Serious Music - Definition

[greenilex]

But we all know what GR taught us:

You canNOT be serious!

[ahinton]

But we all know what GR taught us:

You canNOT be serious!

Or, as a disbelieving person once said to Stockhausen, "you cannot be Sirius"...

[greenilex]

Used to say this to the dog when she was pretending to be the dominant female...

[MrGongGong]

I believe the background music to Peppa Pig or Thomas the Tank engine is/was composed by very serious intentions. How we hear the result is, I think, completely unrelated to how the music was composed.

Experimental summary of this thread.

Natty: Why is some music referred to as serious?
Mr GG: By whom?
Natty: By many people.
Mr GG: including you?
Natty: No. I don’t understand why […] is considered to be serious
Mr GG: Does that matter?
Natty: Yes, because I want to know why that is.
Mr GG: In that case, go and do a bit of reading and listening (here are some links to start with) and think about it. You may find something you didn’t know, for example, what people mean when they say serious music.

David Bedford once told me that the string arrangement for "Our House" by Madness was his best piece.
I think he probably meant he earned more money from it than other things (it is rather good IMV) so I would add this to the great and serious works of Vernon Elliot and the ones you mention above.

[Tetrachord]

I tend to think the label "serious music" is adopted because "classical" is clearly anachronistic and "art music" pretentious. I tend to think of serious music as describing what something is NOT rather than what it actually is. For example, Andre Rieu is NOT serious music because of its SOCIAL FUNCTION; it brings people together for the spectacle, with hand-clapping, dancing, cooing and other forms of approval. It does not focus on the music exclusively as 'serious music' does. So, this latter term comes with accretions of "weight; merit; complexity; formality; learned-ness and so forth". That, for me, is the essence of 'serious music'; it asks a LOT of the listener and appreciation will come after many more than one experience of it. And it should never be described as 'NICE'. Rather, as Leonard Bernstein once said, "music navigates the psychological geography of the interior". Yeah, that's it.

So, shoot me!! Think of it as Shakespeare with notes instead of words.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... the label ... "art music" [is] pretentious.

Why?

[ahinton]

For example, Andre Rieu is NOT serious music because of its SOCIAL FUNCTION; it brings people together for the spectacle, with hand-clapping, dancing, cooing and other forms of approval. It does not focus on the music exclusively as 'serious music' does. So, this latter term comes with accretions of "weight; merit; complexity; formality; learned-ness and so forth". That, for me, is the essence of 'serious music'; it asks a LOT of the listener and appreciation will come after many more than one experience of it.

Whilst I don't disagree with much of what you write here (although, like fhg, I do take exception to the suggestion that the term "art music" is "pretentious"), I do not accept that appreciation of the kind of music to which you refer is likely only to develop after repeated listenings; would you not agree that some pieces of such music can and indeed do hit listeners between the ears first time around?

[Tetrachord]

Why?

Well, if "serious music" is deemed pretentious then 'art music' is even worse.

[ahinton]

Well, if "serious music" is deemed pretentious then 'art music' is even worse.

But you still haven't answered fhg's (and, for that matter, also my) question!

[Tetrachord]

Whilst I don't disagree with much of what you write here (although, like fhg, I do take exception to the suggestion that the term "art music" is "pretentious"), I do not accept that appreciation of the kind of music to which you refer is likely only to develop after repeated listenings; would you not agree that some pieces of such music can and indeed do hit listeners between the ears first time around?

Perhaps a piece by Tchaikovsky, like the B Flat Minor Concerto, and certainly music by Mozart can hit listeners between the ears the first time around - but does this mean that they've had the full experience of what is possible with it? Are they coming back to it, again and again?

We can all listen to something and say, "Oh, yeah, that sounds good" but, to my mind at least, one cannot 'know' serious music after just one hearing. It simply isn't designed this way, but rather unfurls and reveals itself steadily over time. Of course, if people want to use is as a once-only listening experience I wouldn't personally regard that as necessarily "serious". Who, for example, can watch a Shakespearean play and after one viewing get the full gist of its power and complexity? We might say we 'enjoyed' the performance but we need to come back again and again for a 'serious' engagement with it.

It's possible to listen to Grieg's "Holberg Suite" and enjoy it but when I see it on the CD shelves and it's evident that repeated hearings have yielded more then I'd say that was a 'serious musical' experience. Otherwise, Grieg can seem like confectionary. Serious music, I say again, makes demands of the listener in a way that less serious music does not. Let that last sentence serve as may definition.

[Richard Barrett]

Serious music, I say again, makes demands of the listener in a way that less serious music does not. Let that last sentence serve as may definition.

Except that no music makes "demands" of the listener, it's up to the listener to take it seriously or not. I don't see what's so problematic about that idea.

I presume that you would think of Haydn's symphonies or Bach's cantatas as "serious music", yet in both cases these pieces, produced to order on a frequent and regular basis, would only have been heard once by most of their listeners*, a fact their composers were of course fully aware of and which they accepted as part of the job of a Kapellmeister or Kantor. The facility to listen as often as one wishes to a piece of music is a relatively recent historical phenomenon, more recent indeed than most of the repertoire trotted out as "serious".

And why, as has already been asked, is the label "art music" pretentious? (More pretentious, supposedly, than "serious music")

* whereas nowadays many "serious" music listeners decry the infrequency of second performances of contemporary works as if it were a mark of the music's failure!

[jean]

And why, as has already been asked, is the label "art music" pretentious? (More pretentious, supposedly, than "serious music")

Because both terms categorise other music as not art or not serious?

[Richard Barrett]

Because both terms categorise other music as not art or not serious?

yes...? That doesn't really answer the question, does it?

[jean]

It does for me - even if 'pretentious' isn't quite the right word, saying that someone else's music isn't 'art' or isn't 'serious' assumes superior qualities in mine, doesn't it?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I'm happy to continue using the word "classical". Indeed, it might be better to find a clearer term for music composed 1750-1820, as usage has pushed that meaning of the word into second place.

Re "serious" music, the use of this term reminds me of the inane BBC sports commentators of their annual live broadcast of the London Marathon, referring to non-elite participants as fun-runners. Running a marathon may be satisfying, but it's never fun.