Unexpected Thoughts Regarding Classical Music | Hacker News Reader

Unexpected Thoughts Regarding Classical Music

rinich.com

16 pointsrms34 comments

Something that strikes me - whenever I've seen pieces like this before, they often seem to ignore that people still write classical music. It's nearly always Mozart, Beethoven, Bach but no mention of any modern or contemporary composers... I wonder why that is. Sure some contemporary classical music is a bit more esoteric and even less likely to appeal to the average listener, but it's certainly not all like that.

Maybe I'm slightly unusual in that most of the classical music I enjoy comes from the late romantic period onwards, but I do find it slightly disappointing that often when people "discover" classical music they seem to think it mostly stopped in the 1700s.

In the 20th century, classical music went a lot of interesting ways. A lot of the really innovative composers were focusing on dissonance and atonality — Bartók, Stostakovich, Varèse, Stravinsky. With that, there starts to be a challenge to find music that grasps you instantly. I tend to find that once I figure out something about a composer, his works start making sense to be, but before then it frequently sounds like noise.

When I think about modern composed music, my utterly-amateur mind goes in three directions — jazz, minimalism, and scores. There's a lot of interesting music being made for movies — do the scores of Jaws and Indiana Jones or Sweeney Todd and Phantom of the Opera count as classical music? Certainly musically there are certain things in common. Jazz, meanwhile, is an absolute paradise of talented musicians and musical experimentation. Charles Mingus comes to mind, as does John Zorn as a more modern composer.

The only movement I'm really aware of in modern classical music that has a distinct classical taste is that of minimalism. Philip Glass is an obvious first name, but then Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and La Monte Young were all composers whose music emphasized certain kinds of repetition. But when you begin listening to them, you realize how diverse each one is and how it's almost silly to group them together. Riley's music tends toward electronica and unpredictability, Glass eschews the term altogether, and Young's music tends towards categories like "drone", at which point you're talking a genre that includes a lot of rock music, also. Then you look at how Riley influenced bands like the Who (who named a song after him) and how La Monte Young worked with John Cale of the Velvet Underground, and it starts looking like that branch of classical music got submerged in avante garde rock.

But that's all the perspective of somebody who admittedly knows less than he wants to. If the classical music scene is different than that, it's done a damn good job of hiding it: I've found no other category of music that might help me understand what's going on today (and I'd appreciate the helping hand of any user who knows more).

That's understandable. Have you heard of any new classic rock bands lately? I doubt that. They do exists though. It's just that people lose interest in new faces playing the same old things. I mean sure, the scores may be different, but still somehow the music sounds the same, because they do combine chord progressions and melody parts in a certain painfully familiar way. Well, most of the time at least, that's what happens to the second generation of the genre followers.

Same as in web-apps industry. People like twitter and they are doing a good job. But having yet another one in a different skin would make no sense.

This phenomenon is similar to the class of posts that say "why [business] is like [poker]" etc. A vast majority of these posts are by people with amateur-at-best experience with the comparison topic. This article is no exception.

And admittedly so.

It's hard to imagine it playing out otherwise -- you need to start somewhere, and that stuff is:

a) more familiar to the ear

b) more plentifully recorded

c) more widely discussed and recommended etc.

b) more plentifully recorded

That's a big one.

There's some more obscure classical music that I happen to be a huge fan of. Problem is, with that music I came on listening to it as if it were a song and not a composition. When I listen to Steve Reich's Music For 18 Musicians, the first music I think to compare it to is Sufjan Stevens, who's a pop songwriter. Or I'll listen to Philip Glass and think of rock riffs. The problem is that for those more modern musicians (and for certain older, less well-known ones) is that we don't have the same conservative respect for them, and we have fewer interpretations of their music. When I listen to Einstein on the Beach, there are only two known recordings, and they're of music that's so innovative that your thoughts aren't about the interpretation, they're about the design of the music period.

(I'd also like to add, as an aside, that Hacker News sees the most bizarre stories submitted. Every article I've written that's at all tech-related gets passed over; without fail every article I'm insecure about writing and worry will be passed over finds its way here.)

My submission methodology: saw Ed's prediction comment, went to your site, read the last article, liked it, read the second most recent article and decided the classical music one would do better here.

So what? Classical music will never have the same level of prominence that it did before the 1900's. That's his point.

That's not his point. His point is that he has connected to the music by listening to what he likes, rather than what he was told to respect. I'd hardly call that result "unexpected", though.

As for your point, it is debatable. I think the percentage of people enjoying classical music is greater today than 100 years ago.

If you actually meant that the quality of music we write today is lower, that is very hard to for us to judge until maybe 100 years later. Maybe you've heard of John Cage, Luciano Berio, or perhaps György Ligeti -- whose music was used as the soundtrack of 2001: A Space Odyssey. There are a lot of people out there writing contemporary "classical" music that are respected in the music community, but virtually unknown elsewhere (and they are respected because we are touched by their music, just like the author has written, and not because they are writing avant-garde, esoteric music).

