Annoying things in classical music (just for fun)

[stevensk]

What are your annoyances? Here are som of mine:

a) Coughing during a concert

b) The view that musicians were better in the past

c) The view that classical musicians are square and boring

d) The question to a young classical musician: "Do you listen to any pop music?"

e) The view that all young musicians nowadays sounds the same

f) The view that all asian musicians sounds the same  (they dont!!)

g) The view that all asian musicians are copycats

h) Untuned piano when you are invited to play a concert

i) The view that you cant be cute, young and good at playing Rachmaninoff, Beethoven or Bach

j) The view that you are a very intresting musician if you are young

k) The view that everyone that doesnt have the same opinions and musical taste that I have  must be almost ton deaf  or poorly trained

l) The view that musicality is entirely innate

m) The view that classical music are "relaxing"

n) Teenagers playing Chopin etydes

o) The occult, unexplained view like "the art lies between the notes" or "in the pauses"

[outin]

a) Bachism
b) Classism

[stevensk]

p) The view that you cant use sustain pedal when playing Bach

q) The view that handspan is important if you want to be a pianist

[mjames]

Handspan doesn't matter...unless if they're really really small, like a toddlers hands. Plenty of successful pianists have small hands, it's all a matter of technique.

And what's wrong with teenagers playing chopin etudes? Lol

[quantum]

Satisfaction in the mystery of the unexplained without effort made to greater understanding. 

Labeling "smoke and mirrors" to a technique that a person does not fully understand. 

Elitism among art music listeners and performers.

Academics that don't play instruments, never attend live music, never listen to recordings, yet label themselves as "professional musicians" because they have degrees in music research.  They can write tomes on any microcosm of music yet don't have a clue of what it is to even play a simple piece. 

Iconification of certain highly regarded composers or pieces or music.

Intolerance of diversity in performance interpretation and musical thought. 

[coda_colossale]

Rockers or other musicians speaking belittlingly of classical music(ians). Dude, do you even read music?

[thorn]

Hate (this thread itself and all the kind of things people are saying)

Music isn't meant to be about hate.

[gyzzzmo]

I actually tend to find other 'classical persons' most annoying, who claim things like:

-there is only one way to play all classical pieces
-theyre sure thats the way the composer wanted it (like composers can never admire new ideas or originality?)
-other types of music are always of lesser quality than classical music (too often seen among older generation classical teachers/musicians)

[visitor]

competitions (as they are currently/traditionally done). if they would run them in a way that makes sense, that would be a different story.

i.e. have the contestants all learn the same piece. Have them all play the piece. judge them on that piece. that makes sense. 

[stevensk]

r) The view that says "if you are good at sightreading scores, you cant be good at improvise, playing by ear or by chords"

s) The view that states:

1)  "If you play pop, you cant be a serious classical musician
2)  "If you play and love classical music you cant rock"
3)  "If you look like a pop star or fashion queen you cant be a serious classical musician"

[j_menz]

People who misspell "etude". 

n) Teenagers playing Chopin etydes

[Bob]

The belief that anything x-composer wrote is great.  And that if something is written by another composer who's not in the "top 100," it's automatically garbage.

Pigeon holing.  You play x piece or listen to y piece, so that's what kind of musician you are.  If do or say that to a person in a different area, then they think you're not in their area.  Ex. Mention practicing jazz to a classical pianist... You're a jazzer and not really a full classical pianist.  Mention classical to a jazzer... You're not a real jazz person.

That the solution to problems in playing is _____. This comes from musicians.  I think things are more complicated for some issues than just one solution.  Problem with ____?  You just need to relax and that will solve it.  That might be one part of the overall solution.  Maybe "the" solution in some cases.  But not always.

[thalbergmad]

f) The view that all asian musicians sounds the same  (they dont!!)

Yeh, that is rubbish.

They look the same, but don't sound the same.

Thal

[stevensk]

I think the most annoying is when my wife asks me:  "are you still working or just playing?"

