Anyone who could put make some sort of list of musical styles which are among the most complex?
It's a generalization, but mainly should be pretty easy to tell, even if it isn't perfect.
Out of what I'm familiar with, I'd make a list like this:
1. New Complexity, 2nd Viennese and Darmstadt-ish stuff
2. Jazz/Fusion
3. Late Romantic
4. Prog Rock
or something... what other musical styles would fit in there?
Music from the Ars Subtilior (14th C.) (Codex Chantilly, Codex Ivrea, etc.)
Polyphonists of the mid-1500s (e.g. Ockeghem's Missa Prolationum)
Prog rock is not really complex, just very notey.
Quote from: corey on October 23, 2009, 04:55:46 PM
Music from the Ars Subtilior (14th C.) (Codex Chantilly, Codex Ivrea, etc.)
Polyphonists of the mid-1500s (e.g. Ockeghem's Missa Prolationum)
Prog rock is not really complex, just very notey.
Right: lots of major and minor chords.
Complexity:
Symphony #4 by
Charles Ives.Also not to be forgotten: The Music of the
KRELL! :o
Quote from: Greg on October 23, 2009, 01:05:17 PM2. Jazz/Fusion
I've you've never seen a free jazz concert, go do so - it's a truly epic experience. You take 3-4 virtuosi and they all play the hell out of their instruments, all at the same time, for the entire concert. I can't decide if it's incredibly complex (because it sounds so dense), or if it's incredibly simple (because the format is so easy to grasp).
Truly inspired Composer Music of either Ulra-Late Romantic, or New Complexity, periods would get my vote.
Free Jazz just sounds dense, as you noted.
Prog Rock just has a lot of "parts", as has been noted.
Some "Death Metal", however, does utilize... seriously, haha...
Improv is only good when it doesn't sound like improv.
Agreed, Jazz and Prog aren't really complex, just dense...
I'd vote for New Complexity, certainly, but there's a reason I don't listen to it much... :o
Quote from: Cato on October 23, 2009, 06:10:47 PM
Right: lots of major and minor chords.
Complexity: Symphony #4 by Charles Ives.
Also not to be forgotten: The Music of the KRELL! :o
Krell?... did a search on youtube and couldn't find anything. Is this a band?
I think that some music which seems simple, e.g. Delta blues, is in fact very complex. It incorporates quarter tone melodic elements and rhythmic sophistication which is so nuanced it cannot be notated. There are other styles of music, flamenco for example, for which this is true. I see Western art music as a far less complex music compared to these "folk" genres.
I understand what you are saying - it is a persuasive point and I am inclined to agree with it. A well-made ethnomusicological transcription can often be a thing of spectacular complexity - you can find anything there.....arcane key signatures with microtones indicated; sophisticated rhythmical complexty etc. etc. I have a few wonderful examples of this sort of thing to hand - the make the music of Nile boatmen and Hungarian village fiddler look like James Dillon or Michael Finnissy...
However, to play devil's advocate for a second, it's probably doubtful that the performers (In these cases and many others) are aware of the rhythmical complexity of what they are actually playing in lots of this music - in their heads, it is probably a lot more simple than that, just as, when I play Bach, I think I am playing an equal line of (say) quavers, but am in fact producing something that the precise measurements of an analyst would show to be unequal (we all do this, even the greatest performers - it's what humans do, and it's wonderful!)
So the apparent complexity seen in the 'score' of the Nile boatmen's song or whatever is really the result of the ethnomusicologist's attempt to include everything in his transcription, on the basis that 'this is an 'alien' style of music and I must not make any assumptions about what is important and what isn't; I will therefore try to notate every last inflection'. Were one to imagine the situation reversed - someone new to western music attempting an equally impartial notation of even something relatively simple, as performed 'in real life' - my example of me playing a line of even quavers in Bach - the result would probably look equally complex.
The other reason, of course, that such music can often seem so complex when viewed through the filter of western notation and western musical categories (of tuning, rhythm and so on) is precisely because these filters are imperfect or at least incomplete, and were designed with western music in mind. We prioritise circle of fifths key signatures, standard accidentals, 2:1 or 3:2 ratio rhythms, and so our notation makes anything else look stranger that perhaps it really is...
