This question deeply engages the students in my graduate course on the future of classical music, which I teach at Juilliard each spring.
The link takes you to the week by week class schedule, with links to all assignments. For an overview of the course, go here.
And this is an important question. We need a new audience. But how are we going to get one if we can’t tell people why classical music is valuable? And how can we do that if we don’t know what classical music is?
Without, that is, falling back on boilerplate — resounding phrases about our art form, repeated so many times that they’ve lost their meaning — like the idea that classical music goes deeper, emotionally, than other music. Is our new audience ready to believe that? We have to stop looking at the world through a classical music prism. Because we won’t see the world the way it really is. Better to see classical music through the prism of the rest of the world, because then we’ll know where our prospective new audience is coming from.
Dictionaries don’t help
But I digress. If you look up classical music in the dictionary, you’ll get an idea of why the term is so hard for people to define. Because the dictionaries don’t define it!
First look at the definition of jazz, from the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, whose name shouldn’t mislead you. This isn’t a concise book for students and journalists. It’s one of the standard reference works on the English language (British style), a massive two-volume abridgment of the multivolume Oxford English Dictionary, which to the extent possible includes every word ever used in the long history of the language. (Or did, in the days of print.)
Here’s how the Shorter Oxford defines jazz:
A type of music of US black origin, characterized by its use of improvisation, syncopated phrasing, and a regular or forceful rhythm; loosely syncopated dance music.
You can argue with any part of that, if you like, but overall it’s a cogent attempt to concisely say what goes on in this kind of music.
Compare their definition of classical music:
[S]o-called conventional or serious music, as opp. to folk, jazz, pop, rock, etc.
That’s not a definition. It doesn’t tell us what the nature of classical music is. It’s an evaluation — classical music is serious, and folk, jazz, pop, and rock aren’t. (I don’t grasp what they mean by “conventional.” Unless they’re saying that classical music is the central kind of music, the kind the word “music” normally refers to, while other kinds are peripheral.)
From some other major dictionaries:
Of or relating to music in the educated European tradition, such as symphony or opera, as opposed to popular or folk music. (American Heritage Dictionary)
Orchestral and chamber music, etc, as opposed to jazz, folk music, etc. (The Chambers Dictionary, a British dictionary I normally like quite a lot.)
Music of the European tradition marked by sophistication of structural elements and embracing opera, art song, symphonic and chamber music, and works for solo instrument. (Random House Dictionary)
Again, these aren’t definitions. Imagine a definition of a triangle that said, “An elegant shape, with interesting mathematical properties, distinct from a square or a pentagon.” Without saying it has three sides!
These definitions don’t tell us what the essence of classical music might be, what the purely musical factors are that make classical music different from folk, jazz, or pop. (Or, for that matter, from any number of world music traditions.)
Instead they praise classical music. It’s “marked by sophistication of structural elements.” It comes not from just any European tradition, but from an “educated” one.
And, to tell us what classical music is, they point to it. It’s symphonic music, opera, chamber music. It’s not folk, jazz, or pop.
None of which helps smart people in our prospective new audience, who might say, “Look, I know classical music isn’t rock, and I know it’s those symphonies you play in your concert halls. But what is it really? Why should I care?”
More coming on how — in my class — we went a lot further. And came up with a definition strong and interesting enough to make people care about hearing the music we make.
As the great artist “Yo Yo Ma” has said time and time again, classical music should be renamed just “music” (listen to this great “On Being” podcast interview from last year: https://www.onbeing.org/programs/yo-yo-ma-music-happens-between-the-notes/) He goes on to say “I think I would, first of all, say that the idea of classical music is kind of — the definition of it bears reexamination. In some ways, it’s a false category. It’s certainly a commercial category, because you can then — with that category, you can go into a certain world and assume that there’s a certain number of things that are going to be there.”
I wish more classical artists shared – or made vocal – this opinion, because I think bringing classical music back into common spaces more often (such as parks, community centers, pubs, malls) would broaden many people’s opinions about the music. As it stands now, bringing “classical” music to a broader, more diverse group of people will be a constant challenge because of the stigma attached to it already – that it can be “high brow”, inaccessible, and unrelatable. This is partly because of the traditional setting that the best classical music is most often presented in – expensive concert halls where each performer is dressed the same and barely makes eye contact with the audience throughout the performance, and audience members are expected to dress up and behave. Tickets are often expensive. This casts a certain perception on the music that there is almost a wall between the audience and the art itself. More and more, new audience segments expect to feel engaged with what they are spending their money on – and there is certainly a lot out there competing for people’s time (i.e. other genres of music, dance, movies, staying home and watching Netflix, etc.)