[Bob]

Yes.  That you're just having fun while practicing.  It's not work at all.  You want to be there.  And it's all just fun.

[quantum]

I prefer to call it groundbreaking research on cognitive processes of "doodling" while at the piano.  Discoveries in this discipline could lead to greater understanding of how the human brain process auditory stimuli.  

No, you are not just "playing"  

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Snobs.  

And we ALL know who those people are.  They're the people who worry about what the heck the freaking performer is wearing!  Like pregnant dog stop worrying about what Yuja Wang is wearing and enjoy the *** music!  She can wear whatever she wants!  They're the ones who rail on all the new performers and hail the old ones.  They're the ones that rail any other genre besides classical.  They're the ones that freaking bring the score to the performance and freaking annotate the score while listening to it.  pregnant dog put the score down and enjoy the freaking music!  They're the ones that get mad at you for not sitting in your assigned seat.  pregnant dog, we couldn't find our seats and nobody was sitting there!  Are these YOUR seats?  NO.  So shut the *** up and enjoy the music.  They're the people who get mad at you for making a few small mistakes and/or intentionally not playing EXACTLY according to the score. pregnant dog shut the *** up there's like 50k notes in this piece and I only changed like 5 and missed 7!  They're the people who hate Asians.  They're the people who dress in tuxes and prom dresses for a freaking rehearsal concert.  

A god I could go on and on...

[kakeithewolf]

The attitude a lot of people have that Classical music is either "relaxing" or "dramatic" really pisses me off at times. There is a whole spectrum of emotions that are portrayed across the entirety of the repertoire of even a single era. It is NOT a binary system of halcyon/bold.

Coughing during concerts is annoying as hell as well. I remember listening once to a particularly good performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and during the third movement, there was a guy who coughed as if he was trying to expel his lung out his throat.

On a similar vein, during long pieces with lyrics, I hate where the lyrics are on separate pages, and at a given point, the performance gets drowned out by the sound of an entire venue turning the page on their program. It is simply atrocious to me.

Elitist attitudes, the concept that the greats are long dead, the idea that no new classical music is good... there are countless views and dogmatic principles that are widely held and practiced that I can't stand in the least.

[liszt1022]

I don't want to get whoa deep or anything, but I don't like classical music being labeled with easy adjectives like "happy," "sad," "angry," etc.
Music done right, to a receptive listener, can reach emotions past what words can describe.

[quantum]

Jury members and professors that are more concerned with the term report and jury repertoire list than listening to the student perform.  It is a performance course, so listen to the performance!

I once accompanied a singer for a jury.  The singer was grilled for 10 mins after performing for the jury for using the wrong repertoire list form.  The jury member seemed totally disinterested in the music the singer just performed and the hard work that was required for an entire term learning the music.  What was wrong with the form?  It was last years copy that was in a different font. 

[quantum]

They're the ones that freaking bring the score to the performance and freaking annotate the score while listening to it.  

Hmmm.  Will bring the score to 4'33, and annotate it at the next concert.   

[stevensk]

Classical musicians accompanies pop, rap, house, trans, wropps, ripps, wrapps, rock stars


Dont you annoy it? ..or am I getting old??

[j_menz]

Hmmm.  Will bring the score to 4'33, and annotate it at the next concert.   

The original Latin or a translation?

or am I getting old??

Gotten, methinks.

[nanabush]

Annoying thing for me:  SNOBS

Students who take a first year musicology course, and feel like they are entitled to crap on any music written from 1990 on.  People who are overly obsessed with harmony and form, and don't give a crap about instrumentation.  What about a piece that uses a brilliant ensemble, but is harmonically simple. 

Some people drool at a name, similar to the way people drool when they hear the name Lady Gaga (except I'm talking about classical musicians saying that every work by so-and-so is a masterpiece).

I also find it odd that today there is a huge divide between music written by scholars and music written just for creative expression (and nothing beyond).  There is music written like a blueprint that does not spark the imagination of most listeners (except for a small group who can understand and appreciate).  There is also music that by some unknown force can appeal to a huge population but the select few do not appreciate it because it is simple. 

