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Musica
People obsessed by categories: "Soundtracks are not classical music!!!"
https://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.p...
The purpose of giving names to different kinds of music is to understand, more or less, what to expect from a musical work, but there are people in the classical music world who are literally obsessed with categories, as if it was possible to scientifically determine the genre of a musical work.
Well, it's not possible: as soon as you formulate a rule to determine if something is classical music or not, someone will give you an example of a work that doesn't fit the rule.
Some examples here below.
Two days ago I listened to a contemporary violin concerto (2017) in Youtube and I read this comment below the video.
------------
He is writing in the style of modern film music..... this is not classical, just listen to the last movement blasting I - V - vi - IV. That is called instant gratification, which is how pop music works.
------------
Basically, what this guy wrote, is that in classical music should be forbidden to use determined chord progressions.
If you use I - V - vi - IV, your musical work should be expelled from the genre.
Furthermore he speaks about film music as if it was a different genre in respect to classical music, while in reality the style of many soundtracks is so close to the neoromantic music of the 20th Century that it makes sense to label them as "classical music".
For example, listen to this movement of Joly Braga Santos between 00:38 and 01:52 and tell me that it doesn't sound exactly like the opening of an american movie, maybe with the score written by John Williams!
I call this "american neoromanticism": I think that this style was born with the Symphony No. 9 of Dvorak in 1893 and that while some composers at the beginning of the 20th century were experimenting dissonance, other composers were developing this new kind of romantic style music, which became the standard in soundtracks of american films, probably because it transmits a sense of "adventure".
I'm not sure about this, as I'm not a musicologist and I've never read books about musicology: perhaps I should open a discussion about this.
So, why do many people reject the classification of american neoromantic soundtracks as classical music, when this style is clearily born inside classical music?
Other people obsessed by categories follow different paths to exclude classical-style soundtracks from classical music, for example this article written in a musical blog of the newspaper "theguardian.com": https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2008/a...
Basically, this guy was angry because Classic FM promotes classical-style soundtracks.
After he has established for everyone of us that the soundtracks of Morricone are good music while the soundtracks of Hans Zimmer are bad music (as if he was any kind of authority to decide what is good and what is not good... he doesn't provide any argument to explain why Hans Zimmer sucks), he says that soundtracks can not be considered classical music because while soundtracks are composed to accompany pictures, classical music is an abstract art form designed to provoke a truly subjective response in each of its listeners.
As I wrote above, everytime you try to find a rule that makes something classical or that excludes something from classical music, someone will give you an example of a work categorized as classical music that doesn't fit that rule, but in this case the error is huge, because there are entire subgenres of classical music that are intended to accompany images: opera and incidental music.
Classical soundtracks are nothing else than a subcategory of classical incidental music, which can be divided between:
- Classical incidental music for theatre (for example "A Midsummer Night's Dream" of Mendelssohn)
- Classical incidental music for cinema and TV (for example "Star Wars" of John Williams or "The Lion King" of Hans Zimmer)
- Classical incidental music for videogames (for example "King Bowser" of Super Mario Galaxy)
"So, W.A. Mozart, this is all you have? Do you open a discussion only for the bullshit of two people in the web?"
Well, no. I've already disussed this argument in other classical music forums, and perhaps the 50% of the users had to make sure that classical-style soundtracks won't be classified as classical music.
The people obsessed by categories are a lot in the classical music world: I only provided two examples because I can not discuss every single examples.
So, I'll simply discuss about arguments that often come out.
Other people say that what makes music classical is that it's not composed or played for commercial purposes and that since soundtracks are composed for commercial pruposes they are not classical music. This is an other big error, because many (most?) highly celebrated composers of classical music created music for money.
As a side note, I'll also tell you that I think that the idea that commercial music is of a lower quality is absurd, because professional composers can dedicate their full time to music and, as a result, we can imagine that they reach a high level of craftmanship that it's difficult to reach if you have to dedicate most hours of your time to other activities).
Not surprinsingly, Mozart and Beethoven were professional composers.
A variation of this argument is that something is classical music only if the composer is free to write whatever he wants and that if the there is a client who tells you that he expects to receive X, X will be not classical music.
Basically, the idea is that in classical music there is not someone who puts his nose in your work, and since the works of the composers of soundtracks must be approved by the directors, the product will not be classical music.
So, what about the String Quartet No. 13 of Beethoven?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grosse_Fuge
---------------
The Grosse Fuge was originally composed as the final movement of Beethoven's Quartet No. 13 in B♭ major, Op. 130, written in 1825; but Beethoven's publisher was concerned about the dismal commercial prospects of the piece and wanted the composer to replace the fugue with a new finale. Beethoven complied, and the Grosse Fuge was published as a separate work in 1827 as Op. 133
---------------
Regarding Beethoven, I could also mention that he had to recompose parts of his incidental music for Ruins of Athens because someone else changed the lyrics.
What about Mozart? The Emperor wanted to eliminate his ballet in "Le Nozze di Figaro". A the end he didn't, but this example shows us that the public authorities had the controls of arts in the classical period.
Now, if someone told me that the industry in the modern capitalism is more business/profit oriented and that the freedom of soundtrack composers is even more restricted in respect to the one of the old composers, I might understand the argument (although the notion should be seriously verified), but really... how do you determine where is the line? Which is the point from which the music stops to be classical because there are too many intrusions in the artistic work of the composer? Where is the point from which the intrusions become "too many"?
If it was a binary matter, 1 or 0, like "Beethoven and Mozart wrote music for themselves and they didn't receive money, while John Williams receives a lot of money from a big business-profit oriented industry", the distinction would make sense... but this doesn't describe the reality.
Basically, if we decided that classical music is not commercial music, we should eliminate the music of Mozart and Beethoven from classical music.
