"Classical Music" and other names for it

[MrGongGong]

The more I read this, the more i'm convinced that there really is a need for another word to describe what we call "Classical Music".
Some folks seem to be of the opinion that because they don't see a problem, "it works for me" then there isn't a difficulty at all.

I'm not totally convinced by "composed music" but i'm definitely of the opinion that "classical music" is an inadequate and in many ways worn out term for many of the musics it is used to describe.

Today i'm going to a school (on behalf of a well known orchestra who DO play "Classical Muisc") on days like today i'm more and more convinced that those of us who DO understand the nuances are in a tiny minority. I don't think this just applies to youngsters but they are much more vocal in their opinions.

One thing i'm sure of though, we certainly aren't going to be making "happy" and "sad" music today, we might make something to flap the trousers and scare the caretaker OR we might make something so still and quiet that it would be hard to breathe without disturbing it.

(again) The most common word folks come up with when confronted with the "C" word is "Boring". TELLING people it's not doesn't work, involving them in an 'embodied experience' where they listen to the unfamiliar does open ears.

[ahinton]

The more I read this, the more i'm convinced that there really is a need for another word to describe what we call "Classical Music".
Some folks seem to be of the opinion that because they don't see a problem, "it works for me" then there isn't a difficulty at all.

I'm not totally convinced by "composed music" but i'm definitely of the opinion that "classical music" is an inadequate and in many ways worn out term for many of the musics it is used to describe.

Today i'm going to a school (on behalf of a well known orchestra who DO play "Classical Muisc") on days like today i'm more and more convinced that those of us who DO understand the nuances are in a tiny minority. I don't think this just applies to youngsters but they are much more vocal in their opinions.

One thing i'm sure of though, we certainly aren't going to be making "happy" and "sad" music today, we might make something to flap the trousers and scare the caretaker OR we might make something so still and quiet that it would be hard to breathe without disturbing it.

(again) The most common word folks come up with when confronted with the "C" word is "Boring". TELLING people it's not doesn't work, involving them in an 'embodied experience' where they listen to the unfamiliar does open ears.

Whilst I'm with you in principle on much of what you write here, the problem seems to remain one of satisfactorily meeting the need to replace a term that most (if not quite all) appear to agree is unfit for purpose and, until and unless one is found that meets with general approval, we'll still be stuck with "Classical Music" whatever its shortcomings, image problem or whatever else.

[french frank]

unless one is found that meets with general approval, we'll still be stuck with "Classical Music" whatever its shortcomings, image problem or whatever else.

The alternative is no name at all - unless on the lines of grunge, garage, house, hip-hop, trip-hop, heavy metal, thrash metal &c, you go for symphony, concerto, sonata, string quartet, tone poem.

I wonder what the long term effect is of catching youngsters unawares so that they listen to 'classical music'? If they like it, do they go on to listen off their own bat? Or is that just the Cunning Plan (like Radio 3 dumbing down with tripe to lure in new listeners in the hope that they'll hear something better while they're over here and be hooked)?

I can see that dropping all terms except 'music' , and talking about it in terms of 'scaring the caretaker' is probably a good thing for young children. And if enough classical repertoire were slipped in by enough teachers &c. for a long enough time it might begin to have an effect.

But at what age does music stop just being fun and begin as a discipline?

[Hornspieler]

The alternative is no name at all - unless on the lines of grunge, garage, house, hip-hop, trip-hop, heavy metal, thrash metal &c, you go for symphony, concerto, sonata, string quartet, tone poem.

I wonder what the long term effect is of catching youngsters unawares so that they listen to 'classical music'? If they like it, do they go on to listen off their own bat? Or is that just the Cunning Plan (like Radio 3 dumbing down with tripe to lure in new listeners in the hope that they'll hear something better while they're over here and be hooked)?

I can see that dropping all terms except 'music' , and talking about it in terms of 'scaring the caretaker' is probably a good thing for young children. And if enough classical repertoire were slipped in by enough teachers &c. for a long enough time it might begin to have an effect.

But at what age does music stop just being fun and begin as a discipline?

A good question, FF.

I would ask, at what stage does music become anything more than just a background noise?

That would be a start.

HS

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Discipline is "fun"!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

And I don't just mean those ladies who used to advertise their services in telephone boxes - I mean the fun of accepting, meeting and overcoming a challenge: the joy of developing new skills and knowledge. It's how we learn to talk and walk (sometimes both at the same time) in the first place. "Discipline" doesn't have to involve drudgery and boredom.

[MrGongGong]

And I don't just mean those ladies who used to advertise their services in telephone boxes - I mean the fun of accepting, meeting and overcoming a challenge: the joy of developing new skills and knowledge. It's how we learn to talk and walk (sometimes both at the same time) in the first place. "Discipline" doesn't have to involve drudgery and boredom.

