As I mature I'm appreciating classical music a lot more

[ford442]

I am still astounded at how many of the masters used bird calls slowed down and transcribed to write their works!

Da-da-da-dah da-da-da-dah included..

Here is something I found while investigating and writing my last album -

http://www.noahcohn.com/Musician_Wren-C ... _Arada.mp3

[fmr]

To clarify: "lack of rhythmic ingenuity" - just listen to any street ensemble in sub-Saharan Africa or classical Indian music and compare what you hear (rhythm-wise) to classical music (pre- 20th century). I ain't talkin' bout time signatures, I'm talking polyrhythms and, above all, GROOVE. Classical music is a lot of things, but it sure as hell doesn't groove. It's harmonically rich and rhythmically barren.

Sorry if I sounded like I was trying to teach anything. But you just sound like you had some kind of bad experience, and area geberalizing based on that.

Regarding african and indian music, and their differences compared to western music, it's a matter of culture backgrounds. Each zone of the globe has (had - differences are blurring because of the globalization, unfortunately) it's own culture. But 20th century music IS as classical as 19th century, 18th century, and so on. It's just that rhythm got much more focus in the 20th century (especially first half), while "sound" and "space" is what has the focus now, and harmony got the focus in the 19th century. But these are just two dimensions in one multi-dimensional reality.

[Sendy]

I live with someone who listens to Classic FM :facepalm:

I love how they call anything with orchestral instruments in it "classical music". Like even the Jurassic Park theme.

He also listens to the old proper opera stuff. The singers are amazing but I wish they'd lay off of the pitch mod. Vibrato is one of my favourite things in music but with opera they crank it to 11 and leave it there, such that it sounds more like a car alarm than a note. I understand this was to help the voice cut through the mix* - an animated waveform draws more attention for any given loudness - but I'll be damned if it doesn't get annoying to me after 10 minutes.

Such a shame as he used to be into allsorts of music, though now it's only classical and opera. He got me into The Soft Machine, Frank Zappa, Kraftwerk, etc when I was a lot younger and he seemed a lot happier when he listened to a variety of stuff.

Myself, I like the romantic and baroque period, but I'm barely even a casual listener to that stuff, so not really equipped to discuss it. People told me my taste in music would mellow as I got older. It hasn't, I still love me some hard, abrasive, experimental crap But I have become more and more receptive to different musical worlds - for example recently I've realised I really love watching people play blues guitar well. I've never disliked that music but I've never found myself seeking it out either until now.

There's only a few types of music I genuinely can't stand. Musics that border on revulsion for me. Give me grime, dubstep, trance, trap... I don't particularly like it, unless I can find an unusally good example or something that transcends the genre, but at least it doesn't bring me out in a rash. THIS stuff does, though:

youtube.com/watch?v=cYeSn2wOBII

(I've removed the obvious part of the url so the board doesn't show the video, too off topic and I have mercy). It's basically mainroom house/EDM I guess.

This is not meant to insult anyone who happens to like it, there's just something about all of it - the music, culture, etc, that feels so false that it's like a million alarm bells going off in my head. Never in the history of cookie cutter music have I heard so many versions of the same song over and over again. It takes me to a dark place.

And to think of what house music used to be...

* - ok, "cut through the mix", pretty dumb anachronism given the context, but I'm leaving it in.

[Tricky-Loops]

I am still astounded at how many of the masters used bird calls slowed down and transcribed to write their works!

My attempt to use Red Kites as inspiration for composing ended when they opened their beaks and sounded like an angry cat!

Next time I'll better use nightingales!

[burkek]

Hate classical. It's like the Top 40 of 400 years ago done by 40,000 artists since.

KEv

[fmr]

I am still astounded at how many of the masters used bird calls slowed down and transcribed to write their works!

My attempt to use Red Kites as inspiration for composing ended when they opened their beaks and sounded like an angry cat!

Next time I'll better use nightingales!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnDx33-oTFY

[DSmolken]

Ah, opera. As one of my heroes put it, "In Italy under the Borgias they had thirty years of murder, bloodshed and warfare. And they produced indigestible noodles, boring operas and the Fiat. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The Swiss bank account, the best cheese in the world and 'Heidi'!"

[Tricky-Loops]

I am still astounded at how many of the masters used bird calls slowed down and transcribed to write their works!

My attempt to use Red Kites as inspiration for composing ended when they opened their beaks and sounded like an angry cat!

Next time I'll better use nightingales!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnDx33-oTFY

Thanks but I cannot watch it because of my 32 kbps snail-net connection... Maybe I can buy the bird somewhere for a live concert?

[jancivil]

Regarding a couple of things... The school I spent the most time in, five trimesters was all, was a big opera school. If you're ambitious to become a Met star, CCM is a major training ground.
I don't really go for the 19th c opera, and especially the Italian opera, much at all. BUT, there was a huge production of Mozart 'Magic Flute' with a lot of stagecraft that was all the rage my second year and the lead coloratura was simply fantastic; so the whole thing was really just compelling to be a part of. I'm not buying the record though, I think I have to have this live kind of thing to really get into it.

But I like say Britten operas quite a bit and used to buy those records, with Peter Pears.

