As I mentioned in How to Fall in Love with Modern Classical Music,
Wow! Luke, I somehow totally missed that you had an interest in this subject. You even have Ferneyhough on that page! (And Murail—who was actually a teacher of mine.)
I’m about ready to forgive you for every sin you’ve ever committed—maybe even including the use of the word “classical”. :-)
Anyway, what I’m really asking is, are those old game soundtracks actually any good, or do I just have no taste?
The third option is that you like them because you played the game in question. There’s two sub-explanations here: the nice one is that you have a strong emotional attachment to the music due to having played the game, and the cynical one is that you just heard the tracks over and over when you played and got used to them.
I also like music from the video games I played as a kid, and also think that more recent video game music isn’t as good. But listening to the tracks you linked to did nothing for me. On the other hand, my brother (10 years younger than me) thinks that the soundtrack to Skyrim is the best thing ever. So I’m inclined to be skeptical of our music tastes here.
Potential hybrid explanation: Explanation #3 is true in that better sound capabilities have allowed video game composers to focus less on melody, but we only care so much about melody (as opposed to other aspects of the music) in the first place because we grew up playing games with soundtracks that put such emphasis on it. :)
It’s the melody that we associate most with a piece of music. It’s the aspect that is the easiest to remember. Pop-music is quite melody centric, I think. Older video game music is like pop-music. It’s very memorable and we become attached to it, which is why we like to hear it outside of the game.
Newer video game music is more like film music. It’s less noticeable, but still improves the experience a lot. The function of the music is to support the overall experience, not distract from it, or to be likeable on its own.
I picked those particular tracks because they’re from the original Game Boy, which has a far more limited sound capability than the SNES. If I wanted to link to my absolute favorites, I’d have picked something from the Final Fantasy VI soundtrack. This, for example.
A counterexample: I noticed and liked the music from Lufia: The Ruins of Lore despite not having played it in childhood, although I don’t rank it as being among my favorite soundtracks.
On the other hand, I’m pretty sure that at least some of my fondness for the Final Fantasy VI soundtrack is the result of playing the game in childhood; the music, in context, is a lot more moving than merely the music alone, and some of that spills over when I listen to the soundtrack. (As far as I’m concerned, Final Fantasy VI is the definitive example of how to use music to enhance a story.)
Although that Skyrim soundtrack does seem pretty good, now that I’ve tried listening to some of it on Youtube… (I’ve never played the game.)
I grew up listening to classical music because of the influence of my parents, and I was heavily involved in the classical music subculture because I shared a house with a music student.
I gradually stopped listening to classic music as I realized I didn’t really enjoy it and I merely associated it with high status. Now I almost exclusively listen to chiptunes and 90s electronic dance music. This music is much simpler than music I previously listened to (I also listened to metal and jazz), but I’ve made a conscious decision to listen to music purely for enjoyment. I now spend far less effort on thinking about music, but I’m equally happy with it, so I think it’s a win.
Were you listening to classical music of all periods, or just to “modern” classical music? I personally believe that the latter doesn’t cause much pleasure in most people who listen to it, and its (limited) appeal is instead explained largely in terms of self- and public signaling. At the same time, I find that certain works of a few classical composers of earlier periods (such as Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Debussy and Vaughan Williams [click for examples]) induce in me intensely pleasant experiences.
IIRC, J.S. Bach wrote his keyboard pieces for the harpsichord, which, unlike the modern piano, can’t change it’s volume based on how the performer presses the keys. MIDI is usually played with a similar constant volume, so the MIDI version may actually be closer to how it was intended to sound than the same piece being played by a concert pianist.
If you are fond of synthesized versions of Bach, you should check out Wendy Carlos’s “Switched-On Bach” albums. (Wendy Carlos was formerly Walter Carlos and you might possibly find old copies under that name.)
To what extend are you aware of the wonderful world of chiptune music and video game music rearrangements? By video game music rearrangements I mean thinks like symphonic concerts (my favorite is “Symphonic Fantasies”, which you can listen to on youtube and is much better than some others, like “Video Games Live” ), the Final Fantasy piano collections, ocremix.org, and the works fans put on youtube.