Devil's advocate bit over - I still think you are right! ;)
Quote from: Luke on October 25, 2009, 08:43:38 AM
I understand what you are saying - it is a persuasive point and I am inclined to agree with it. A well-made ethnomusicological transcription can often be a thing of spectacular complexity - you can find anything there.....arcane key signatures with microtones indicated; sophisticated rhythmical complexty etc. etc. I have a few wonderful examples of this sort of thing to hand - the make the music of Nile boatmen and Hungarian village fiddler look like James Dillon or Michael Finnissy...
However, to play devil's advocate for a second, it's probably doubtful that the performers (In these cases and many others) are aware of the rhythmical complexity of what they are actually playing in lots of this music - in their heads, it is probably a lot more simple than that, just as, when I play Bach, I think I am playing an equal line of (say) quavers, but am in fact producing something that the precise measurements of an analyst would show to be unequal (we all do this, even the greatest performers - it's what humans do, and it's wonderful!)
So the apparent complexity seen in the 'score' of the Nile boatmen's song or whatever is really the result of the ethnomusicologist's attempt to include everything in his transcription, on the basis that 'this is an 'alien' style of music and I must not make any assumptions about what is important and what isn't; I will therefore try to notate every last inflection'. Were one to imagine the situation reversed - someone new to western music attempting an equally impartial notation of even something relatively simple, as performed 'in real life' - my example of me playing a line of even quavers in Bach - the result would probably look equally complex.
The other reason, of course, that such music can often seem so complex when viewed through the filter of western notation and western musical categories (of tuning, rhythm and so on) is precisely because these filters are imperfect or at least incomplete, and were designed with western music in mind. We prioritise circle of fifths key signatures, standard accidentals, 2:1 or 3:2 ratio rhythms, and so our notation makes anything else look stranger that perhaps it really is...
Devil's advocate bit over - I still think you are right! ;)
I definitely agree far more with your devils advocate version I'm afraid...
The proof of the pudding is that the music, even if not notated, is very hard for a non-practitioner to perform convincingly. These nuances are such a huge part of the music, if you leave them out either due to an technical inability to capture them or in an effort to "straighten out" the rhythm or melodies, the music does not sound like and loses all of the power of the original.
It does not matter if the Delta blues singer knows the names for the techniques he naturally employs - the complexity is an integral part of the music.
Yes, sure, I agree - except that the same thing could be said of someone playing a classical piece which is superficially simply - say something by JC Bach, or whoever. It still needs someone 'inside the style' to play convincingly, and it still needs an ability to see 'beyond the notes', beyond the simple surface to the complexities and nuances which are undoubtedly underneath.
Quote from: Franco on October 25, 2009, 07:09:56 AM
I think that some music which seems simple, e.g. Delta blues, is in fact very complex. It incorporates quarter tone melodic elements and rhythmic sophistication which is so nuanced it cannot be notated. There are other styles of music, flamenco for example, for which this is true. I see Western art music as a far less complex music compared to these "folk" genres.
So are Whitney Houston/Mariah Carey's vocal melismatics, but it's still crap.
IMO, all of the styles mentioned, Delta blues, flamenco, Nile boatmen, Hungarian village songs, are vastly different from the examples you mentioned. But, I won't argue the point with you, I said what I thought was complex music, if you don't agree, that is your prerogative.
Um actually I did agree - didn't you read what I wrote, first and last sentences? :)
My last post was directed to this comment: "So are Whitney Houston/Mariah Carey's vocal melismatics, but it's still crap." by corey.
oh, fair enough!
Quote from: Franco on October 25, 2009, 01:48:05 PM
My last post was directed to this comment: "So are Whitney Houston/Mariah Carey's vocal melismatics, but it's still crap." by corey.
Yeah, I don't agree with Corey either if he's calling country blues "crap".
Hey, I'm using up my reserve of Unqualified Blanket Statements. :D
IMO, music has been effected in the West by the elevation of the written score, whereas music, for me, is best thought of as an oral (or aural) tradition.
Merely because some music has no written tradition (this fact is some proof of why it is complex, the nuances are nearly impossible to capture in written notation and the music is only learned through apprenticeship) does not mean it is not complex and does not involve highly technical aspects which can only be performed by assiduous study and training. Of course the reverse is true as well, because music does NOT have a score does not always translate into complexity.
I stand by my earlier comments about blues and flamenco, and add the styles that Luke suggested - this music is complex, although can sound much simpler than it is to pull off.
