People obsessed by categories: "Soundtracks are not classical music!!!"

[W.A. Mozart]

The purpose of giving names to different kinds of music is to understand, more or less, what to expect from a musical work, but there are people in the classical music world who are literally obsessed with categories, as if it was possible to scientifically determine the genre of a musical work.
Well, it's not possible: as soon as you formulate a rule to determine if something is classical music or not, someone will give you an example of a work that doesn't fit the rule.


Some examples here below.

Two days ago I listened to a contemporary violin concerto (2017) in Youtube and I read this comment below the video.

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He is writing in the style of modern film music..... this is not classical, just listen to the last movement blasting I - V - vi - IV.  That is called instant gratification, which is how pop music works.

------------

Basically, what this guy wrote, is that in classical music should be forbidden to use determined chord progressions.
If you use I - V - vi - IV, your musical work should be expelled from the genre.

Furthermore he speaks about film music as if it was a different genre in respect to classical music, while in reality the style of many soundtracks is so close to the neoromantic music of the 20th Century that it makes sense to label them as "classical music".

For example, listen to this movement of Joly Braga Santos between 00:38 and 01:52 and tell me that it doesn't sound exactly like the opening of an american movie, maybe with the score written by John Williams!

I call this "american neoromanticism": I think that this style was born with the Symphony No. 9 of Dvorak in 1893 and that while some composers at the beginning of the 20th century were experimenting dissonance, other composers were developing this new kind of romantic style music, which became the standard in soundtracks of american films, probably because it transmits a sense of "adventure".
I'm not sure about this, as I'm not a musicologist and I've never read books about musicology: perhaps I should open a discussion about this.


So, why do many people reject the classification of american neoromantic soundtracks as classical music, when this style is clearily born inside classical music?

Other people obsessed by categories follow different paths to exclude classical-style soundtracks from classical music, for example this article written in a musical blog of the newspaper "theguardian.com": https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2008/apr/07/canfilmmusiceverbeclassical


Basically, this guy was angry because Classic FM promotes classical-style soundtracks.

After he has established for everyone of us that the soundtracks of Morricone are good music while the soundtracks of Hans Zimmer are bad music (as if he was any kind of authority to decide what is good and what is not good... he doesn't provide any argument to explain why Hans Zimmer sucks), he says that soundtracks can not be considered classical music because while soundtracks are composed to accompany pictures, classical music is an abstract art form designed to provoke a truly subjective response in each of its listeners.



As I wrote above, everytime you try to find a rule that makes something classical or that excludes something from classical music, someone will give you an example of a work categorized as classical music that doesn't fit that rule, but in this case the error is huge, because there are entire subgenres of classical music that are intended to accompany images: opera and incidental music.

Classical soundtracks are nothing else than a subcategory of classical incidental music, which can be divided between:
- Classical incidental music for theatre (for example "A Midsummer Night's Dream" of Mendelssohn)
- Classical incidental music for cinema and TV (for example "Star Wars" of John Williams or "The Lion King" of Hans Zimmer)
- Classical incidental music for videogames (for example "King Bowser" of Super Mario Galaxy)


"So, W.A. Mozart, this is all you have? Do you open a discussion only for the bullshit of two people in the web?"

Well, no. I've already disussed this argument in other classical music forums, and perhaps the 50% of the users had to make sure that classical-style soundtracks won't be classified as classical music.
The people obsessed by categories are a lot in the classical music world: I only provided two examples because I can not discuss every single examples.

So, I'll simply discuss about arguments that often come out.


Other people say that what makes music classical is that it's not composed or played for commercial purposes and that since soundtracks are composed for commercial pruposes they are not classical music. This is an other big error, because many (most?) highly celebrated composers of classical music created music for money.
As a side note, I'll also tell you that I think that the idea that commercial music is of a lower quality is absurd, because professional composers can dedicate their full time to music and, as a result, we can imagine that they reach a high level of craftmanship that it's difficult to reach if you have to dedicate most hours of your time to other activities).

