|
45worlds Forums » Classical Music » View Topic
| Just what IS Classical? |
Add Reply
Page 1 of 2 : Previous : Next :
| 8th Aug 2014, 9:53 AM | #1 REPORT | |
 | Trainman Trainman Member since Jun 2014 2559 Points Moderator | Interesting comments on one of the listings a recording of selections from Franz Schubert's "Lilac Time" as to whether it could be called "Classical" One must never forget that a very great percentage of what we call "Classical" music was the "Pop Music" of it's day. Where do we "draw the line" ? This selection was being questioned because it was "musical theatre". Are we to say that Classical music is only that which is confined to the concert hall? How about Opera? That is also "musical theatre". What about German "Lieder"? Strauss Waltzes? The Operettas of Fritz Kreisler, Sigmund Romberg, Franz Lehar, Offenbach, Gilbert & Sullivan.........? I'd be interested in people's thoughts on this? |
| 8th Aug 2014, 10:02 AM | #2 REPORT | |
 | nboldock Lend me ten pounds and I'll buy you a drink. Member since Feb 2012 7169 Points Moderator | The only one on that list I'd be unsure about - and which funnily enough I was contemplating yesterday - is Gilbert & Sullivan. I guess they would be a grey area but others perhaps can offer some opinion if and when it becomes an issue. My ex-wife's father is in a local amateur operatic society which specialises in G&S operettas (they have an annual production which is of a pretty high standard) - I might canvas his opinion! As a result of the above, I did once go and see their production of The Mikado (one has to fulfil one's familial obligations) which was actually a lot more enjoyable than I was expecting. |
| 8th Aug 2014, 11:03 AM | #3 REPORT | |
 | Redpunk SUBS Crates Are For Digging Member since Aug 2012 25243 Points Moderator | What is classical ? This is going to be a long running debate, from the views put forward so far the purpose of this stand alone site is to attract serious classical collectors. If that is the case loads of submissions of second rate unidentified orchestral / easy listening from the heyday of the 78s / LPs will not be inviting for them. Also brass band music which is not considered classical will be submitted by the casual collector so clear guidelines need establishing to help submitters. |
| 8th Aug 2014, 11:07 AM | #4 REPORT | |
| nboldock Lend me ten pounds and I'll buy you a drink. Member since Feb 2012 7169 Points Moderator | I've just read a book, "The Friendly Guide To Music" - see here - which has a section addressing this very question. I seem to recall thinking their answer was really quite good (and clear) - I'll dig it out and see if there is anything in there which might be useful to include here, as a guide. |
| 8th Aug 2014, 3:54 PM | #5 REPORT | |
 | Magic Marmalade If you're not lost... It's not an adventure! Member since Jun 2014 3735 Points Moderator | Maybe we'll eventually get round to the actual musical instruments and recording equipment, the former being of some great importance to classical fans I understand... ...God knows how anyone's going to scan a Steinway, even on the biggest Flatbed Scanner!!!!! (Images of silent movies pop into my head of man with grand piano dangling form piece of rope above the street- old lady passing underneath with small dog on lead - dramatic, precipitous incidental piano accompaniment music- SNAP!) |
| 8th Aug 2014, 8:51 PM | #6 REPORT | |
 | TopPopper Member since Mar 2013 2612 Points | I think the strict definition applies to music composed between certain dates - I seem to remember my music teacher telling me it ends on the year Beethoven died - so of course by that definition, Rachmaninov or Dvorak isn't classical. But that would be a silly definition to use here. I think maybe it needs to be more of a hunch about it. I can envisage popular classics being included, or serious orchestral adaptations of pop music, but not, say, a 'classical' version of jive bunny. I think it will be almost impossible to write down what the definition is. |
| 9th Aug 2014, 12:18 AM | #7 REPORT | |
| Trainman Trainman Member since Jun 2014 2559 Points Moderator | [quote="TopPopper" I think maybe it needs to be more of a hunch about it. I can envisage popular classics being included, or serious orchestral adaptations of pop music, but not, say, a 'classical' version of jive bunny. I think it will be almost impossible to write down what the definition is.[/quote] I don't think I'd want to see the disco version of Beethoven's fifth either  |
| 9th Aug 2014, 9:22 AM | #8 REPORT | |
