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

[pjme]

Strong adjectives and superlatives

Whatever you come across in a clickbait headline is likely to be shocking, astonishing, sensational, the best, the easiest, or the quickest.

[W.A. Mozart]

If by highly successful you mean that people who adore to hear themselves talking (or rather, to read themselves) went on and on and on making the same and the same and the same points over and over again and over and over again and over and over again, not a single one of them having changed their initial views by the end --- then yes, that discussion was highly successful. In the real world, though, that is called intellectual masturbation a huge waste of time and mental energy.

Online forums are only entertainment, nothing else. You might say that partecipating to an online forum in general is a waste of time.

[Maestro267]

No more or less a waste of time than "discussing" these things face-to-face with people.

[W.A. Mozart]

Strong adjectives and superlatives

Whatever you come across in a clickbait headline is likely to be shocking, astonishing, sensational, the best, the easiest, or the quickest.

An attractive title is not clickbait. It's only good marketing.

People use the word "clickbait" when the title lies.
For example, "Panic in the flight U4567 - All passengers have survived".
And then you open the news and you read "The plane had a failure to the left engine and reverted back the the departing airport".

The title makes you think that the passengers have surived for some sort of miracle, while in reality the loss of ONE engine is not a so critical issue.

The title of my discussion doesn't lie. It's descriptive.

[Florestan]

No, this discussion is about people who rant.

I'd like to paste some texts that people have written in an other discussion to understand what I've read, otherwise you all think that I'm speaking about ghosts.

After the line, I'll paste some texts written by MANY DIFFERENT PEOPLE.

Okay, so what? Why are you so obsessed with what anonymous people say on an internet board? Can't you enjoy your favorite music, including film music, because someone somewhere says they don't like it? Can't you sleep well over night because of that? Does that have any relevance whatsoever to your life, or anyone else's for that matter? Will the Earth stop revolving around the Sun and the Nile start flowing southward because of that?

I thought so. Then why all this fuss about such an insignificant matter?

The reasons for which I speak about this is that I think that this snobbish culture inside the classical music world is toxic and that we need to overtake it to relaunch the popularity of classical music.

Who is this "we" you're talking about? And which segment of people not familiar with, or downright dismissive of, "classical" music will Alma Deutscher's ripping off Vieuxtemps and Wieniawski, or Moscheles and Litolff, make see the light? 

[W.A. Mozart]

No more or less a waste of time than "discussing" these things face-to-face with people.

Yes, and you might say that chatting is a waste of time. I even agree with this to some extent, but chatting is a form of entertainment... and there is nothing wrong in entartainment.

[W.A. Mozart]

Okay, so what? Why are you so obsessed with what anonymous people say on an internet board? Can't you enjoy your favorite music, including film music, because someone somewhere says they don't like it? Can't you sleep well over night because of that? Does that have any relevance whatsoever to your life, or anyone else's for that matter? Will the Earth stop revolving around the Sun and the Nile start flowing southward because of that?

I'm not obsessed. I speak about it. I only think that these kind of people are toxic for the classical music world.
First of all because they always try to start fights with you and so they are unpleasant, and second, because more control have this kind of people of the classical music institutions and more the snobbish culture becomes institutional.

Who is this "we" you're talking about? And which segment of people not familiar with, or downright dismissive of, "classical" music will Alma Deutscher's ripping off Vieuxtemps and Wieniawski, or Moscheles and Litolff, make see the light? 

I have a youtube channel called "Classical Music & Soundtracks".

https://www.youtube.com/@ClassicalMusicAndSoundtracks/videos

Most of my videos can be inserted in one of the two following categories:
- Concert works of classical music with pictures of beautiful landscapes (most of theme are works of Mozart, Mendelssohn and Beethoven)

- Soundtracks of films with pictures from the film.


Regarding the second category: the soundtracks of films are published as suites, and to listen to a full suite requires a lot of time... and as you can imagine a lot of pieces in the suite are not so interesting once extracted from the film.

What my channel does is to compress a suite of one hour into a small suite of 15-20 minutes.
How I do this? I listen to the full suite and I take notes of all the themes I hear.

The following for example are my notes for the suite of "Beautiful Mind" (James Horner)


The exclamation mark means "interesting piece".

MT means "main theme".

T2, T3, T4, tn,.... means theme 1, theme 2, theme 3, theme n

"climax" means the the piece has a high energy and emotional impact.


-----------


A Kaleidoscope Of Mathematics ! (T2, MT, climax)

Playing A Game Of "Go!"

Looking For The Next Great Idea (MT)

Creating "Governing Dynamics" ! (T2, MT, climax)

Cracking The Russian Codes ! (T2)

Nash Descends Into Parcher's World

First Drop-Off, First Kiss (MT, T3)

The Car Chase ! (T3, climax)

Alicia Discovers Nash's Dark World ? (T3, climax)

Real Or Imagined? (T3)

Of One Heart, Of One Mind ! (MT, intro?)