As regards rhythm, Indian Classical Music is, as a point of fact, far more interested in it as a tradition than anything 'concert music' in the west has an exponent of. You cannot honestly put 'Stravinsky' next to ICM competively just out of 'time signature', so I have to back Ariston's play there. *Tala* is more than 'Time signature' to begin with, there are subtleties and thought that western music never touched.

I know from 20th c 'art music', 'concert music' and opera. While Schoenberg went with his deep interest in harmony to exceed it radically, rhythmically it's actually rather staid. Then people serialized everything, which is the opposite of groove and body. You have to take things for what they are.

[jancivil]

I fell in love with the very populist Pictures at an Exhibition when I was quite young. Drifting away from orchestral music and back again many times over the past 30+ years, my interest always seems to be grabbed most by the "20th century composers." Some of my biggest compositional inspirations are Bartok, Holst, Bernstein, and Gershwin. But my *favorite* is Stravinsky!

Then the bridge to film music is not so wide. I love it too.

More strange for me though is that, as *I* mature, I'm appreciating pop music a lot more. Not top 40, mind you--but the pop form. I always focused on technical merit in my own music (still a big prog rock fan), but for me the hardest thing to learn has been how to write a truly good pop (or folk) *song.*

"Song" is a different medium altogether, and to do it well takes a lot more skill than I have.

I was exposed to Pictures through ELP. That brings out some things in the music that it seems like a lot of conductors try to reform into something more palatable for 'classical audience'. Critics really went at that at the time. The modal, Russian elements were just gauche. It is rather apt for the ELP sort of physicality, and it 'rocks', too. The same things came in reaction to Stravinsky Le Sacre. The barbarians are storming the gate, type of thing.

I have come to appreciate the pop song gem more as I got older, as well. I have a couple of rock tunes that I believe totally work, as a simple form, but a great pop tune is a whole thing that I think a lot of more snobby people tend to miss (and I'm not saying 'snob' as a bad thing in itself). Because, like anything else, most of what we get is not very good, a pale imitation of an exemplar or just hack work.
A matter of craft, in addition to 'inspiration'. People work their ass off to get a gem to come through.

[fmr]

As regards rhythm, Indian Classical Music is, as a point of fact, far more interested in it as a tradition than anything 'concert music' in the west has an exponent of. You cannot honestly put 'Stravinsky' next to ICM competively just out of 'time signature', so I have to back Ariston's play there. *Tala* is more than 'Time signature' to begin with, there are subtleties and thought that western music never touched.

I know from 20th c 'art music', 'concert music' and opera. While Schoenberg went with his deep interest in harmony to exceed it radically, rhythmically it's actually rather staid. Then people serialized everything, which is the opposite of groove and body. You have to take things for what they are.

Oh, but I agree... Indian music is much more rhythmically complex than any western composer ever was. But when you say people serialized everything... well, that's not true. After the war, there was a strong current defending serialism (which came from what's called the "Darmstadt school" where, BTW, Messiaen teached summer courses). Leading figures of that current were Boulez and Stockhausen, and they claim to be the heirs of Schoenberg and, especially, Webern

But there were other thinkings. Messiaen, for example, did extensive studies on rhythm, especially hindu rhythms (I already pointed to his work: The Technique of my Musical Language"), as well as bird singing and modes, and although he also did some works on serialism, he was basically a "modalist", in a sort of continuation of Debussy.

Ligeti was mainly interested in sound, and his works concentrated on that dimension. Xenakis was concentrated on the mathematical and statistic concepts (what he called stochastic), and also sound masses, but basically as a result of statistical distributions of pitches.

I am a product of this culture, was created with it and absorbed it, so, it is where my roots are, and consequently where I feel comfortable. I don't deny what it is, and very much take it for what it is

That doesn't prevent me to listen to other things, though.

[spaceman]

I live with someone who listens to Classic FM :facepalm:

Classic FM is shite.
It's like listening to a "Best of slimy classical crap" album. It's the classical version of Magic, or any other crap UK radio station, including the constantly repeating playlists playing the same cliche shite all the time.

[jancivil]

But when you say people serialized everything... well, that's not true.

Ok, that wasn't to be taken as a literal construction, of fact. I think there is a language barrier, I'm speaking American, off-the-cuff (which may not travel either). "[Some serial] people serialized everything." Obviously there were many other things.

[fluffy_little_something]

Any else?

How old are you?

Anyway, it is certainly not the case with me. I never liked and never will like classical music, 99% of it sounds cold, soulless, constructed, and boring to me. Not least because it is mostly instrumental music played on ancient instruments, no synths or anything. It is a bit like with movies, I don't watch old movies, I only like movies that are set in "my present" (which in my view started in the late 70s) or the future.

I love, listen to and make the same kind of music I listened to 30 years ago, and there is no change in my taste. The only genres I am listening to more than in the past these days are very rhythmic genres such as Samba, i.e. the other direction, even further away from classical music.

[Kalamata Kid]

As I have gotten older I now not only appreciate classical more but now I also appreciate the genius of the composer, “what was he thinking!”.

Ok Classical does not make me move like popular music but it is fine for me. Yes I do enjoy music that makes me move but when I have a choice 90% of the time I choose classical to listen to.

Classical to me is as much an intellectual pursuit as it is aesthetic one and this is why I love it. I perceive it as three dimensional and abstract and this is two additional ways that I love it.

I just Classical music.