What is this thing classical music?

Subject: What is this thing classical music?
From: harryrages
Date: 27 Apr 06 - 02:18 PM

I get concerned about labelling, categorising and boxing stuff - especialy music. What do people mean when they say 'do you like classical music' or 'what classical music do you listen to?'. What is this 'classical music' - Haydn&Mozzie and afterwards as long as it was composed in western european music style? Is it age - so how old does it have to be? Did it have to be scored as a fixed composition or is that folk music? Is Plainchant classical, the scored dance tunes of Susato, O'Carolan harp tunes, 17th century Bulgarian music, Early Chinese 7 string qin music . . . .
When is something NOT classical - or is ?
I get concerned with sweeping labels - why not just like the music - whoever wrote it, for whom, for what and when?

Subject: RE: What is this thing classical music?
From: GUEST,Martin Gibson
Date: 27 Apr 06 - 02:34 PM

Because things have to be catagorized and organized.

If it was your way, going into a store to buy a CD would be impossible to find anything.

Going into a library the same way. My wife does all of the CD buying for our local library. She studies the music hard to fit a category. Without it, you would be able to find nothing.

don't be so concerned. Just take your own advice and enjoy the music, whatever it's called.

Subject: RE: What is this thing classical music?
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Apr 06 - 02:54 PM

Cogent point, harry. But Martin is right.

"Early music" generally encompasses Renaissance and Baroque music, "Classical" is the word generally used to refer to music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, although that morphs into the Romantics toward the end of the nineteenth and into the early twentieth. "Classical" is a sort of blanket term that people use for all of this, but invariably in reference to European music and music that sprang from the European culture. These are broad generalities, and one can (and some folks often do) argue 'til Sunday breakfast about when this period ended and that period began. Picky, picky, picky. . . .

It depends on how widely you wish to define "classical." Is there a "classical" rock-and-roll? Some folks would say so. I tend to think of the Child ballads as the "classical" ballads. But the word can really get fuzzy around the edges.

I was looking for some poop on classic guitar fingerboard measurements some time back, and I put "classic guitar" and "fingerboard dimensions" in the search boxes in Google. I turned up a lot of the information I was looking for about wide-necked nylon-string guitars (upon which one usually plays "classical" music, even if one is more interested in using a guitar to play lute pieces, which are usually categorized as Renaissance or Baroque music), but I also got a lot of hits about "classic" guitars such as the Fender Stratocaster.

Some words can be applied so widely that they no longer have much practical meaning. But at least it's a place to start.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: What is this thing classical music?
From: GUEST,The black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 27 Apr 06 - 02:56 PM

Didn't one John Tams album have an instruction "File under difficult listening"?

Subject: RE: What is this thing classical music?
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Apr 06 - 03:32 PM

Well, unfortunately there is some of that to be found in all categories of music.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: What is this thing classical music?
From: Sorcha
Date: 27 Apr 06 - 03:36 PM

Well, IMHO, Classic doesn't equal Classical....Classical is generally European, or N. American....Copeland qualifies, as do Bartok and Stravinsky. N. Americans are not 'usually' too into 'Eastern' music, but some of us are.

Classic rock, pop, jazz, etc...yes....but then again, Switched on Bach does qualify!!!

Just a matter of opinion I guess, just like 'folk'

Subject: RE: What is this thing classical music?
From: gnomad
Date: 27 Apr 06 - 03:45 PM

Broad brushstrokes have to be the rule if trying to categorise such a wide range as the different styles of music, while maintaining a small-enough number of categories for people to use the system.

In one record shop I visited the categories were so broad that a disc of renaissance dance music came in the "nostalgia" section. Some folks have looong memories.

Subject: RE: What is this thing classical music?
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Apr 06 - 03:54 PM

That's pretty funny!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: What is this thing classical music?
From: katlaughing
Date: 27 Apr 06 - 04:02 PM

Uh-oh, might as well ask "what is folk?" **big smile**

Good point about "classic" and "classical," Sorcha.

