Intervention and Flow
Posts: 34
(11/12/01 12:08 pm) Reply
The Future of Classical Music
I was thinking more about something Nous and I were discussing in another thread, about how classical music needs to be explored and transformed.
So, my question is: does Classical music still have room to grow? Can anything truly "new" be done with classical music?
It seems that a lot of bands--even pop bands--do use classical music to some extent or another. Deodato, for example, produced a funky version of Strauss' "Thus Spoke Zarathustra." Frank Zappa performed Ravel's "Bolero" with his rock-fusion band. The Disco Biscuits (another improvisational rock-fusion band with more of a techno feel) occasionally perform some classical pieces (such as selections from Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite.") Taking after Zappa, Phish also wrote rock-fusion songs with fugues.
Then we have some rap groups using simple orchestral arrangements, and even Metallica performing with an orchestra.
In my own music, I have tried to stretch classical music through improvisation. I play with dissonance and poly-tonality, two elements which define 20th centure classical music. However, I also strive for a sort of free-association which defies the confines of any particular classical structure. Thus, while my music often tends towards jazz or rock, I often produce phrases or harmonic structures which sound more classical than anything else. But this really isn't new. Many jazz musicians present and past (Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett come to mind) have used classical music in this way.
If anything new can be done with classical music, I think perhaps it would involve combining more avant-garde classical ideas (such as atonality) with non-classical forms (such as electronica and heavy, groove-oriented music.) At least, that is what I would like to do with it. The thing is, I don't even know if that is really new.
Edited by: Wanderer at: 11/12/01 1:25:51 pm
Re: The Future of Classical Music
Wanderer,
I do have a question...what defines music being written today as "classical?" Is it the venue where the composer envisions it being played, or the instruments used...or the intended audience...or something else?
Seems like a dopey question but that's OK...it's my specialty. For example, would a knowledgible listener from the 1870's view modern classical music as "classical?"
Intervention and Flow
Posts: 36
(11/13/01 10:33 am) Reply
Re: The Future of Classical Music
Excellent question, Damnit Jim. I don't think venue or instruments define music as "classical." Traditional classical instruments (violin, cello, piano, etc.) can, and often are, used to create music that would not be considered classical. The defining element is the musical structure itself--the relationships between the sounds.
It's not that easy, though. "Classical music" cannot be reduced to any one particular musical structure, though there is a basic set of harmonic relationships which are generally identified as "Western classical." This structure, however, is not present in all classical music. Before Mozart and Haydn were writing symphonies and sonatas (which is where the "classical" harmonic style really came into its own), J. S. Bach was writing preludes and fugues (contrapuntal music that doesn't use any particular harmonic structure). They also had simple songs back then, too, as classical music was influenced by folk and gypsy music. In the Romantic period (19th century), especially, the structures of "classical music" (and they didn't call it that back then) went through significant changes--so much so that, in the early 20th century, some composers (Prokofiev, for example) were called "neo-classical," because they returned to the sonata form. Other 20th century composers, such as Schoenberg, tried to break out of the traditional structures completley, creating their own tonal systems.
So where does that leave us today? That is really my question, too. What has the classical tradition left us? What are we to make of it? Is there any more room for the Western classical tradition to grow, or is it on its death bed? While there still are classical composers, most of the classical music being performed today is old. Really old.
Edited to add: I just realized one area where classical music seems to be alive and kicking, and accepted by the mainstream: film scores. This genre of music is also a breeding ground for different styles of music. In film scores as much as anywhere else (perhaps even more than anywhere else), classical music is mixed with electronica and other "non-classical" genres. I also just remembered that several people have told me my own music often sounds like film scores (not specific ones, but just film scores in general.)
Edited by: Wanderer at: 11/13/01 1:18:04 pm
Re: The Future of Classical Music
Sorry not to have gotten to this thread sooner...
I think there's a great deal still to be played with in Classical music.
Some ideas:
The same sort of infusion of quotations from other music styles which happens now in electronica of various sorts could be played with.
I think music which is fully choral has not really been explored.
Arvo Part uses *silence* as part of the music in classical pieces...I think to great effect...but as far as I know, he's the only experimenter in that realm.
Dissonance and chaos. Lots o' instruments going willy nilly and then coming back together again in big swells? Or perhaps two melodies playing at the same time which merge and over-ride? Etc.
In terms of composing, the problem is really that getting the financial backing necassary to work with a full orchestra is rather difficult for young composers. As I understand it, works by modern and contemporary composers in classical music are also severely "underperformed" by most symphony orchestras.
Most attendees want to be able to tell their friends they saw Vivaldi or Bach. There's also the fact that, as an audience member, you're going to sit through a rather long program. If it's not to your taste, it's a lot of time and money.
