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

[Karl Henning]

In order to destroy my thesis, you have to show that the music of John Williams has nothing to do with ROMANTICISM.

False. Complete, self-absorbed rubbish.

[Karl Henning]

And nobody has said that the music of John Williams has nothing to do with Romanticism. The problem is that its a facile imitation.

For students of music history, one telltale datum is: John Williams was born in the United States in 1932.

Now please address the Alex Ross and Corigliano quotes upthread. If we're meant to be "destroying" your "thesis".

Does he even read?

[SimonNZ]

Does he even read?

I believe this answers your question...

Finally, I'm not sure about this, but I read that some late romantic composers started to use a lot of dissonances and that someone told himself "Why do I have to resolve the dissonances?". In practice, the atonal music of the 20th century would be the the further evolution of the tonal but higly dissonant romantic music, from what I read.
And of course, the avantgarde music of today is the evolution of the atonal music of the beginning of the 20th century.

...with a "no".

[Karl Henning]

I believe this answers your question...

...with a "no".

Otto: Apes don't read philosophy.
Wanda: Yes they do, Otto. They just don't understand it.

[Karl Henning]

The late Chas Wuorinen: How can there be an "avant-garde," when the revolution before last said "Anything Goes?"

[Florestan]

Apes don't read philosophy.

Ask Engels and his working ape... 

[Cato]

I will not be going back to see what I missed here...


...but...

...let me pose this question to our 21st-century W. A. Mozart:

If a piece of classical music - Finlandia by Sibelius, which music was incredibly used in Die Hard II - or Wagner's operatic music, bits of which were used in Looney Tunes cartoons - or Schubert's Symphony #8, which was used in early horror movies from Universal Studios - has it become film music?   


If a rock-'n'-roll song is played by a symphony orchestra, e.g. These Dreams by Heart, does it become Romantic music?


The music remains what it is.  Music, and I will return to what I quoted near the beginning, a jazz musician's famous observation that there are two kinds of music: Good and "the other kind." 

I also recall Stravinsky saying that music was about itself.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/stravinsky-in-context/music-is-by-its-very-nature-essentially-powerless-to-express-anything-at-all/88A9D7A570047E2EE32DF642D54BEE15

[DavidW]

BTW if you think this thread is ridiculous, I want to remind you all to check the olive oil    

[SimonNZ]

Edit: Both of the above shows are pretty well booked out - the Batman one almost completely so dammit - I was going to go to that.

As the OP will inevitably treat this as proving that classical venues should stop programming what he sweepingly calls avant-garde in favor of more film music I'm compelled to add that the fastest sold out classical concert I've been to was for the Kronos Quartet. And the most consistently sold out genre is opera.

[SimonNZ]

BTW if you think this thread is ridiculous, I want to remind you all to check the olive oil    

88 pages!!

I encourage you to unlock that thread, invite Robert Newman back, and have our OP direct his energies into a one-on-one. "The unstoppable force meets the immovable object".

A quote from page 10 there:

I think it is pointless to really argue with Newman. He is using a typical propagandist technique. Pretend to have an open discussion but in reality ignore all dissenting opinions and keep repeating the same exact points over and over until they become branded into the minds of others. It's the famous "big lie" concept. Essentially, it's like talking to a bot. I think it won't be long until the mods are fed up with him.

[W.A. Mozart]

Well, it makes sense to illustrate musically Sense and Sensibility, whose action takes place cca 1800, with music composed in the style of that time

For sure better than what they did in the film "the piano", a film set in the 19th century where the main carachter (a pianist) plays the contemporary music of Michael Nyman, who composed the music for the film without readjusting his style.

(although it would have been even better to use music composed precisely at that time, but this is another story).

If the producers of film would simply recycle already existing music for the soundtracks, they wouldn't create new music, so the artistic value of films would be lower.

[Luke]

For sure better than what they did in the film "the piano", a film set in the 19th century where the main carachter (a pianist) plays the contemporary music of Michael Nyman, who composed the music for the film without readjusting his style.

Tellingly, Nyman's score for The Piano, which you seem to dislike/disapprove of, is a great example of the wonderful things that can happen when a composer's personal style is allowed to emerge in a score. The Piano is set in the 19th century, for sure, but it is the story of European settlers in New Zealand, trying to establish an enclave of European-style life in an environment which has never seen such a thing. The Piano itself, washed up on that southern beach, is an image of that. Nyman's music, which is based on Scottish folk songs and is founded on 19th century style figurations, grows appropriately rich and strange from the confrontation of these European materials with the composer's 'alien' techniques, minimalist and other. A whole new unique language builds up instead. It is the perfect music for the action and the themes of the film, and the fact that you dont get that but instead yearn for a simple pastiche is revealing.

