How does one have time to explore?

[71 dB]

Simple. Art music (prefer this term to "classical") offers a lot more in terms of the art-form and it has been around a lot longer & evolved much longer, so more time is necessary. It's broader & deeper in all aspects of musical art. It offers the best that is available.. and it is so much more engaging (requires more on our part etc.) & nourishing. I haven't ignored entertainment music, or pop music (and all it's stylistic cliches & boxes etc.) either, its fun, easy to digest, and was a bigger part of my youth  .. its just that once your curiosity & hunger take you along, and you make the leap & delve deep into Art music and forge a relationship with it, pop music doesn't really compare, it is so impoverished in comparison. I have a much, much deeper and richer appreciation & experience with music as a whole as a result of spending so much time with "classical music". I have had a better life because of this relationship.

How do you really know you have had a 'better' life? We don't know how good our life would have been had we chosen differently. Art music (as you prefer) has a lot to offer (no wonder about 2/3 of my CDs are "art music") and it is (often if not always) deep. However, it just doesn't offer everything. I'm confident I have a better life having 'both worlds', art music and non-art music. A large part of "art music" is actually not that deep while some pop music can be amazingly complex and sophisticated (most of the time isn't).

[Madiel]

LOL. That was just an incredibly elaborate way of saying "I really like classical music and I can't imagine how anyone could like popular music to the degree that I like classical music".

It doesn't matter how many adjectives you throw in. The comparison aspect is also irrelevant.

WHAT have you learnt? Apart from how to copy and paste other people's words, which is what you invariably do on this forum when describing the music you're listening to. All I'm seeing is a lot of vague platitudes about how classical music makes you feel good. It makes me feel good too. Whether it makes me feel better than popular music isn't the point.

[Ken B]

How do you really know you have had a 'better' life? We don't know how good our life would have been had we chosen differently. Art music (as you prefer) has a lot to offer (no wonder about 2/3 of my CDs are "art music") and it is (often if not always) deep. However, it just doesn't offer everything. I'm confident I have a better life having 'both worlds', art music and non-art music. A large part of "art music" is actually not that deep while some pop music can be amazingly complex and sophisticated (most of the time isn't).

You are not catching the distinction James is making between art and other music. Classical as a label only broadly covers art music. As you note, they aren't synonyms. Art requires a different confrontation, in music and other forms. Guernica is a different experience than Madonna album covers. This is a point Orfeo ignores. Different. And because it is different the rewards, and costs, are different. James went to some length to explain that his experience of art music is different from his experience of other music.

The pleasure of watching Jerry Springer drunk and the pleasure of learning to master chess may be to some here indistinguishable -- there are both just things you enjoy right? -- but to some of us they are different.

[amw]

If you think that the music of Brahms has intrinsic value to your life beyond its capacity to bring you enjoyment, you've lost me. I've yet to find another use for it besides the fact that I really, really like listening to it.

Obviously I can't speak for Florestan here...

I think music actually stopped affecting me emotionally a while ago. I mean, I still enjoy listening to it, and sometimes playing it (though my hands don't), and I can still get some superficial happiness, sadness, adrenaline, etc, from particular pieces. However for the most part I can't seem to listen to music the way "normal" people listen to it, as entertainment; it's become more about understanding. Coming to understand a new piece of music has a mind-expanding effect similar to a really good uni course, or a well written book on an interesting subject.

Playing/writing is different. I don't particularly enjoy practicing Kreisleriana, except for the satisfaction of a job well done on the rare occasions when I don't fuck it up royally. It's sort of a more primal need than pleasure. The closest way I can explain that is as though the music were a sentient force, and I merely a conduit for it. Maybe that doesn't make any sense.

(Side note: after trying to reply to you earlier and failing, I think I will have to retract my earlier post on variety in popular music. It's clear that I don't understand how to listen to it and won't get very far by trying to judge it by the same criteria I use for classical music. I'll need to do more listening and understanding before I can formulate a proper response.)

[Madiel]

I think music actually stopped affecting me emotionally a while ago. I mean, I still enjoy listening to it, and sometimes playing it (though my hands don't), and I can still get some superficial happiness, sadness, adrenaline, etc, from particular pieces. However for the most part I can't seem to listen to music the way "normal" people listen to it, as entertainment; it's become more about understanding. Coming to understand a new piece of music has a mind-expanding effect similar to a really good uni course, or a well written book on an interesting subject.

Hmm.

