Music

[bladespark]

Oh look, another lj post! I am talkative tonight.

Anyhow, I recently aquired a top hits of the 90s collection. 200 songs, woot! I'm up to #33 now, so there's lots more to go. But it's interesting listening through them. There are some where I hear a bit, and go "ew, no!" and delete. Some where I go "oh yeah!" and add to my Playlist Of Doom, after listening through and getting all nostalgic. A few where I go "Hey, I remember this..." and listen through once, for nostalgia's sake, but then delete, 'cause I don't really like 'em that much. There's even been two I totally didn't remember hearing at all. Guess they were hits that never made the radio stations I listened to in the 90s. But there have been a couple where I smile, and listen, but delete anyhow, because I have them already, and listen to them pretty regularly.

Listening to all this more than a decade old stuff and seeing how much of it turned out to be forgettable, and yet finding some that I still had around, and still loved, reminded me of something that happened in one of my music courses when I was in college sometime around... 98? Something like that. It was a sight singing course, and a lot of the training was about how to tell chords and intervals by ear, but we also spent some time listening to the great classics and training our ears to hear the difference between Baroque and Romantic, Classical and Contemporary. And the guy who taught that course was a good musician, but he was a little clueless. See, he loved Contemporary music, and was kind of snooty about it. I don't know of anybody, really, who's into Contemporary that isn't. (And by Contemporary here, I mean the stuff that's suposed to be Great Classical Music Of The Modern Era. Stuff that the poor plebes don't listen to. Stuff that is, frankly, weird, atonal, and not much fun to listen to, most of the time.) He maintained that just as few people today know the music lilstened to by the uncultured masses 300 years ago, 300 years from now nobody will know the "popular" music of our age.

But what's really funny about that is that, in trying to prove that rock and pop were eventually going to die out he actually proved just the opposite! He played for us two selections. One was, I think a bit of Handel, something pretty much everybody in the class knew. "There," says he, "That was the music of the elite, and it endured. You remember it, because it was great." Then he put on another selection, saying "This is music of the masses, it's barely two decades old, and yet I think most of you won't know it." And what did he play? Don McLean's American Pie. And he shot himself in the foot, because far more of us could name tune and composer than were able to name Handel.

I think that just like most Classical, most rock and most pop is going to die. There were hundreds of contemporaries to Mozart that are unremembered today. But the greats, they're going to last. 300 years from now people will know who The Beatles and Pink Floyd and Don McLean and Aerosmith and Led Zepplin were. They may be considered music for old fuddy-duddies who just can't keep up with modern times, but they won't be forgotten!

Comments

[dexam.livejournal.com]

I find this most amusing... 300 years ago, Handel, Mozart, Bach, Schubert, Beethoven, and all the rest of that crowd - the "Classical" Musicians and Composers - were Contemporary.

In 300 years time, most of the better known musicians of "our" time will probably be known as "Neo-Classical", or some such thing. Yes, a lot of "music for the masses" will have fallen by the wayside, be lost and forgotten. But look at how much has been produced, is being produced, and is going to be produced. It is truly staggering. And I, for one, love it.

Music that I love today I probably won't like in several years time. I'm already noticing that some bands and artists that I adored a decade ago, I'm not really fussed about now. But the best thing is that there is always something new and exciting being made right now! And I know I'll love it... at least for the next 12 months or so. :)

I guess that is why I prefer "contemporary" music to "classical" music. Yes, a lot of it I consider "rubbish". A lot of music I listen many would consider "rubbish". That's fine. But the sheer volume of new music means that there is something for everyone to enjoy. I say: listen forward more often than you listen back, otherwise you won't hear it when you've missed it.

I'll finish with a very appropriate quote from The Science of Discworld II: The Globe:
"It is said that Johannes Brahms was walking along a beach with a friend, who was complaining that all of the good music had already been written. 'Oh, look,' said Brahms, pointing out to sea. 'Here comes the last wave.'"

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

He he he.

Have you ever listened to the contemporary classical stuff? I don't mean anything you'd hear on the radio, I mean the kind of thing you put on your tie and tails and take a date in a dress to go see kind.

[dexam.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'contemporary classical'. Possibly not.

Then again, when you say "anything you'd hear on the radio"... well, obviously you don't listen to the same sort of radio stations I do :)

Triple J (my favourite radio station) has a weekly program called "The Sound Lab". As the name implies, it is a program for 'musical science' (often of the 'mad' variety). They play music so cutting-edge it is practically covered in blood. :P

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

Ah. You probably have heard some of it then. I just recall being forced to listen to several classes worth of... well... noise. Just screeches and clashing random chords and things that sounded like the symphony members were murdering eachother with their instruments.

