance of the Development in Beethoven's Fifth: nothing, absolutely nothing in the Exposition leads us to predict these bars: a sort of Dominant minor ninth on C - with a touch of Gb minor with an added major seventh thrown in - grinding its way towards F minor for a reappearance of the Second Group theme. Bleak and desolate, the Music meanders around, seemingly lost until it gets stuck on a Diminished Seventh on A (natural) around bar 197 - and who is it that sees the way out of this impasse? The humblest member of the ensemble; the fourth violin (and the superb use of the instruments in this piece is another Thread in itself).


None of which means that everybody "has" to enjoy the Octet, or like its Harmonic language - but it does demonstrate that a modicum of technical language helps to describe what is heard and communicate what features make it a work of what might justifiably be described as "high Art". AND to contradict an opinion which speaks of its "generally unchallenging Musical language". Not so useless after all, this "Music Theory" mallarky!

[ahinton]

Mendelssohn's Octet is a work of greatness and has huge significance in the history of Western Music
I don't "like" it
but it's still wonderful even though I don't "like" it
I've heard it played live by some of the best chamber musicians in the world in a wonderful performance
but I still don't "like" it

I don't see any contradiction

Well, I rather doubt that Daniel Barenboim would do so either; in his opening paragraph of a piece about Elliott Carter, he opined that, much as we admire Mendelssohn's best work, had it not been written the course of Western music would not have been affected at all. That was quite clearly not to undermine it, let alone pour scorn on it and clearly he loves the piece and recognises that many others also do and that it's a mind-boggling achievement for a composer ages just 16. I do "like" it - very much - but I recognise that it did little to alter the course of musical history, not I imagine was it really intended to do any such thing. What is arguably Menddelssohn's finest chamber work of all (among a considerable clutch of fine and skilled ones), his final (sixth) quartet, which was in many ways modelled on Beethoven's Op. 95 in the same key, except that, whereas Beethoven's finale at last achieves joy and positivity in F major, Mendelssohn's continues the often despondent, bitter and angry sentiments that pervade much of the remainder of the work and it ends in near-violent desperation without a suggestion of hope in earshot; this was quite a departure for him, without doubt, yet even this tremendously powerful work doesn't really break much new ground otherwise and I don't think that the composer really sought to do that in what was to be almost his final utterance.

[Serial_Apologist]

Well, ferney's having gone to such trouble to give us his well argued case for the Octet it would have been churlish not to have given it another listen - my second, I think: here's Imusici's lovely 1966 recording in its entirety.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgfeVaK0yeM

Maybe it will grow on me.

[teamsaint]

Ferney,re your # 232, do us a favour and give the Italian the same treatment when you have 10 minutes spare, would you please ?

Time that it and I were reconciled, post O level overkill.

Looking forward to a listen to the Octet with a score and your thoughts when the moment is right.
Thanks for the time and effort and thought put into that post.

[MrGongGong]

Some really interesting things here.
Thanks

[doversoul1]

Before we are treated with Ferney’s post on the Italian (many thanks for your # 232), let’s just get back to poor Natty’s original question.

This is from his opening post

It has always puzzled me why jazz is connected with classical. The way I see it jazz is a form of pop music, not classical

…and a few posts later

My aim is to understand why jazz and classical are so very often lumped together. I cannot see the connection

Why Jazz is ‘lumped together’ with classical music has been explained more than a dozen times, and why the use of the word ‘pop music’ is not appropriate for discussing this subject has also been pointed out probably a dozen times. Yet, Natty is still far from satisfied and all popular music is still pop music. My guess is, the OP was not a question but a statement and he was/is not going to change his mind (or has everybody else worked this out long ago?).

If this is the case, Natty, that’s fine. Nobody minds as long as you don’t insist that others should see it as you do. Or if you genuinely wanted to ask a question, how about trying again? After all these posts, you must have a better idea what and how to ask.

[NatBalance]

Cripes, I'll be weeks understanding and replying to all these. Won't have as much time today or tomorrow as I hoped to do justice to such answers as I find it a very difficult thought provoking subject. I see Dover is accusing me of not understanding the replies again, claiming the answer to this thread has been explained a dozen times, and that I am insisting others should see things my way. I'm not like that am I? I thought my replies were put across in a discussion type manner, and I really cannot remember the answer being given. Some opinions have been given, but not definitive answers. I'll have to troll through the replies to see what he means, and find that elusive answer to the question of life, the universe …. oh no, it wasn't that question was it? I asked that one on another forum and apparently missed the answer to that too ….. bugger!

Thanks for the Sultans of Ping link Lat … great stuff, made me laugh. I've also listened to the link of the octet to which Gongers is referring to and you've probably guessed …. I like it. Did have some hate music when a kid but grew up to like virtually everything, of course I can't say I do actually like it all because I haven't heard all the music there is out there but I'll answer properly when I've got time. Actually I remember now when in school everyone was laughing at me because I wouldn't follow the fashion and hate the Bay City Rollers. "Why pick on them?" I would reply "They're alright. Not that bad". So you see the answer probably is I've just got no taste
:)

Rich

[MrGongGong]

Did have some hate music when a kid but grew up to like virtually everything, of course I can't say I do actually like it all because I haven't heard all the music there is out there but I'll answer properly when I've got time.

I love a challenge

I'll make you a list on one condition, which is that you aren't allowed to use the "it's not music" card.
OK

[Lat-Literal]

Cripes, I'll be weeks understanding and replying to all these. Won't have as much time today or tomorrow as I hoped to do justice to such answers as I find it a very difficult thought provoking subject. I see Dover is accusing me of not understanding the replies again, claiming the answer to this thread has been explained a dozen times, and that I am insisting others should see things my way. I'm not like that am I? I thought my replies were put across in a discussion type manner, and I really cannot remember the answer being given. Some opinions have been given, but not definitive answers. I'll have to troll through the replies to see what he means, and find that elusive answer to the question of life, the universe …. oh no, it wasn't that question was it? I asked that one on another forum and apparently missed the answer to that too ….. bugger!

Thanks for the Sultans of Ping link Lat … great stuff, made me laugh. I've also listened to the link of the octet to which Gongers is referring to and you've probably guessed …. I like it. Did have some hate music when a kid but grew up to like virtually everything, of course I can't say I do actually like it all because I haven't heard all the music there is out there but I'll answer properly when I've got time. Actually I remember now when in school everyone was laughing at me because I wouldn't follow the fashion and hate the Bay City Rollers. "Why pick on them?" I would reply "They're alright. Not that bad". So you see the answer probably is I've just got no taste
:)

Rich

No problems!

This is probably not the done thing but I've just noted your name.

As a matter of interest, are you on Digital Spy? If so, we may have chatted, not that I venture there much these days, and if I have "got the right person" you have a lot of historical knowledge of the singles chart, ie that's your main area of interest and essential point of reference which you approach on the basis of what you like more or less?

For the record, it is where I did political writing before I decided there was no point in it and I didn't like it anymore; I am still signed up in principle to a fantasy football team on there although my main team is with another forum where most dialogue about that occurs; and I spent a lot of time chatting with others about radio in broad terms - past and present - which was the best bit but it is only sporadically that something of great interest crops up by which I generally mean that it is about an aspect of the history of radio.