Anyway, what I’m really asking is, are those old game soundtracks actually any good, or do I just have no taste?
If you have no taste, you are not alone. Nabuo Uematsu is quite popular. Personally I found those exact videos quite annoying, though that might have to do with sound quality and some filters might improve them. I do, however, like the piano arrangements this one guy made to pieces from the same series: Burning Blood and a Legend 1 medley. I also love the Link’s Awakening OST and this album, which has a similar (Game Boy) sound.
I think I have fairly poor taste in music.
What do you think is a good taste in music?
My first answer would be that the concept is quite silly. (That also seems politically correct to me)
My second answer would be that it’s not about what music you like but about how varied your taste is. It seems to me that one gets more total amounts of enjoyment and different kinds of experiences from liking different kinds of music, and different qualities in music.
If you are interested in developing your taste, I’d suggest you listen to this Final Fantasy medley (I’m assuming you are familiar with the Final Fantasy music. For me the Chrono medley from the same concert was the first time I really appreciated symphonic music). Try to recognize the themes. That should be fun (at least it’s for me) and you might like the piece better after having concentrated on it. You could then pay attention to different aspects like the variation in loudness (sometimes the music whispers, sometimes it’s loud and impressive), which is something pop-music or chiptune don’t really have. If you take a liking to this type of music you can then listen to something like Beethoven’s 5th and notice that it’s really the same type of music.
To what extend are you aware of the wonderful world of chiptune music
I’ve heard of it, and I’ve listened to a little bit (it seemed good) but I’m not that familiar with it.
and video game music rearrangements?
These tend to be hit or miss with me. I sometimes like the original version better than the arrangement played on actual instruments.
What do you think is a good taste in music?
I dunno. The kind of music that doesn’t get made fun of by music snobs, I guess. Yeah, my concept of “poor taste in music” is pretty much about social status, but I haven’t invested enough time or effort to go beyond the uninformed “I don’t know music, but I know what I like” stage.
I really don’t understand music. I apparently have some talent for performing music, but I can’t explain what it is I do that makes the pieces sound good, and I never learned much in the way of music theory. I can talk endlessly about why I like the video games or literature that I do, but I can’t do the same for music. If I could actually present arguments for why the music I like actually is good, I’d have an answer to what good taste in music is.
I suppose I’m not really all that interested in learning more about it, though. (Does this mean I’m failing at curiosity?)
the piano arrangements this one guy made to pieces from the same series: Burning Blood
I found this way more awesome than the original linked to by CronoDAS. I was surprised that my subjective judgement for two different arrangements of the same melody could be that different.
I think a lot of other people have good points. I DO still think video game music is often excellent, but not universally. I think modern video game music is higher variance—games where someone obviously cared about the music have both good melodies AND good instrumentation. But there’s a lot of games where nobody cared at all.
The best video-game music I’ve heard recently was from Braid and Bastion. In both cases, the music is clearly a central “character” of the game, obviously cared deeply about by the creator. Braid falls into the “silent protagonist” category. Bastion oddly enough has a lot of dialog, but the narration is intertwined with the audio in a pretty deliberate fashion.
Anyway, what I’m really asking is, are those old game soundtracks actually any good, or do I just have no taste?
I didn’t enjoy the first two, but I kind-of liked the third one (especially the beginning). More generally, I like the music that makes me instinctively want to move at its rhythm (or to sing along, but that’s not applicable to instrumentals).
I don’t count as someone who knows anything about music, but I agree with your assessment. Though I find the bit about MIDI files surprising, seeing as MIDI files and chiptunes don’t have the same sound (to the extent that MIDI files have a consistent sound). I’m not sure how much this says anything seeing as going by the linked articles there seem to be a number of people who would agree with this.
Explanation number two is interesting. I had considered #3 to be the obvious explanation and hadn’t really considered any others. Thanks for pointing that out. It seems easier to test than explanation #3.
Do you have a list of your own favorite pieces from the past 60 years?
It’s not exactly the same thing, but I did once throw together a “sampler” list of works by currently living* composers. Not everything in there is a favorite, and there are many favorites not included (especially since the list was restricted to academic composers, thus leaving out a lot of Europeans such as Boulez), but it does give an idea of my “orientation”. :-)
*At the time of writing—Babbitt has since passed on.
