Esthandior Wrote:wow. , .
i do love listening to instrumental music. . .but i rarely listen to classical ones. All i've listened are those played by bond, vanessa mae, maksim, and edvin marton. But i can hardly remember the composer of the songs. .
honestly, i don't really understand about the definition of 'classical' itself. i used to not listen classical musics so much when i was kid, so i don't know which composers or songs that is categorized by 'classical'
It's a distinction that not many people make. There was a "classical" period in music that lasted in Western Europe from about 1750 to about 1820 and included the music of such composers as Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, but these days most people generally use the term "classical music" to describe music from the middle ages to the present day that has been composed (as opposed to created in a studio) and is played by (usually) trained musicians (including singers) who play (usually) instruments one might find in an orchestra. Naturally, the boundaries of the definition are being tested all the time and these days, so-called classical music often crosses over into other genres.
What do you reckon to the argument that Classical music should be worthy of the Classical period of history, Athenian Golden Age and whatnot?
Should be worthy ...? Interesting
The designation of "serious" music as "classical" is not actually helpful in my line of business, so I tend to think of classical music being that which was composed between 1750ish-1820ish. During that period the music was characterised by formal beauty, order, clarity and balance rather than emotion, although that is not to say that emotional content was absent. The term is vague though, since some of the later works of composers of the classical period definitely presaged the later Romantic period. I am not blessed with synaesthesia, but I am somehow put in mind of the great structures of classical antiquity when I listen to, say, a Mozart symphony. Maybe it was something someone told me when I was a child! Having said that how would one assign a value to measure the worthiness of a massive, solid, structure of Athenian architecture against a creation as ephemeral as a classical symphony? The contrast must have been even more stark when, in the day, one could only hear the music in live performance.
I'm inclined to dismiss it as a piece of abstract aesthetic philosophising, though no doubt you'll tell me it is an important cultural statement! Do you subscribe to this idea?
To be honest, there really isn't a good way of describing what classical music is as a genus of music. Others have cited the obvious delineation of the neo-classical period. Yet, this doesn't acknowledge the genera as a whole, as the classical genera also contains the Baroque, Romantic, Modern, Postmodern, etc. periods. And the idea of a "serious" or "legitimate" music is so ethnocentric and classist . . . as if folk music of various ages and peoples is not serious or legitimate because it did not appeal to the European aristocracy. As far as holding it up to the golden age of Athens, well, I think that speaks more of the legend of Athens than the reality of it. Indeed, I think the Athenians' own music would have a very hard time measuring up to the mythologized understanding people have of the culture today. There is not an accurate definition or terminology for the music. It is something one grows up understanding the characteristics of. A musicologist may be able to give a general description of conventions, but these would not always hold true. Really, there is no definitive understanding of it. And I think that it is better this way.
Classical music for most people is music written centuries ago by a composer like Bach, Beethoven or Mozat etc., for a large orchestra or for an opera. We now include music written from anicent times to about fifty years ago, usually we termed classical music as old written music.
What is interesting is what modren music and writers will be class as classical in the future? Will people like John Barry, Lennon and McCartney, Jean Michel Jarre join the ranks of classical composers.
Rychard the Lionheart Wrote:Classical music for most people is music written centuries ago by a composer like Bach, Beethoven or Mozat etc., for a large orchestra or for an opera. We now include music written from anicent times to about fifty years ago, usually we termed classical music as old written music.
What is interesting is what modren music and writers will be class as classical in the future? Will people like John Barry, Lennon and McCartney, Jean Michel Jarre join the ranks of classical composers.
Somce people still seem to be having trouble with what classical music is, here is the deffinition from wikipedia:
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western litergical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 9th century to present times. The central norms of this tradition became codified between 1550 and 1900, which is known as the common practice period.
European music is largely distinguished from many other non-European and popular music forms by its system of staff notation, in use since about the 16th century. Western staff notation is used by composers to prescribe to the performer the pitch, speed, meeter, individual rhythms and exact execution of a piece of music. This leaves less room for practices, such as improvisation and ad libitum ornamentation, that are frequently heard in non-European art music and popular music.
The term "classical music" did not appear until the early 19th century, in an attempt to "canonize" the period from J. S. Bach to Beethoven as a golden age. The earliest reference to "classical music" recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is from about 1836.
Given the extremely broad variety of forms, styles, genres, and historical periods generally perceived as being described by the term "classical music," it is difficult to list characteristics that can be attributed to all works of that type. Vague descriptions are plentiful, such as describing classical music as anything that "lasts a long time," a statement made rather moot when one considers contemporary composers who are described as classical; or music that has certain instruments like violins, which are also found in other genres. However, there are characteristics that classical music contains that few or no other genres of music contain.
W. A. Mozart - Adagio In C Minor For Glass Armonica
EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH--Philip Glass (I had the priviledge of attending the world premier of Glass' 2nd Piano Concerto)
What piece of classical music do you like?
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