You are Robert Fripp and I claim my £100

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

You are Robert Fripp and I claim my £100

(= crimson)

[ahinton]

The alternative is no name at all - unless on the lines of grunge, garage, house, hip-hop, trip-hop, heavy metal, thrash metal &c, you go for symphony, concerto, sonata, string quartet, tone poem.

I wonder what the long term effect is of catching youngsters unawares so that they listen to 'classical music'? If they like it, do they go on to listen off their own bat? Or is that just the Cunning Plan (like Radio 3 dumbing down with tripe to lure in new listeners in the hope that they'll hear something better while they're over here and be hooked)?

I can see that dropping all terms except 'music' , and talking about it in terms of 'scaring the caretaker' is probably a good thing for young children. And if enough classical repertoire were slipped in by enough teachers &c. for a long enough time it might begin to have an effect.

Speaking as someone who was never encouraged at the outset either to listen or not to listen to any kind of music, the excitement that arose when I began to do so was in no way influenced by anything that anyone had said to me or that I had read on the subject. OK, had I been raised in conditions where music had been all around me from the very beginning, that would have been a very different scenario, but in such circumstances I might in any case have been more accepting of whatever music I'd heard without being affected or influenced by the divisiveness of externally imposed category becoming an issue.

I'm not sure of this but I suspect that the "Classical Music" "problem" where the young listener is concerned might rest more with active inverted-snobbish discouragement from listening to certain kinds of music because they're not reckoned to be "cool" and/or that they're "boring" and antediluvian than with the use of the admittedly hopeless term "Classical Music" per se. I suspect that part of the reason why I got so easily hooked (and it was a very sudden case of hook, line and sinker at that) was the very absence of influences of that kind at the hands of either my peers or anyone else; no one had ever said to me "you ought to listen to this" or "you shouldn't be listening to that" for whatever reason/s or none - so when I first heard Roussel's Third Symphony I not only had nothing in my previous experience with which to compare either it or my responses to it, I had no realistic option but to take it at its face value and, given how exciting I found it, that face value was a very high one. By the time that, a few years later, I'd become accustomed to quite a bit of Boulez, Nono, Stockhausen and other music going back as far as Mahler but was only just getting to grips with earlier music, I really had no idea of any of this as "Classical Music" with all the heavy baggage that the widespread misuse of this term carries with it, as discussed here; awareness of that came afterwards, albeit with no small measure of accompanying perplexity.

[ahinton]

And I don't just mean those ladies who used to advertise their services in telephone boxes - I mean the fun of accepting, meeting and overcoming a challenge: the joy of developing new skills and knowledge. It's how we learn to talk and walk (sometimes both at the same time) in the first place. "Discipline" doesn't have to involve drudgery and boredom.

Indeed (and in any case I rather doubt that those ladies' services ever included listening to "Classical Music")...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Indeed (and in any case I rather doubt that those ladies' services ever included listening to "Classical Music")...

They did on the Pitville Lawn manor in Cheltenham.












I believe.

[ahinton]

The alternative is no name at all - unless on the lines of grunge, garage, house, hip-hop, trip-hop, heavy metal, thrash metal &c, you go for symphony, concerto, sonata, string quartet, tone poem.

No name at all, indeed (other than just music). The specific categories here are fine insofar as they go but, within several of them, the contrasts can be so wide as to make even that somewhat problematic, not least with "symphony" whose very definition was quite different during the Baroque era from what it was later to become; for one thing, how many movements in a "symphony, concerto, sonata, string quartet"? - for another, what kinds of dimensions might they be expected to occupy (in most cases anything from a few minutes up to several hours). Likewise, distinguishing between heavy metal and thrash metal or between hip-hop and trip-hop might not seem any easier for some (and, by the same token, some garages are integral to the houses of which they're part and others are not yes I'll get me coat). Anyway, isn't hip-hop someting to do with Wozzeck?...

[ahinton]

They did on the Pitville Lawn manor in Cheltenham.

Ooh, when was that, then? - and, as it's not personal experience, what is your information source? (anyway, like Carter's forename, Pittville's got two "t"s, no sugar)...

[vinteuil]

"Strange how potent cheap music is."

Thus Mr Coward, describing music that wd not be accepted as 'classical'.

I suggest we use this example, and re-classify 'classical music' as - 'expensive music'.

Or perhaps, taking note of how supermarkets brand their high-end stuff : 'taste the difference music'

[verismissimo]

Indeed (and in any case I rather doubt that those ladies' services ever included listening to "Classical Music")...

Don't think it was ever excluded, though, ah.