What bugs me is that classical musicians feel it is their right to hate on contemporary music like they are the Westboro Baptist - f*cking church.  I just want to broadcast a huge "GET OVER IT". 

[Bob]

André Rieu annoys me a bit.  Seems fake.   And a bit pastel.

[coda_colossale]

for creative expression and nothing beyond.

Why would we need anything beyond?

can understand and appreciate.

Understand what? Eight f*cking minutes of air raid sirens and random clusters? There is nothing to understand there. Appreciate Bach or Chopin if you want to clap your ass off...

[j_menz]

There is nothing to understand there.

x) People who assume that because they don't understand something, it has no meaning.

[outin]

x) People who assume that because they don't understand something, it has no meaning.

or

Ö) People who think meaning is the point of everything.

[nanabush]

My ISSUE is that there is even a debate in the first place.  It has been everything but proven that music is used to express pretty much anything.  It is effective in car commercials (or else the marketing team would have stopped putting in music), it can be poetic, it can be meant just for sheer 'noise', it can be used to amplify the gravity of a situation (horror movies), it can be the centerpiece, or it can be a complement.

There are 'schools of thought' beyond "classical vs pop" that argue the importance of music.  Just like political stances, religious stances, your favorite color, food preferences, there are music preferences too... there are probably some wine connoisseurs who only listen to the radio top 40 hits, and there are DEFINITELY classical musicians that live off of McDonalds and Coke.. both parties will say the others 'have succumbed' to marketing.

It's silly, and it easily becomes malicious.  Some people hate Bach but love Chopin.  It's cool to have your own preferences and to allow yourself to enjoy what kind of media you want.  Some people like looking for meaning in a piece -   The poem attached to my score of the Mephisto Waltz was the reason I wanted to play it.  Others like deconstructing it like a puzzle (there are performers who play Xenakis).  Others just want music to make their day just go smoother (sitting on the beach, drinking a beer, listening to some rock music).  Please, just let everyone be!

*Sorry, I am not trying to argue with anyone.  I am notorious for my wall-of-text replies that do not get to the point

[carl_h]

y) All the note-learning, it makes me tired
z) Maintaining pieces in my repertoire, I need more hours in a day
â) Deciding which piece to learn next, my whishlist is endless
-) People that take everything too seriously, loosen up!

[justanamateur]

People on Taiwan's Yahoo! Answers who tell people they must recite all the French and English suites by heart before starting the well-tempered clavier, that they must finish all (!) the Czerny, Hanon, Moscheles, Pischna and Cramer etudes AND Kinderscenen, Schubert impromptus, Mendelssohn Songs Without Words, Suite bergamasque, etc. (there had to be more because she put a '...' after these) before they touch on Chopin's etudes (even though, for some inexplicable reason, the same rule doesn't apply to Liszt's concert etudes)...

(Okay, I've only seen one person write that, but details, details.)

[justanamateur]

Annoying thing for me:  SNOBS

Students who take a first year musicology course, and feel like they are entitled to crap on any music written from 1990 on.  People who are overly obsessed with harmony and form, and don't give a crap about instrumentation.  What about a piece that uses a brilliant ensemble, but is harmonically simple.  

Some people drool at a name, similar to the way people drool when they hear the name Lady Gaga (except I'm talking about classical musicians saying that every work by so-and-so is a masterpiece).

I also find it odd that today there is a huge divide between music written by scholars and music written just for creative expression (and nothing beyond).  There is music written like a blueprint that does not spark the imagination of most listeners (except for a small group who can understand and appreciate).  There is also music that by some unknown force can appeal to a huge population but the select few do not appreciate it because it is simple.  

What bugs me is that classical musicians feel it is their right to hate on contemporary music like they are the Westboro Baptist - f*cking church.  I just want to broadcast a huge "GET OVER IT".  