Not surprinsingly, Mozart and Beethoven were professional composers.



A variation of this argument is that something is classical music only if the composer is free to write whatever he wants and that if the there is a client who tells you that he expects to receive X, X will be not classical music.
Basically, the idea is that in classical music there is not someone who puts his nose in your work, and since the works of the composers of soundtracks must be approved by the directors, the product will not be classical music.

So, what about the String Quartet No. 13 of Beethoven?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grosse_Fuge

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The Grosse Fuge was originally composed as the final movement of Beethoven's Quartet No. 13 in B♭ major, Op. 130, written in 1825; but Beethoven's publisher was concerned about the dismal commercial prospects of the piece and wanted the composer to replace the fugue with a new finale. Beethoven complied, and the Grosse Fuge was published as a separate work in 1827 as Op. 133

---------------


Regarding Beethoven, I could also mention that he had to recompose parts of his incidental music for Ruins of Athens because someone else changed the lyrics.

What about Mozart? The Emperor wanted to eliminate his ballet in "Le Nozze di Figaro". A the end he didn't, but this example shows us that the public authorities had the controls of arts in the classical period.


Now, if someone told me that the industry in the modern capitalism is more business/profit oriented and that the freedom of soundtrack composers is even more restricted in respect to the one of the old composers, I might understand the argument (although the notion should be seriously verified), but really... how do you determine where is the line? Which is the point from which the music stops to be classical because there are too many intrusions in the artistic work of the composer? Where is the point from which the intrusions become "too many"?

If it was a binary matter, 1 or 0, like "Beethoven and Mozart wrote music for themselves and they didn't receive money, while John Williams receives a lot of money from a big business-profit oriented industry", the distinction would make sense... but this doesn't describe the reality.

Basically, if we decided that classical music is not commercial music, we should eliminate the music of Mozart and Beethoven from classical music.



An other argument is that classical music is the music that has passed the test of time, but since the existence of contemporary classical music is recognized, this is an other huge error.
Furthermore I might ask: is the music of the the high numbers of the forgotten classical music composers not classical?
That poor man who has composed the spurious Violin Concerto No. 6 of Mozart, Johann Friedrich Eck, has not even a wikipedia page.

Does anyone thinks that this is not classical music?

Finally, someone told me that since soundtracks don't follow the forms of classical music (such as the sonata-form), they are not classical music.
The problem of this argument is that even classical music doesn't follows the forms of classical music.
In the classical period and at the beginning of the romantic period the composers used to follow a well-defined sonata-form, but later the form was broken and it became a very generic thing, like "write some themes and some development around them", and since the generic sonata-form (theme + developments) is also used in soundtracks, why can't we not say that even soundtracks follow the forms of classical music?


In conclusion, don't try to find mathematical rules to determine if something is classical music or not.
Whether something is classical music, jazz, rock, whatever... is determined by the istinct, by our subjective perception.
So, if most people who have to label musical works agree about the fact that the music of John Williams is classical, his music will be categorized as "classical". It's easy!

Here below examples of websites that consider soundtracks as a form of classical music.

https://www.allmusic.com/genre/classical-ma0000002521

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_classical_music_genres

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/genres

https://rateyourmusic.com/genre/cinematic-classical/

https://halloffame.classicfm.com/2023/



Since the classification is subjective and not objective, determined by our istinct, we might not agree about the classification of one musical work... so what? Is it so important to determine if something is classical music or not?

Some people are even obsessed with the distinction between popular music and classical music, as if they had to be rigidly separated categories, but this was not the spirit of the great composers.

In the Symphony No. 9, Dvorak borrow elements from american folk music.

The people obsessed by categories think that the contemporary classical music must be completely separated from popular music and that if a composer borrows elements from the popular music of today, his music must be not considered classical.
So, why don't they ask to expel the Symphony 9 of Dovrak from classical music? And why should the freedom of the contemporary classical composers be so restricted if this dumb rule didn't make any sense in the eyes of composers who have made the history of classical music?

