Those of you (most, by the looks of things) who don't care about classical music...

...how do you justify it?

And not just classical music but any kinds of music that don't revolve around the rock/rock'n'roll culture and its modern descendents such as indie/metal/punk etc.

Anyone would think that other kinds of music just didn't matter!

 

I love classical music... I'm trying to piece out sorcerers apprentice on guitar right now.... sounds badass cool......

 

Actually, I love classical music. Among my favorites are The Four Seasons by Vivaldi and Fur Elise by Beethovan. We listen to many different musical genres in our home.

 

I used to be obsessed with Johann Sebastian Bach. I think I read every biography I could ever get my hands on, on every single classical/jazz composer I could find. I remember the story about Bach and the fish heads and whatnot. I also had an obsession with Cab Calloway, John Coltrane, Sun Ra... Trust me, if I see a bio on any musician, I'll read it. I read Bob Dylan's Chronicles in a day.

 

ooooo in yo' FACE emo wusses!!

 

Oh God.

That's all very well but it's not even scratching the surface. What about the great big symphonic works? Operas, Ballets, Oratorios. Vivaldi is on my list of composers who really get up my tits. It's all scales, arpeggios, effects and cycles of fifths. It just doesn't even sound music to me any more. Fur Elise is cool, especially because any fool can play it on the piano, and sound like a great pianist, but when you think about the great music that Beethoven gave us, well Fur Elise doesn't really enter into it.

Other composers I really can't stand include Mozart, Britten and all those muppets who gave us experimental music like John Cage and Steve Reich. I admire Arnold Schoenberg though because although his tone-row experiments were hideous, he actually wrote some really gorgeous stuff before going down that route and really did know his stuf, unlike Cage who did what he did because he couldn't be arsed to do things properly. I don't like music that's all about a single idea rather than about arranging sounds in a deliberate way to create a pleasing effect. Fact is that steve reich and john cage had some really interesting and cool ideas of alternative ways of making sounds. What they didn't do is make an effort to turn those ideas into music that is worth listening to in its own right. A good piece of music should be strong enough to be appreciated without knowing how it was created, and you certainly don't get that out of experimental music.

My favourite composers include Bach, Beethoven, Berlioz, Shostakovic, Rachmaninov and Bartok. But the exhaustive list of my favourites is indeed a long one.

 

dvorak rocks too.....

 

I used to like listening to classical works, on full blast, while writing or doing homework. Haha, flight of the bumblebees...

 

did we all forget Paganini?

 

How about Liberrrracccccccchichi?!?!

 

I guess I could answer your original question. It's not that I only like Rock: most of the music I listen to is older and more acoustic, but I don't enjoy classical music. It's not that I think it's "bad" music, but I guess that my brain doesn't comprehend music all that well and listening to pieces without lyrics just doesn't do anything for me. I know that there is emotion and passion in it, but I can't sense it. Music that I consider enjoyable must involve a human voice, and it must be used as a voice and not just another musical instrument (as is the case in opera, as well as much pop music). Voices like BB King's, Jimi Hendrix', Bob Dylan's, Bob Marley's - when singing powerful lyrics - are perceived by my mind like no melodical tune ever will be.

 

I personally love Beethoven. I think its amazing how he composed his music. Did you know he was def?

Let the music be your master
Will you heed the masters call?

 

What does def mean? I've always wondered that. There's a band called the def tones isn't there? I did know that Beethoven was deaf though, well certainly by the end of his middle period.

Incidentally, I'm quite the opposite. I don't pay too much attention to song lyrics. Really good lyrics do stand out but most of the time I don't even make an effort to try and make them out, particularly as in a lot of popular music styles you've got to have a talent for understanding what the singers are going on about. I really don't subscribe though to the idea that music is about lyrics. There is a lot of vocal music out there, including Rossini's bel canto operas that is driven by the idea that the vocalist is the front line and everything else is merely there to support it. You get it a lot in RnB and Pop as well, where it's all about the singer or the rapper and everything else is just there to provide a beat and a simple rhythm. That's not what it should be as far as I'm concerned. The vocalist is not the most important part of a piece of music. The vocalist is merely the focal point where everything comes together and all the musical lines are defined by the lyrics. But as a single part, the vocalist is no more important than any other part. Ironically though a lot of rock music doesn't do this. The vocal line is simply a distillation of everything else going on in the background, a lot of the time, and in a lot of rock tracks the singer is rather understated is driven along by the rest of the band. However, the other side of this in a lot of rock music is that what the instruments are playing is often not very involved. It's a solid wall of sound that can support anything, but with a limited range of timbres and harmonies. In fact I've heard bands who religiously play all of their songs in the same key, but I'm sure that's not what generally happens. Of the two means of expression, it's language that is inadequate, not music - that was the philosphy of Mendelssohn anyway and I tend to agree with it. It's very easy to set words to music, you've got the words all set out and you can already hear chords and rhythms and melody lines and instrumentations that would help bring the words to life. But try taking a piece of music and writing words to it - you'll find it extremely difficult to capture the meaning of the music with words.