Chamber Music Pittsburgh recently held a mashup performance with classical musicians and hip hop artists at a local neighborhood gallery, allowing audience members to “pay as what they wished” (http://www.burghvivant.com/2017/01/10/chamber-music-pittsburghs-new-series-continues-with-eclectic-collaboration-bachboombox/ ) . Organizations, if they are not doing so already, should consider sprinkling in alternative events like this amongst their regular programming to reach a broader audience and open up people’s eyes to the possibilities classical music has to offer everyone.
There’s a danger in just calling a particular subset of something a generic name, such as just calling classical music “music”: it tacitly privileges that group and sets it as a norm. This is just music, but that other stuff is “adjective-apparently-needed music”, and people not using an adjective should be somehow assumed to be talking about the subset that we consider normative.
It’s just like, in describing someone, many people will mention if they’re black, Asian, etc, but not use such a modifier when describing white people.
Defining something by what it isn’t is rather underwhelming, for sure. I’ll be eager to see what you and your class came up with.
On a somewhat related note, I’m frequently frustrated by conversations that define a target audience as “everyone who hasn’t been to the symphony before.” It’s a fine starting point for a conversation, but it’s not exactly actionable. We need to dig in a bit more.
Having hosted a classical music radio program in college, I define it as “music you shouldn’t crossfade.”
I love that! But I bet there are exceptions…classical pieces you really could crossfade…
Here are a few comments which I think are very practical.
[a] I try to avoid beating my head against the wall trying to find exact definitions for things like “music” or “classical music”. I do try to find approximate pictures or models that capture the concepts fairly well.
[b] A useful observation about music is that *it can stimulate a listener in many ways*. When listening even to a simple tune, I can experience: “emotions”, bodily movements (tap foot, make faces, wave my hands, …); desire to dance; spatial associations; feel “happy”; feel “sad”; can fall into a light revery; …
[c] A big difference between “classical music” and other kinds of music (e.g. childrens tunes, commercial pop music) is that with classical music, *the range and the depth of the stimulation is much greater* than what we experience in other forms. Listening to the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth, there is an overwhelming range of stimulation or experience. There is chaos, dissonance, sweet harmony, big noise, ecstatic quietude, earthy silliness, the starry skies above, confusion, absolute clarity and certainty, near-panic, deep relaxation, weird stuff, breathtaking beauty, and more more more.
[d] In our times, the scope of the “classical music experience” is expanding. Audiences love a total experience which includes not only the music itself, but also: The program notes, the pre-concert presentations; the physical experience of the performance space; visuals that may accompany the performance; remarks from the artists onstage; the social experience of the entire event; opportunities to meet the artists; good food (what is good music without good food !!!). Also, I think audiences are increasingly permissive of performers pushing the limits. (Not too long ago, the LAPhil performed Cage 4’33”. The audience loved it. 50 years ago this would have been a bad idea) (In Ojai I attended a performance of a 5-hour work by Morton Feldman. Audience of about 150 who loved it. Definitely an extreme and wonderful experience).
[e] One way to summarize the above in just a few words. Classical Music is the “gourmet experience” of music. The goals are: Exquisite craftsmanship and production; deep and wide-ranging experience; no compromises; no limits. When things go well, the result is a rich, memorable, perhaps unforgettable experience. If there is an occasional failure, then perhaps the result is a memorable flop.
Is there a demand for this kind of gourmet music? You bet there is. (This is part of growing demand for gourmet experiences of all kinds: Food, wine, visual arts, adventure travel, …). Are there economic models which support gourmet music? I think so; but I hope that Mr. Sandow will help us all to develop those models..
The LA Phil performed Cage’s Greatest Con (4’33” of Silence) and the audience “loved it”???
REALLY???
I’m calling B.S. on that!!!
I agree that classical music is above all distinguished by the presence of a supreme architect (the composer). But when a “composter” like Cage’s claim to fame is the clever trick’s he’s invented to AVOID COMPOSING, we must draw a line there or all is lost and there is no art left to preserve and evolve for future generations.
I knew John Cage slightly. And watched him speak and/or perform on several occasions. By far he was the most joyful person I’ve ever encountered. And more free from BS than anyone I’ve ever met. A person of total honesty, total transparency, total openness to new experience.
You may think what you like (a great freedom all us humans have, or ought to have(). But I’ve been involved with performances of 4’33”, including one that I lead with the Pittsburgh Symphony in their big concert hall. The audience, quite appropriately, was divided on whether they liked the experience. But some loved it, including one who came up to me in the Pittsburgh airport as I was getting ready to fly home. She just loved 4’33”, and had various things to say about why.