The fact that it's so difficult for individuals to work in this style is regretable...as I firmly believe there is a big gaping hole where history ends...and the popularity of Les Voix Bulgares, Anonymous 4 and Arvo Part nicely demonstrate that most audiences are open to classical done differently.
Re: The Future of Classical Music
It's so nice to find other people thinking the same things I've been thinking for so long. I'm presently taking a year off of school so this music discussion is some much-needed fuel for my passion. I'd like to commend all of you on your notable remarks and highly respectable stances on the issue of classical music and its future. You wouldn't believe how many composition students don't even consider such notions or even try to explore why they want to write music. So having said all of that, I'll delve into the actual topic.
This whole thing is something I've been grappling with for the last year and a half. I started going to the University of North Texas as a transfer student in the comp department only to find it full of people who didn't even know or care what they were doing; people who just want to write music to be arty, if you will. Many combined factors at that music school really inflamed me about the future of music. For one thing, it seems there is a total disregard for the audience on the composer's part. I sat through countless student and faculty concerts and discussions and rarely came across anything that actually moved me. It is my firm belief that the purpose of music is to give the listener an experience, and most of the people around me at concerts were doodling on programs, staring at their watches, or dozing. Granted, the audience is partly to blame for a form of disinterest in music in the first place. But I think it is the responsibility of the composer to invest enough effort into their music to make it worthy of eartime. True professionals in this area are the ones who understand the importance of their craft. I'm certainly not saying that the audience should be the first consideration on the mind of the composer--I simply mean that the composer should have some kind of direction for their music. He or she should be aware of their reason for doing what they do.
As far as classical music goes, I agree that you can't really typecast what falls under the category. It isn't like "pop" or "rock" where the style of music, the artists, and the elements involved are so similar to one another that it just all fits together. Classical music is so diverse that it simply isn't possible to classify it. This makes it very versatile, which is a big plus. I feel that, as a composer, I can do anything I want to within the "confines" of classical and get away with it. I don't know what exactly separates classical from other genres, however. Is it possible to make such a distinction? One could say that classical music is a result of some form of classical training. Then again, you have people such as Charles Ives who didn't really pursue composition as a career yet made a rather significant mark on it. Then again, Ives also was also "trained" in the area by his father, a band leader. This question, of course, can't really be answered. The concept is so broad that it isn't easy to break it all down into one core issue (much like asking, "What is music?"). I just thought I'd share my thoughts on the matter.
dharma explorer
Posts: 220
(11/25/01 10:27 pm) Reply
Re: The Future of Classical Music We interrupt this topic for the following important announcement
Welcome to our little corner of the word, slepingaftershock! Your informed insight into musical things is dearly appreciated here. Have a seat, peruse a bit, and stay awhile.
We now return you to the regularly scheduled topic, already in progress
Re: The Future of Classical Music
John Cage also experimented with the use of silence in music. There are a lot of composers who have, actually. Music is essentially about tension and release--tension can be anything from dissonance, dynamic levels, silence, or whatever. To myself personally, silence is one of the most fascinating elements of music. I agree that there doesn't seem to be much exploration in this area today, but then again I might just be really ignorant and/or misinformed.
Also, I don't really consider using samples of classical works or popular bands/artists writing string pieces to be any kind of "new classical." I consider this to be an offshoot of whatever genre that artist belongs to in the first place. True, this kind of classical quotation does keep the art form alive in a sense, but I don't think it really *creates* anything new. The same goes for any other kind of music or art. I wouldn't consider trance music with rap samplings thrown in to be a new kind of rap--it's still trance.
I think a lot of musicians, even those with classical training, associate the term "classical music" with a certain kind of sound (e.g., Beethoven symphonies). Many of us are guilty of typecasting classical music. We don't associate it with new sound because many of us don't know about the new composers or their music. Having said that, I could venture into discussing the fact that many composers have trouble getting any kind of promotion or cultural support, which also pertains to society's view on classical music. If you consider the composer, you have to consider what society thinks of his profession, then there is the whole issue of society not relating to classical music perhaps because composers don't choose to relate to their audience, blahblahblah. Honestly, I think the classical music world has gotten itself into some trouble by creating and adhering to an "elite" persona. Ugh! If I get into that, I'd open another pandora's box about how classical musicians compare themselves to other musicians, and so on. This topic really has no end, you know.
Re: The Future of Classical Music
Welcome to the board, sleepingaftershock, glad to have you here.
My background is art but I can well sympathize with many of your observations concerning school. Art school was filled with a motley assortment of characters...I often thought some of them attended simply because they had no other inclinations. That said, as the years rolled by, everyone started to pull things out of their hats. Even people who seemed to be "ho-humming" their way through the degree program found their niche and thus their ability at some point. Have patience with it...it gets better.