 

yeah but he wasn't to begin with, he was able to hear when he wrote his most famous pieces like fur elise for example, and then he just became deaf and was able to write pieces too

 

Man, but check out his work right about the time he went deaf, as well as the 10 years afterward. Apassionata in particular. That's when the genius really poured out, even if it's not as popular.

He was completely deaf by around age 28. But I've read that he didn't simply go deaf (silent) like most people think. Instead, he lived out the last 30 years of his career with an awful, ear-splitting whine in his head. Try this: put on a radio headset, crank it up to 10 and walk under a power line. Then try to sing "Mary Had a Little Lamb", let alone write a half dozen symphonies.

Nicely put.

I don't think we'll find anyone ignorant enough to say "classical sucks", if that was the intent of this thread. But like all musical genres, it has different appeal to different people. So I fully understand people who say they don't care for it.

 

The original intent of this thread was to get people to come out and discuss classical music and what they like and dislike about it properly. If I'd just said "who here likes classical music" the result would be a series of uninformative replies saying "yes, such and such if my favourite piece" and nobody would be any the wiser as a result. It'd be nice to actually get people talking about the music itself, analysing and criticising it properly instead of just listing things that they like or dislike. That goes for every genre and not just classical music. You've got to admit that most of the threads in this part of the forum are really crap as far as discussing music goes. It's just lists of people's favourite bands and songs or pieces and that doesn't tell anyone anything new about the music. If you know the music it's nothing new, and if you don't then you're no better informed about it.

I'd really love to read analyses of people's favourite rock tracks but so far no-one's ever given one, apart from maybe the occasional look into meanings of lyrics. By choosing classical music to discuss at least it gives everyone a chance because whilst most people are divided on modern genres of music, there's something in classical music for everyone, and also everyone knows how to analyse it because analysis is something associated more with classical music than any other sort, even though in an ideal world people should be able to analyse all the music they like or dislike in order to discuss it properly.

 

^ Cool. But I still would like to see a troll come in here just for laughs. (Mmm... Eine Kleine Trollmusik.)

I agree, it would be nice to really sink our teeth into a musical discussion. So let's do it, damnit. And it doesn't matter if you don't know all the vocabulary, because I sure as hell don't. Ok, so what's your favorite piece, and more importantly, WHY?

 

Rachmaninov is an absolute legend...you can't just say "i hate classical music" coz it's just way too broad...of course there's baroque/romantic etc....too...um....ahhh rachmaninov that piano concerto the one in c sharp minor..so powerful! ahhhhhh....bootiful *smiles*

i had my last a2 level exam today..it was music listening and analysis. unfortunately we had to analyse cage, berio and reich....i sort of liked reichs hypnotic piece(new york counterpoint) it has this pulsing bass clarinte bit at the bottom which feels alive.....but the cage [prepared piano ahhhhhhhh how evil! he's trying to be clever with his specially structured bar scheme....it annoys me though...largely coz of him disfiguring the piano.... *sniffles* if he wanted to create it that badly he shoulda made his own piano and put stuff in it....

berio....was interesting....sequenza for female voice-lots of experimentation on the different uses of the voice....but the score was hard to follow and it was a bit vague....wasn't as bad as john cage though..

i'm sort of a mozart fan *blush* each to their own i guess. i just like the pretty pieces he comes up with..and plus it's not too hard to play his compositions either....beethoven is another one of my favourites: there was a great programme on the bbc the other week which had beethovens life story...yeah....he had a ringing in his ears-tenitis i think it's called.

i'm gonna end my post now, i bet you haven't even read this far..i wouldnt blame you!

 

*wonders if Lozi can play the Rach 3*
*and if so, are you wearing any pants?* <- obscure reference to the movie "Shine"

 

lolop i've never seen shine....sorry...

the batman soundtrack sounds good, i heard on classic fm the other day.

film music is another sort of music that should be looked into. did you know most of the film composers jsut write about 5 notes and leave the rest to everyone else? well..i say most..but actually i'm only referring to a few composers i've been informed about. eg.zimmer
. and that the reason alot of film scores sound like other pieces of music, isn't actually the composers fault but the director of the films fault coz they want it to sound a certain way and refer the composers to specific pieces of music and the composers sometimes just lift the piece note for note....example:star wars (the first one that came out...so episode 4 i think) in the throne scene the music to that is apparently jsut a sped up version of a famoose piece....