The piece — this is the simplest way I can put it — creates a radiant space. In which we meet parts of ourselves that can only emerge when there’s extended silence (anyone who medidtates is surely familiar with that). And we also meet the world, as represented by the sounds that occur whether anyone plans them or not.
I could tell other stories of the effect of Cage’s work on musicians. Including what happened when Cage visited Japan in (I think it was) the early 1960s. He presented what he always presented, and the effect on Japanese composers wasn’t to make them want to make the kind of music Cage made. It led them to use traditional Japanese materials for the first time in their compositions. That’s just one more example of how Cage and his work leads you into yourself, an helps you find things you didn’t know were there. In a related example, a Juilliard student of mine was a pianist, with very traditional taste. After we discussed John Cage in class, he took very seriously what we’d talked about, and went and studied Cage on his own. The result of that, he told me, was that it helped him play Rachmaninoff.
I wonder, classytroll, what would happen to you if you gave Cage a chance?
CAGE IN HIS OWN WORDS: When Schoenberg asked me whether I would devote my life to music, I said “Of course.” After I had been studying with him for two years, Schoenberg said, “In order to write music, you must have a feeling for harmony.” I explained to him that I had no feeling for harmony. He then said that I would always encounter an obstacle, that it would be as though I came to a wall through which I could not pass. I said, “In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against the wall”.
Who is crazier? The man who, lacking the talent, decides to pursue music anyhow, or the cultish followers who cheer him on as his head goes BANG, BANG, BANG?
I’ve given Cage a chance… Read his Future of Music “Credo” a few times too. There are some praiseworthy notions there. His vision for the future of “electrical instruments” (expressed in 1937) was quite prophetic, as was his call for the creation of “centers of experimental music” where “the new materials, oscillators, generators, means for amplifying small sounds, film phonographs, etc.” would be “available for use”. That’s all fine…
But good intentions shouldn’t earn a place in the canon. Musical craftsmanship should matter as much to us as mathematical accuracy does to physicists. Here, Cage was a total failure. He tells us as much. And the fact that a few people feel “moved” by his work should not be surprising (it was the 60s, Charles Manson had an LSD music cult too).
True craftsmen master their inheritance, then take it further. Cage bungled his inheritance then invented a new reality where his lack of talent (no ear for harmony) was an asset. All cult leaders do this. Manson’s music was rejected outside his cult, so he tweaked the “reality” he was teaching back at the compound, folded the rejections into his narrative, and found another way to get famous. 400,000 views on YouTube for a single Manson track! He’s moved some people too.
When I meditate (a daily practice), it is the words of Messiaen that linger in my silence: “The melody is a point of departure. May it remain sovereign!” or “We shall not reject the old rules of harmony and of form; let us remember them constantly, whether to observe them, or to augment them…”. These are the words of a craftsman. Cage is a con.
I might suggest another way to give Cage a chance. You might, if you cared to, and had the opportunity, spend some time with people who’ve performed his work and love it, and hear from them what they get from it.
The Schoenberg/Cage story is well known. I once sat next to Cage on a flight from Syracuse to New York City. We’d both had musical business at Syracuse University. I’d gone to the talk he gave. He asked me to play chess with him on the flight, and when I won, he laughed, and said he wasn’t good at chess for the same reasons that he wasn’t good at harmony.
I think there’s a danger of being too severe about what constitutes musical craftsmanship, and for that matter, in the larger picture, what constitutes music. Certainly there are world music traditions in which harmony as we know it plays no part. Traditional African drumming, obviously. And Indian classical music. In fact any world tradition outside the west. I mention the two I mentioned only because I know a little about them. Are we to throw out African drumming because it has no harmony? It has rhythms we in the west have no idea how to render or even comprehend.
So Cage helped to start something in western music in which harmony wasn’t important. Fascinating how he played a liberating role for others whose music was vasty different from his. I may have mentioned this: He visited Japan in the 1950s, and as a result of his visit, Japanese composers (still using harmony) began using elements of traditional Japanese music, including Japanese instruments. When Cage met the serial composers in Europe in the ’50s, they began questioning their own work. They began realizing that the results of very severe serial composition sounded in many ways no different from the music Cage created with random processes. They didn’t discuss this with any sense that Cage’s work was nonsense. But rather that their severe procedures may have been unnecessary.
Finally, I wonder what you think of Cage’s notated music? There’s quite a lot of it. No more notable for its harmony than Eric Satie’s music is (to cite just one comparison). But quite striking and valid, engaging to hear.