Quote from: Franco on October 25, 2009, 02:02:57 PM
IMO, music has been effected in the West by the elevation of the written score, whereas music, for me, is best thought of as an oral (or aural) tradition.
Merely because some music has no written tradition (this fact is some proof of why it is complex, the nuances are nearly impossible to capture in written notation and the music is only learned through apprenticeship) does not mean it is not complex and does not involve highly technical aspects which can only be performed by assiduous study and training. Of course the reverse is true as well, because music does NOT have a score does not always translate into complexity.
I stand by my earlier comments about blues and flamenco, and add the styles that Luke suggested - this music is complex, although can sound much simpler than it is to pull off.
Oh no I understand your point exactly, I was just trying to be funny, sorry. :) It would be difficult to try and differentiate between complexity that is constructed as opposed to complexity that is a part of the "signifiers" of a tradition that has developed over many years. It's also quite relative — Gagaku music from Japan
sounds much simpler than most Western art music from Machaut's time to now, but there could be many nuances that someone immersed in the tradition would look for, and which would probably be lost on someone like me.
What's also interesting is the idea of "difficulty". For instance Mahler's music is extremely complex on the page, but easy to understand — whereas Morton Feldman's music is usually very simple, but often (for me) elusive.
Quote from: corey on October 25, 2009, 02:11:37 PM
...whereas Morton Feldman's music is usually very simple, but often (for me) elusive.
well, not really - it's
highly complicated stuff, is Feldman, rhymithcally, technically, notationally, the nuances are so subtle and so precisely indicated - his music is constructed like no one else's, and looks like no one else's on the page (as Franco suggests, the score isn't the be all and end all, but at the same time it is hardly irrelevant to this discussion). Check out some of the Feldman scores in the mystery scores thread to see what I mean. Certainly it is more complex in details than Mahler is
Quote from: Guido on October 25, 2009, 08:58:21 AM
I definitely agree far more with your devils advocate version I'm afraid...
Me, too.
There's nothing complex, about, say, quarter-tone guitar string bends within a blues context.
Quote from: Franco on October 25, 2009, 02:02:57 PM
I stand by my earlier comments about blues and flamenco, and add the styles that Luke suggested - this music is complex, although can sound much simpler than it is to pull off.
I can't say anything about flamenco, but I wonder what type of blues you're talking about.
As for bluesy stuff by rock artists- sometimes they can get stuff that's a bit complex, but even the most complex blues stuff I've played is simple compared to, even, say, a Haydn Piano Sonata. The guitar part might have something a little challenging, but usually the rest of the music is just a big loop.
Maybe you're talking about older blues or something... I don't listen to that much, but haven't heard anything that sounds very complex to me. Maybe there is?... (and we're talking non-jazz related?)...
Quote from: Greg on October 25, 2009, 05:19:42 PM
Me, too.
There's nothing complex, about, say, quarter-tone guitar string bends within a blues context.
I am not talking about the guitar, but the singing. The vocal lines are very complex, unless you just gloss over the nuances and think of it reduced to its most basic elements, but if you did that and notated a melody stripped of those nuances, when someone played it back it would simply not sound like the original but a bland simplistic echo.
"Bluesy stuff by rock artists" is nowhere as complex as the acoustic "plantation" recordings of Muddy Waters. If you haven't heard these recordings, then you wouldn't know what I am talking about. The Robert Johnson recordings are another example. There are rhythmic complexities in the guitar playing that no one could duplicate by trying to notate them and have someone like John Williams attempt to recreate the sound.
But, like I said earlier, this is purely my opinion and I am not trying to prosletyze.
Quote from: ' on October 25, 2009, 06:09:57 PM
I agree with your point, but I am not so sure that gagaku (coincidentally,a written tradition) illustrates it. I have played this music for 30 years (ryuteki and komabue), and although it is rich with nuance that you get to know better only with familiarity (the patterns, some of the articulation that is context dependent), it has never seemed complex, rich certainly, but not complex.
Are there any recordings that you recommend? I'm interested!
This an example of tala adi. There are more complex talas in this same style.
http://www.youtube.com/v/jxYP0uqHh4o
Quote from: Franco on October 25, 2009, 05:42:37 PM
I am not talking about the guitar, but the singing. The vocal lines are very complex, unless you just gloss over the nuances and think of it reduced to its most basic elements, but if you did that and notated a melody stripped of those nuances, when someone played it back it would simply not sound like the original but a bland simplistic echo.
