The word: "Classical"

[dlu]

Has anyone noticed me, or anyone else, putting quotes around the word: "Classical"...meaning "classical" music. It seems kind of demeaning to me to say that all western instrumental music (not including new age or jazz) is "classical." I find it weird to say that I'm listening to Ligeti or Debussy even and call it "classical."

Well, the problem is, if we don't call it "classical" then what do we call it?! Should we categorize music by it's historical period?baroque...classical...romantic..."modern"...postmodern...ultramodern?

ect...ect...ect.

DLu (for Bob: _@/)

[Ludwig Van Rachabji]

Just because "classical" does not refer to the historical period, it still applies to Ligeti, Debussy, Stravinsky, Sorabji, and even Glass. Sure, the sound and stucture of the music has changed completely, but it still is "classical".

I don't see why this is a problem. Why would you want to make things more troublesome than they're worth? If it bothers you to call Ligeti's work "classical", then you might as well just refer to it as "music". There, doesn't that make everything easier?

[dlu]

Just because "classical" does not refer to the historical period, it still applies to Ligeti, Debussy, Stravinsky, Sorabji, and even Glass. Sure, the sound and stucture of the music has changed completely, but it still is "classical".

I don't see why this is a problem. Why would you want to make things more troublesome than they're worth? If it bothers you to call Ligeti's work "classical", then you might as well just refer to it as "music". There, doesn't that make everything easier?

First of all, calm down...lol. I wasn't saying that music should be called by it's historical period. I was just offering an example for my "situation." It's like rock music. There is punk, grunge, rock and roll, ect... Shouldn't there be the same kinda thing for "classical."
*confused*
DLu

[galonia]

Oh, when I write, I use capital letter Classical to mean somthing from the Classical period (e.g. Mozart, Haydn et al) and small case classical to mean classical music in general as most people think of it, without differentiation between the periods, including Baroque, Romantic and Impressionist and the more contemporary periods and styles.

I guess now that punctuation, spelling and grammar are not as popular, this could cause some people problems, but not for me (I'm only 25, but I was brought up to do all these things properly).

[Tash]

i guess it's just to refer to the fact that say you're talking about classical music, you're not talking about jazz or 'pop' music- i use the term pop to refer to any 'popular' music which is the essentially 'normal' music of today, whilst the people who listen to that, just refer to it as songs, and nothing more specific.
something interesting i saw a few months ago was when i was in i think david jones (for those who don't know it's a sort of aussie equivalent to harrods and macy's and other giant shopping places) looking in the cd section, and under 'classical' they had various singers like sara brightman, and more of that contemporary easy listening kind of stuff, which i'd probably think more of as slow pop or something. and then for what i define as 'classical' they had as 'golden classical' or something i can't quite remember. so that was interesting
as for not distinguishing 'classical' further, i guess the people who do know the difference between eras already know where composers fit into that, if you're mentioning a composer, and for people who have no idea, naming classical music into baroque, romantic etc. would probably just confuse them because they don't know when composers lived- i did try to see if people knew this sort of thing by asking 'who's your fave romantic composer' and basically none of them knew who was a romantic composer, one guessing faure cos she'd played something by him before, but she wasn't fully sure if he was romantic or not.

[pianonut]

there's no guess about faure. hewould fit the impressionistic style quite well.  and, there are many of his pieces that sound 'romantic.'  but, have you compared his beginning works to his final compositions.  there's a trend toward less notes and more contrapuntal thinking. more squared, if you want to say that.  take for instance his theme and variations (i forget the op. number) or his late nocturnes.   i just find it interesting.  i'm not a scholar, but i tend to ponder why a thing is so.  just as you were pondering the term classical.  i suppose if we relied on others to tell us what to think, we'd all think alike.  thankfully, most people on this forum have pretty much their own ideas about certain things, and unless you make a good case for it being different--everyone just goes on believing what they think is the way it is.

I would say the fourth nocturne in Eb Major is very "tonal."  it has a sway to it, that reminds one of the romantic ideal of a nocturne.  I don't know if the term nocturne was one that lasted very far into the 'contemporary' style except with 'contemporary/romantic' composers such as MacDowell and others who kept it going.  Chopin probably enabled faure to think of his concept of a noctune in a more modern way.  (this is my analysis of the style/ period overlapping to a great extent sometimes)

Now, if you look at the theme and variations op. 73, you see he starts out very tonally, and by the end variations is VERY modern sounding (much more lack of tonal center in variation XI).  so, even tho the idea of 'theme and variations' was propagated by virtuosos as liszt and paganini, you have a sort of virtuosity that is transferred to knowledge of how far one can go tonally (really stretching the notes and adding lots and lots of naturals and sharps to the key of C#Major!  On a piano, that is the LEAST likely, in my way of thinking, to be the best tempered key to play in.

[pianonut]

i made a mistake calling a nocturne a term.  it is a genre and form, too, i suppose.  in french it means "of the night," tho the 18th century genre isn't necessarily what the 19th century genre was thinking.  John Field (wrote 18 nocturnes) used a texture that is associated with the repertoire of nocturnes in the 'romantic style' as he used a lyrical melody accompanied by broken chords pedaled to collect the harmonies.  this is exactly faure's method in his early nocturnes.

[Tash]

yeah but she wouldn't even know what impressionism was, it was more to do with the fact that she just didn't know when he was around!

[pianonut]

i understand what you are saying!  my teacher or someone in my class suggested a timeline in studios that goes around the perimeter so you can actually see when composers lived.  i think i might try it.  (used to paint directly on the wall of my son's room - basically the globe in square form.  he learned all the countries and states at the time because he was able to look at it a lot)  this time around, in my studio, i think i'll just put composers timeline on paper and wallpaper it. 

[Tash]

haha that's like what i've done! i've got about 80 different composer's dates, and countries (including where they were born and died) all pasted up around the edges of my windows, desk, bookshelf, etc. in an attempt to let them all subciounsciously get sucked into my memory! so far the most memorable are thos e lik scriabin, rachmaninov, schoenberg, vaughan williams, ravel, bartok and stravinsky cos they're around my computer thus i stare at them a lot!

and also, not only did she not know when faure lived, she didn't even know when the romantic era was!

[galonia]

Try this: "Western Art Music Tradition"

Definitely more accurate, but a loose use of the word "classical" is much less clumsy.

 

[ChristmasCarol]

And who can forget the association of the word "stuffy" with classical?  I'm not sure that "Western Art Music Tradition" is quite catchy enough.  I find myself thinking what do I associate with that word.  For me, it refers to music with form, substance, high level musicianship, a definable structure, yeah that's it.  It's as though it's a category that is based on ones reponse to it.  Do you take it seriously?  Does it come from a place of knowledge, courage, guts?  Sooner or later words have a limit as to what they convey.  Heck, I think about that all the time with music on the printed page.  It's an absolute miracle that we can reproduce glorious sounds from looking at all the lines and black dots.