I hate pop music, and I'm sure a lot of people do too, but it's not because of snobbishness - it's because of BORINGNESS. Musically, pop music is nothing without the lyrics. There are pop songs with good lyrics, but the underlying music - nothing. No harmony, no counterpoint, no form. Apart from being a good insomnia cure, I can find no good in the music of pop songs.

No, I know absolutely nothing about music. My knowledge about harmony and counterpoint are minimal. I know what Neapolitan sixth chords and diminished sevenths are, but if you show me a Chopin piece and ask me to analyse it, I will have no idea what to do. However, I do know that to listen to a piece of homophonic music with no interesting harmony (*cough cough* Yiruma *cough cough*) is torture. There really is a difference. Bach and Chopin are two of my favourite composers, but for different reasons - the former because of the intricate, interwoven melodies (counterpoint), the latter because of the chromatic harmony that really entices me. I don't have a single clue how the harmonies work, BUT I am still enticed by them, esp. in the nocturnes.

That is not to say everything written after 1990 is bad - there are Ligeti etudes for example.

P.S. To prove that I'm not a snob, I sometimes wish people clapped between movements, and screamed like crazy fangirls after a performance of the Transcendental Etudes. I also admire Valentina Lisitsa's attempts to 'popularise' classical music on YouTube - playing Prokofiev in clubs and Appassionata in trains stations.

[nanabush]

And your opinion is fine  because you aren't saying that other people's opinion on 'good' music is wrong.

The Ligeti Etudes are awesome, I've played Fém.  They are intricate, but some other people may find them boring. 

Music existed long before the idea of a Neopolitan chord, German/French/Italian sixth, secondary dominants, 'extended harmonies'...these ideas are used so we can analyze and document music.

But, saying that all pop music is boring and has no form is kind of like someone saying "all classical music is too rigid and boring".  My brother refuses to listen to classical music unless it was in the soundtrack for a movie and he can associate a picture to it.  He's not a very creative guy...he's a little ignorant about this music.  I feel classical musicians are just as ignorant to any other form of music.  Try cracking the code of jazz music.  It's insane; fine, you can probably learn a jazz piece with a score in front of it if you are predominantly classical... but 'feeling' the piece is a whole other thing.  Some jazz musicians are complete gods with harmonies, rhythms, forms, improvisation.  I'm starting to get into playing it, and this is after like 15 years of piano lessons, and holy crap I feel like a beginner all over again.  I can't talk sh*t about jazz musicians for the rest of my life haha.

The same is with rock music.  If you are put in a session with a guitarist, bassist, drummer, vocalist, and they want to you add some piano... theory and harmony will likely have no business there.  They'll just want you to 'play'.  And with the same feeling that they have.  If it's boring and simple, then it would seem very easy to do.  But it's just a whole other genre that relies more on ensemble and texture, listening to other musicians, lyricism, etc, etc, etc, than maybe a solo Etude by Ligeti might offer.  Ligeti's are complete insanity with rhythm and finger independence, but a rock band is not seeking someone who has good finger independence when they are playing a live show  They have their own needs with the music they are playing just as a classical musician does.

[nanabush]

I agree with the reasons you like Bach and Chopin though - those are very good reasons to like their music, and you should read up on the harmony they use.  It could definitely influence your own compositions if you do any of that.

Yiruma's stuff is harmonically simple - when compared to Chopin.  His pieces though have instantly recognizable melodies which a lot of people today crave; this is not because they are simple minded people (or you would be against the massive majority of the population on earth), but just because they can tell what a beautiful melody is.  I can assure you, a lot of the Ligeti Etudes do not have beautiful, singable melodies haha.

If you take any of the Nocturnes by Chopin, and just isolate the melody - they are all pretty simple, but since he wrote pretty much exclusively for piano, he had A LOT of practice to develop the complexity in his works.

Liszt has a LOT of pieces that are 'harmonically simple'... Check out Un Sospiro.  There is very little dissonance in that piece, but it's masked because he was so proficient with his technique.