Saying Goodbye To Those You So Love ! (T3, MT, T2)

Teaching Mathematics Again (MT)

The Prize Of One's Life...The Prize Of One's Mind

All Love Can Be ! (MT)

Closing Credits


-----------



Once I've produced these notes, I eliminate all repetitions by taking only ONE version for each theme. Of course the version that I select for each theme is the one with the exclamation mark.

Only the main theme is repeated twice: at the beginning and at the end. For the final repetition, I always take a piece marked with "climax".

So, the usual structure of my videos is the following:
- Exposition of main theme
- Best version of theme 2
- Best version of theme 3
- Best versionf of theme 4
- Best version of theme n
- Final reprise of the main theme with climax


This is how I was able to reduce the suite of "A Beautiful Mind":
00:00 Of One Heart, Of One Mind [main theme]
06:22 Cracking The Russian Codes
09:44 End Credits [final reprise of the main theme with climax]

In 16 minutes you hear all the themes of the soundtracks (MT,T2 and T3).

Basically, I create summaries of soundtracks and I give them a structured form, so that they make more sense outside of the film.



Now, the point is that this format is more successful in respect to the other one: concert classical music with pictures of beautiful landscapes.

My most popular videos are the ones of the second category.

My most successful video is this one (20'879 views). the soundtrack of the film "The English Patient".

The video is structured as follows:
00:00 As Far As Florence (exposition of the main theme)
05:16 Opening
08:54 Read Me To Sleep
13:56 Let Me Come In (final reprise of the main theme with violin solo)

What I want to say is that we need to understand that in the modern world soundtracks might be more relevant for most people in respect to the concert works of our beloved historical composers.

Do you want to ignore classical soundtracks and pretend that they don't exist? Good, but then don't ask why classical music is probably losing popularity. This is what happens when you snob the tastes of people.

My point of view is simple: if the soundtrack of The English Patient is so appreciated by the public, you should play it in the concert hall together with the symphony 40/41 of Mozart.

A lot of people will come to listen the English Patient, but they will also hear the Mozart's symphony... and some of them might realize that they like it.

I've created this video to try to attract the fans of soundtracks inside Mozart's music and I'd like to see more initiatives like this instead of people who snob soundtracks and their fans.

[pjme]

[Roasted Swan]

or just "STOP!!!" 

[Florestan]

I'm not obsessed. I speak about it. I only think that these kind of people are toxic for the classical music world.

These people, besides being entitled to their opinions, have zero relevance for the classical music world at large.

First of all because they always try to start fights with you and so they are unpleasant,

Excuse me??? Both here and on TC it's you who started the whole kerfuffle. They wouldn't have expressed their negative views toward film music had you not started the topic in the first place, and in a belligerent manner for that matter. It's you alone who is responsible for providing them a reason and a place for trashing film music.

and second, because more control have this kind of people of the classical music institutions and more the snobbish culture becomes institutional.

Please, show me one single real-world musical institution controlled by these people.

[W.A. Mozart]

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

Isn't this also the structure of the Pachelbel Canon? If yes, it means that this structure is born inside classical music and not inside popular music and that the latter has simply borrowed a technique from classical music.

However, is Pachelbel an outsider? I doubt this: usually the composers are inspired to the works of other composers, so I suspect that there were many works written like this in the period/location of Pachelbel and that the Pachelbel Canon is simply the most popular work of this category, but not the only one.

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.

Why do you relate the harmonic structure with the matter of microclimaxes vs macroclimaxes? Do you need repeating chords to create microclimaxes?

The works of my two favourite composers - Mendelssohn and Mozart - contain a lot of microclimaxes in a row, and this is probably why they are my favourite composers. They maintain high tension throughout the entire piece.

A good example is the last movement of Jupiter.

The entire exposition is full of microclimaxes and at the end of the exposition there is the big climax.

In the development section, the themes of the exposition are dramatized, they become darker.

Probably what you wanted to say is that if a piece has a slow development is probably a piece of classical music, and not that all classical music is lacking of a constant dose of climaxes.

I'd say that most romantic symphonies are full of microclimaxes and I'd even say that this is obvious: they people didn't go to the symphony to sleep.

[DavidW]

Everyone, let's please follow the golden rule and engage with WAM's ideas and not who they are as a person.  And previous history on another forum should not be relevant on this forum.  I also know that the mods on TC also don't allow the same about this forum nor CMG.

[DavidW]

Seriously - you must try and listen to some of his work.  Instantly appealing I reckon....

Alright queued up for today!

[vandermolen]

I see people talk about Braga Santos a lot here, but I don't know his music myself.
Could be one of the next composers to check out someday...

Definitely! Try symphonies 3 and 4. (1 and 2 are also excellent).