| Magic Marmalade If you're not lost... It's not an adventure! Member since Jun 2014 3735 Points Moderator | And that's before you even consider George Gershwin! ...a fair proportion of his contributions on this site are performed by jazz artists. ... In fact, Jazz is the only genre of music that approximates classical, in being a world of it's own among it's enthusiasts... but even this tends to cross over into classical, and blues, and rock at times. |
| 9th Aug 2014, 9:37 AM | #9 REPORT | |
| Trainman Trainman Member since Jun 2014 2559 Points Moderator | Which would bring up the point, are :An American In Paris" and "Rhapsody in Blue" Classical? To my way of thinking they would be. These are the kinds of things I was thinking of when I spoke of contemporary works that future generations would consider as such. The same question can be asked of composers such as Leonard Bernstein. What about classical selections done by "pop" performers? (For example Streisand did a "classical: album. Another term often used is "serious music, But how do you define it? Someone used the word "Hunch". I tend think of it more as a "feeling" that the music has which brings it out of the realm of "pop" |
| 9th Aug 2014, 12:01 PM | #10 REPORT | |
| Magic Marmalade If you're not lost... It's not an adventure! Member since Jun 2014 3735 Points Moderator | You will probably find more versions of Gershwin made by jazz, and pop artists than you would classical arrangements... and these versions or styles are probably regarded as more definitive, or regarded as the more generally style of the most celebrated renditions of these. Perhaps in approaching this question, it ought to be working from the outside in... eliminating, and excluding everything we can most surely say is NOT classical, until we reach the greyer areas and points of contention, but with reference to some very basic points of reference; that is: the word "Classical" itself. For instance, Dictionary.com gives a set of definitions which largely agree with other dictionary sources: clas-si-cal [klas-i-kuh l] Word Origin adjective 1. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of Greek and Roman antiquity: "classical literature; classical languages." 2. conforming to ancient Greek and Roman models in literature or art, or to later systems modelled upon them. 3. marked by classicism: "classical simplicity." 4. Music. a.of, pertaining to, or constituting the formally and artistically more sophisticated and enduring types of music, as distinguished from popular and folk music and jazz. Classical music includes symphonies, operas, sonatas, song cycles, and lieder. b.of, pertaining to, characterized by, or adhering to the well-ordered, chiefly homophonic musical style of the latter half of the 18th and the early 19th centuries: "Haydn and Mozart are classical composers." 5. Architecture. a.noting or pertaining to the architecture of ancient Greece and Rome, especially the religious and public architecture, characterized by the employment of orders. Compare order (def 27b). b.noting or pertaining to any of several styles of architecture closely imitating the architecture of ancient Greece or Rome; neoclassic. c.noting or pertaining to architectural details or motifs adapted from ancient Greek or Roman models. d.(of an architectural design) simple, reposeful, well-proportioned, or symmetrical in a manner suggesting the architecture of ancient Greece and Rome. 6. (often initial capital letter) pertaining to or designating the style of fine arts, especially painting and sculpture, developed in Greece during the 5th and 4th centuries b.c., chiefly characterized by balanced composition, the separation of figures from an architectural background, and the naturalistic rendering of anatomical details, spatial movement, and distribution of weight in a figure. Compare archaic (def 4), Hellenistic (def 5). 7. of or pertaining to a style of literature and art characterized by conformity to established treatments, taste, or critical standards, and by attention to form with the general effect of regularity, simplicity, balance, proportion, and controlled emotion (contrasted with romantic ). noun 13. classical music: "a jazz pianist who studied classical for years." Origin 1580-1590 1580-90; classic + -al1 Related forms classicality, classicalness, noun classically, adverb anticlassical, adjective Can be confused classic, classical. Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2014. Cite This Source British Dictionary definitions for clas-si-cal Expand classical /ˈklæsɪkəl/ adjective 1. of, relating to, or characteristic of the ancient Greeks and Romans or their civilization, esp in the period of their ascendancy 2. designating, following, or influenced by the art or culture of ancient Greece or Rome classical architecture 3. (music) a.of, relating to, or denoting any music or its period of composition marked by stability of form, intellectualism, and restraint Compare romantic (sense 5) b.accepted as a standard the classical suite c.denoting serious art music in general Compare pop1(sense 2) 4. (music) of or relating to a style of music composed, esp at Vienna, during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This period is marked by the establishment, esp by Haydn and Mozart, of sonata form 5. denoting or relating to a style in any of the arts characterized by emotional restraint and conservatism a classical style of painting See classicism (sense 1) 6. well versed in the art and literature of ancient Greece and Rome 7. (of an education) based on the humanities and the study of Latin and Greek 8. (physics) a.not involving the quantum theory or the theory of relativity classical mechanics b.obeying the laws of Newtonian mechanics or 19th-century physics a classical gas 9. another word for classic (sense 2), classic (sense 4) 10. (of a logical or mathematical system) according with the law of excluded middle, so that every statement is known to be either true or false even if it is not known which Derived Forms classicality, classicalness, noun classically, adverb Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012 Cite This Source But when the word is broken into constituent parts... it gets a little more confused: class [klas, klahs] Spell Syllables Synonyms Word Origin noun 1. a number of persons or things regarded as forming a group by reason of common attributes, characteristics, qualities, or traits; kind; sort: "a class of objects used in daily living." 2. a group of students meeting regularly to study a subject under the guidance of a teacher: "The class had arrived on time for the lecture." 3. the period during which a group of students meets for instruction. 4. a meeting of a group of students for instruction. 5. a classroom. 6. a number of pupils in a school, or of students in a college, pursuing the same studies, ranked together, or graduated in the same year: "She graduated from Ohio State, class of '72." 7. a social stratum sharing basic economic, political, or cultural characteristics, and having the same social position -ic Word Origin 1. a suffix forming adjectives from other parts of speech, occurring originally in Greek and Latin loanwords ( metallic; poetic; archaic; public) and, on this model, used as an adjective-forming suffix with the particular senses “having some characteristics of” (opposed to the simple attributive use of the base noun) ( balletic; sophomoric); “in the style of” ( Byronic; Miltonic); “pertaining to a family of peoples or languages” ( Finnic; Semitic; Turkic). 2. Chemistry. a suffix, specialized in opposition to -ous, used to show the higher of two valences: "ferric chloride." 3. a noun suffix occurring chiefly in loanwords from Greek, where such words were originally adjectival ( critic; magic; music). -al Word Origin 1. a suffix with the general sense “of the kind of, pertaining to, having the form or character of” that named by the stem, occurring in loanwords from Latin ( autumnal; natural; pastoral), and productive in English on the Latin model, usually with bases of |
| 9th Aug 2014, 12:11 PM | #11 REPORT | |
| Magic Marmalade If you're not lost... It's not an adventure! Member since Jun 2014 3735 Points Moderator | believe it or not, that last post of mine was longer, but much of it appears to have gotten lost in the post! (OK, so it was unnecessarily long winded and probably annoying....sorry.) But basically I think it means a kind of music which has a "timelessness", does not conform to fashions or tastes contemporary to it, and is marked by the use of instruments in the performance of it which likewise are not dependent on specific times. |
| 9th Aug 2014, 1:09 PM | #12 REPORT | |
| Trainman Trainman Member since Jun 2014 2559 Points Moderator | That last phrase I think sums it up the best. Words are too limiting, for example definitions 4 and 7 would tend to eliminate 90% of what I think we would all agree should be included (including almost all my favorite composers, the mid to late 19 th century Romantics). I also agree that it doesn't need to be dependent on the instrumentation or how it's presented (although I do much prefer hearing Bach on a proper pipe organ than a Moog synthesizer), but does that make the music itself any less? The term "classical" is just like the term "Jazz". It will mean something different to almost every person that hears it. (and I've been having THAT discussion with people for 50 years). I think we're going to find the "grey area" probably larger than the "black & white"  |