[Maestro267]

Right, this gon' be good. *gets popcorn out and waits for the rest of GMG to wake up* We need somewhere to vent our pointless spleens after the extremely long piano thread got yeeted into the ocean...

[Luke]

I'm not commenting on the rest of the many points in your post but:

Two days ago I listened to a contemporary violin concerto (2017) in Youtube and I read this comment below the video.

------------

He is writing in the style of modern film music..... this is not classical, just listen to the last movement blasting I - V - vi - IV.  That is called instant gratification, which is how pop music works.

------------

Basically, what this guy wrote, is that in classical music should be forbidden to use determined chord progressions.
If you use I - V - vi - IV, your musical work should be expelled from the genre.

I don't think that is what he is saying. The way I read it is that he's referring to the repeated cycling of a four chord sequence which is a hallmark of contemporary pop music, and the way that this style is designed to give regular doses of micro-climax/catharsis rather than to characteristic developmental processes of classical music which tend to lead to less frequent but more dramatic macro-climaxes.

A classic illustration of this, because so clear, is in the Chopin E minor Prelude, which dramatises a simple descent from B to E so that it tells a long, non-repeating musical narrative, leading to some sub-climaxes and a final, larger one it all happens in approximately the length of a pop song, which, generically speaking, would tend to fill that time with a repeating chord pattern or two, ie with lots of small, satisfying returns. It's not a value judgement - they're just two ways to approach the issue of tension and release. The youtube comment you quote seems to me to be referring to this.

[Luke]

.

[Cato]

Duke Ellington on how to classify Music:

There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind ... the only yardstick by which the result should be judged is simply that of how it sounds. If it sounds good it's successful; if it doesn't it has failed.

[71 dB]

Music is music and labels are labels. I don't care if the movie scores by John Williams are classified as classical music or not. It tells nothing about how much John Williams' music improves the movies he has wrote the score for. It only tells about how broad or narrow the definition of the concept "classical music" is.

Some people want to boost their ego by declaring to the World what is or isn't good enough to be called classical music. Who cares? John Williams' scores are movie music heavily influenced by classical music. You can call it classical music or not depending on how loosely you want to use that term. Context matters. The music for Star Wars is not so much classical music compared to "real" classical music such as Beethoven, but it is quite classical music sounding compared to the Beatles. 

We can speculate about what's good or bad music till the cows came home, but in the end the only thing that matter is what the music means to us. I enjoy music considered complete garbage. I enjoy music considered some of the greatest in the history of music. I like what I like and other people like what they like. Stressing about what music belongs under what label is pretty unnesessary unless you are a record store owner and you want to know in what shelf which record needs to be put for sale...

[Luke]

Music is music and labels are labels. I don't care if the movie scores by John Williams are classified as classical music or not. It tells nothing about how much John Williams' music improves the movies he has wrote the score for. It only tells about how broad or narrow the definition of the concept "classical music" is.

Some people want to boost their ego by declaring to the World what is or isn't good enough to be called classical music. Who cares? John Williams' scores are movie music heavily influenced by classical music. You can call it classical music or not depending on how loosely you want to use that term. Context matters. The music for Star Wars is not so much classical music compared to "real" classical music such as Beethoven, but it is quite classical music sounding compared to the Beatles. 

We can speculate about what's good or bad music till the cows came home, but in the end the only thing that matter is what the music means to us. I enjoy music considered complete garbage. I enjoy music considered some of the greatest in the history of music. I like what I like and other people like what they like. Stressing about what music belongs under what label is pretty unnesessary unless you are a record store owner and you want to know in what shelf which record needs to be put for sale...

I absolutely get this, and agree; with Leo's Ellington quotation too. However, as my post above maybe suggests, I also find it interesting to speculate upon these sort of questions, of what constitute the differences in technique and aesthetic between various approaches to music-making, because I find the results thought provoking and illuminating. It's not about judgements of good or bad, just about the fun of inquiry.

