Who Killed Classical Music?

[Richard Barrett]

Thank you Calum.

In other words, "élitist", as used in the sense under discussion, carries with it an association between specialised knowledge and (political/economic/academic) power. On the other hand, for example, driving a car is "something which requires familiarity" but is not generally thought of as an élitist activity.

[Serial_Apologist]

In your last sentence, you seem to take a step towards my original generalisation, that appreciation of this music demands a high level of education or familiarity.

Does one want a low level of education or familiarity?

[Richard Barrett]

Does one want a low level of education or familiarity?

Quite. I would like to live in a world where everyone could be educated sufficiently to make informed choices in such matters.

Appreciation of all music requires education and/or familiarity. Take the example of "non-Western" musics. The classical music of Bali isn't very widely understood/appreciated by Western audiences, but it clearly isn't "élitist" in its country of origin.

[teamsaint]

I agree this music works well when combined with other media, including film. Also, when audiences experience live performance in the same space as the performers.

In your last sentence, you seem to take a step towards my original generalisation, that appreciation of this music demands a high level of education or familiarity.

I think that an interest is enough, at least to start with.

Familiarity comes over time.

As for Education, musical or otherwise, and engagement with certain types of music, that is a whole other thing.


Just for starters, there are plenty of people highly trained in music who have little or no interest in Serial works, for instance.

[Gordon]

Fascinating thread and a subject we've been around quite a bit in the past. Who says "Classical music" is dead anyway? Where's the body? I'm with Mark Twain; our concert halls, radio schedules and CD tracks are full of everything from Hildegarde to McMillan - we've never had it so good [sorry]!!

The only "dead" bit is that some of the composers whose music we retain at the head of the canon happen to be dead; so why do we bother at all with their music then? Part of the problem is forcing things into inappropriate moulds for tidyiness. FWIW I think the dilemmas over what R3 should be transmitting is that boundaries are blurred as never before - my argument for retaining more "traditional" playlisting on the station is that much modern, more popular music is available through other channels and R3 need not go there. OTOH it should not be a museum either - one thing that music is is that it is a living, recreative art and so Beethoven's Fifth is not set is stone - but there is huge amount in that museum's store that is not exposed because it is ousted by material that has no other home. R3 has become a bit of a dumping ground.

Put simply, the airwaves are awash with pop music absorbing spectrum out of proportion to its artistic worth and thus preventing other genres from getting an airing. Fortunately the internet does allow some of that material to be heard but NOT by many people. Many young musicians appear to see no boundaries between genres. A film music composer does a job and will do well if the music supports the drama - play it on its own and it loses a great deal. It may contain strong themes and harmonic character and be constructed using the same principles as more "classical" pieces - indeed the composers may well be people trained in the classical traditions, as many were - so perhaps what needs doing is that the material is "re-purposed" [nice modern word that] to re-shape it more formally, as in VW eg. Perhaps then it would be more acceptable, after all which composers failed to reuse their material from time to time, but who will be bothered to do that?

As for "Elitism" there seems to be a selective definition of this term and its usage. If by "elite" you mean the "best" - the Aristos, as in aristocracy, government by the best", whatever that means - who would possibly object? Does anyone go out and deliberately buy anything but the best product they can find? Why go for the worst if you can help it? Surely any Premier League football manager wants an elite squad, the "best" that money can buy - surely so do the fans who are deemed to be non-intellectual types but they know the difference between excellence and mediocrity. Ah!! the dreaded word money!! The elite are clearly the wealthiest because they have been able to amass wealth by being, well, the best at doing it and so have the power to enforce their dominance!! Problem is the criteria we use to fill out the definition of the word.

We know that "elite" actually carries heavy overtones; it means privileged, exclusive, fashionable, members of MY club, MY gang etc., The elite are usually self appointed; eg Modern Celebrity [they deserve Capitals surely], an "elite" made up of those that set the trends, arbitrate public taste, command the twittering places and influence the unthinking mind. Its essence in tis sense is ME!! It's what I think is good, acceptable, worthy [sorry to use that one] that sets the standard NOT what YOU think. This is not confined to music it's just that music is caught up in this melee of shifting social power bases. It also applies to opinions about audiphile reproduction!!!

Unfortunately some elements of the classical music business have also set themselves up as arbitrators of what right thinking is and have thereby set up barriers that exclude anyone who doesn't subscribe to their tastes. Such people also exist in Jazz and Rock of course, but those musics are OK aren't they, because they have all those "cool" people in them? Modern popular music has little to do with music and a lot to do with celebrity - but it has to be said among all the glitz there are some fine musicans at work. Some of them manage to stay themsleves - perhaps they are the ones with real talent - and others do not and are cynical constructions of the moment.

Going back to the original posting, on the death of certain styles of music, did Bebop "kill off" Traditional New Orleans Jazz? Where did it come from? Does it have any kind of continuity with NOJ. It's the same argument that suggests that Serialism - where do you go after uber-chromatiche musik - "killed" tonality. Composers in any genre are free to write whatever they like, either to please themselves - and/or a handful of like minded academics - or to make a living. Perhaps a true professional does both those things.

Why do musicians feel the need to break out of what they perceive as a kind of bondage? How did they get those feelings anyway? Haydn was able to innovate well enough in his era without any outrageous departures. Beethoven however did start to kick against the traces - why did he seem to succeed or is that only retrospective? Was it his influence on successors? Did CPE commit patricide by rejecting counterpoint as a THE fundament of his compositions? Who killed counterpoint? Who was the heretic that allowed parallel fifths!