What’s your preferred term for this? “New music?”
“Contemporary art music.” (Or “modern”, but that might paradoxically suggest older, as in 1900-1950.)
“New music” is perfectly fine in a context where it’s taken for granted that “music” refers to art music (as opposed to popular music). But “classical” is just as bad when referring to Tchaikovsky as when referring to Boulez; the issue is the terminological collision with the Classical period) in music history.
The phrase “contemporary art music” has its own problems, of course. For example, it suggests that music from the rock and jazz worlds isn’t “art” or “artistic music,” which would be a weird thing to say of Joanna Newsome, Julia Holter, Elegi, Matthew Shipp, Nels Cline, Carla Bley, Bill Frisell, and many others.
I’ve also heard the term “university music,” since nearly all composers of the type you and I are discussing were trained in music at a university, but of course that’s also true for lots of rock and jazz composers.
Anyway, thanks for the link to your sampler list of works!
On my university popular music course, we were told that the accepted term at that time (ten years ago) was “Western Art Music”, but that that covered jazz as well.
Possibly “orchestral” music? Although that would then cover stuff like film scores, or rock bands using a symphony orchestra as what amounts to a big guitar, and wouldn’t cover solo piano works or someone like Varese...
The phrase “contemporary art music” has its own problems, of course. For example, it suggests that music from the rock and jazz worlds isn’t “art” or “artistic music,”
I might be sympathetic to that objection except for the fact that it is virtually never raised against the term “art song”—which is nothing but a special case of the same usage.
I’ve also heard the term “university music,” since nearly all composers of the type you and I are discussing were trained in music at a university
The idea of “advanced music” (another candidate term, with its own problems) as mainly a university pursuit has historically been mostly an American phenomenon, but has started to spread elsewhere. In Europe the cultural milieu is different, so there hasn’t been as much need for such music to “retreat” into academia (as it is sometimes pejoratively phrased). Of course, some composers (notably Babbitt) have explicitly embraced the university as an ideal setting for this sort of music, and don’t mind terms like “academic” (considered derogatory by some).
My father, a music reviewer, coined ‘learned music’. The crux is careful study of theory, and its full application. This is not restricted to the western tradition, so when relevant, it can be clarified to ‘western learned music’.
To be sure, pop artists often know their music theory—but I think few would assert that they’re applying it to the fullest extent. Some would, and those are cases that don’t match ‘classical’ exactly, but have elements that a classical music fan might perk their ears at.
I fear the battle for the strict sense of “classical” has already basically been lost. For what it’s worth, I tend to say things like “classical music in the broad sense” or “classical music in the sense that includes Josquin and Prokofiev as well as Haydn and Mozart”. Which is appallingly clunky, but better that than the mere incomprehension that will generally follow if one uses terms like “art music” instead.
Unfortunately, its well-established-ness is only useful when talking with people who are well informed on this stuff, which most people aren’t. See, e.g., the fact that Luke (who is generally well informed about things, and interested enough in this particular topic to be writing evangelistic webpages about contemporary art music) is choosing to use the term “classical” and proposing “new music” as an alternative.
So: yes, you can say “art music” when you mean art music. In that case, your usage will be correct and you’ll be accurately understood by music experts; but to anyone at roughly Luke’s level of expertise and below your meaning will not be clear.
Or you can say “classical music” and make, where necessary, appropriate disclaiming noises. In that case, your usage will be incorrect and some music experts will look down their noses at you a bit; but people at roughly Luke’s level of expertise and below will have a reasonably idea of what you mean.
I generally choose the second option unless I know I’m addressing only experts. I wish there were an option that combines correctness, broad comprehensibility, and conciseness—but I don’t know of one.
It’s about as concise as the version that puts “classical” first and qualifies it. I prefer to start with the term that will be more widely understood, and then (when necessary) add the qualifier that lets experts know I’m well informed, rather than starting with the term that pleases experts, and then (almost always) adding the qualifier that lets muggles understand what I mean. Others’ mileage may vary!
