Klarinet Archive - Posting 000329.txt from 1998/06

From: Rich & Tani Miller <musicians@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Serious music and entertainment
Date: Tue, 9 Jun 1998 08:59:30 -0400

Umm, . . . Mozart is the quintessential example of classical period music, not
baroque. Handel is baroque. Bach is baroque too(I agree, Bach belongs in a
category unto himself). Beethoven kind of led the way into the romantic
period. His early music, though is very classical.

I think that the term "art music" works well to distinguish what we generally
refer to as classical music from popular music. Obviously all lines are not
distinctly drawn, especially in the 20th century. Using this term then allows
for the term "classical music" to refer to music during a specific period in
time (I'm sure that someone else remembers the dates from Music History).

The classification of music into historical periods serves several purposes. It
allows us to identify trends in various societies that influenced the way that
music was composed. It also allows us to more easily see the changes. Finally,
for me anyway, learning about music history can make us better educated
listeners and performers.

Lee Hickling wrote:

> Carl Schexnayder is bothered by
>
> > the use of "classical" to refer to all serious music, since "classical"
> refers
> >to a period in history.
>
> and I think he's right. I'm bothered too. Beethoven is classical. Handel
> and Mozart are not. They're baroque. Tschaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov are
> not. They're romantic. Bach, of course, is uncategorizable. Stravinsky is
> not classical. He's an early modernist. And so on. But "periods" and dates
> are unreliable, because Borodin is clearly a romantic, born out of his time..
>
> And as Carl says, there's no use fighting it because
> >using more precise terminology seems to confuse so many people.
>
> Jazz musicians have, or used to have, a more useful catchall term - legit
> music. I don't hear the word any more.
>
> Carl and I part company, though, when he says
>
> >Actually, I'd like to hear serious music referred to as "music" and any form
> >of popular "music" referred to as "entertainment"! The only problem with
> >that for me is that "entertainment" is not very entertaining!
>
> Serious? I can't believe he's being serious. Maybe he's thinking about the
> stuff most radio stations play today, some of it by groups whose names one
> wouldn't want to mention on a family mail list.
>
> But to grab various other names, very various ones, at random ....
>
> Was Miles Davis a serious musician? or Benny Goodman? Duke Ellington? John
> Coltrane? Bix Beiderbecke?
> Were Rodgers and Hart serious composers? Lerner and Loewe? Kurt Weill and
> Ogden Nash? George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward?
> How about Wynton Marsalis and his new Blood on the Fields?
>
> All these people and many more like them can't be dismissed as mere
> entertainers. They are musicians of towering achievement. Entertaining?
> Yes, usually. Was Mozart "serious" when wrote Cosi Fan Tutti and The
> Marriage of Figaro, or was he, like Lerner and Loewe, out to entertain
> people and make a little money? As for me, I can listen to Prokoviev's
> Second Piano Concerto, or to Goodman's Sing Sing Sing, over and over, with
> the same pleasure each time. In my book, Anton Rubenstein and Thelonious
> Monk were both great pianists and composers. Monk, of course, was the more
> original of the two.
>
> Popular music can rise to the level of high art. Of anyone who isn't
> transported by the delicacy and verve of Beiderbecke's famous solo on I'm
> Coming, Virginia, or the bitter sweetness of Kurt Weill's haunting Speak
> Low, or delighted by the masterful matching of words to music in Lerner and
> Loewe's On The Street Where You Live (its bridge alone could serve as a
> texbook for lyricists), I'm tempted to say he must have no music in his soul.
>
> But of course, neither Carl nor I is right, because there are no fixed
> esthetic standards. They are always in a state of flux, so there are no
> rights and wrongs when it comes to taste. I like it and I don't like it
> are equally non-debatable statements. De gustibus disputandum non est, as
> the old lady said when she kissed her cow.
>
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