[Boilk]

And, pardon me for stating this obvious thing one more time, serialism is a method of composition, not a style.

True of course, but serialism has tended (for obvious reasons) to give rise to far more atonal than tonal (or neo-tonal) music. As we know, the musical masses rather hate prolonged atonality ... whereas the passing atonality in (e.g.) Wagner, Liszt, Scriabin and Mahler, is acceptable to them in the context of tension and none-too-delayed tonal resolution.
Detractors of atonality might well argue that the rise of atonality per se was a direct symptom of serialism, which makes Schoenberg and the 2VS an all-too-easy target.

[MrGongGong]

Diving music into
Tonal VS Atonal etc
seems a very superficial and often meaningless activity

Whether music is perceived as 'tonal' or 'atonal' is often dependent on context
as Patrick Gowers used to demonstrate wonderfully with his collection of 'atonal' Bach excerpts

[Serial_Apologist]

As we know, the musical masses rather hate prolonged atonality ... whereas the passing atonality in (e.g.) Wagner, Liszt, Scriabin and Mahler, is acceptable to them in the context of tension and none-too-delayed tonal resolution.

The Beatles - well, some of them - were encouraged (for a while) to expand their musical horizons beyond received conventional procedures of blues and popular song-based formats and harmonies - partly, it has been said, by means of substances which by-passed thinking processes prejudicial to what was unacceptable in certain musical circles including the pop; one also surmises due to innate musical intelligence, but above all because "expanding the permissible" was "in the air" at the time, just like it was when many composers coming from different starting-points in different countries began breaking away from the respective norms of 19th century music, and in jazz circles in America in the late 1940s. By the time we reach the 1980s, young people in their thousands could be found dancing nights away in warehouses and open fields to atonal music. I remember jazz pianist Django Bates pointing out that atonality was proving acceptable to huge numbers of people in a rhythmic context. Today I join packed audiences in which ordinary young people mingle with older freaks like me who've been into musical abstraction for decades to appreciate and even enjoy live improvised, part-improvised and often structurally highly complex music performed live. It's taken its time reaching this point, but if we can re-engage music with its original social/ritual function I think it will literally play its part in more involved, response-able ways of dealing with history and our part in it, rather than being the stop-gap means of escape it has been for the masses since probably the Romantic era, (pace Philip Glass).

[MrGongGong]

I remember jazz pianist Django Bates pointing out that atonality was proving acceptable to huge numbers of people in a rhythmic context. .

Spot on
In spite of what we are often told....
what people find 'difficult' is NOT the tonality or lack of conventional 'melody' in music but rather the lack of continuum (not the piece by Ligeti ). If one takes a piece of rhythmic and tonal music and then randomises the pitches people are more than happy to listen and enjoy it. Discontinuity, which is loved by many of us, is maybe the thing that people have problems with. The dominance of pitch based (what Leigh Landy calls 'Note Based' as opposed to 'Sound Based' ) music has meant that people often assume that the pitch information is ALWAYS (sometimes it IS, of course) the defining element of the piece in question when often, even in very tonal 'conventional' music it's other elements.

[vinteuil]

what people find 'difficult' is NOT the tonality or lack of conventional 'melody' in music but rather the lack of continuum (not the piece by Ligeti ). If one takes a piece of rhythmic and tonal music and then randomises the pitches people are more than happy to listen and enjoy it. Discontinuity, which is loved by many of us, is maybe the thing that people have problems with. The dominance of pitch based (what Leigh Landy calls 'Note Based' as opposed to 'Sound Based' ) music has meant that people often assume that the pitch information is ALWAYS (sometimes it IS, of course) the defining element of the piece in question when often, even in very tonal 'conventional' music it's other elements.

... which is to say : People Like Tunes.

To whistle on their bikes, if they're butcher's boys...

[Quarky]

S_A and MrGongGong have put into words what I feel about this situation. A musical education may be perhaps more of a hindrance than a help.

Approaching Schoenberg in a historical context from late 19th Century Brahms, Mahler, one is confronted with Schoenberg's first orchestral compositions. I have always found his later compositions easier to enjoy than these.

It's fairly easy to predict the content of the Radio 4 programme: akin to the BBC 4 programme - was it "Sound and Fury"?, where Philip Glass attempted a demolition job on Schoenberg. Of course, I might be pleasantly surprised.

What is of concern is that if "authorities" keep on saying Schoenberg is rubbish, then people might just start believing that. I can't help feeling there may be a secret agenda somewhere.

Anyhow, good excuse for a great thread!

[ahinton]

It's fairly easy to predict the content of the Radio 4 programme: akin to the BBC 4 programme - was it "Sound and Fury"?, where Philip Glass

John Adams, I seem to recall; odd, from someone who wrote a piece called Harmonielehre. It did him no favours whatsoever...

[MrGongGong]

... which is to say : People Like Tunes.

To whistle on their bikes, if they're butcher's boys...

No it's not at all
When people say they like "Tunes" we assume they mean melodies
BUT (as Django Bates points out) it's not always the notes

[ahinton]

When people say they like "Tunes" we assume they mean melodies

Mightn't some of them mean English Country ones?

Anyway, in answer to the question, I hear that some say that it was that Tikhon Kalashnikov; Mr Prokofiev would presumably be able to confirm or deny this...

[amateur51]

No it's not at all
When people say they like "Tunes" we assume they mean melodies
B

Ah not the cherry/menthol cough sweets then?