But “classical” is just as bad when referring to Tchaikovsky as when referring to Boulez; the issue is the terminological collision with the Classical period in music history.
Heh.
Informally, though, “classical” music seems to be defined as anything written before the advent of jazz music in the 1920s.
I’d disagree. I think if you played most people works by, say, Britten, William Grant Still, Copland, Philip Glass, John Taverner or Pierre Boulez, they would recognise it as ‘classical’ music.
I think the problem here is the attempt to draw an arbitrary boundary around something that doesn’t really exist. There is no reasonable way in which, say, Boulez is trying to do the same thing as Bach, but neither are trying to do what the Beatles did. There are people in the pop/rock tradition (like Joanna Newsom or Scott Walker or Van Dyke Parks) who are doing very much the same thing that people from the ‘classical’ tradition like, say, Gavin Bryars, are doing. It makes far more sense to me to, say, put Boulez with Ornette Coleman, Gavin Bryars with Brian Eno, and the Beatles with Louis Armstrong, than to put Boulez with Bryars because they’re both ‘classical’, Coleman with Armstrong because they’re both ‘jazz’ and the Beatles and Eno because they’re both ‘pop’.
(The only ones of whom I have listened to a sizeable fraction of their works are the Beatles, the only other one of whom I’ve heard a non-trivial amount is Bach, and the only other ones I’ve heard about are Armstrong and Eno.)
Folk music on the other hand doesn’t seem to evolve with time that much—I’ve over- or underestimated the age of certain songs by as much as a century. I mean, would you have guessed that “Finnegan’s Wake” is [rot13: sebz gur rvtugrra-svsgvrf] whereas “The Fields of Athenry” is [rot13: sebz gur avargrra-friragvrf], just from listening to them?
The “Dubstep Beethoven” is very funny, but doesn’t actually appear to be dubstep or even slightly dubstep-like. Admittedly, everything I know about dubstep I know from having just read the Wikipedia article about it, so maybe I’m just confused.
Apparently dubstep is descended from something called 2-step (which “Dubstep Beethoven” also appears very much not to be). 4-step I’ve never heard of, and neither has the internet so far as I can see.
4-step is what preceded 2-step. I say preceded, but it’s not like 4-step has gone anywhere. It’s still the most common beat pattern for electronic music. It’s just a steady beat in 4⁄4 time with a kick drum on each beat, so it just goes boom boom boom boom with each measure, and it’s super easy to dance to.
Techno and house are pretty much exclusively 4-step.
2-step runs at the same/similar speed as 4-step, and is still in 4⁄4 time, but the drum beat is split up and made more erratic. You’ll often have several drum rhythms going on simultaneously. The effect is that the beat sounds like it is sort of stuttering, sort of like this: boom boom pause boom pause pause boom boom pause boom boom boom (that’s three measure’s worth there). I think Garage was the only real 2-step going on before dubstep, but I’m not real clear on that part of it.
Dubstep gets it beat patterns from 2-step (thus the “step” in the name).
The “Dub” comes from the reggae tradition of sampling pop songs to build a record in an afternoon. That’s why the vast majority of dubstep tracks are remixes—it’s just how you make dubstep. The build ups and drops that are so popular are not necessary for dubstep, and just because a song has that stuff doesn’t make it dubstep. They are just a natural fit for DJ’s (who like to control the energy of a crowd) and a 2-step beat pattern.
It’s not really dubstep if it isn’t heavily sampled with an erratic 4⁄4 beat (aka 2-step).
Good post.
What about using the word ‘rational’ for alliterative purposes? :)
Here’s some, but they’re not great. As I mentioned in an early draft of How to Fall in Love with Modern Classical Music, Nero’s “Doomsday” samples from my favorite piece of contemporary classical music, John Adams’ Harmonielehre. Also see Rudebrat’s “Amadeus” and this Fur Elise dubstep remix. The best I could find in 5 minutes was Dubstep Beethoven.
Wow! Luke, I somehow totally missed that you had an interest in this subject. You even have Ferneyhough on that page! (And Murail—who was actually a teacher of mine.)