I would admit that the percentage of quality music in the total corpus being performed and listened today is unfortunately lower than it might have been 100 years ago.

Actually, my point was that if we look at classical music and say "So what?" we're losing a vast treasure.

What I was trying to say in my reply was that "he is ignoring the fact that people still write classical music" is not a valid point. There are 6.7 billion people on this planet; if there are a couple of people with a hobby, that does not prove anything.

Gotcha. But what if those "people with a hobby" are capable of doing incredible things with music? They'd benefit from being in a field of music that's not neglected for being thought of as centuries-old.

The reason classical music is less popular among the masses is not that it does not appeal to emotions - a lot of people would argue with that. Half of the story is indeed in the conservative nature of it (my father is a musician and I know how he goes about interpretation of classical compositions, stage appearance and all these rules).

But there's also another half of the story which is simply lack of education in listeners. I only started to listen to different kinds of music (including jazz and classical) after I played an instrument for a year. It takes understanding and practice and since classical music is not really about any social group (like, say, punk-rock or classical rock are to some extent) it's hard for it to get this attention from people seeking for just emotional satisfaction. Over time, when a person gets more musically educated (and I mean doing music, not listening) his emotions require more intellectual sources, which is the structure of the composition (harmony and melody) and skills of the performers. That you can only appreciate when you try something yourself.

Classical music is a bit like a novel: it is complex and it takes a bit of effort to understand. Popular music is rather simpler and can be readily understood (like, say, the movie version of the novel). If you just want to feel, classical music is too much effort.

There is also the barrier that it is hard to write classical music. Anybody can pick up a guitar, learn I, IV, V chords and write a song (these days, the lyrics don't even need to rhyme). Fewer people can add harmony, and very few can write counterpoint. I think a classical music piece can take as long to write as a short novel.

I suspect that classical music was never all that popular: the upper classes enjoyed classical music and the more numerous lower classes enjoyed the pop music of the time from traveling musicians. It's just that the traveling musicians didn't write their stuff down.

another half of the story which is simply lack of education in listeners.

A lot of people just don't have the wherewithal to appreciate melodic music. Melody just escapes them. They want chords and riffs to wash over them while moving with a strong beat. The kind of lyric dance implied by other musical forms escapes them, and they have no hope of appreciating anything that wasn't once based on some kind of dance.

What really frightens me, though, are all these young people killing their fine cochlear structures with headphones. The wispy nuances of acoustic music don't even exist for them. They don't even exist in the same aural universe.

That's an utterly biased and thoroughly wrong accusation. Name one of those songs lacking melody and I'll point out exactly what line could get stuck in my head. Even songs that use chords as a hook don't get the entire chord stuck: There's a single line that catches you.

The real problem is a little bit more complex: We instinctively set up divides between us and things we don't know, so that we may more readily dismiss them. I'm actually in the middle of writing a New Year's post about that now.

That's an utterly biased and thoroughly wrong accusation.

I think not. If you are one of those people who can relate to snippets of melody, then you are, by definition, not one of those people devoid of melodic perception. Or, are you assuming that your particular perceptions represent the entire spectrum of listeners of electronic music. I doubt that's warranted.

What you do is fundamental to the human experience -- having a bit of music stuck in one's head. Most of us are born with some ability like this. There are entire musical traditions where this facility has been expanded and developed to a very high degree, however. I can pay something like 350 distinct tunes from memory off the top of my head, well enough to perform in front of a festival crowd. I probably have the "stuck in my head" impression of another 700 or so tunes. I am not a prodigious talent in this way, however. I know of traditional musicians who know something like 10,000 tunes, and 2 or 3 distinct versions of many of those.

I posit that musicians like that have a better appreciation of melody than I do. Their brains are very good at processing that kind of information, and have processed much more of it. I also suspect that I have a slightly more developed sense of melody than someone who can recall some catchy hooks.

I look at it another way. When I play classical music, I find that I develop an appreciation for its nuances that I don't initially have. I start liking every individual line for its melody, whereas at first I only hear one or two things. And the more I listen to music, the more quickly I'm able to break down new music that I listen to.

Most of us are born with some ability like this.

Exactly why I'm confused as to your initial point:

A lot of people just don't have the wherewithal to appreciate melodic music. Melody just escapes them.

Now, in modern music there is a branch that focuses on rhythm more than it does on melody (in classical music as well as in pop). However, that branch is still exceedingly rare compared to the rest of what's coming out. People who listen to Lady Gaga, the Jonas Brothers, and J-Lo are all listening to music for its melodies. So it's not the fact that classical music is melodic that turns them off.