Greg, harmony is essential to African drumming because… SCIENCE! Excepting perfect sine waves, every tone is “self-harmonizing” with the overtones above it. African drums are tuned for this so that their rhythmic patterns form hypnotic harmonic progressions. All traditions recognize this (gamelan, Indian, etc.), whether they utilize western I-V-I or not. I can’t imagine that an African drummer with no harmonic ear would be any good. The best drummers I’ve played with (African, Latin, Hip Hop, or otherwise) have all had excellent ears for harmony. Thus, I will always dismiss Cage because (for me) he does not meet the craft test. However, I will allow that he has met Debussy’s test: “Let it be stated once again that a name lives in the memory of men for various though not necessarily weighty reasons. One of the best means of achieving this is to stir the emotions of the majority of one’s contemporaries”. I’ve been stirred at least.
Hi Greg,
Please elaborate:
What, exactly, are we giving John Cage a “chance” at?
Classytroll is arguing that John Cage is by definition an imposter composer because he doesn’t compose with any demonstrable awareness of the craft of tonality, which is rooted in the science of overtones. There is a biological basis for why certain intervals are consonant to our ears and why others are dissonant. Generally speaking, this is why a pop song is catchy and twelve-tone is the musical equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. THIS is why classy troll is arguing that 4’33” is a con job, because historically composers have sacrificed the bulk of their lives studying the resonant phenomenon of overtones which slowly over time allowed simple musical chant structures to logically evolve into the craft of fugue. Then John Cage comes onto the scene and “mic drops” with LITERALLY NOTHING. That isn’t even lowering the quality-filter bar… that is removing the bar altogether. “Open-minded” BS artists and composers are two different things.
John Cage’s 4’33” is the musical equivalent of Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain.” Just because a urinal conned it’s way into the art museum doesn’t necessarily make it art. Great branding maybe, zero craft substance certainly.
From your response, Greg, I understand that you found John Cage to be a joyful person, that he was “more free from BS than anyone I’ve ever met … a person of total honesty, total transparency, total openness to new experience.” You paint him warmly, but none of your character defense supports your claim that Cage was a competent composer worth remembering. We are certainly looking at John Cage from different points on the circle because from my POV, 4’33” is the definition of BS when it comes to being reverently incorporated into a catalog of music (classical) with origins that trace back over 1,000 years that has morphed through many “skins” yet which has always held respect and dedication to the craft as it’s spine. John Cage adds nothing to that legacy in any way that I can wrap my head around.
For me to follow any argument otherwise I would need you to first define what “music” is, and second, what “classical music” is and how those terms nest together into a meta-definition of music. If we are setting the bar so low that a basic definition of music is nothing more than arranging sounds over a canvas of time, then 4’33” arguably doesn’t even make THAT cut because the “point” of the piece is to allow the shuffling of feet, the turning of pages, the coughs of octogenarians, etc. to enter into the ears of the listener to suggest that “music is all around us if only we listen for it” … which means that John Cage is no longer the “composer”, the imagination of the audience is.
So now that I have elaborated, I return to my initial question – what, exactly, are we giving John Cage a “chance” at?
Blue Frank, you might look at my reply below to classytroll. And then you might start by looking at, listening to, some of Cage’s notated music. Like the String Quartet, for instance. A work that I believe was composed the same year as 4’33”, 1950. Here you find music composed the way more orthodox composers do it. Harmony is not such a great factor, but then (as I’ve already said here) neither is it in Eric Satie, or for that matter (and very importantly) in world music traditions outside the west.
As for 4’33” and related works, here it could be important to develop some understanding of all kinds of contemporary art — the Fluxus movement, for instance — that works in similar ways. There’s quite a lot of it. One thing this could show you is that Cage isn’t alone. That he’s part of a much larger context. Art, very broadly speaking, that asks us to look at things occurring naturally in the world, or in our own experience, with the same attention that we give to formal works of art. Is this invalid in all cases, do you think?
Then you might, if you have the opportunity, go to a Cage performance by a really great Cage player. I might suggest Frances-Marie Uitti, an American cellist living in Europe. I once heard her play a Cage piece that had been composed by random processes. Her playing weaned me forever from any need to hear one musical event connected to another. In her playing, each new sound was the creation of a new universe. You need amazing focus and openness to do that. It’s part of what Cage is about.
