"Classical Music" and other names for it

[ahinton]

Yes, sometimes because (and you might find this hard to understand?) we pay people to be TEACHERS in order that they future and develop the people they teach. One idea of school is to learn about stuff you don't find outside, so if you live in a world where music is either "happy" or "sad" then a good teacher will encourage you to question and explore other possibilities, you know, use NEW WORDS, listen to NEW MUSIC (whether it's "Classical" or Tuvan Overtone singing)...

Did you never do English exercises at school where you were given words to use in context?

It's not the 1950's you don't get beaten senseless for saying that something is "happy" (though i'm sure some of our leaders would be all in favour)

I don't think that this is a helpful response, even though it is an obvious fact that teachers are indeed paid to teach and one hopes that this act involves encouraging students to question and explore as much as possible; the words "happy" and "sad" are perfectly acceptable in the context of the vasts and wide panoply of human emotions, provided that they're accepted as just that, be it in a musical contaxt or any other.

But as to this major/minor happy/sad nonsense - which is indeed the nonsense that you point it out to be - one has only to consider some seriously powerful outbursts of C major that one might think would all be on the positive side - ecstatic, euphoric, even; the triumphant openings of Praise to the Holiest in Gerontius and Die Sonne from Gurrelieder fit into that mould very well, but then listen to the heavy brass-laden outburst near the close of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony which one of the most devastatingly tragic, doom-laden instances of C major that I can think of...

[P. G. Tipps]

I think I know what you mean by "new 'clichés'", Daniel - and these would be dealt with as they arise, later in the young person's education. A child of eight using "ecstatic" instead of "happy" is not [yet] using a cliché/"cliché"; s/he's discovering and implementing a word for the first time(s). If it just becomes a lazy "substitute" for "happy", then another word - for example, "euphoric" - would be introduced. And then the differences between "ecstatic" and "euphoric" would be explored, which develops language, and - one hopes - builds a more closely-examined relationship between the child's/teenager's emotional/psychological experiences and the ways they reflect internally upon these and communicate them to others.

Perhaps the word "banning" takes on an unpleasant aura that does not reflect what happens in the classrooms: no letters are sent home to parents; names are not read out in Assembly; scarlet letters are not sewn onto jumpers. It's a game - not unlike not being allowed to use the word "said" in a passage of dialogue: a "tool", as I said in the post you quoted. Kids are not given detention for not singing "Euphoric Birthday to you"! It's more a case of their being given a set of (temporary) rules to channel their imaginations into exploring a wider vocabulary.

Happy now?

That too comes across as infinitely patronising.

Either people mean what they say when they use the word 'banning' or do not.

If there is no question of banning there is no argument.

So which one is it? Ban or No Ban!

[jean]

But my point was that before the end of the 19thc, there was the music of the beginning of the 19th c, 18th c, 17th c, 16th c, 15th c, 14th c, 13th c and a bittie further back than that, which commonly shelters under the (protective) brolly of 'classical music'...

But what about the whole 'folk' tradition, which I think has been mentioned?

And if you separate that off, and treserve 'classical' for court and church tradition, where do you put popular forms like West Gallery music?

[Daniel]

Kids are not given detention for not singing "Euphoric Birthday to you"! [...]

Happy now?

And to the rest of your lucid post, thanks, ferney, that's clearer now.

I suppose my point was that the words happy and sad can lead on to discussions about other words/ways of hearing what one has heard. I wasn't suggesting that anybody was being tormented for using the words*, merely wondering why the healthy situation you describe couldn't happen with the words happy and sad still in play as it were. But you have made that clearer.

*Though obviously it's a shame. I didn't get where I am today without tormenting children for using the words happy and sad.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

None of us who are/have been involved in teaching would claim to have all the answers. But we do have our boundaries.

[MrGongGong]

That seems to be rude, patronising and ignore what I said. Do you really want me to answer?

The whole post was as follows:

You (and others) are completely exaggerating what was a passing comment about what happens in many schools.

I'm not an expert in pedagogy, why not ask someone who is?
My own experience has been that if I ask a group of teenagers to say something about a piece we have just composed or improvised, they are likely to say things like.... "it was high, then low, there was a loud bit, a quiet bit, it was fast, and there was a slow bit, it was happy, it was sad".
If I ask them to talk about it without using the words... high, low, loud, quiet, fast, slow, happy, sad... then they are more likely to think more about the music, how it sounds and how it was organised etc etc

There's nothing totalitarian, controlling or anything else in this JUST something I learnt by observing music teachers who somehow had articulate and curious students. Prof John Finney at Cambridge had a conference a couple of years ago where music teachers talked about how they developed vocabularies with their students to talk about music. It was very interesting and I learnt loads of useful things.

seriously powerful outbursts of C major that one might think would all be on the positive side - ecstatic, euphoric, even; the triumphant openings of Praise to the Holiest in Gerontius

There's a perfectly good word for that which is a homonym (?) of the name of a composer mentioned elsewhere

[french frank]

But what about the whole 'folk' tradition, which I think has been mentioned?

Yes, of course there was music other than 'court' and church music at the time but it doesn't survive and get played in anything like the quantity that the 'court' music does, other than now and again in an examination of 'Early Music' - into which West Gallery Music fits quite comfortably, I'd say?

[gradus]

Gongers, you wind any further and you can pay for a new spring.

[P. G. Tipps]

So it looks like Gongers didn't actually mean what he posted ...

Let's hope for a lot more of that then!

[MrGongGong]

So it looks like Gongers didn't actually mean what he posted ...

Let's hope for a lot more of that then!

What on earth are you wittering on about ?
No, don't bother

[P. G. Tipps]

What on earth are you wittering on about ?
No, don't bother

[jean]

Yes, of course there was music other than 'court' and church music at the time but it doesn't survive and get played in anything like the quantity that the 'court' music does, other than now and again in an examination of 'Early Music'...

I think there's much more of it than that implies, if you listen in the right places!

... 'Early Music' - into which West Gallery Music fits quite comfortably, I'd say?

Only in that it's been researched mostly by Early Music specialists; it extends well into the nineteenth century.

[french frank]

I think there's much more of it than that implies, if you listen in the right places!

Only in that it's been researched mostly by Early Music specialists; it extends well into the nineteenth century.

Both of which replies show the difficulty of defining types of music precisely and concisely. Just look for what works most of the time.

[jean]

Oh I agree - but it's fun talking about it.

[french frank]