My suspicion is that a part of it is an inability to really sympathize with the music. Pulsating beats are more instantly relatable than a complex sonata, which can be more readily dismissed as "tinkly classical nonsense" if a listener's apathetic.

> Most of us are born with some ability like this.

Exactly why I'm confused as to your initial point

My point is about degrees of development. Also, note that I leave room for some people to be devoid of melodic sense. I've taught music, and I'll tell you there are a few out there.

Heck, we're mostly all born with some degree of hand-eye coordination. That doesn't all make us star outfielders or professional jugglers. Someone won't develop a sophisticated appreciation of baseball just because they were born with the baseline set of neuromuscular resources.

I use headphones because the only time when I can spend some conscious time listening to music (not just filtering it with my ears) is when I'm taking a 30 min walk to the gym and then 30 min back. I realize, it's a trade off though, but don't be so hard on that.

I'm not being hard on headphones per se, but on killing one's high-frequency hearing by blasting loud electronic music into your skull. If you are truly an active listener, then you are probably not one of those people.

The reason classical music is less popular among the masses is not that it does not appeal to emotions - a lot of people would argue with that.

I'm curious if you'd say that about Romantic music, which tried explicitly to evoke an emotional response in the listener.

"When I listened to Mozart last year, I thought classical music was all about the composer. Today I realized the performer matters just as much"

That's certainly true to an extent. But some performers won't suit your taste, and if you judge the music because you picked a poor performance (like you might get on the cheap imports), you might miss some incredible music. I can't stand Karajan's Beethoven, good thing I didn't start listening with him.

I can't tell someone exactly why I like Mozart best when Marriner's conducting, or why Serkin just does the Emperor better. But once you know you like a composer's work, then you'll start to prefer some performances over others.

The great part is that this slowly changes all your life, and that really great music never gets old and you can repeat the same chills you got when you were 20. It's a lot like Sherlock Holmes that way!

Education: One thing that strikes me in looking at Loony Tunes from (I suppose) that 1950s is how many allusions to classical and folk music they could slip in. I'm guessing that something has been lost in music education in the schools over the half century.

Stodginess: as aristoxenus says, the classical stations do figure on an older, more conservative audience. I used to get a kick out of a Washington, DC station, since defunct. It wasn't unusual to hear a commercial with a relaxed, folksy voice telling one how important the F-15 was too our national defense.

The author does not have a place for comments on his blog ... so I will use this space to suggest that:

1. anyone interested classical music should use Pandora.com to find out what they like: I ended up with a lot of Telemann and Corelli as performed by Manze and Egarr

2. if you have space in your apartment/house, go on Craigslist and get a decent set of speakers and a CD player and tuner/amp. Listening to classical on headphones is good but listening in open air is better.

A pair of high-end Sennheisers can be a great investment. (I have the 580s, which were once the flagship, now outdated, but still very good.) I can also recommend the Etymotic ER4P in-ear headphones.

Inexpensive but highly accurate small acoustic suspension speakers have been a commodity for awhile. Put these with a decent subwoofer with a built-in crossover, and you can get a very formidable setup, if you are willing to move your furniture around and hang things on your wall. Really good headphones can give you plug & play high fidelity, if you can live with a soundstage that's inside your skull.

(I use a Velodyne powered subwoofer with a pair of NHT Subzero-XUs, with a home-made external high-pass filter between my NAD receiver and the Subzeros. The natural rolloff from the speakers, plus the high-pass filter and the low-pass filter on the subwoofer gives me a bi-amplified system on the cheap.)

I never thought to use Pandora for classical music! Upvote for a marvelous suggestion.

It took Pandora a long time to get classical music into their system because they weren't sure how to classify individual pieces. I mean, once you have a dozen versions of the same song by different orchestras with different conductors, the "What's your favorite song?" interface kind of breaks down.

The crappy thing about classical music in Pandora is that if your piece spans multiple tracks (a good 80% of classical music falls into this category - multiple movements) you never get to hear the entire piece at once.

The main buyers and patrons of "classical" music turn out to be a pretty conservative bunch. Have you ever listened to radio stations or concert promoters try to be humorous or hip? It's generally pretty puritan and sad, like something you'd find on the Disney Channel.

Until a new generation really takes ownership of this stuff, selling it to new listeners will remain an endeavor with dwindling returns.

OK, so he said that classical music and the community around it is more rigid than most newer forms of music and their communities, and that it's dying, and the former might cause the latter. What is so unexpected, I wonder

Unexpected not perhaps for a vast audience, but for me. What you didn't mention was perhaps the core of the post: Classical music isn't dead, it's living and breathing and subject to interpretation. Then the points you mentioned carry with them certain implications, namely that classical music could benefit from irreverence and innovation, and that modern music would benefit from classical music's being made more accessible.

as a classical musician, this was inspiring and makes me feel happy :)

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