I’m about ready to forgive you for every sin you’ve ever committed—maybe even including the use of the word “classical”. :-)
SI + $10.
[veering off topic]
So, since you guys know something about music...
I think I have fairly poor taste in music. Perhaps as a result of growing up listening to NES and SNES-era video game music all the time, I have an inordinate fondness for the sound of MIDI files, which are supposed to be one of those things everyone hates. As a matter of fact, I tend to feel that video game music has gotten notably worse as the technical capabilities of game consoles has gotten better. (I have three hypotheses that could explain this. One is that the music has improved but my taste in music sucks. The second is that voice acting competes with music for players’ attention, and that it’s no coincidence that the music stopped being as interesting at the same time voice acting became more common. The third is that improvements in technology “freed” composers from having to rely on melodic complexity alone to hold gamers’ attention, so melodies have gotten less interesting.)
Anyway, what I’m really asking is, are those old game soundtracks actually any good, or do I just have no taste?
The third option is that you like them because you played the game in question. There’s two sub-explanations here: the nice one is that you have a strong emotional attachment to the music due to having played the game, and the cynical one is that you just heard the tracks over and over when you played and got used to them.
I also like music from the video games I played as a kid, and also think that more recent video game music isn’t as good. But listening to the tracks you linked to did nothing for me. On the other hand, my brother (10 years younger than me) thinks that the soundtrack to Skyrim is the best thing ever. So I’m inclined to be skeptical of our music tastes here.
Potential hybrid explanation: Explanation #3 is true in that better sound capabilities have allowed video game composers to focus less on melody, but we only care so much about melody (as opposed to other aspects of the music) in the first place because we grew up playing games with soundtracks that put such emphasis on it. :)
Oh! Let me try!
It’s the melody that we associate most with a piece of music. It’s the aspect that is the easiest to remember. Pop-music is quite melody centric, I think. Older video game music is like pop-music. It’s very memorable and we become attached to it, which is why we like to hear it outside of the game.
Newer video game music is more like film music. It’s less noticeable, but still improves the experience a lot. The function of the music is to support the overall experience, not distract from it, or to be likeable on its own.
Well, unless the piece of music is “We Will Rock You”! :-)
The Firebird. Take Five. Bolero. Mars from The Planets.
I picked those particular tracks because they’re from the original Game Boy, which has a far more limited sound capability than the SNES. If I wanted to link to my absolute favorites, I’d have picked something from the Final Fantasy VI soundtrack. This, for example.
Also, here’s the orchestral version and in Italian in case the midi puts anyone off.
A counterexample: I noticed and liked the music from Lufia: The Ruins of Lore despite not having played it in childhood, although I don’t rank it as being among my favorite soundtracks.
On the other hand, I’m pretty sure that at least some of my fondness for the Final Fantasy VI soundtrack is the result of playing the game in childhood; the music, in context, is a lot more moving than merely the music alone, and some of that spills over when I listen to the soundtrack. (As far as I’m concerned, Final Fantasy VI is the definitive example of how to use music to enhance a story.)
Although that Skyrim soundtrack does seem pretty good, now that I’ve tried listening to some of it on Youtube… (I’ve never played the game.)
I grew up listening to classical music because of the influence of my parents, and I was heavily involved in the classical music subculture because I shared a house with a music student.
I gradually stopped listening to classic music as I realized I didn’t really enjoy it and I merely associated it with high status. Now I almost exclusively listen to chiptunes and 90s electronic dance music. This music is much simpler than music I previously listened to (I also listened to metal and jazz), but I’ve made a conscious decision to listen to music purely for enjoyment. I now spend far less effort on thinking about music, but I’m equally happy with it, so I think it’s a win.
Were you listening to classical music of all periods, or just to “modern” classical music? I personally believe that the latter doesn’t cause much pleasure in most people who listen to it, and its (limited) appeal is instead explained largely in terms of self- and public signaling. At the same time, I find that certain works of a few classical composers of earlier periods (such as Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Debussy and Vaughan Williams [click for examples]) induce in me intensely pleasant experiences.
All periods.
I still like some of J. S. Bach’s keyboard works (especially as MIDI played with FM synthesis), and some minimalist compositions (Steve Reich etc.).
