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

[robogone]

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

Classic FM is shite.

I don't even think the problem with it is the fact that it takes popular arias and movements from larger works because of their popularity and presents them as standalone pieces - the biggest problem with radio stations like that is that they rarely seek out the best performances. It always seems to be about the biggest 'star' or the most radio friendly production. I also have my suspicions that there's at least some kind of dynamic compression going on, although it could be that it's present on the source considering their penchant for finding clinically executed and shiny packaged crap.

[Doug1978]

Best classical music, best England team:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn3XmJE5y9k

[nasenmann]

Music is never written here (excepting the copyists), it's always "composed"

It's funny, i started to avoid saying "i compose" a good while ago as well, because of the grandiose connotation. While if you look at just what the word means, it couldn't be any less pretentious and fits the computer music paradigm really well.
Literally a composer is someone who puts stuff together. So a sound collage or even a couple garageband loops thrown together are a composition as much as anything else.
In that light, music "maker" or god forbid "creator" is far more pretentious. You didn't invent the wheel son, you're mostly just remixing stuff of yesteryear!
So why not reclaim the word

Shout out loud! IM A CUMPOSA! PRODUCA! MOZART!

[lectrixboogaloo]

That makes sense. But, the older I get the less I can tolerate it.

[fmr]

Best classical music, best England team:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn3XmJE5y9k

Indeed a great team, leaded by a great coach. He then came to Portugal, was in F C Porto, where he started to work with Jose Mourinho (with whom he continued working in Barcelona), and also leaded the young Andre Villas-Boas in his first steps in football. He was a very important teacher to Mourinho, and started a school of greatness and ambition in F C Porto that lasts until today. A great coach and a gentleman.

And that aria is indeed "bellissima". As a matter of fact, all Turandot story is a very beautiful love story, worthing of a movie in the best style of Hollywood love dramas (as are many, many operas, BTW).

[fmr]

Music is never written here (excepting the copyists), it's always "composed"

It's funny, i started to avoid saying "i compose" a good while ago as well, because of the grandiose connotation. While if you look at just what the word means, it couldn't be any less pretentious and fits the computer music paradigm really well.
Literally a composer is someone who puts stuff together. So a sound collage or even a couple garageband loops thrown together are a composition as much as anything else.
In that light, music "maker" or god forbid "creator" is far more pretentious. You didn't invent the wheel son, you're mostly just remixing stuff of yesteryear!
So why not reclaim the word

Shout out loud! IM A CUMPOSA! PRODUCA! MOZART!

Prejudice and political correctness (the cancer of contemporary world civilization) are what makes people avoid the word. Composer is THE WORD to designate those who create music. And the words are compositions. Song is a very specific word, for a very specific type of composition. Calling anything now "song" is very misleading. Composition can be applied to anything, being it a short one minute piano piece, a 20 second advertising jingle or a 25 minute epic "song" in the style of Genesis or Yes (calling this last one example a "song" is the most ridiculous statement I can imagine).

And the film composers never say they "write songs" (because it would be ridiculous - the score may include songs, but is usually more pure music). They "compose scores" for "soundtracks".

And I totally fail to see where is the "grandioseness" in the word, BTW.

[Kalamata Kid]

Composer, musician, artist, policeman, plumber, president, OP, KVRian
Now which title if any are grandiose?

[Tricky-Loops]

Music is never written here (excepting the copyists), it's always "composed"

It's funny, i started to avoid saying "i compose" a good while ago as well, because of the grandiose connotation. While if you look at just what the word means, it couldn't be any less pretentious and fits the computer music paradigm really well.
Literally a composer is someone who puts stuff together. So a sound collage or even a couple garageband loops thrown together are a composition as much as anything else.
In that light, music "maker" or god forbid "creator" is far more pretentious. You didn't invent the wheel son, you're mostly just remixing stuff of yesteryear!
So why not reclaim the word

Shout out loud! IM A CUMPOSA! PRODUCA! MOZART!

Prejudice and political correctness (the contemporary world cancer) are what makes people avoid the word. Composer is THE WORD to designate those who create music. And the words are compositions. Song is a very specific word, for a very specific type of composition. Calling anything now "song" is very misleading. Composition can be applied to anything, being it a short one minute piano piece, a 20 second advertising jingle or a 25 minute epic "song" in the style of Genesis or Yes (calling this last one example a "song" is the most ridiculous statement I can imagine).

And the film composers never say they "write songs" (because it would be ridiculous - the score may include songs, but is usually more pure music). They "compose scores" for "soundtracks".

And I totally fail to see where is the "grandioseness" in the word, BTW.

Maybe it has to do with German language? In German, "composing" = "komponieren" has the connotation of writing complex classical scores like Mozart or Beethoven did. But if I "compose" a song on the keyboard or piano roll, it's rather called "Songwriting", "Songs schreiben", IMO. And if you pick up your guitar and "compose" a song, you'd say in German: "Ich hab 'nen neuen Song geschrieben!" - "I've written a new song!" Nobody would say: "Ich habe einen Song komponiert." ("I've composed a song.")

[fmr]

Maybe it has to do with German language? In German, "composing" = "komponieren" has the connotation of writing complex classical scores like Mozart or Beethoven did. But if I "compose" a song on the keyboard or piano roll, it's rather called "Songwriting", "Songs schreiben", IMO. And if you pick up your guitar and "compose" a song, you'd say in German: "Ich hab 'nen neuen Song geschrieben!" - "I've written a new song!" Nobody would say: "Ich habe einen Song komponiert." ("I've composed a song.")