| 9th Aug 2014, 1:28 PM | #13 REPORT | |
| Magic Marmalade If you're not lost... It's not an adventure! Member since Jun 2014 3735 Points Moderator | Try Playing Drum n' Bass on a Kettle Drum.... and even a standard drum kit! |
| 9th Aug 2014, 2:08 PM | #14 REPORT | |
| TopPopper Member since Mar 2013 2612 Points | I used to have Debussy played by Tomita on a synth or something - I bought it by mistake! It was horrible, but is it classical, given its modern treatment? If it is, then so is a Fifth of Beethoven. If it isn't, then we are (I think) concerned with the types of instruments, and also the style of the performance. Is there such a thing as a classical style, so an orchestra could play the Beatles solemnly and be 'classical', or play them like James Last and not be. |
| 9th Aug 2014, 4:37 PM | #15 REPORT | |
| Trainman Trainman Member since Jun 2014 2559 Points Moderator | That's the point. We're working in a Genre that defies definition. I have an album of Belgian Pianist Francois Glorieux playing the Beatles, I wouldn't consider that classical nor Kiri Te Kanawa singing 1930's show tunes (whichj I also have). The "fifth of Beethoven" started a whole fad of adapting classical pieces to disco. I'm still trying to forget Apollo 100's "Ode to Joy" and I think if I hear Pachelbel's Canon on the radio one more time I'm going to have a breakdown. On the other hand, what about Streisand singing Handel or Faure (I've got that too!) or the kitschy Mantovani albums of excerpts or themes from acknowledged classical works? Maybe the best way is if we have something questionable, start a new thread where one could post a specifc album and let people voice their opinions? That, or create a Jury to "rule" on specific albums? No matter WHAT your opinion, someone will disagree. Edited by Trainman on 9th Aug 2014, 4:43 PM |
| 9th Aug 2014, 5:57 PM | #16 REPORT | |
| TopPopper Member since Mar 2013 2612 Points | How about having some baselines? Let's say the musical content must be written in a 'classical' style, so not jazz or film scores or pop music with a classical bent ("Yesterday" etc). And what if we also said the principle performer must be recognised in the field of classical or serious music - so not Barbara Streisand, not Tomita and not my old cassette of Andy Williams singing words to classical pieces. |
| 9th Aug 2014, 7:02 PM | #17 REPORT | |
| Trainman Trainman Member since Jun 2014 2559 Points Moderator | I think if those "must"s were changed to "should"s I would agree whole heartedly |
| 11th Aug 2014, 2:17 AM | #18 REPORT | |
| GEMSMFAN Member since Jan 2013 3324 Points | Billy Joel and Paul McCartney did classical albums, although I think neither performed their works, they just were the composers. |
| 11th Aug 2014, 10:10 AM | #19 REPORT | |
| TopPopper Member since Mar 2013 2612 Points | I Don't know Joel's but Macca's Standing Stone and Liverpool Oritorio were composed, to me, in a 'classical' style - as opposed to say, orchestrated pop (a la Violinski). So they could go up in my view. |
| 11th Aug 2014, 10:33 AM | #20 REPORT | |
| nboldock Lend me ten pounds and I'll buy you a drink. Member since Feb 2012 7169 Points Moderator |
TopPopper wrote:
I Don't know Joel's but Macca's Standing Stone and Liverpool Oritorio were composed, to me, in a 'classical' style - as opposed to say, orchestrated pop (a la Violinski). So they could go up in my view.
Definitely, for me. |
Page 1 of 2 : Previous : Next :
Add Reply
45worlds website ©2024 :
Homepage :
Search :
Sitemap :
Help Page :
Privacy :
Terms :
Contact :
Share This Page
Vinyl Albums : Live Music : 78 RPM : CD Albums : CD Singles : 12" Singles : 7" Singles : Tape Media : Classical Music : Music Memorabilia : Cinema : TV Series : DVD & Blu-ray : Magazines : Books : Video Games : Create Your Own World
Latest » Items : Comments : Price Guide : Reviews : Ratings : Images : Lists : Videos : Tags : Collected : Wanted : Top 50 : Random
45worlds for music, movies, books etc : 45cat for 7" singles : 45spaces for hundreds more worlds
:
Like us on Facebook
Vinyl Albums : Live Music : 78 RPM : CD Albums : CD Singles : 12" Singles : 7" Singles : Tape Media : Classical Music : Music Memorabilia : Cinema : TV Series : DVD & Blu-ray : Magazines : Books : Video Games : Create Your Own World
Latest » Items : Comments : Price Guide : Reviews : Ratings : Images : Lists : Videos : Tags : Collected : Wanted : Top 50 : Random
45worlds for music, movies, books etc : 45cat for 7" singles : 45spaces for hundreds more worlds