Subject: RE: What is this thing classical music?
From: Helen
Date: 28 Apr 06 - 06:44 PM

As I said on the other thread I started about classical music, Classical music - what makes you listen?

the Oz national ABC Classic-FM
http://www.abc.net.au/classic/ radio station plays just about everything mentioned in harryrages' first post here - and more - during their average broadcasting week. Jazz, world music, folk, included.

You can listen online or to archived broadcasts. The programme I have heard most of the wider range of music is the Classic Drive programme broadcast on weekday late afternoons.

Because I have a very broad range of interests in music, including rock, pop, alternative or independent rock (but sadly not rap or hip-hop) I am happy as a clam listening to the range of music served up by Classic-FM.

[Rap and hip-hop - excluding Michael Frante - makes me feel like an old fuddy-duddy. I find myself saying, "this isn't really music!"   I never thought I would say that about any music - except disco of course! I have to turn off the radio when I hear it.I have to turn off the radio when I hear it.]

Helen

Subject: RE: What is this thing classical music?
From: frogprince
Date: 28 Apr 06 - 07:35 PM

If people want to listen to rap, that's up to them; but why not just call it "performance art"; I can accept a very broad definition of "music", but I have a hard time stretching it to the total absence of any good, bad, or indifferent melodic line.

Subject: RE: What is this thing classical music?
From: M.Ted
Date: 29 Apr 06 - 12:40 AM

Rhythmic chants are a subset of folk music--even still, there is a lot of melody in hip-hop--at least for those willing to listen--

Subject: RE: What is this thing classical music?
From: CarolC
Date: 29 Apr 06 - 01:54 AM

The way I can tell if it's classical or not is, if I'm in the mood to listen to classical music, whatever I'm listening to (if I was the one who selected it), it's probably classical.

One of the things I find with a lot of classical music (or the kinds I like, anyway), is that it makes me feel expansive in one or all of a few ways. Spiritually expansive, mentally expansive, and emotionally expansive. Works for me. (Most really weird modern classical music has the exact opposite effect on me though.)

Subject: RE: What is this thing classical music?
From: Flash Company
Date: 29 Apr 06 - 10:59 AM

I'm with you a little bit, Harry,in that I think that we should just enjoy the music without worrying too much about what it is called.
However, for a shop or a library you probably have to call it something!
My own system is to file it all alphabetically, Jazz (ancient & modern), folk, C & W, classical, all together. I can always find anything I want, and choose according to my mood.
If I bought it, it was because I enjoyed it, if I don't, I don't buy it.

FC

Subject: RE: What is this thing classical music?
From: GUEST,DB
Date: 30 Apr 06 - 07:34 AM

Dear 'harryrages',

Why are you concerned about "categorising, labelling and boxing stuff"? Where, exactly, is the harm? I've come across this attitude many times in my life and, frankly, it baffles me! Things naturally fall into categories and I suspect that none of us would be able to function if we refused to recognise this fact.

Just a little salutary tale (which may or may not be relevant):

I remember reading, back in the 60s or 70s, about a group of hippies who set up a commune somewhere in a remote part of Wales. One day they set off into the lanes, near to their new abode, to gather the makings of a fresh, 'natural' green salad. One of the plants they picked happened to be Hemlock (Conium maculatum)- and it poisoned all of them to death ...

Now, if only they had known how to identify plants ('categorise, label and box' them) they might all still be alive today.

Subject: RE: What is this thing classical music?
From: autolycus
Date: 30 Apr 06 - 02:35 PM

Harryrages - there's no one definition and the boundaries are, as usual fuzzy. You can get a reasonable idea of what is conventionally regarded as classical music (in the sense your post meant) by looking at one of those introductions to classical music. The Rough Guide is a good example. I brought myself up on the excellent Musical Companion edited by Bacharach, later called the New M.C.