[W.A. Mozart]

If it deliberately imitates classical music, it is classical music. And a pirate knockoff of a Gucci bag is a Gucci bag.

It's an extremely bad comparison, because while in the case of a Gucci Bag it's possible to define what is a real Guccy bag (the ones produced by Gucci), in the field of the subject of this discussion is not possible.

The comparison would make sense only if Classical music (the music written in the style of the classical period) was a registered trademark owned by Mozart: in that case only the music of Mozart would be Classical and everyone who copies his music would produce a pirate knockoff of the product Classical music.

Now, tell me who is the owner of the trademark "Classical music". Mozart? Mozart and Haydn? Mozart, Haydn and C.P.E. Bach? Mozart, Haydn, C.P.E. Bach and Boccherini?

Well, you should know that in the real world "Classical music" is not a registered trademark: it's an "open source project".
There is nothing which prevents Patrick Doyle (the composer of soundtrack of Sense and Sensibility) from being a composer of Classical music....


... unless you don't define "Classical music" as the music composed in a determined period (1750-1820), but is this the real spirit of the categories?
I'd say that the spirit is to define the different styles of classical music and that the time periods given by musicological texts are only vague indications of the time in which the style was common.

I seriously doubt that any serious musicologist would tell you that Classical music completely died after the 1820: for sure, he will be aware that even today there are still people who compose in that style.


However, do you know what's the difference between Classical music and romantic music? While the former has been mostly replaced by romantic music, the latter has never died.
In the case of romantic music there isn't a corpse not even from a statistical point of view. Infact, the composers of soundtracks have kept it alive.

[W.A. Mozart]

You didn't address the Alex Ross quote about film composers commonly being required to imitate pre-made guide-tracks. Nor did you address the Corigliano quote about film composers working entirely to the whims of the director without being able to realize any vision of their own.

Nobody said working for money was the problem. That's a strawman of your own invention.

It's not that I didn't address your quotes. It's that you are using a strawman, because I've never written that the composers of soundtracks are free to compose whatever they want.


Instead of using strawmen, you should declare that, according to your definition, classical music means "art music", i.e. music composed for pure artistic purposes and in full control of the composer.
This is what you want to say?

If this is your definition, we can check its consistency.


I already wrote that when I was younger I used to create rap songs for myself, so it was music created for pure artistic purposes and not for commercial purposes. I had the full control of the end product.
Would you categorize my music as "classical/art music"?


Yesterday I listened to this Piano Concerto of Ferdinand Ries.

In the comments below the video, I read: "The cliched passagework was designed to sell copies of the sheet music. Interestingly, the 1806 version doesn't have so much of this, demonstrating how commercial pressures changed Ries's approach to composition. (This recording is of the 1823/4 version.)"


Now, if you tell me that my rap songs are classical/art music (according to your definition), while the PC of Ferdinand Ries is popular music (is this the term you want to use to describe music that is not art music?), I'll respect your position, because I've always said that that definitions/categories are subjective but that every serious definition is logically consistent.


What I absolutely cannot accept, for the sake of logic, is being told that it makes any sense to say that classical music is equivalent to art music in the real world, considering the way the category "classical music" is used by people.
It's not art music, until you won't expel from the category all classical-style commercial music and you will accept purely artistic pieces which don't follow determined forms-styles.


The people who pretend that classical music is art music simply want to elevate a form-style above the others.
Yes, because in the real world the category "classical music" is used to group together determined form-styles in historical continuum between each others, and this is why no one cares about the fact that the String Quartet No. 13 of Beethoven and the Piano Concerto of Ries are pieces of commercial music where the publisher put his nose in the artistic work.
Because it doesn't matter.

If Beethoven would have composed a Trumpet Concerto with a gun to his head, we'd consider the piece as "classical music".


However, if a composer of soundtracks who writes classical-style music has not the complete control of the end product, many people will suddenly remember that classical music is purely artistic music, for then forgetting it as soon as we speak about the String Quartet No. 13 of Beethoven.

These are nothing else than double standards of people who want to elevate classical concert music above classical soundtracks. It's musical racism.

Absolutely nobody thinks this. This is some worrying drama that you have playing out in your head: that you're being "laughed at", that you're being "bashed" for liking the music you like, and you need your tastes to be approved and admired by the rest of us. But nobody cares what you like - just go ahead and like it.

250 pages on this forum after 250 pages on the other forum is still not going to satisfy that need.

It's an other strawman.