IIRC, J.S. Bach wrote his keyboard pieces for the harpsichord, which, unlike the modern piano, can’t change it’s volume based on how the performer presses the keys. MIDI is usually played with a similar constant volume, so the MIDI version may actually be closer to how it was intended to sound than the same piece being played by a concert pianist.
If you are fond of synthesized versions of Bach, you should check out Wendy Carlos’s “Switched-On Bach” albums. (Wendy Carlos was formerly Walter Carlos and you might possibly find old copies under that name.)
To what extend are you aware of the wonderful world of chiptune music and video game music rearrangements? By video game music rearrangements I mean thinks like symphonic concerts (my favorite is “Symphonic Fantasies”, which you can listen to on youtube and is much better than some others, like “Video Games Live” ), the Final Fantasy piano collections, ocremix.org, and the works fans put on youtube.
If you have no taste, you are not alone. Nabuo Uematsu is quite popular. Personally I found those exact videos quite annoying, though that might have to do with sound quality and some filters might improve them. I do, however, like the piano arrangements this one guy made to pieces from the same series: Burning Blood and a Legend 1 medley. I also love the Link’s Awakening OST and this album, which has a similar (Game Boy) sound.
What do you think is a good taste in music?
My first answer would be that the concept is quite silly. (That also seems politically correct to me)
My second answer would be that it’s not about what music you like but about how varied your taste is. It seems to me that one gets more total amounts of enjoyment and different kinds of experiences from liking different kinds of music, and different qualities in music.
If you are interested in developing your taste, I’d suggest you listen to this Final Fantasy medley (I’m assuming you are familiar with the Final Fantasy music. For me the Chrono medley from the same concert was the first time I really appreciated symphonic music). Try to recognize the themes. That should be fun (at least it’s for me) and you might like the piece better after having concentrated on it. You could then pay attention to different aspects like the variation in loudness (sometimes the music whispers, sometimes it’s loud and impressive), which is something pop-music or chiptune don’t really have. If you take a liking to this type of music you can then listen to something like Beethoven’s 5th and notice that it’s really the same type of music.
I’ve heard of it, and I’ve listened to a little bit (it seemed good) but I’m not that familiar with it.
These tend to be hit or miss with me. I sometimes like the original version better than the arrangement played on actual instruments.
I dunno. The kind of music that doesn’t get made fun of by music snobs, I guess. Yeah, my concept of “poor taste in music” is pretty much about social status, but I haven’t invested enough time or effort to go beyond the uninformed “I don’t know music, but I know what I like” stage.
I really don’t understand music. I apparently have some talent for performing music, but I can’t explain what it is I do that makes the pieces sound good, and I never learned much in the way of music theory. I can talk endlessly about why I like the video games or literature that I do, but I can’t do the same for music. If I could actually present arguments for why the music I like actually is good, I’d have an answer to what good taste in music is.
I suppose I’m not really all that interested in learning more about it, though. (Does this mean I’m failing at curiosity?)
I found this way more awesome than the original linked to by CronoDAS. I was surprised that my subjective judgement for two different arrangements of the same melody could be that different.
I think a lot of other people have good points. I DO still think video game music is often excellent, but not universally. I think modern video game music is higher variance—games where someone obviously cared about the music have both good melodies AND good instrumentation. But there’s a lot of games where nobody cared at all.
The best video-game music I’ve heard recently was from Braid and Bastion. In both cases, the music is clearly a central “character” of the game, obviously cared deeply about by the creator. Braid falls into the “silent protagonist” category. Bastion oddly enough has a lot of dialog, but the narration is intertwined with the audio in a pretty deliberate fashion.
If you have no taste then neither do I.
I didn’t enjoy the first two, but I kind-of liked the third one (especially the beginning). More generally, I like the music that makes me instinctively want to move at its rhythm (or to sing along, but that’s not applicable to instrumentals).
I don’t count as someone who knows anything about music, but I agree with your assessment. Though I find the bit about MIDI files surprising, seeing as MIDI files and chiptunes don’t have the same sound (to the extent that MIDI files have a consistent sound). I’m not sure how much this says anything seeing as going by the linked articles there seem to be a number of people who would agree with this.
