Classical music - what's going on?

Simon silverdollarcircle

Well-known member
This is something I've been wondering about...

What's going on with classical music ? Specifically, why does music of all the art forms have a such a radical and defined distinction between the classical and the non classical-

- often entirely different sets of musicians
-often entirely different environments and modes of listening
-a different canon
-different radio stations
-often, an entirely different part of the record shop (Oxford Street hmv's classical music section was in like a sealed off area with plush carpets and mood lighting I recall?)
-very little real overlap between the classical music world and the "popular" music world

I think it goes beyond classical just being a different genre, and more that there are two different worlds of music sitting side by side but not really listening to each other. Outside classical music genres overlap and blur, but the world of classical music always seems distinct.

That's different from the standard high art/ low art distinction you get in the visual arts say. A cheap landscape that you'd pick up in a charity shop is still in some way on the same continuum as Constable. But I don't think a classical composer really is on the same continuum as, say, the Beatles. They are trying to do different things and it's being received in a very different way.

So what's going on? Is classical music fulfilling some need that other music doesn't? Are there really 2 musics? Is it just snobbery?

Help me dissensus.
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
people quite regularly seem to try to make those worlds overlap

there's a line from Deep Purple recording with the London Philharmonic

to Goldie doing an orchestral version of 'Mother'

to that recent 'classical grime'

^^^^^^^^^^^^

a lot of casual classical music listeners use it as a form of ambient or even muzak - they'll have one of those light Classical stations on in the car, or playing softly in the background in their houses - , - it's something that sets the tone: elevated, cleansing, serene somehow even if when it's quite lively or bombastic. almost like an air freshener
 

Simon silverdollarcircle

Well-known member
Yeah I guess something like classical grime relies on their being within v different worlds.

Like it's a self consciously bold juxtaposition in the way that say the Rabit-style abstracted techno take on grime isn't, or grindie (ha!) wasn't

The classical musicians I know have very little artistically or professionally in common with musicians I know from rock/dance music backgrrounds. Whereas the latter are definitely somehow competing in the same pool
 
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version

Well-known member
people quite regularly seem to try to make those worlds overlap

there's a line from Deep Purple recording with the London Philharmonic

to Goldie doing an orchestral version of 'Mother'

to that recent 'classical grime'

I don't think I've ever heard a worthwhile classical crossover. I'd much rather listen to one or the other.
 

version

Well-known member
Whenever someone comes up with one, it just strikes me as them having been given some sort of arts council funding or whatever, having no ideas and just doing it for the sake of it. I get the same feeling when dance producers end up coming out with an album 'featuring their own voice' a few years down the line.
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
plenty of great crossover in soul and disco

bernie worrell, synth player for parliament funkadelic was a classically trained pianist. when you listen to them with that in mind it's really quite striking how classically influenced he was
 

version

Well-known member
That's something different. I'm talking Actress working with the LCO, the orchestral versions of Dre's 2001, Mike Skinner at The Proms.
 

version

Well-known member
You mean from the crossover relative to the individual genres or from the individual genres relative to each other?
 

version

Well-known member
Is that one? I can't see an orchestra in the Knebworth performance, just a bloke playing keys alongside the band.

 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
plenty of great crossover in soul and disco
Arthur Russell would surely be the shining canonical example

his music is crossover in the truest sense of the term, in that the classical and popular are mixed into one inextricable whole, rather than jammed together

which is the problem with rock bands or producers performing with orchestras, they're always a gimmick and never an organic whole

they usually seem to exist to 1) artistically legitimize the band or producer and/or 2) make classical music and orchestras seem relevant to now
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
But I don't think a classical composer really is on the same continuum as, say, the Beatles.
I don't necessary disagree with the thrust of the OP

but also, the Beatles famously acknowledged Stockhausen. I mean he's on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's.

and they in turn famously influenced Holger Czukay to start paying attention to rock music, which eventually lead to him forming Can

and it seems like there was a good deal of crossover between the classical and popular worlds in the 60s and 70s

John Cale brought his classical training and La Monte Young experience to the Velvet Underground

Terry Riley made records with both Cale and Don Cherry, among others

Wendy Carlos composing the soundtracks for A Clockwork Orange, Tron, etc
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
there are plenty of other examples

and it continues on today with people like Nico Muhly, who exist in both the classical and popular realms
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I think it might be more accurate to say that Western classical music pre-modernism is a thing unto itself

1600 thru the turn of the 20th C. more or less, the dividing line being somewhere around Schoenberg

that classical music - baroque, classical, romantic eras - and its modern iterations are a thing unto themselves

and I would agree that they somehow have far less relevancy than paintings or other visual art from the same periods can

that classical music is for whatever reasons only relatable in modern terms as kitsch; "A Fifth of Beethoven", "Rock Me Amadeus", etc
 

Simon silverdollarcircle

Well-known member
Ah yeah that's a good way to think about it.
I was thinking last night actually that when you get to someone like glenn branca in the 80s the boundaries between the two worlds have broken down to the point of invisibility

Is part of this because in the 20th century we started to have musicians working outside of the classical continuum but still making music that shared some formal elements with it -e.g. long form, not for dancing or singing along, highly complex, not really about bangers.

E.g the ambient lot or a lot of early electronic stuff.

So perhaps the boundaries now are dissolving. You can make stuff that fulfils the same kind of purpose as classical music historically has without being part of that world .

boomkat lump modern composition stuff with ambient in their listings right?
 
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