"Classical Music" and other names for it

[MrGongGong]

It has an air of deserved superiority about it as, compared to other recognised forms of music, it requires greater concentration and study to appreciate.

(Not wanting to quote the late Ian Paisley but) "No no no no no"

[ahinton]

If anyone really wants to make the effort and learn more about classical music there is little stopping them. If they don't, that's fine. Their loss, not ours, and that includes Prime Ministers.

I somehow doubt that the present Prime Minister is likely to develop such an interest even after reading your admonition; he's probably more interested in baking. After all, if the header to Chapter 11 of Jesse Norman's book The Big Society (University of Buckingham Press, 2010) - namely

"You can call it liberalism. You can call it empowerment. You can call it freedom. You can call it responsibility. I call it the Big Society. (David Cameron)
I am not a radical. I am a conservative who has been forced to become a radical. (Arnold Schoenberg)"

didn't do the trick in getting him started (and there's no evidence that it did) - and given the Arne and Elgar example that I cited earlier - I suspect that he's a lost cause on this.

Anyway, isn't "Philistine" an abbreviation for Peter Warlock?...

Someone's nicked me coat...

[MrGongGong]

Anyway, isn't "Philistine" an abbreviation for Peter Warlock?...

(you wait for the linguists to correct you and tell you it's a contraction or other such thang )

[ahinton]

(Not wanting to quote the late Ian Paisley but) "No no no no no"

Your lack of desire to quote Paisley is perfectly understandable but I think that this "air of deserved superiority" to which our resident Tippster alludes is an intended reference to himself rather than to any kind of music but he just got his pronouns mixed up (Muddle instead of Music, peut-être?...)

[ahinton]

(you wait for the linguists to correct you and tell you it's a contraction or other such thang )

I can wait for that; I don't pretend to be any expert on contractions and, in any case, attending a state grammar school like wot I did instead of one of those posh expensive independent ones is no guarantee of future grammatical skill.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

(yawn) - yet again hoping that treating this music as a fashion accessory and sort of like pop music somehow makes it more appealing.

Indeed. It's a pathetic approach, and one that's adopted by so many of the R3 presentation team.

[MrGongGong]

Your lack of desire to quote Paisley is perfectly understandable but I think that this "air of deserved superiority" to which our resident Tippster alludes is an intended reference to himself rather than to any kind of music but he just got his pronouns mixed up (Muddle instead of Music, peut-être?...)

Indeed

I'll have a go as well then.

I like Xenakis, his music demands rigorous intellectual application to play and a colossal intellect to compose, therefore I share his intelligence.



Actually, Tipppy's comment illustrates why there is a problem with the name.

[P. G. Tipps]

Indeed

I'll have a go as well then.

I like Xenakis, his music demands rigorous intellectual application to play and a colossal intellect to compose, therefore I share his intelligence.



Actually, Tipppy's comment illustrates why there is a problem with the name.

There is no real problem with the name, I most humbly submit.

The only "problem" lies with the wretched philistines and their 'anti-elitist' apologists who are always so desperately keen to pander to them

No Surrender To The Philistines!

[french frank]

Just seeking clarification here: is the suggested 'Composed Music' intended to imply that there are just two sorts of music: composed and improvised? Or composed and what? What is 'non-composed' music? This isn't to challenge the suggestion - merely seeking information, though composers may consider it self-evident. I haven't really thought about it for long enough.

[Richard Barrett]

merely seeking information

"Composed" according to the article means conceived by a single person and written down. I quote: "Composed Music’s primary virtue is its blunt veracity. It is what it says it is: works by a singular mind, fixed and promulgated in written form. When you think about it, that is probably the one and only thing that unites all eras and styles of so-called Classical Music." Although, as has been pointed out, that isn't really true.

[MrGongGong]

Just seeking clarification here: is the suggested 'Composed Music' intended to imply that there are just two sorts of music: composed and improvised?

I don't understand it that way at all.
I'm not sure it's a great solution but it's a better word than "Classical" for many of the musics it includes (but has obvious flaws as RB points out)

[ahinton]

"Composed" according to the article means conceived by a single person and written down

So no Prison Cycle or Montjuic, then, yet works composed solely by Britten, Berkeley, Rawsthorne and Bush fall within that descriptor. What about works begun by one composer and completed by another, usually following the first composer's death? (even though only one composer at a time worked on them). And "written down" by whom? - must it be the composer? - if so, where might that leave late Delius or Ornstein? Hmmm; doesn't get any better, does it?...

[french frank]

"Composed" according to the article means conceived by a single person and written down. I quote: "Composed Music’s primary virtue is its blunt veracity. It is what it says it is: works by a singular mind, fixed and promulgated in written form. When you think about it, that is probably the one and only thing that unites all eras and styles of so-called Classical Music." Although, as has been pointed out, that isn't really true.

Thank you, RB. When you think about it, it unites a whole lot more than so-called Classical Music. Andrew Lloyd Webber? John (Star Wars) Williams? Cole Porter? Not sure about MrGongGong's … If it doesn't have to be 'written down' by the same person who conceived it, it would include anything which appeared in sheet music form, I suppose; or exclude any music conceived by a single mind who was unable to write music down.

It seems so general, it might just as well be called 'Music'. Then you can have a BBC Director of Music and a BBC Music Day which can ignore the things that used to be called 'classical music'. There's plenty enough 'music' around not to need any of the stuff at the margins.

[Richard Barrett]

Certainly there's a lot of fuzziness about what "classical" means. But it doesn't seem to have struck the author that there's also a lot of fuzziness about what "composed" means. Personally I find it clearest to use the word "compose" to mean the activity of creating music, with for example "improvisation" among the methods for doing it. (I know I've said this before in numerous contexts so excuse me if you've heard it too many times.) I didn't arrive at this conclusion for the sake of classificatory tidiness but because it had a fruitful and liberating effect on how I thought about the things I spend my life doing, which counts for a lot with me!

So, if all music is composed, that word doesn't really work as a label for some music which one assumes has been made in a certain somewhat ill-defined way, even though surely it isn't in principle possible to tell when listening to a piece of music how it was made. I know a violinist/composer who at a conservatory exam put a score by Webern on the stand and proceeded to improvise his performance; I don't recall if he told me whether the examiners could tell he wasn't playing Webern but one can imagine they might not. Thinking about it further, is it really a good and audience-inclusive idea to classify music according to how it's made, when presumably one is trying to help that music appeal to people for whom how music is or might be composed might be mysterious. I often get asked "how can you write music without working at the piano to hear how it sounds?", for example. I don't hold it against anyone if they don't know the answer.

As far as I'm concerned it is indeed all just music. The problem then is to justify the need that some musics have for institutional support (in the absence of princes and archdukes and all the rest of it). It seems to me the choice is then either to conceive somehow that these musics are superior to others and therefore more deserving of support even though their "market share" is so small, or to adopt an attitude of "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs". Or is there another alternative?

[french frank]

or to adopt an attitude of "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs".

I'd say that was an exemplary formulation!

As a non composer, I would have thought that 'idea' of music was the most obvious one: based on its creation by whoever, however. Leave it to another occasion to 'define' music.