At the beginning of the discussion I was responding to this article: https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2008/apr/07/canfilmmusiceverbeclassical


Now I'm responding to the article and to the users who support its views.


I'm responding to people who say that classical soundtracks don't exist, not to people who say that John Williams is a bad composer.

[W.A. Mozart]

That is not enough. Apparently, as long as there is even one single person in the world who doesn't like what he likes, he'll cry "Snob! Persecution!"

It's not one single person.

The idea that classical concert music is superior in respect to classical soundtracks is a very popular joke in the world of classical music.

It's important to distinguish the people who say that they prefer X more than Y from people who say that X is superior in respect to Y and that if you like Y it means that you have bad taste.
I'm fighting the second group, not the first.

When a toxic and dumb culture becomes popular, someone must take the time to fight it.

Here below you see a picture of me.

[W.A. Mozart]

That is surely my impression from the concert works of his that I've heard. The corollary is, he would never have been commissioned to write concert works, had he not been a celebrity and unusually well-connected.

John Williams doesn't have to show his value as a composer with concert music, since he has already showed his value as a composer of soundtracks.

Composing solid soundtracks is not easier than composing concert music, but harder, because while composing soundtracks requires the same craftmanship required to compose concert music (orchestration, melody, harmony, and so on...), soundtracks require additional craftmanship that is not required in concert music: the ability to write music that fits a scene perfectly.

While in concert music there is not wrong music (but only music that doesn't satisfy your expectations), it's possible to support that in the field of soundtracks the concept of correct/wrong music makes sense.


This video has the wrong music, and so it communicates wrong messages (in respect to what the real scene actually communicates).

The original music, on the other hand, fits perfectly the scene: it provides the right message.

In concert music none of them would be wrong: it's only a matter of taste.



If John Williams wanted to compose concert music that everyone likes he could simply compose an orchestral suite of romantic and epic music with nice tunes and orchestrations. Nothing else than what he has done for his entire life.

The point is that in concert music John Williams uses a less accessible style, and this is the only reason for which many people don't find his concert pieces satisfactory.
I have to say that I don't care about this, because if I want to listen to the beautiful music of John Williams I know where to find it and if for his concert pieces he wants to compose more experimental, but also less accessible, music, let him do his experiments.


In TC there is a composer who praise his concert works, especially the Cello Concerto, so I guess that there is a public for it.

[Cato]

Just as there's a difference between knowing that the sun is shining, and actually standing out in sunlight, I knew these examples would be worth sitting down and listening to, and so, I've just done.

That Isoldina is a hoot!

Here are more examples of music which is stylistically similar but aesthetically very different. Pieces that prove (to my mind) that style is not everything:

Thanks @Luke !  Discovery of the year so far!

[SimonNZ]

Well, I'm convinced. I take it all back. Not calling sound tracks classical is "musical racism". And I was wrong to think your rap songs were "pure art".

And I think I speak for everybody. We owe you a heartfelt apology.

Your work here done. Congratulations. Might as well close the thread now, before some other racists show up.

[W.A. Mozart]

Nobody attacked you, unless you equate exposing flaws in your argumentation and gaps in your knowledge with  personally attacking you.

Yes, if you ignore the posts which compare me with apes and posts in which I'm described as a dumb student (the second one written by a moderator).

Perhaps you think that this is polite argumentation. I see only personal attacks and no (logical) arguments.

Otto: Apes don't read philosophy.
Wanda: Yes they do, Otto. They just don't understand it.

"If"... last I checked John Williams was not a 19th century composer following the ideals of romanticism which you learned about in high school English if you were paying attention. Were you paying attention back then?  CS types usually don't see the value in English class.  Not all, just some.  And judging by your poor argumentation and lack of persuasiveness I would say you were probably in that camp.

And so what?

We're speaking of romanticism as a style, not as a period.


To all the users who are trying to play with the notion that baroque/classical/romantic music is the music written in a determined period, and not music written in a determined style, can you tell me how do you define a contemporary violin concerto written in romantic style?

For example this one?

Do you want to call it "porridge"? Then let's call the music of John Williams "porridge".

However, if this violin concerto is romantic music, or neoromantic music, the music of John Williams can also be called romantic music or neoromantic music.


By logic, if the category "(neo)romantic music" is a subset of the category "classical music", the music of John Williams is classical music.

This is primary school logic: it's accessible even for us apes.

[SimonNZ]

No, really, your work here is done: Florestan, Karl, David and I all met earlier today and played Danny Elfman's Men In Black soundtrack, and with one voice we said "well if this isn't classical I don't know what is!"

So congratulations.

Where will you go next?