Klarinet Archive - Posting 000477.txt from 1998/06

From: "Carl Schexnayder" <carlsche@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Serious music and entertainment
Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 00:31:30 -0400

>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..

Reply by Carl Schexnayder:
Leopold Mozart is from the Rococo Period. W.A.Mozart is from the Classical
Period. Bach's music IS timeless and, in my opinion, more highly advanced
than any other music but is
considered High Baroque. Most 20th Century Music can be characterized as
either Neo-Romantic, or Neo-Classical, (program or absolute).

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.

Reply by Carl Schexnayder:
I never liked referring to serious music as legimate music because it
implies that jazz is illegitimate.

>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!

Reply by Carl Schexnayder:
I thought that statement would get a rise out of many people and was
interested in reading reactions to it. I was not, however, including jazz
in that catagory, because I feel that good jazz is also serious music.

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.

Reply by Carl Schexnayder:
Yes, that is the stuff I was referring to. In my section of the country,
that is popular music and all age groups seem to listen to it and to
consider it THE music of today! To illustrate that point, our Band Booster
Club was giving an Adult Dance to raise money. They were looking for a
group to play for the dance. At the time, I was playing with a stage band
type group and I mentioned that I may be able to get the group to play for
free. I said, "Would you be interested in a band that would play for free,
but doesn't play country or rock and roll"? There was a long silence in the
room. Finally, someone asked: "What else is there"?

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?

Response by C. S.:
To me, Definitely!

>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.

Response by C. S.:
Yes, to a large extent, I agree with you. But I had a graduate music
education course where to teacher tried to say that all music was equal. In
other words, Elvis was equal to Bach!!!?????? Personally, I believe that all
music is not created equal and that, even given 20 compositions by the same
great composer, all 20 are not equal so, to me, all you mentioned above is
not equal. On the other hand, it is certainly far better than rap or other
popular styles of today! If all music were equal, what would be the point
of studying music and trying to learn and improve???

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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