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THE writer and critic Nick Hornby, who has a new novel out, wrote this a few years back in discussing the songs of Ben Folds:
There is an argument that says pop music, like the novel, has found its ideal form, and in the case of pop music it’s the three- or four-minute verse/chorus/verse song. And if this is the case, then we must learn the critical language that allows us to sort out the good from the bad, the banal from the clever, the fresh from the stale; if we simply sit around waiting for the next punk movement to come along, then we will be telling our best songwriters that what they do is worthless, and they will become marginalized.
I’m not sure he’s right about pop music, or about the novel, but he’s got me thinking. Anyone else?
Traditional classical music is not sound. Sound is merely how the music is conveyed. It’s all there on the page. Those adept at reading scores can imagine the music, sound or not. Variations in performance do not vary the basic nature of the work because performance practices are quite uniform. This uniformity and standardization is one reason classical music is dying. Little new is being created. Or least the new is not widely accepted.
Very often, popular music IS sound. Countless aspects of the song are not notated in the score. Most songs are indelibly intertwined with how they are performed by the people who wrote them – or by the person who first performed them. We generally evaluate cover-performances in reference to the song’s original performance. Same story for jazz. It’s not the notes, it’s the nuance. To speak broadly, classical music is a composer’s art, while pop music and jazz are a performer’s art. Speaking in very broad terms, performers create nuance, while composers create sonic architecture. This defines to some degree the difference between pop and classical.
There might be a general principle in art that the more complex the content, the simpler the form, and vise-versa. The melodic embellishment of Western classical music is very limited compared to most of the rest of the music in the world such as Arabic music, the shakuhachi music of Japan, most Hindu music, and Whitney Houston’s elaborate “Star-Spangled Banner.”
Simple forms allow for complex and unnotatable performance practices in terms of melody and rhythm. Western classical music is more given to complex, extended structures, in part, because it is one of the very few, strictly notated musical art forms. If the large-scale structures of classical music were weighed down with the embellishment characteristic of most world and pop music, the musical architecture would collapse. And who would write a structurally complex pop song that lasts 45 minutes?
Songs are usually about love. We are more concerned with our lover’s nuance than their architecture – keep it simple and hit the right spots just right. Maybe pop songs have a simple form because love is very simple in itself, even if caringly nuanced.
So I guess that’s why the simple A-B-A form Hornby talks about suits pop music, but that also means you can’t just judge the song. Pop music is holistically intertwined with the countless qualities that are not on the page.
Of course, these distinctions are a matter of degree. Black dots don’t tell you much. Classical performers learn a great deal aurally. Much can be debated when attempting to define something as ineffable as music, something like these words, thoughts for nothing that vanish into nothing…