Explanation number two is interesting. I had considered #3 to be the obvious explanation and hadn’t really considered any others. Thanks for pointing that out. It seems easier to test than explanation #3.
Do you have a list of your own favorite pieces from the past 60 years?
What’s your preferred term for this? “New music?”
It’s not exactly the same thing, but I did once throw together a “sampler” list of works by currently living* composers. Not everything in there is a favorite, and there are many favorites not included (especially since the list was restricted to academic composers, thus leaving out a lot of Europeans such as Boulez), but it does give an idea of my “orientation”. :-)
*At the time of writing—Babbitt has since passed on.
“Contemporary art music.” (Or “modern”, but that might paradoxically suggest older, as in 1900-1950.)
“New music” is perfectly fine in a context where it’s taken for granted that “music” refers to art music (as opposed to popular music). But “classical” is just as bad when referring to Tchaikovsky as when referring to Boulez; the issue is the terminological collision with the Classical period) in music history.
The phrase “contemporary art music” has its own problems, of course. For example, it suggests that music from the rock and jazz worlds isn’t “art” or “artistic music,” which would be a weird thing to say of Joanna Newsome, Julia Holter, Elegi, Matthew Shipp, Nels Cline, Carla Bley, Bill Frisell, and many others.
I’ve also heard the term “university music,” since nearly all composers of the type you and I are discussing were trained in music at a university, but of course that’s also true for lots of rock and jazz composers.
Anyway, thanks for the link to your sampler list of works!
On my university popular music course, we were told that the accepted term at that time (ten years ago) was “Western Art Music”, but that that covered jazz as well. Possibly “orchestral” music? Although that would then cover stuff like film scores, or rock bands using a symphony orchestra as what amounts to a big guitar, and wouldn’t cover solo piano works or someone like Varese...
Symphonic music?
Same problem as “orchestral music”: it would exclude piano sonatas, string quartets, solo songs, etc.
I might be sympathetic to that objection except for the fact that it is virtually never raised against the term “art song”—which is nothing but a special case of the same usage.
The idea of “advanced music” (another candidate term, with its own problems) as mainly a university pursuit has historically been mostly an American phenomenon, but has started to spread elsewhere. In Europe the cultural milieu is different, so there hasn’t been as much need for such music to “retreat” into academia (as it is sometimes pejoratively phrased). Of course, some composers (notably Babbitt) have explicitly embraced the university as an ideal setting for this sort of music, and don’t mind terms like “academic” (considered derogatory by some).
My father, a music reviewer, coined ‘learned music’. The crux is careful study of theory, and its full application. This is not restricted to the western tradition, so when relevant, it can be clarified to ‘western learned music’.
To be sure, pop artists often know their music theory—but I think few would assert that they’re applying it to the fullest extent. Some would, and those are cases that don’t match ‘classical’ exactly, but have elements that a classical music fan might perk their ears at.
I fear the battle for the strict sense of “classical” has already basically been lost. For what it’s worth, I tend to say things like “classical music in the broad sense” or “classical music in the sense that includes Josquin and Prokofiev as well as Haydn and Mozart”. Which is appallingly clunky, but better that than the mere incomprehension that will generally follow if one uses terms like “art music” instead.
“Art music” is a well-established term.
I’m well aware of that.
Unfortunately, its well-established-ness is only useful when talking with people who are well informed on this stuff, which most people aren’t. See, e.g., the fact that Luke (who is generally well informed about things, and interested enough in this particular topic to be writing evangelistic webpages about contemporary art music) is choosing to use the term “classical” and proposing “new music” as an alternative.
So: yes, you can say “art music” when you mean art music. In that case, your usage will be correct and you’ll be accurately understood by music experts; but to anyone at roughly Luke’s level of expertise and below your meaning will not be clear.
Or you can say “classical music” and make, where necessary, appropriate disclaiming noises. In that case, your usage will be incorrect and some music experts will look down their noses at you a bit; but people at roughly Luke’s level of expertise and below will have a reasonably idea of what you mean.