I would include as a start, the music composed by a named person from around 1200 onwards in Western Europe, for church, court, patron or personal use. Early names include Dunstable,Taverner,Dufay, Jannequin, Palestrina. The stream spreads to the Americas, Russia and the colonies from perhaps the 17th century.

The prime places to catch classical music live are the concert hall, recital room and church. i'd include Tudor music - madrigals and stuff in the category.

One quick way to get at what's in it is to mention other traditions. Folk, Jazz, Popular and Pop (with their innumerable subdivisions), Military, World Music, New Age. Film music is a category that can belong partly in popular, partly in classical.

Subdivisions of Classical include Orchestral, Chamber (say 1 to 15 players, Opera, Ballet, Church.
Orchestral includes symphonies, Concertos, Overtures, Tone Poems, Suites; Chamber includes duos, trios, quartets,quintets etc. for many combinations of instruments.
The categorising has become mind-bogglingly complicated in the last 100 years with all the types of ordering breaking down. Music didn't have to stick to one key, or a few rhythms, familiar forms (as just outlined), the usual instruments, the normal venues. It even became clear whether something was music at all, or what music was.

Classical music is thus the most iconoclastic and revolutionary category; the others have staid (!!!!!) relatively conservative by comparison (jazz least so). For example, the shape of most popular songs hasn't changed vastly since they began (there are exceptions. There always are.)Hence much classical music of the recent period gives a lot of people a headache.

In some respects, classical and jazz and the most avant-garde of pop have moved nearer each other, so that these days, with some stuff, you might be very unsure where you are.


   So, actually, asking someone if they like classical music is somewhat like asking them if they like restaurant meals, to which the reply ought to be "Some of it." And is unlikely to be "All of it."

One way to think about classical music is to imagine what somebody could come up with if they were serious, sensitive, imaginative, funny, OR opinionated people (or any combination), and who had decided to express themselves in those kinds of aspects of themselves in music as distinct from through words, sex, manual work, sport or whatever.


   Ivor

Subject: RE: What is this thing classical music?
From: Kaleea
Date: 30 Apr 06 - 03:46 PM

When studying the history of "Western" Music, the Classical Period in considered to be roughly from 1750 (when J S Bach died, thus ending the Baroque Period) to 1820. The term "Classical Music" as used now, probably came about because the uneducated listener was sort of aware that the orchestras in large cities often played symphonies by Mozart, Beethoven, Hayden, et al, who were commonly referred to as Classical composers because their works were composed during the Classical Period of Music. So, any music played by an orchestra began to be referred to as "Classical Music." The genre might be more accurately called "Classic Music."
So, if works by the greatest Composers of the various periods in the history of "Western" Music are the most commonly heard, it's bound to be pretty darn good sounding Music--so it likely is quite appealing to a large portion of humankind who hears it.
Then, when you learn a little bit about the people who wrote the Music, you might be even more likely to appreciate the joys and the troubles they lived through, and the emotions which you might feel when listening the their Music.
Or, a lot of the Music is just plain pretty to listen to.

Subject: RE: What is this thing classical music?
From: Don Firth
Date: 30 Apr 06 - 04:10 PM

Ivor and Kaleea both. Well said.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: What is this thing classical music?
From:
Date: 30 Apr 06 - 04:18 PM

If that's classic music, then what isn't classic about the folk music around the world which might have lasted 1000 years. Some of the Irish and Scottish Gaelic pieces have been dated to the 1500s and earlier. I am sure some of the Japanese and Chinese and Egyptian music has stood the test of time for a thousand years or more before that. So they should be called classic too, by their endurance alone.

Subject: RE: What is this thing classical music?
From: autolycus
Date: 30 Apr 06 - 04:57 PM

You're right George.

There isn't a thoroughly satisfactory word. Kaleea is right about 'classical', and it's the word people usually use, knowing roughly what they mean.

Alternatives are 'art music' and 'serious music', which both have advantages and disadvantages. The downside of 'classical' is that it also refers to that period around 1750 - c.1820.

Thanks,Don.


   Ivor