[Spotted Horses]

I agree with this and this is is basically what I'm trying to say in this discussion. If the definition of classical music is generic and not scientific, why do many people swear for the fact that some film music is labelled as "classical"?

...and why do you swear for the fact that film music isn't? It's a grey area. Speaking for myself only, very little strikes me as really being classical, and the composer would have to extract a symphonic suite to make the music stand on its own, as Vaughan-Williams did for the seventh symphony and as many composers of ballet music did for their stage works.

[Luke]

Isn't this also the structure of the Pachelbel Canon? If yes, it means that this structure is born inside classical music and not inside popular music and that the latter has simply borrowed a technique from classical music.

Yes, this is true. But note that a) it isn't coincidental that Pachelbel's Canon is about as close to 'popular music' as 'classical music' gets; that the Pachelbel canon sequence is famously used in a large number of pop songs; and c) that this technique of playing over repeating chord patterns was born in the popular music of the day eg the Passamezzo antico or the Romanesca (there are many more). In other words, that the short repeating chord sequence has always been a particularly popular and accessible form - relatively easier to play, to improvise on, to extend, to remember, to add new words to, to join in with.

However, is Pachelbel an outsider? I doubt this: usually the composers are inspired to the works of other composers, so I suspect that there were many works written like this in the period/location of Pachelbel and that the Pachelbel Canon is simply the most popular work of this category, but not the only one.

Yes.

Why do you relate the harmonic structure with the matter of microclimaxes vs macroclimaxes? Do you need repeating chords to create microclimaxes?

I think you are misunderstanding my use of the term microclimax - which is fair enough, as I am using it in a way that I'm rather making up! For me it doesn't mean simply a smaller or subsidiary moment of climax, but instead something that happens on an almost imperceptible level. When we journey from one chord to another each one adds a new step on the journey, a new harmonic vista opens up... but with a repeating chord pattern we quickly return to the beginning and do it again, which gives us this small sense of release at having completed one cycle and started a new one. It's as if every four bars (usually four) we get a tiny thrill of pleasure at this return, over and over again. Because in much 'classical' music this repetition is absent and the harmonic development is more spun out and complex, the release takes longer to happen, but is bigger - more of a real climax - when it does.

The repeating chord sequence can do some quite subtle things that would be hard to do in any other way. In this song for example

the unusual harmonic movement, especially with the third chord, imbues the whole song with an interestingly hard-to-pin-down atmosphere. The four chords move from:
1) the comforting solidity of the home major chord, I
...to...
2) a tiny movement in the bass which turns major to a questioning minor chord, III
...to...
3) an interesting thirdless chord, neither major nor minor, which adds an open and unsure quality to the music, VI
...to...
4) the broad solidity of a subdominant major, IV, which shares a pivot note with the previous chord thus resolving it in a satisfying way, but which itself prepares for the return of 1)

The song then repeats this pattern over and over, so that our minds are filled with this repeating progression of feelings. When I teach children about this I ask them what the mood of this song is. They always find it hard to pin down - and this repeated journey from away from and back to major I, via that mysterious third chord, is why.

The microclimax here, then, is simply that return to I, reinforcing itself over and over for most of the song's length.

In general 'classical' music does not do this but, like the Chopin E minor Prelude, it explores a longer, more varied and less repetitive journey. Again, I am not making a value judgement, just observing a difference.

The rest of your post rest on the wrong assumption of what I meant by microclimax.

[71 dB]

Definitely! Try symphonies 3 and 4. (1 and 2 are also excellent).

Thank! At least I have an idea were to start. 

[steve ridgway]

What I want to say is that we need to understand that in the modern world soundtracks might be more relevant for most people in respect to the concert works of our beloved historical composers.

Do you want to ignore classical soundtracks and pretend that they don't exist? Good, but then don't ask why classical music is probably losing popularity. This is what happens when you snob the tastes of people.

My point of view is simple: if the soundtrack of The English Patient is so appreciated by the public, you should play it in the concert hall together with the symphony 40/41 of Mozart.

A lot of people will come to listen the English Patient, but they will also hear the Mozart's symphony... and some of them might realize that they like it.

It makes sense to program music that people want to hear, I believe this sort of mix is what Classic FM broadcasts.

[71 dB]

2) a tiny movement in the bass which turns major to a questioning minor chord, III

I think popular music appreciates chord three more than classical music.

4) the broad solidity of a subdominant major, IV, which shares a pivot note with the previous chord thus resolving it in a satisfying way, but which itself prepares for the return of 1)

I think I generally prefer IV-I Plagal cadences in music to V-I Perfect cadences.

[Karl Henning]

First post on the thread Karl.

Ah, yes, I'd forgotten that it included a YouTube link to Braga Santos. I guess the tortuous 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! prompted an immediate tune-out.