I really don't know how that kind of thing could possibly becoming more of an enduring classic than something like Dark Side of the Moon, which is also highly experimental, really, but in a way that's pleasant on the ears.

(That's funny, now that I think of it. Floyd actually has a dozen or so songs that are atonal and not particularly listenable.)

[silveradept]

We get old when the music we listened to as kids is considered "oldies".

We get ancient when it moves into "classical".

The worst part of it is - no-one is safe from either of those designations.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

Well... the pedantic part of me is going "that's not true!" Classical properly refers to the classical period, and that's fixed to a very specific set of dates. Most of what we think of as classical, and hear on classical stations on the radio is actually romantic, or 20th century, not classical.

But you probably knew that already.

[silveradept]

Well, yes, I had an inkling of it. But 300 years down the road, they may do some redefinitions of just when they consider the "classical" period to be.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

'Tis possible.

[graydown.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of the differences between the two sorts of music come from recording equipment and the lack of it. We listen to Aerosmith and Pink Floyd; we reproduce Handel. I'm not sure which kind of music will have more staying power, in the end.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

Ah, but people reproduce Floyd and Aerosmith too! Ever heard a cover? Or seen a tribute band? The best rock concert I ever went to was a Floyd concert, held many a year after the band broke up, with a newer generation of musicians reproducing their music.

And for that matter, there are a few classical pieces where there are established musicians whose versions are what you usually hear, and those players are even famous, within their own circles.

I think there's quite a bit over overlap.

[graydown.livejournal.com]

People don't "cover" Handel, though, or any pre-recording composer. They play the music. There's no concept of a "cover" or a "tribute band" with the classical composers (and I also wish there was a better term; I've heard "compositional" suggested, and I like it), because the originals are gone.

I think there's a huge culture gulf between us modern types, who can have music on demand, and people who lived at a time when professional music was a thing that happened on special occasions. I think it will have a significant impact on what sort of music survives... but it's still too early to tell.

(I'm really digressing now...)

Don Giovanni is playing at a nearby auditorium, but even though it's my favorite opera, I may not go. After all, I have the CDs...

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

I don't know... we say "cover" and what we mean is one person playing music that somebody else came up with and made famous. What's the difference between a "cover" and a symphony performing Handel? I suppose that covers do sometimes take liberties with the original, but... so do symphonies!

We use different words, but I think that the intent behind what they're doing is the same.

The floyd group I heard just... played the music, like you said.

And yeah, recordings do make a difference, but I don't think, in the long run, that they're going to make as much of a difference as people think.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

Ah! I wasn't articularting this properly, but I discussed it some with JJ today. I don't mean that in the future rock will be just like classical is today. Obviously there are diferences, both technological and stylistic.

BUT! But the point I was trying, rather badly, to make is that 1. people aren't going to stop liking this music just because it'd old. And 2. as it gets older it's going to be more and more thought of the way we think of Classical, as a part of the culture of the past, I mean we already call the earlier bits of it "classic rock," after all. But mostly I was trying to say 3. that just because the musicians are dead, doesn't mean people are going to stop wanting to hear it live, so other musicians will perform it, much the way they now perform music from composers that are dead.

So... like classical in those ways, being still around, old, and still being performed by modern people.

[dexam.livejournal.com]

People don't "cover" Handel, though, or any pre-recording composer. They play the music. There's no concept of a "cover" or a "tribute band" with the classical composers (and I also wish there was a better term; I've heard "compositional" suggested, and I like it), because the originals are gone.

I disagree. You can "cover" classical music.

My favourite example: the album Pieces in a Modern Style by British electronica artist/producer William Orbit. An album of Classical music, done entirely with electronic instruments.

Released in 2000, it caused a bit of controversy among Classical fans when it got played on Classical radio stations and was included in the Classical sections of music stores and music charts. The purists argued that it wasn't Classical music, because it was made by one man on keyboards, synthesizer, mixing desk, and computer. The more open-minded Classical fans argued that it was introducing and attracting a new generation to listen to Classical music in a format that the "younger folk" found appealing.

Guess what: Pieces in a Modern Style - best selling Classical album of 2000. The single "Barber's Adagio for Strings" from that album - best selling Classical song of 2000.

And just to prove that music snobbery works in both directions: many Electronica fans dismissed William Orbit's Pieces in a Modern Style as a piece of pretentious wank.

Guess you can't please everybody. :)