One thing you won’t be able to do, unfortunately, is see Cage himself perform. I heard him once blow softly into a conch shell in a semidark room for 20 minutes or so. The audience was an audience of funders, not necessary the people I’d assume to be most open to Cage. They were mesmerized. We all were. It was Cage’s quality of attention, how we could see he listened to each sound he made, with no goals and no preconceptions, letting each sound inhabit the space around him on its own terms. There are larger life lessons in that. But the purely sonic experience is quite wonderful, bringing into play parts of ourselves that remain passive during performances of more orthodox, composed music, in which everything is given to us.
Finally you could talk, as I’ve suggested, to people who have played Cage’s music. A musician I know played a Cage piece called Variations IV, in which (simplifying a bit) you mark places on a map of your performing space, and do things in those places. Unspecified things. Cage doesn’t say what you should do. This musician found this greatly challenging. Found herself asking very rigorous questions about what activities truly meant something to her, which activities weren’t too easy, too obvious. She found it quite a humbling piece to perform.
Finally, you could play Cage yourself. Try doing 4’33”, at first by yourself, then for a small audience of friends, family, whoever. See what happens. Just take the piece seriously. Don’t treat it as a joke, or meaningless. Just do what Cage asks, and see what happens to you. One thing about the piece that’s not well known is that it’s in three movements, and the performer has to indicate when each new one starts. You quickly learn, when you do the piece, that you need to indicate the movement beginnings with movement, since making sound isn’t part of the piece. And that the movements have to be definite enough to be unmistakable, but not forceful enough to interrupt the listening to ambient sound that lies at the core of the piece. Not easy to do! I’ve performed the piece twice, i should say. Once for an audience of kids and their parents at a summer arts program I taught at years ago. And the second time with the Pittsburgh Symphony (all the players sat silently on stage), on a concert that was part of a series I hosted.
This is what I mean by giving Cage a chance.
Isaac, in our culture there are all kinds of gourmet music. I could think, for instance, of Josephine Foster, a singer-songwriter with a very small audience, but whose work (at least to my ears and heart) is profoundly moving. Or Lucinda Williams, who might sell 200,000 copies of her albums in a good year, which puts her very far from the mass market. but whose work is striking, original, and, from a musical point of view, quite wonderfully constructed. Or even Bob Dylan, for all his fame and his Nobel Prize. His later work, from the 1990s onward, is possibly his best (on the level of Beethoven’s late quartets), but it doesn’t have nearly the audience of his early stuff.
When you say that classical music goes deeper than other musical genres, I have to tell you that I warn my students not to say this. It’s unverifiable. True for you, and for others who think the same thing, but not true for others. I don’t know if you’ve ever read any of the classics of rock criticism, like Greil Marcus’s Mystery Train. But if you do, you’ll find people having profound experiences with rock that can easily stand next to your experience with Beethoven’s Ninth. And I, as someone with knowledge of both classical music and pop (and deep love of both) could never say that classical music is superior. it just isn’t, for me.
And we haven’t even mentioned jazz…
Greg, your point is well taken regarding letter “c” of Issac’s comment.
I must say, and I agree with Greg, when addressing a music genre as having more “depth and stimulation” than “other kinds” of music, this comparative and competitive criteria approach resulting in “this is better than that” ends in division and misunderstanding. When attempting to compare different music genres a problem usually arises which is, since they are by their nature different, attempt at comparatives of criteria washes out. This is because they’re nature is different, their materials and goals are different. Apples, and oranges, so to speak.
An example of a wash out, comparing music genres that have different constructs, motives, and goals; popular music, say Adam Levine’s constructs [form, harmonic/melodic/textural language], craft, and goals, and in comparison, Steve Reich’s constructs [form, harmonic/melodic/textural language], craft, and goals. They’re crafting music with different languages and goals, to serve a particular musical space/event.
Now, I believe, we can many times also find some similarities in disparate music genres, or music genres that seemingly have little or no connection, and that’s really very exciting and stimulating. I encourage this in my music theory courses. Take a broader view, and compare different systems of music (Western classical, and Gamelan music.) But, when comparing apples, say popular music, with other apples, other popular music, now that’s something that can lead to informed understandings of what makes it “good pop,” or what makes it very, “very good pop,” if we’re looking for something superior. Do it within the genre. Just take this idea, and now work it with comparing H. Eisler’s piano sonata, and say, J. Adam’s Phrygian Gates; hmm. Materials, goals, musical space, time/place? Fun.
I agree that there is more than one kind of gourmet music. And personally I am not comfortable with ranking one kind of gourmet over another kind. I love much of the music described by Greil Marcus, no qualifications.