Maybe it's a german problem, but I think it will be the same elsewhere. It's political correcteness, IMO. People think that "compose" has classic connotations, and avoid the word because:

a) They don't want/are able to take that responsibility;
b) Are afraid of being confused with real composers
c) Are too modest to use it, when there were "composers" like Bach and Beeethoven in the past (and we are back into fear).
d) They ignore what the term means, and think that "composer" is someone who only writes symphonies and concertos.

You choose. But, again, would you call a couple of chords played on the guitar "a song"?

[Sendy]

For me "song" is ok for any composition with a lyrical lead line. It doesn't have to be sung, but the more singable it is, the more "song-like" the composition is. I always found it quite weird when I got on the internet and heard American people saying things like "check out this new experimental techno song!" when there was not a lick of melody.

This is not to imply melody is the be-all and end-all of music, just the crux of "song-ness"

[fmr]

For me "song" is ok for any composition with a lyrical lead line. It doesn't have to be sung, but the more singable it is, the more "song-like" the composition is. I always found it quite weird when I got on the internet and heard American people saying things like "check out this new experimental techno song!" when there was not a lick of melody.

This is not to imply melody is the be-all and end-all of music, just the crux of "song-ness"

Yes, a sung melody is the definition of song for me too. If it's a simple melody with accompaniment, and sung words, you can call it a song. If it has elaborated instrumental parts, then I start to have some doubts, but I can still call it a song if the sung part has the predominance. But when I think of pieces like Firth of Fifth, by Genesis, or Close to the Edge by Yes, then, those can no longer be called "songs". If it's EDM, it's definitely NOT a song. If it's a lyric melody, but without words, then I would rather call it a "piece", or Aria, or melody.

Chopin called Nocturnes to pieces that are basically songs played on the piano. Liszt called the same kind of pieces "Consolations". Others could call them "preludes", "meditations", etc. Mendelsohn called them "Songs without words". Gried called them "Lyric Pieces". At least they used their imagination to find names, instead of calling everything "song".

The most byzarre thing about this is looking to my iTunes and see that I have xxxx "songs" (when the vast majority of the pieces there are definitely NOT songs).

[nasenmann]

Maybe it has to do with German language? In German, "composing" = "komponieren" has the connotation of writing complex classical scores like Mozart or Beethoven did. But if I "compose" a song on the keyboard or piano roll, it's rather called "Songwriting", "Songs schreiben", IMO. And if you pick up your guitar and "compose" a song, you'd say in German: "Ich hab 'nen neuen Song geschrieben!" - "I've written a new song!" Nobody would say: "Ich habe einen Song komponiert." ("I've composed a song.")

English has more everyday use words directly descending from latin (componere, put together), while in german the closest counterparts are specialized terms more often. So yeah, it's a bit of that, komponieren sounds a little more stilted because it has just that one meaning, but when it's clear you're using "compose" in relation to music the connotations are very similar i think.

Not that it matters lol

[ariston]

Oh, it's definitely a language thing. You need to pronounce "compose" with a British accent, for one thing. Nasal congestion helps, as well. Don't forget to tilt your head backwards and raise your eyebrows while saying it. (go ahead, try it in front of a mirror)

Serious mode: @fmr, it's really down to context. A word is just a word (say "compose" over and over for five minutes and see what happens). The context being: funny how all the music hacks of the past are "geniuses", who only produced "masterpieces". Learnèd texts that analyse classical tunes rhapsodise over the ingenuity of this motif here and that diminished fifth there, as if these were god-like drops of perfection. It elevates the entire thing to a place where it doesn't deserve to be.

Don't get me wrong: I can get very excited about music, but it's one thing to love it, and another to canonize it. Maybe what I'm trying to say can best be understood through this Buddhist anecdote:

A student says to his master:
"Master, isn't it true that Zen is a dewdrop forming on a budding flower?"
The master says: "Yes, that's true. A pity you had to speak it aloud."

[an-electric-heart]

Me too... if this counts as classical

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT3SBzmDxGk#t=99

I'm always late to the party with these things, only saw it for the first time a couple of days ago.

[nasenmann]

Oh, it's definitely a language thing. You need to pronounce "compose" with a British accent, for one thing. Nasal congestion helps, as well. Don't forget to tilt your head backwards and raise your eyebrows while saying it. (go ahead, try it in front of a mirror)

Serious mode: @fmr, it's really down to context. A word is just a word (say "compose" over and over for five minutes and see what happens). The context being: funny how all the music hacks of the past are "geniuses", who only produced "masterpieces". Learnèd texts that analyse classical tunes rhapsodise over the ingenuity of this motif here and that diminished fifth there, as if these were god-like drops of perfection. It elevates the entire thing to a place where it doesn't deserve to be.

Don't get me wrong: I can get very excited about music, but it's one thing to love it, and another to canonize it. Maybe what I'm trying to say can best be understood through this Buddhist anecdote:

A student says to his master:
"Master, isn't it true that Zen is a dewdrop forming on a budding flower?"
The master says: "Yes, that's true. A pity you had to speak it aloud."

I'm a mystic and i approve (though i'm a really bad one )

I'll write that on my card if i ever should have one... terrible mystic and composer.