[San Antone]

Labels are useful for organizing large collections.  I worked as a professional librarian and genre classifications were a necessary method of organizing the collection so that users could find what they were looking for more easily. Libraries have film music separate from classical music, jazz, pop, r&b, blues, etc. - because when someone wants to find a soundtrack they don't want to plow through Beethoven and Mozart to find what they want.

IMO genres classifications do not connote quality. I personally feel that classical music is not the highest form of musical expression; I don't think that way of any genre. Often a genre reflects a cultural association.  Blues is an musical expression from a different culture from classical music.

One way I use to categorize musical genres is the function or purpose for which the music was written.  If it was written for a film, and the composer consider himself writing in the tradition of Bernard Hermann or John Williams, it is film music. If it were written for a concert performance and the composer see himself as continuing in the tradition of Bach-Beethoven-Mahler-Schoenberg, it is classical music.

Stylistic criteria is not definitive, but can indicate the tradition in which the composer locates himself.

[Karl Henning]

IMO genres classifications do not connote quality

Agreed, to the point where I am tempted to say this should be obvious.

[W.A. Mozart]

I'm not commenting on the rest of the many points in your post but:

I don't think that is what he is saying. The way I read it is that he's referring to the repeated cycling of a four chord sequence which is a hallmark of contemporary pop music, and the way that this style is designed to give regular doses of micro-climax/catharsis rather than to characteristic developmental processes of classical music which tend to lead to less frequent but more dramatic macro-climaxes.

A classic illustration of this, because so clear, is in the Chopin E minor Prelude, which dramatises a simple descent from B to E so that it tells a long, non-repeating musical narrative, leading to some sub-climaxes and a final, larger one it all happens in approximately the length of a pop song, which, generically speaking, would tend to fill that time with a repeating chord pattern or two, ie with lots of small, satisfying returns. It's not a value judgement - they're just two ways to approach the issue of tension and release. The youtube comment you quote seems to me to be referring to this.

Ok, I get your argument. But the point is: would you say that a piece of music written in a classical music form (in this case, a concerto), composed by a classical musician, played by classical musicians and with a classical style/aesthetic, is not classical music only because in the finale (which is usually the movement in which the composers try to increase the excitement of the audience by firing off a series of climaxes in a row) there are some parts with techniques similar to popular music?

I mean, if the finale didn't sound classical at all, I'd understand the polemic, but the classical elements are enough to consider it as classical music.


Furthermore, while I understand that there are statistical differences between the harmony of classical music and the one of popular music, the problem is that the harmony is probably the least consistent element inside the category of classical music.
I mean, the evolution of classical music throghout the history consists in large part of harmonic reinvention... am I not right?

What does it mean "classical harmony"? Is the harmony in the music of Schönberg the same of the music of Mozart?

The essential point is that there is no such thing as an authentic classical harmony, unless you don't restrict classical music to only one period of music (for example, if you say that classical music is only the music written between 1750 and 1800, of course you can speak about a pure classical harmony).


Finally, as I've already written, if to borrow some elements from popular music would make your music not classical, what about the ninth Symphony of Dvorak, which borrows elements from american folk music?

I see that many people who defend the purity of classical music are usually fans of avantgarde music... how exactly is avantgarde music "purely classical"? This is a big contradiction: refusing to consider neoromantic works with some elements of modernity as classical music while considering at the same time as "classical music" some works which violate almost any rule of the traditional classical music.

[Roasted Swan]

Music is music and labels are labels. I don't care if the movie scores by John Williams are classified as classical music or not. It tells nothing about how much John Williams' music improves the movies he has wrote the score for. It only tells about how broad or narrow the definition of the concept "classical music" is.

Some people want to boost their ego by declaring to the World what is or isn't good enough to be called classical music. Who cares? John Williams' scores are movie music heavily influenced by classical music. You can call it classical music or not depending on how loosely you want to use that term. Context matters. The music for Star Wars is not so much classical music compared to "real" classical music such as Beethoven, but it is quite classical music sounding compared to the Beatles. 