However, I think that “classical music” (or rather the best classical music, not Waldteufel etc.) is in a class by itself when it comes to the sheer breadth and depth of stimulation. To properly articulate what I mean by that, I would have to get somewhat nerdy, and get specific about metrics that can be used to distinguish between different musics, genres. If anyone is interested, take a look at http://www.OMSModel.com where I have done that to the best of my ability. Good music of any kind is such a massively stimulative experience that I don’t think that distinctions can be properly made based on “how it sounds”, “what I like”, “what I love”. At that level, it all sounds great!! To get at the right distinctions, a more analytical approach is needed (and I think possible).
That being said, I will try to at least allude to what is special about (top-quality) classical music. It is that composers and performers are working with an attitude of “no limits”, “let’s swing for the fences, let’s aim far beyond the fences”, “let’s aim for the greatness in the *very highest degree*”. I think Boulez captured this attitude when he wrote “Just listen with the vastness of the world in mind. You can’t fail to get the message”. I think that this characterization helps to make clear what is so wonderful and valuable about (top-quality) classical music; there will always be a demand for this kind of music; it can play a unique role in our lives, I just hope that Greg and others can help us to wrap it in highly-successful economic models.
Does great pop music (The Band, Dylan, James Brown) belong in the above category? What I can sat now is that I love that music, and “I don’t know” exactly how it classifies in the long term. For now, I will just listen “with the vastness of the world in mind”.
I’d say that absolutely it fits in that category and in fact in our time way surpasses classical music in swinging for the fences. Classical music exists — and Boulez would be the perfect illustration of this — in a little walled garden. Whereas other music reaches out to a wider world.
As for objective metrics…the easiest thing in the world is to prove the superiority of any music you choose. Simply by choosing to favor what that music does best. This also can be quite treacherous, because one can do it without knowing that one is doing it. A good exercise for you, Isaac, if you don’t mind me suggesting it. Take some James Brown songs (for a pop example that’s quite far from classical music) and define what makes them go musically. Without any reference to classical music! Or to what you think the analytical metrics for classical music might be.
One thing I’ve found about James Brown is that the rhythmic life of the songs — which is one of the main things propelling them, shaping them, making one moment different from another, and making the whole thing transcendent — is way beyond the ability of people in classical music initially to understand. Once it’s explained to them, they pretty readily get it. (This is what happens with my students.) But they’d never think to listen for it! They have no idea it’s there.
The analytical process might go something like this. Take “Sex Machine,” one of the great James Brown songs. What a person whose main musical referent is classical music will likely hear, at first, is repetition. The same things repeated over and over again. While the rhythm goes along at a steady, unvaried 1-2-3-4.
But then, I tell my students, start listening from the bass upwards. Then you start to hear something very different. The rhythm is anything but a constant 1-2-3-4. That’s because, in classical music terms, the musicians, Brown included, are never rhythmically together. Their 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 (and even more all the subdivisions of those beats) don’t actually occur at the same moment. Just listen to the bass, take it for the moment as the norm, and see if Brown and the other instrumental players are playing their notes in sync with the bass. They absolutely aren’t.
What you have, instead, is an ebb and flow of rhythm, happening separately with each musician. (This happens even more with a great jazz group, by the way.) They all feel the same beat. Referring to it in their minds. They feel the same groove, to use the term they’d most likely use. But they don’t actually play that groove. Some are ahead of it, some behind it, some vary. James Brown dances with his voice around the groove, in front of it, behind it, right on it, above it, below it.
Once you start hearing this — even more, feeling it — you hear and understand the music in a very different way. There’s in fact very little repetition. Each moment is distinct, because the players keep changing their relationship to the groove. The sum of those changes is the flow and deep structure of the piece.
When you really feel this — in your mind and your body — it’s very hard to sit still. You want to get up and dance.
And so what are the metrics for music one of whose deepest meanings is that you want to dance to it? That it activates your body just as much as your mind and your soul? We used to devalue that in western culture. While in other cultures — African culture, for instance — the body is greatly valued.
The African connection here is very important, because in what world music is the fundamental beat felt by all the musicians, while none of them may actually play it? In traditional African drumming. And of course African music is an important source of African-American music. So it’s crucial to understand a James Brown song in relation to African music, as well as in relation (or, probably more than) to whatever musical parameters our life-long marriage to western classical music might give us.
And what — thinking more about James Brown — are the analytical parameters for music whose great performer puts himself literally in a trance? As happened with James Brown. (I also saw it happen in Tunisia, in a performance of traditional Tunisian music.) What are your objective metrics for music where that routinely (or at least somewhat routinely) happens?