There's a complex that a lot of people have: if it's an easy piece, it better be dense as hell texturally/harmonically or it's bad.  If it's a harmonically simple piece, it better be hard as hell to play, because then it's an acceptable piece.

Take the first page of the Liebestraum by Liszt (the famous one).  What about it is so much different than some of the more New Age kind of piano music.  It never veers far away from the home key.

Keep in mind too, music is something that is accessible if people are not able to take 'formal lessons'.  A lot of people treat it like a hobby, and are really not interested in learning atonal music

Have you ever taken a second language in school?  If so, did you pursue it to a master level, study the culture, read and memorize poetry, texts, etc?  If you didn't, imagine someone who 'DID' calling your efforts boring and simple.  But if you are fluent in the language, and can express yourself in a way that many people can see your intention, did you necessarily go wrong anywhere?

I know some people who do translation for a living from English -> French and vice versa; their accent may not be the best, but the work they do is solid and is appreciated by whoever seeks it.

In music there are 'levels', but seeing one ultimate level is a really 1-dimensional way of viewing something that can not be quantified.

Is something that took Chopin 10 hours to write necessarily 'better' than a song by Queen?  How can either side begin to justify their views? 

-Chopin's is harmonically more complex
-Chopin's is used for university juries
-Chopin's is more expressive

...

-Queen's uses deeply-layered vocal harmonies
-Queen's used professional studio recording techniques, mic techniques
-Queen's sold more copies

Crude example, but do you see my point?  I personally play and listen to more classical music, but I can't imagine telling another musician that they are 'wrong' in what they listen to, or that their taste in music is garbage.  They'd probably say the same to me if all I had on my iPod were Ligeti Etudes, Finnissy, Sorabji, and all other 20th century-onward music.

[outin]

But, saying that all pop music is boring and has no form is kind of like someone saying "all classical music is too rigid and boring".  My brother refuses to listen to classical music unless it was in the soundtrack for a movie and he can associate a picture to it.  He's not a very creative guy...he's a little ignorant about this music.  I feel classical musicians are just as ignorant to any other form of music.  Try cracking the code of jazz music.  It's insane; fine, you can probably learn a jazz piece with a score in front of it if you are predominantly classical... but 'feeling' the piece is a whole other thing.  Some jazz musicians are complete gods with harmonies, rhythms, forms, improvisation.  I'm starting to get into playing it, and this is after like 15 years of piano lessons, and holy crap I feel like a beginner all over again.  I can't talk sh*t about jazz musicians for the rest of my life haha.

The same is with rock music.  If you are put in a session with a guitarist, bassist, drummer, vocalist, and they want to you add some piano... theory and harmony will likely have no business there.  They'll just want you to 'play'.  And with the same feeling that they have.  If it's boring and simple, then it would seem very easy to do.  But it's just a whole other genre that relies more on ensemble and texture, listening to other musicians, lyricism, etc, etc, etc, than maybe a solo Etude by Ligeti might offer.  Ligeti's are complete insanity with rhythm and finger independence, but a rock band is not seeking someone who has good finger independence when they are playing a live show  They have their own needs with the music they are playing just as a classical musician does.

Often POP MUSIC refers to a certain type of popular music that is rather simple and not too innovative. I find it boring as well. But there are so many genres of music, that it makes little sense to talk about everything other than classical music (= western art music) as a whole, just like it makes little sense to group all classical together. In fact I think classical music (in the strict sense, as in era) can be really boring...

[Bob]

Musicians who always criticize music but never enjoy/appreciate it.  'This is wrong, this is wrong.'   Ok, I fixed that.  'And now this other thing is wrong, is wrong, is wrong.'

[quantum]

Musicians who always criticize music but never enjoy/appreciate it.  'This is wrong, this is wrong.'   Ok, I fixed that.  'And now this other thing is wrong, is wrong, is wrong.'

I'm wondering how much of that is perpetuated by the manner in which many are taught.  Overly critical teachers that emphasize what is wrong with our playing, telling us very little of what we are doing correctly.