We can speculate about what's good or bad music till the cows came home, but in the end the only thing that matter is what the music means to us. I enjoy music considered complete garbage. I enjoy music considered some of the greatest in the history of music. I like what I like and other people like what they like. Stressing about what music belongs under what label is pretty unnesessary unless you are a record store owner and you want to know in what shelf which record needs to be put for sale...

I'm taking a break from thinking about how angels are dancing on the head of a needle to completely agree with you.  The only time I ever get annoyed about the defining of "Classical Music" - with a capital "C" is when by extension that definition confers on the user some sense of superiority or spirituality in their taste.  Sadly, such is the failing state of music education (blame the governments/authorities and those who set the curriculum not the teachers) that the mere use of CM as a title warns off more people than it engages.

[W.A. Mozart]

The music for Star Wars is not so much classical music compared to "real" classical music such as Beethoven, but it is quite classical music sounding compared to the Beatles. 

Thanks for your reply... but isn't this the logical fallacy no true scotsman?

Yes, if we decided arbitrarily the the music of Mozart-Haydn-Beethoven is the REAL CLASSICAL MUSIC, the music of Star Wars wouldn't be so much classical.
However, even the music of Joly Braga Santos wouldn't be so much classical at that point.

And what about Schönberg? If the music of Mozart-Beethoven-Haydn was the only real classical music, how exactly would we be able to consider the music of Schönberg as authentic classical music?

[Mandryka]

Thanks for your reply... but isn't this the logical fallacy no true scotsman?

Yes, if we decided arbitrarily the the music of Mozart-Haydn-Beethoven is the REAL CLASSICAL MUSIC, the music of Star Wars wouldn't be so much classical.
However, even the music of Joly Braga Santos wouldn't be so much classical at that point.

And what about Schönberg? If the music Mozart-Beethoven-Haydn was the only real classical music, how exactly we would be able to consider the music of Schönberg as authnetic classical music?

Your question is similar to "is chess or ballroom dancing a sport?"

It's not intrinsic to the music, it's a cultural thing. If people - especially experts like impresarios and academics and journalists and instrumentalists -  start calling some sounds "classical music" in numbers then that's all there is to it.   

[W.A. Mozart]

Labels are useful for organizing large collections.  I worked as a professional librarian and genre classifications were a necessary method of organizing the collection so that users could find what they were looking for more easily. Libraries have film music separate from classical music, jazz, pop, r&b, blues, etc. - because when someone wants to find a soundtrack they don't want to plow through Beethoven and Mozart to find what they want.

If you have to create a library of music you can order it in every way you wish. For example, even the alphabetical order, if you want.
The fact that Mozart would be under the "M" and Beethoven under the "B" wouldn't make their music two separate genres.

If I had to create an online database of music, I'd create a system that allows you to assign more categories to a musical work.

I'd assign the categories "soundtrack" and "spanish music" to this piece.

"Soundtrack" + "jazz" to this one.

"Soundtrack" + "classical music" to this one.

The point is that the category "soundtrack" doesn't tell you the music genre. It only tells you that the music has been composed for a film.

If you want to give information about the style of music, soundtrack is not sufficient: you have to provide other information.

I don't see why I shouldn't assign the category "classical music" to a classical-style soundtrack and pretend that all soundtracks belong to the same musical genre.

[SimonNZ]

I see that many people who defend the purity of classical music are usually fans of avantgarde music... how exactly is avantgarde music "purely classical"? This is a big contradiction: refusing to consider neoromantic works with some elements of modernity as classical music while considering at the same time as "classical music" some works which violate almost any rule of the traditional classical music.

Every time I see the argument for soundtrack music being called classical it is always made by someone who hates - or assumes they will hate - most of what has been composed post WW2.

The people I *don't * see advocating this are composers of soundtrack music.

My local classical station has started putting in film stuff and i can always tell, because the film music is so...facile...when separated from the images they are meant to be working with.  I'm much more impressed when they program Duke Ellington or Astor Piazolla.