Greg, could you recommend some of the better post-1990 Dylan? I haven’t been grabbed by it, but it might be that it’s all blurred together for me. If you’re mentioning it as particularly good, I should give what you recommend a fresh listen.
I’d recommend four albums, Time Out of Mind, Together Through Life, Love and Theft, and Tempest. All from the 90s and 2000a.
Three songs to start with, for a quick (well, as you’ll see, maybe not so quick) taste. On Tempest, “Duquesne Whistle,” which goes back to the classic meme of the train whistle heard in the distance. Great beat, very accessible song. (The bands on all four albums are really good.) But there’s depth waiting here. The many ways Dylan describes the sound of the whistle, different in each verse. Plus how his tone of voice keeps changing in each description. Plus the events and circumstances he alludes to. What are they, exactly? He never tells us, but I at least am almost transfixed hearing them.
Then, really transfixing stuff — two long songs, “Highlands” from Time Out of Mind, and the title track from Tempest, which is about the sinking of the Titanic. Can’t imagine how anyone with any sympathy for Dylan can stop listening to “Tempest” once it starts. “Highlands” is a song of quiet longing, for a better place. With the lost outsider in _this_ place (the one we all live in) telling quite a long story about a waitress he meets. A story that’s often laugh out loud funny, as the events slowly unfold over a blues progression. But the sense of something not right…I think Beckett would have loved this part of the song.
Something else I like, in all this work. Dylan now sounds like the old blues and folksingers who were his inspiration when he was young. Weatherbeaten voice he has now, sounds like it’s been kicking around in many not great places for a very long time.
I’d love to know what you think of these records! Whether or not you agree with me.
Greg — Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said of pornography: “I know it when I see it.” Perhaps it’s the same with what we call classical music. “We know it when we hear it.” But what is it we hear? You are right that the brief definitions you cite don’t tell us what classical music IS. They talk around it. Most definitions I have tried to come up with make classical music sound dreadfully boring.
When I taught a course in music literature for freshman music majors, I often compared Western Classical music with the classical music of the Indian subcontinent. The first question I asked students was what made these types of music “classical”? I had students look up definitions of the word “classical.” One that seemed to stand out with relation to music was: “(typically of a form of art) regarded as representing an exemplary standard; traditional and long-established in form or style.” We then often discussed if applying this definition to music tells us what we need to know about classical music (of Europe or India). I’m afraid we never came up with concise definition that tells us “what we hear” when we hear classical music.
We did come up with a synoptic view of European classical music that included its having a strong lineage over many centuries, an emphasis on composition over improvisation with the corresponding development of musical notation, the centrality of composers (with performers as transmitters to listeners), an emphasis on musical structure and strict compositional processes, a standard body of musical instrument families, standard types or genres of music (such as symphony, opera, concerto, etc.), and mentoring in certain traditions.
In comparing this list with Indian classical music, students would note the greater emphasis on improvisation and performers in Indian music, a system of symbols that allowed music to be taught and passed down by oral tradition, and participation by audience members in performers through hand signs. Otherwise, many of the basic aspects were similar even if the specific outcomes would be markedly different.
This might still be “talking around the subject” a bit. However, students often noted that such explorations allowed them to make distinctions between broad types of music and added to their involvement in listening.
We asked the question about what would be considered “exemplary” by exploring a short work by J.S. Bach (or other “first tier” composer) with a less distinguished contemporary. We also discussed how Western classical music has changed during the 20th century through contacts with non-Western music. We asked if composers such as John Cage fall into the classification of Western classical music. If so, why so? If not, why not? We also discussed how composers have rarely worked in bubbles, far removed from other classifications of music (such as folk music or popular music of the time). Of course, these discussions varied from class to class.
This is just an overview of some of the things students discovered. Even if they (and I) could stil not come up with a valid single-sentence definition of classical music, we were able to have a better grasp of knowing what it is we hear, when we hear classical music. Even though I was working with music majors here, the goal was still to make classical music more interesting and not more boring.
Wow. What a wonderful journey to take students on. I can see that they’d get a tremendous amount from it, in just the ways you describe.
Kind of like the Supreme Court definition of pornography: “I can’t describe it but I know it when I see it.”
The Shorter Oxford definition above is good but could also apply to rock. bluegrass, rap, etc., couldn’t it?
Years ago I as teaching a large lecture course on jazz history. I played a cut or two from “Sketches of Spain” (Miles Davis/Gil Evans.) A student in back raised his hand and asked me: “Why is this jazz?” I couldn’t think of a single good answer!