I generally choose the second option unless I know I’m addressing only experts. I wish there were an option that combines correctness, broad comprehensibility, and conciseness—but I don’t know of one.
Is “art music (popularly known as ‘classical music’)” concise enough?
It’s about as concise as the version that puts “classical” first and qualifies it. I prefer to start with the term that will be more widely understood, and then (when necessary) add the qualifier that lets experts know I’m well informed, rather than starting with the term that pleases experts, and then (almost always) adding the qualifier that lets muggles understand what I mean. Others’ mileage may vary!
Heh.
Informally, though, “classical” music seems to be defined as anything written before the advent of jazz music in the 1920s.
I’d disagree. I think if you played most people works by, say, Britten, William Grant Still, Copland, Philip Glass, John Taverner or Pierre Boulez, they would recognise it as ‘classical’ music.
What about traditional/folk songs?
Quite.
I think the problem here is the attempt to draw an arbitrary boundary around something that doesn’t really exist. There is no reasonable way in which, say, Boulez is trying to do the same thing as Bach, but neither are trying to do what the Beatles did. There are people in the pop/rock tradition (like Joanna Newsom or Scott Walker or Van Dyke Parks) who are doing very much the same thing that people from the ‘classical’ tradition like, say, Gavin Bryars, are doing. It makes far more sense to me to, say, put Boulez with Ornette Coleman, Gavin Bryars with Brian Eno, and the Beatles with Louis Armstrong, than to put Boulez with Bryars because they’re both ‘classical’, Coleman with Armstrong because they’re both ‘jazz’ and the Beatles and Eno because they’re both ‘pop’.
[pales, ashamed of his musical ignorance]
(The only ones of whom I have listened to a sizeable fraction of their works are the Beatles, the only other one of whom I’ve heard a non-trivial amount is Bach, and the only other ones I’ve heard about are Armstrong and Eno.)
Folk music on the other hand doesn’t seem to evolve with time that much—I’ve over- or underestimated the age of certain songs by as much as a century. I mean, would you have guessed that “Finnegan’s Wake” is [rot13: sebz gur rvtugrra-svsgvrf] whereas “The Fields of Athenry” is [rot13: sebz gur avargrra-friragvrf], just from listening to them?
There’s also this EDM remix of Dvorak—Symphonie n°9 Mouvement 4 (Allegro con fuoco). It’s really great.
The “Dubstep Beethoven” is very funny, but doesn’t actually appear to be dubstep or even slightly dubstep-like. Admittedly, everything I know about dubstep I know from having just read the Wikipedia article about it, so maybe I’m just confused.
Yeah, somebody on YouTube claimed it was “4step,” but I don’t know what that is.
Apparently dubstep is descended from something called 2-step (which “Dubstep Beethoven” also appears very much not to be). 4-step I’ve never heard of, and neither has the internet so far as I can see.
4-step is what preceded 2-step. I say preceded, but it’s not like 4-step has gone anywhere. It’s still the most common beat pattern for electronic music. It’s just a steady beat in 4⁄4 time with a kick drum on each beat, so it just goes boom boom boom boom with each measure, and it’s super easy to dance to.
Techno and house are pretty much exclusively 4-step.
2-step runs at the same/similar speed as 4-step, and is still in 4⁄4 time, but the drum beat is split up and made more erratic. You’ll often have several drum rhythms going on simultaneously. The effect is that the beat sounds like it is sort of stuttering, sort of like this: boom boom pause boom pause pause boom boom pause boom boom boom (that’s three measure’s worth there). I think Garage was the only real 2-step going on before dubstep, but I’m not real clear on that part of it.
Dubstep gets it beat patterns from 2-step (thus the “step” in the name).
The “Dub” comes from the reggae tradition of sampling pop songs to build a record in an afternoon. That’s why the vast majority of dubstep tracks are remixes—it’s just how you make dubstep. The build ups and drops that are so popular are not necessary for dubstep, and just because a song has that stuff doesn’t make it dubstep. They are just a natural fit for DJ’s (who like to control the energy of a crowd) and a 2-step beat pattern.
It’s not really dubstep if it isn’t heavily sampled with an erratic 4⁄4 beat (aka 2-step).