I can certainly relate to the goal of 'understanding' pieces of music. This is precisely why I tend to listen to the same thing a number of times, whether on the same day or over a period (I've come back to Haydn's Creation all month, trying to get to know it better). I am by nature a person interested in form and structure. My professional job is all about creating form and structure in words and ideas and rules, and it's always been the structural aspects of music that interest me the most (that goes, incidentally, for the popular music I'm most drawn to as well as the classical music I'm most drawn to: I'm interested in the shape and flow of a 50- or 60-minutes album far more than a 3-minute pop song on the radio, although there are some extraordinarily beautifully constructed 3-minute pop songs from time to time).  And I find it incredibly difficult to treat music as some kind of pleasurable background entertainment that isn't of further interest and doesn't require mental analysis.

I still can't think, though, of much I get out of the process of understanding a piece of music I'm listening to (rather than performing/composing) than the pleasurable satisfaction of feeling that I've cracked it and that understanding a piece enhances the listening experience. Much as I love admiring the drama that Beethoven can meld into a sonata form or the way that Ravel can manipulate a motif, I'm not sure that it gets me anything beyond the ability to talk excitedly to someone else about the Beethoven's sonata form or Ravel's constructional principles. It's understanding for the sake of enjoying understanding, not for the sake of practically applying that understanding.

The one thing I would say (in agreement with Greg) is that understanding other pieces of music one has listened to is of use when performing or composing, but that is applying music to music. I suppose there IS an argument that one could also apply that understanding in some way to other forms, such as literature for example. My own professional work doesn't lend itself to sonata form principles, but I suppose that there might be a writer out there who has observed the patterns of repetition and variation / transformation that we've labelled as 'sonata form' and written a work based on those principles.

[Madiel]

pop music is a blip compared to it, as are the lifespans of the people who consume it.[/font]

...whereas classical music consumers live for centuries?

See, this is the kind of claim that makes me find the whole comparison aspect of this thread odious. Let me repeat for, oh, about the sixth time: I'm not interested in comparisons between genres of music. I'm not interested in trying to persuade you that popular music is more valuable than classical music, because I don't think it is. I don't think it's less valuable either. I think trying to compare the different values of them is a hopeless exercise. It makes about as much sense as arguing whether the taste of a watermelon is better or worse than the taste of a steak.

The only reason I comment on the comparisons is because they contain such absurd descriptions of popular music - like a vegetarian trying to tell me how unappealing my steak is.

(Full Disclosure: I adore watermelon.)

EDIT: I don't even see the point of trying to argue whether a watermelon tastes better than an apricot. I love the flavour of both. I don't see why enormous amounts of energy should be spent on debating whether Bach or Beethoven is the greater composer. When I'm in the mood for the values of Bach's music I'll go listen to some Bach, and when I'm in the mood for the values of Beethoven's music I'll go listen to some Beethoven. Deciding whether one is better than the other involves an assumption that they really ought to both be achieving the same thing, an assumption that I'll fight against whether we're talking about Bach and Beethoven, Debussy and Ravel, The Beatles and the Rolling Stones or even 2 albums from different points in Joni Mitchell's career.

[71 dB]

It makes about as much sense as arguing whether the taste of a watermelon is better or worse than the taste of a steak.

I hate the taste of watermelon so it is definitely worse than the taste of a steak!  0:)

[Karl Henning]

...whereas classical music consumers live for centuries?

Surgically done.

[Madiel]

The analogy with tastes in food is silly. Even within that world there are proven regimes that are much better and more nourishing for you than others. Taste is one aspect, there is also nutritional content to consider. Maybe too many people forget about this, and it's why there are so many fat blobs shifting around. To much tasty fat & sugar rich JUNK being consumed. Anyway .. for me, pop music is like the junk food of the music world in many ways, it is an impoverished diet; whereas Art music is far more nourishing ..

Yes, because when I talk about watermelon and steak, I'm clearly selecting foods that have no nutritional value whatsoever.

One of the truly silly things about the comparisons going on is that they deliberately select the very best that classical music has to offer and pit it against the very worst that pop music has to offer. No-one comes in here talking about how nourished they are by one of Haydn and Mozart's forgotten contemporaries (just last night, I was reading how Haydn said that Baron von Swieten's symphonies were 'as stiff as the Baron himself'). No-one even comes in here declaring how nourished they are by the contredanses that Mozart and Beethoven wrote for the entertainment of the Viennese upper classes. It's all about the highest expressions of the art.

And then it's pitted against some bland, generic description of whatever's on top 40 radio, or something. As if that's the sum total of popular music has to offer. As if there aren't pop songs as long or longer than most classical sonata forms. As if there aren't concept albums. As if there aren't bands that radically change their sound palette from one album to the next.

When people take the cream of the classical crop and pit it against the dross of popular music (or a completely generic form of popular music with no specifics whatsoever), the outcome is obvious.