I think you're seriously underestimating the complexity of Western classical music. Just because there's a score, doesn't mean that that represents everything a performer must do. Think about putting all the parameters into a computer programme like Sibelius - the music that comes out is nothing like a real performance - Rubato, attack, precise timings of crescendos, tone colour, precise tuning of intervals, and most of all vibrato (its width and speed) are all absolutey vital for western classical music, but none are notated (traditionally at least) - and indeed would look ridiculously complicated on the page if they were. Even dynamics have an infinite subtlety and range within what is written on the page.
QuoteMerely because some music has no written tradition (this fact is some proof of why it is complex, the nuances are nearly impossible to capture in written notation and the music is only learned through apprenticeship) does not mean it is not complex and does not involve highly technical aspects which can only be performed by assiduous study and training.
The western musical notation is designed to notate Western classical music, so I don't think it means that other music is complicated just because you can't notate it using another system. How would you notate Rachmaninov's Piano concerto no.2 using Raga notation?
Quote from: Guido on October 26, 2009, 01:46:00 AM
I think you're seriously underestimating the complexity of Western classical music. Just because there's a score, doesn't mean that that represents everything a performer must do. Think about putting all the parameters into a computer programme like Sibelius - the music that comes out is nothing like a real performance - Rubato, attack, precise timings of crescendos, tone colour, precise tuning of intervals, and most of all vibrato (its width and speed) are all absolutey vital for western classical music, but none are notated (traditionally at least) - and indeed would look ridiculously complicated on the page if they were. Even dynamics have an infinite subtlety and range within what is written on the page.
The western musical notation is designed to notate Western classical music, so I don't think it means that other music is complicated just because you can't notate it using another system. How would you notate Rachmaninov's Piano concerto no.2 using Raga notation?
I agree with most of what you say, but notating a Rachmaninoff Piano concerto is vastly more successful than notating a Delta blues performance (I am using Delta blues as merely one example of music which is outside the Western classical music context and developed outside of a written traditon). If you think I am underestimating the complexity of Western classical music (I'm not, I think it is complex too, but for different reasons), then I know you are underestimating the complexity of Delta blues music.
It is no coincidence that musicians of the Delta chose to use the slide on the guitar instead of fingering the notes using the frets, because they needed the microtones. This implies a level of complexity that is hard to capture in notation. Add to this melodic context the nuances of rhythm and meter, which some ignorant people hear as "mistakes" and you end up with a very complex style of music that is impossible for someone to reproduce unless they have studied this music from a master. You certainly could not duplicate it by reading even the most detailed score, since as you have said, even diatonic Western classical music is not fully captured in a score, and for all those same reasons Delta blues is even harder to capture in a written score.
Also, if you reread my posts you will see that I already stated that having a score is not definitive of complexity or lack of it, and vice versa. If the musical tradition grew up without a written tradition that does not necessarily mean that the music is complex, but it usually will mean that it will be hard to notate. Being hard to notate does mean that there are elements foreign to the Western classical music tradition, and this can make the music more complex than it appears on the surface since many times those differences seem to the ignorant as defects.
Look, I don't have an axe to grind, i.e. I am not trying to show that Delta blues is superior to Rachmaninoff, etc. - the topic was about complex music and I gave my opinion and the reasons why I thought so. I sure don't want to compare classical music to blues with the intention of putting one above the other in quality or meaning. I love both and appreciate them both for difference reasons - and put forward this opinion because no one else had mentioned it.
Music is not a zero sum game.
I'd say Indian classical music is pretty complicated. So are maqams.
Quote from: zorzynek on January 08, 2010, 02:27:46 AM
I'd say Indian classical music is pretty complicated. So are maqams.
Rhythmically, I'd agree. Harmonically, Indian classical it's about a simple as you can get. (Unless you want to get into natural vs equal tempered tuning...) I would say for me that a good interpretation of a Raga and Tala is definitely a "very deep, rich, multi-faceted creation".
I like the post earlier on how the "simple" can be perceived as complex, while some of Bach's multi voice fugues can seem very natural and accessible.
Too bad the Rachmaninoff never had the chance to play with a gutbucket blues band.
Taqsim from the Middle East.
I can't believe I never Ranted on this Thread. ::)