...and then you graduate, qualified for very little and it gets worse!
Quote: John Cage also experimented with the use of silence in music. There are a lot of composers who have, actually. Music is essentially about tension and release--tension can be anything from dissonance, dynamic levels, silence, or whatever. To myself personally, silence is one of the most fascinating elements of music. I agree that there doesn't seem to be much exploration in this area today, but then again I might just be really ignorant and/or misinformed.
I try to hunt down odd things to listen to even if they aren't immediately to my taste...I would agree with you, silence is underutilized. I think, however, that this somewhat reflects the lack of restraint, the "overload mode" of the current culture. It takes patience and subtlety to appreciate the "spaces in between". In this world of cell phones, I fear that silence is enemy for most people.
Quote: Also, I don't really consider using samples of classical works or popular bands/artists writing string pieces to be any kind of "new classical." I consider this to be an offshoot of whatever genre that artist belongs to in the first place. True, this kind of classical quotation does keep the art form alive in a sense, but I don't think it really *creates* anything new. The same goes for any other kind of music or art. I wouldn't consider trance music with rap samplings thrown in to be a new kind of rap--it's still trance.
I somewhat disagree with you here. I am a fan of a group called Cinematic Orchestra. They authored traditional jazz compositions, recorded these compositions live using jazz musicians and *then* sampled their own recordings. The result is not jazz...not hip hop...not trance...but then I am one of those people who loves giving every small thing it's own name.
I do think that classical symphonies that played with Flamenco styles or perhaps eastern harmonic scales would be an altogether "new" type of classical...and, indeed, I hunt for such efforts at music stores...
Unfortunately, everytime I come across something that's attempting to "fuse" two styles together on the classical end, it tends to lean towards the type of music you might hear in a yuppie coffee house...in other words, in blending the two styles, someone tries to get far to elegant/clever/cute and literally cuts off the power of the music. It quickly degenerates into "easy listening" and there's no reason it should.
Quote:
If you consider the composer, you have to consider what society thinks of his profession, then there is the whole issue of society not relating to classical music perhaps because composers don't choose to relate to their audience, blahblahblah. Honestly, I think the classical music world has gotten itself into some trouble by creating and adhering to an "elite" persona. Ugh! If I get into that, I'd open another pandora's box about how classical musicians compare themselves to other musicians, and so on. This topic really has no end, you know.
Visual art has much the same problem...and sometimes I get the sense that poetry disappeared in the popular palate even earlier than art. I can name around 5 contemporary poets...and that's a rather small number given the amount who are out there.
Literature, fiction and live theatre is slowly being replaced by film.
I'm not so certain whether or not accessibility is the composer's problem. It seems to me the phenomena is far too widespread to have anything to do with any one (or handful of) individual work.
Intervention and Flow
Posts: 45
(11/27/01 11:58 am) Reply
Re: The Future of Classical Music
Nous
Quote: I do think that classical symphonies that played with Flamenco styles or perhaps eastern harmonic scales would be an altogether "new" type of classical...
Both of those happened in the 19th century. Debussy, for example, used eastern scales, changing the shape of classical music, and creating the stage for jazz and the blues. If my memory serves, Manuel de Falla was a 19th-century Spanish composer who gave Western classical music a Flamenco feel. Then we have Ravel's "Bolero" and Bizet's "Carmen."
Edited to add:
Quote: I think music which is fully choral has not really been explored.
Choral music was popular a lot back in the 16th century. Orlando Gibbons comes to mind.
Quote: Dissonance and chaos. Lots o' instruments going willy nilly and then coming back together again in big swells? Or perhaps two melodies playing at the same time which merge and over-ride? Etc.
Dissonance has been an important part of classical music since the early 19th century, when the Romantic period took leave of the "classical" forms. The interplay of multiple melodies and tonalities was the key to contrapuntal music (J.S. Bach, for example.) That aspect of music was somewhat lost during the "classical" period, though some Romantic and neo-classical composers (such as Prokofiev, who I consider a master of dissonance and polytonality) brought it back.
As far as chaos goes, that seems to be a practice closer to the jazz tradition, as it favors improvisation over composition. I do like the idea of a more improvisational classical music. There was improvisation in classical music--for example, in "classical" concertos, there were many opportunities for the soloist to play with the themes and melodies, both as a soloist and as an accompanist. But that didn't involve chaos or any "willy nilly." Also, in the Romantic period, people like Lizst improvised quite a bit, seeing the live performance as a celebration of spontaneity and the individual's spirit. But, again, that improvisation was not chaos. Nothing like the sort of experimentation that happened with jazz in the 60s, through Sun Ra and the likes. Edited by: Wanderer at: 11/27/01 12:14:27 pm
Re: The Future of Classical Music
Yes, Wanderer...but I tend to compare that work (especially Bizet) to the "Orientalist" trend in art at the time. Western painters played with eastern subject matter...but using the western style of rendering.