[Madiel]

This thread has inspired me to listen to some 5-voice counterpoint. We need the finer things in life.

http://youtu.be/e-ux7GMOc6k?t=2m5s

[EigenUser]

Counterpoint did you say .. ?

Does it need to be said that in order to truly learn & appreciate this demanding art
one should listen-to & study the masters within Art music first & foremost to get a
real creative perspective on it. Perhaps starting with ..

...and (according to your current listening line ) ending with...

[kishnevi]

This thread has inspired me to listen to some 5-voice counterpoint. We need the finer things in life.

http://youtu.be/e-ux7GMOc6k?t=2m5s

[kishnevi]

Oh, Bach....If you really want the fons et origo then Perotin is your man.  And of course Fux.

[Ken B]

Let's just say music is my religion.

I love Stockhausen, his music is irrigated with deep polyphonic thinking, I view him as the archangel Michael ..

J.S. Bach is my Jesus Christ though. If there is ANYTHING in this world that will make me believe that there is a God, he would be it.

0:)

Well I am no Stockhausen fan, partly because of the non musical crap. But then James is no Nyman fan. You don't have to like art to recognize that it tries something more ambitious than sameold sameold does.

So James, what are 3 shortish Stockhausen pieces to make me rethink him?

As for music from The Archies, I can hunt that down myself.

[Madiel]

Counterpoint did you say .. ?

Does it need to be said that in order to truly learn & appreciate this demanding art
one should listen-to & study the masters within Art music first & foremost to get a
real creative perspective on it. Perhaps starting with ..

Oh, but I do know a lot about counterpoint. I was once told by a person who didn't like Bach that I was the first pianist he'd heard in a long time that made him enjoy a Bach fugue. I think I own more Bach than I do of any other composer. Let's see... *rummages through CD collection* I just found 70 discs. Is that okay with you?

That's precisely why I can recognise counterpoint even when it appears in 'junk' music. People who ONLY listen to the music you think of as 'junk' probably don't know the word counterpoint, and wouldn't know what it means.

Or are you telling me that the passage linked to is not, in fact, counterpoint? If not, why not? There seem to be a considerable number of independently moving and overlapping parts in it.

[EigenUser]

Well I am no Stockhausen fan, partly because of the non musical crap. But then James is no Nyman fan. You don't have to like art to recognize that it tries something more ambitious than sameold sameold does.

So James, what are 3 shortish Stockhausen pieces to make me rethink him?

As for music from The Archies, I can hunt that down myself.

Well, I'm not James, but I'd recommend Tierkreis for orchestra (there are also versions for many other combinations). He recommended this to me a while back and I really like it, in fact.

Mantra for two pianos, percussion, and electronics is another good one, especially since you mentioned that you particularly like Bartok's S2PP (a few similarities, even). The electronics aren't overdone which is nice, but there is this one part where the two pianists yell at each other that I wish wasn't there. I just ignore it .

And then for something totally out there (literally ), Cosmic Pulses is a very cool sounding work -- purely electronics. It sounds nothing like Kontakte and is much easier to follow for me. I can't say I like it as a piece, but I like how it sounds (if that makes any sense).

EDIT: Oddly, the opening of Tierkreis reminds me of Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe for some reason.

[Karl Henning]

Let's just say music is my religion.

Music is my profession.

So, maybe your statement is indicative of problems:  zealotry, a tendency to dogma, an intolerance of those with different viewpoints, a certainty that you have a direct communication line with your deity, a readiness to tell the rest of the world the Truth, in whose inflexibility you are totally invested.

Yes, in quite a rare display, truly you say well, that music is your "religion."

[Karl Henning]

Well I am no Stockhausen fan, partly because of the non musical crap.

Oh, no kidding!  Give me a composer like Cage, whose non-musical articles are at least engaging!

[Madiel]

Music is my profession.

So, maybe your statement is indicative of problems:  zealotry, a tendency to dogma, an intolerance of those with different viewpoints, a certainty that you have a direct communication line with your deity, a readiness to tell the rest of the world the Truth, in whose inflexibility you are totally invested.

Yes, in quite a rare display, truly you say well, that music is your "religion."

Another forum I'm on has a bowing, "I am not worthy" animated smiley. Sadly, this forum lacks it. 

[Karl Henning]

Mantra for two pianos, percussion, and electronics is another good one, especially since you mentioned that you particularly like Bartok's S2PP (a few similarities, even). The electronics aren't overdone which is nice, but there is this one part where the two pianists yell at each other that I wish wasn't there. I just ignore it .

Apart from Ken's request for shortish pieces, a good call!  And (as you disclose) another instance of what might have been a thoroughly commendable piece, spoiled by KS's need to inject arrant goofiness.