The definition doesn’t apply very well to rock, because while rock has some improvisation, it doesn’t have nearly as much as jazz. Improvisation isn’t as central to rock, not nearly, as it is to jazz. And jazz is more syncopated than rock or bluegrass or hiphop. Hiphop also has very little improvisation (though it did have a lot at its beginnings, where both words and music were improvised).
Definitions are tricky. They become vague at the edges. There are always shadings, exceptions, even contradictions. Wouldn’t be hard to find a contemporary classical piece that fit the definition of jazz, but in intangible ways clearly, to any knowledgeable listener, wasn’t jazz at all.
As for Sketches of Spain, first it started as a classical piece. And Miles plays it pretty straight. It also doesn’t have that intangible but instantly recognizable jazzness that we associate with jazz. So it’s an extension of jazz, done by very creative jazz people. Again showing how definitions can’t cover every instance of what they define.
Classical music is the blueprint for all Western Music. Its a musical language that we all share but aren’t aware of because it is so nuanced – kind of like body language. Classical music is a world that we all inhabit to some degree – its a celebration of the rudiments. Its folk music elevated – idealized to the highest degree.
I’m sure Bartok would agree on the folk front (and that’s high praise!).
However, “classical” is more than a cultural blueprint. True, the Catholic church had the resources to build the biggest reverb chambers and support a thousand year incubation allowing composers to explore overtones and develop a written language to maximize their impact (aka “tonality”). But that doesn’t mean western culture “owns” those discoveries any more than the Chinese “own” gunpowder. The overtones and the tonal system derived from them are essentially math. The physics of sound is universal, transcending the instrumentation fads of any given century, and is there for any culture to discover. The west just happened to get there first. Does the US own the moon too?
And let’s not dismiss tonality just because western culture spent the last century doing its best to destroy everything beautiful. WWI and WWII are over. Humanity survived. Music no longer needs to suck in order to reflect the times. Music is math and math always builds upon its discoveries. Debussy extended tonality into new modes, Messiaen filled in the gaps Debussy left open (more modes of limited transposition, etc.), but both were able to extend tonality only because they had first mastered its previous forms (chorale, canon, fugue, etc.). This age of composer con artists (4’33” of silence is a great composition… PLEASE!) will end just like all fads and the two thousands years of musical evolution will continue (with or without the bankrupt orchestras) because real composers will carry it forward as they always have, passing the baton of craftsmanship from century to century.
I agree with much of your sentiment… But it would be better to say “classical is the blueprint derived from the universal physics of sound (aka math)”.
Just as Chinese accountants gave up the abacus centuries ago in favor of better math that happened to originate in the west, most cultures have embraced the “better math” western tonality too. We just need a few more Bartoks who have the genius to synthesize all that came before, standing on the shoulders of the true giants in order to see the path forward. We typically get a handful of these each century, so there’s hope… But it may take a few decades to cull out the cons.
For the purposes of this thread, I do not claim that classical music is superior-to or better-than jazz, pop, or whatever. I listen to both LVB “Grosse Fugue”, and Louie Louie.
Attempting an analogy. I’m here in Los Angeles, which is now an attractor for the widest variety of great food.
And so we have http://www.vespertine.la/ , a no-limits, radical, expensive restaurant which aims at an all-encompassing and unforgettable experience; and also the legendary Tommys Hamburgers http://www.originaltommys.com/ . Tommy’s burger is a simpler, narrower kind of stimulation/experience than Vespertine. But that is not a negative on Tommys. Many times, the food experience I want is a “Tommys” experience. Other times, a “Vespertine” experience.
The rough analogy I have in mind is GrosseFugue==Vespertine, LouieLouie==Tommys.
For those of us who want to promote Classical Music, I think it is important to be aware of the above. And to promote ClassicalMusic without broad proclamations about superiority. But I am also not shy about saying what I think is distinctive about (top-quality) classical music. So I think my [c] earlier in this thread is fairly correct, and *should* be proclaimed.
btw, after a massive experience at a restaurant like Vespertine, I usually find myself craving something like Tommys. And after a few weeks of faster, simpler food, I desire another “Vespertine” experience. (My musical cravings seem to operate similarly; A day or two after a big concert at LAPhil, I find myself listening to all kinds of pop; but a few weeks later, I am craving another LAPhil experience. )
Isaac, with all respect, I think your mistake here is equating Vespertine to classical music and Tommy’s Hamburgers to pop. I eat at restaurants like Vespertine, and I’ve had Experiences with pop music — with Bob Dylan’s song “Highlands,” for instance — that seem equivalent to me to eating at that kind of restaurant. A comparison that I think is ironically quite apt, since Vespertine seems to be named after a Bjork album! 🙂