I'm a Purcell and Handel fan. There is a story of Purcell entering the presence of Queen Mary accompanied by a very celebrated court singer of the time. When asked what the queen would care to hear...(Purcell had been composing for said queen for some time), the queen ignored Purcy and asked the singer to *repeatedly* render a little Scottish ditty...a folksong.
While annoyed, Purcell overcame his temper and used the base melody of said folksong as the body of one of the bits in "Come All Ye Sons Of Art"...so the history of composers borrowing basic melodies and structures from other places is common...but the complete overhaul of the classical form through that other influence (?as far as I know?) is not.
I think I am literally proposing more of a flamenco rendering classical rather than classical rendering flamenco. Take for example, the eastern music (asian, indian) which incorporates "half tones"...notes inaccessible without the availability of a fretless instrument....(unless you want to completely screw up the tuning of your piano).
I'd like to see a symphony in half tones...or rather, I would like to see someone who comes in an pulls apart the structural underpinnings of what one expects a "symphony" to be. Edited by: NousPoetikos at: 11/27/01 1:01:56 pm
Re: The Future of Classical Music
I'm feeling torn between the belief that classical music should be completely overhauled. A year ago I would have been all for the idea, considering I was so passionately opposed to the environment I was stuck in at UNT. I wrote several essays on the matter and handed out copies to professors (who all later agreed with several of my points). But now, since I'm not in school at the moment, I'm constantly craving some kind of classical music, something I've studied, something familiar. I downloaded tons of Cage piano music and even more Debussy and Ravel, along with some Mahler symphonies and Crumb's Black Angels. I've spent evenings completely absorbed in listening to choral anything. I've contacted old friends about missing classical CDs I loaned out months and months ago. Needless to say, this is strange for me. I've always studied classical music but never really listened to it in my spare time. I've stuck to my obscure bands, electronica, and hard rock. I'm certainly not complaining, though. It brings back a lot of memories to listen to music which I've analyzed before, years ago, and just enjoy it now rather than feeling like I have to study the chord progressions, instrumentation, and form. So I guess I'm really soaking up classical music now more than I ever have in my life. I have this strangely different sense of appreciation for it, whereas before I was so eager to tear it apart and gripe about how it's too hard to relate to. I was always so caught up in what should be changed; now it's almost like all the parts I missed before have been illuminated and I only see things that amaze me.
Perhaps I've just found a more balanced stance about classical music. I can clearly see where it's been before and where it hasn't been. The hard part is *changing* it. But really, it isn't as hard as we all think it is. I don't really set out to radically change things anymore because I know change will occur naturally anyway. Yes, there were and still are plenty of composers who wanted to shake things up and did so and I'm certainly not saying I don't have a desire to stir up some controversy. In essence, I understand now that controversy can occur naturally, without force. And I think it's very possible. When you think about it, it always has been. It is the driving force behind change and classical music is chock-full of it. So there really isn't much to worry about. As long as there are people who are willing to take up their crosses for the cause of breathing new life into this seemingly dying musical genre, there will always be something new.
Intervention and Flow
Posts: 46
(11/27/01 6:05 pm) Reply
Re: The Future of Classical Music Nous
Quote: so the history of composers borrowing basic melodies and structures from other places is common...but the complete overhaul of the classical form through that other influence (?as far as I know?) is not.
I think classical music has grown and changed so much because it has been able to incorporate structures from different places. In the Romantic period, Chopin changed the way music was written for piano by using new forms that were not "classical" and not folk, but an utterly new combination of the two (e.g., mazurkas and polonaises.) Of course, the changes in classical structures were never limited to specific outside influences. Rather, I think many composers wanted new forms and structures, and outside sources were often there for inspiration.
diesel78 Registered User
Posts: 1
(12/12/01 4:33 pm) Reply
Re: The Future of Classical Music
Oh if only bach had a sequencer.
Crescendo Registered User
Posts: 9
(2/23/03 2:07 pm) Reply
Re: The Future of Classical Music
It's fun going over these old conversations.
It strikes me that Damnit Jim's initial question about what defines something as "classical music" is really key.
I think sleepingaftershock had it right. There isn't any line between "classical music" and non-classical music. Today's music, be it rock, jazz or hip-hop, is just an extension of old forms.
Any new music, then, could be considered a new form of classical music.
If Steely Dan or Charles Mingus can't be considered "classical music," then why should Chopin or Liszt?
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