You say you've had this argument many times? Then why have it again? Expecting a different result? How many minds did you change previously?

[W.A. Mozart]

Every time I see the argument for soundtrack music being called classical it is always made by someone who hates - or assumes they will hate - most of what has been composed post WW2.

No. It's made by people who think that the contemporary classical music must not necessarily be avantgarde music (as wished by the fanatics of avantgarde music) and that neoromantic works are a respectable form of contemporary classical music.

The point is simple.

This contemporary piece is classical music, because contemporary music must not necessarily be avantgarde music.

If it was composed for a soundtrack, it would be still classical music.


The contrary is true: most people who say that neoromantic soundtracks are not classical are usually people who think that the romantic tradition must die to leave the entire space to avantgarde music. They have arbitrarily decided that avantgarde music is the present and the future of classical music and they are angry because many composers keep the romantic tradition alive and many people prefer this music more than avantgarde music.

The people I *don't * see advocating this are composers of soundtrack music.

Maybe because there is no need to advocate obvious things.

However there are various citations of John Williams that make clear that he is conciously composing classical music for films.

My local classical station has started putting in film stuff and i can always tell, because the film music is so...facile...

Can you explain how exactly is this...

... easier than this?

[SimonNZ]

No. It's made by people who don't think that the contemporary classical music must be necessarily avantgarde music and that neoromantic works are a respectable form of contemporary classical music.

Absolutely nobody thinks modern classical has to be "avant-guard" (however you define that). Unless you want to dredge up some deliberately provocative Boulez quotes from way back when. They might say it shouldn't sound like an ersatz colour-by-numbers and dumbed-down reheating of the 18th century, like some poorly made costume drama - but that's not the same thing.

You're having an argument with voices in your head, not with anything people are saying in the real world now.

And if you must keep going on about  "neoromantic" then you're the one "obsessed by categories".

[W.A. Mozart]

Absolutely nobody thinks modern classical has to be "avant-guard" (however you define that). Unless you want to dredge up some deliberately provocative Boulez quotes from way back when. They might say it shouldn't sound like an ersatz colour-by-numbers and dumbed-down reheating of the 18th century, like some poorly made costume drama - but that's not the same thing.

Yes, I know that the fanatics of avantgarde music want to dictate the direction of classical music and that, therefore, are against the artistic freedom. And this is why the institutions of classical music must not be controlled by them, otherwise the word "art music" won't make any sense anymore.

If they were for the artistic freedom, they wouldn't say that a contemporary composer can not take romantic music and modernize it. Until the so called "art music" will be really "art", the sentence "you can not do this" won't make any sense.

What does "dumbed-down" mean? Can you provide any scientific demonstration about the fact that the composers of soundtrack are dumbing down anything?

There is a thread of 81 pages in the main section of this forum where the users insert new soundtracks every week: https://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,8728.0.html

Apparently, many of us think that it's worth spending time listening to this music.

Your musical values are not universal. They are only YOUR PERSONAL values.

You're having an argument with voices in your head, not with anything people are saying in the real world now.

You have just written "it shouldn't sound like", which confirms that you want to dictate the direction of arts.

Someone who supports the artistic freedom in classical music doesn't use the sentence "it shouldn't sound like...".

And if you must keep going on about  "neoromantic" then you're the one "obsessed by categories".

"Obsessed by categories" doesn't mean that you recognize that categories are useful, but that you think that you can formulate mathematical rules to determine if something is classical music or not.

If you use categories in a generic way and you are aware that they are only words to understand, more or less, about what we're speaking about, you are not obsessed by categories.

[SimonNZ]

Okay, I'm just going to leave you with those voices in your head. Bye.

[Mandryka]

If they were for the artistic freedom, they wouldn't say that a contemporary composer can not take romantic music and modernize it. Until the so called "art music" will be really "art", the sentence "you can not do this" won't make any sense.

Have you explored Berio,  Schnitke, Rochberg, Silvestrov, Kagel,  the more recent music by Rihm and Finnissy?