An other argument is that classical music is the music that has passed the test of time, but since the existence of contemporary classical music is recognized, this is an other huge error.
Furthermore I might ask: is the music of the the high numbers of the forgotten classical music composers not classical?
That poor man who has composed the spurious Violin Concerto No. 6 of Mozart, Johann Friedrich Eck, has not even a wikipedia page.
Does anyone thinks that this is not classical music?
Finally, someone told me that since soundtracks don't follow the forms of classical music (such as the sonata-form), they are not classical music.
The problem of this argument is that even classical music doesn't follows the forms of classical music.
In the classical period and at the beginning of the romantic period the composers used to follow a well-defined sonata-form, but later the form was broken and it became a very generic thing, like "write some themes and some development around them", and since the generic sonata-form (theme + developments) is also used in soundtracks, why can't we not say that even soundtracks follow the forms of classical music?
In conclusion, don't try to find mathematical rules to determine if something is classical music or not.
Whether something is classical music, jazz, rock, whatever... is determined by the istinct, by our subjective perception.
So, if most people who have to label musical works agree about the fact that the music of John Williams is classical, his music will be categorized as "classical". It's easy!
Here below examples of websites that consider soundtracks as a form of classical music.
https://www.allmusic.com/genre/classical-ma0000002...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_classical_mu...
https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/genres
https://rateyourmusic.com/genre/cinematic-classica...
https://halloffame.classicfm.com/2023/
Since the classification is subjective and not objective, determined by our istinct, we might not agree about the classification of one musical work... so what? Is it so important to determine if something is classical music or not?
Some people are even obsessed with the distinction between popular music and classical music, as if they had to be rigidly separated categories, but this was not the spirit of the great composers.
In the Symphony No. 9, Dvorak borrow elements from american folk music.
The people obsessed by categories think that the contemporary classical music must be completely separated from popular music and that if a composer borrows elements from the popular music of today, his music must be not considered classical.
So, why don't they ask to expel the Symphony 9 of Dovrak from classical music? And why should the freedom of the contemporary classical composers be so restricted if this dumb rule didn't make any sense in the eyes of composers who have made the history of classical music?
https://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.p...
The purpose of giving names to different kinds of music is to understand, more or less, what to expect from a musical work, but there are people in the classical music world who are literally obsessed with categories, as if it was possible to scientifically determine the genre of a musical work.
Well, it's not possible: as soon as you formulate a rule to determine if something is classical music or not, someone will give you an example of a work that doesn't fit the rule.
Some examples here below.
Two days ago I listened to a contemporary violin concerto (2017) in Youtube and I read this comment below the video.
------------
He is writing in the style of modern film music..... this is not classical, just listen to the last movement blasting I - V - vi - IV. That is called instant gratification, which is how pop music works.
------------
Basically, what this guy wrote, is that in classical music should be forbidden to use determined chord progressions.
If you use I - V - vi - IV, your musical work should be expelled from the genre.
Furthermore he speaks about film music as if it was a different genre in respect to classical music, while in reality the style of many soundtracks is so close to the neoromantic music of the 20th Century that it makes sense to label them as "classical music".
For example, listen to this movement of Joly Braga Santos between 00:38 and 01:52 and tell me that it doesn't sound exactly like the opening of an american movie, maybe with the score written by John Williams!
I call this "american neoromanticism": I think that this style was born with the Symphony No. 9 of Dvorak in 1893 and that while some composers at the beginning of the 20th century were experimenting dissonance, other composers were developing this new kind of romantic style music, which became the standard in soundtracks of american films, probably because it transmits a sense of "adventure".
I'm not sure about this, as I'm not a musicologist and I've never read books about musicology: perhaps I should open a discussion about this.
So, why do many people reject the classification of american neoromantic soundtracks as classical music, when this style is clearily born inside classical music?
Other people obsessed by categories follow different paths to exclude classical-style soundtracks from classical music, for example this article written in a musical blog of the newspaper "theguardian.com": https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2008/a...
Basically, this guy was angry because Classic FM promotes classical-style soundtracks.
After he has established for everyone of us that the soundtracks of Morricone are good music while the soundtracks of Hans Zimmer are bad music (as if he was any kind of authority to decide what is good and what is not good... he doesn't provide any argument to explain why Hans Zimmer sucks), he says that soundtracks can not be considered classical music because while soundtracks are composed to accompany pictures, classical music is an abstract art form designed to provoke a truly subjective response in each of its listeners.
As I wrote above, everytime you try to find a rule that makes something classical or that excludes something from classical music, someone will give you an example of a work categorized as classical music that doesn't fit that rule, but in this case the error is huge, because there are entire subgenres of classical music that are intended to accompany images: opera and incidental music.
Classical soundtracks are nothing else than a subcategory of classical incidental music, which can be divided between:
- Classical incidental music for theatre (for example "A Midsummer Night's Dream" of Mendelssohn)
- Classical incidental music for cinema and TV (for example "Star Wars" of John Williams or "The Lion King" of Hans Zimmer)
- Classical incidental music for videogames (for example "King Bowser" of Super Mario Galaxy)
"So, W.A. Mozart, this is all you have? Do you open a discussion only for the bullshit of two people in the web?"
Well, no. I've already disussed this argument in other classical music forums, and perhaps the 50% of the users had to make sure that classical-style soundtracks won't be classified as classical music.
The people obsessed by categories are a lot in the classical music world: I only provided two examples because I can not discuss every single examples.
So, I'll simply discuss about arguments that often come out.
Other people say that what makes music classical is that it's not composed or played for commercial purposes and that since soundtracks are composed for commercial pruposes they are not classical music. This is an other big error, because many (most?) highly celebrated composers of classical music created music for money.
As a side note, I'll also tell you that I think that the idea that commercial music is of a lower quality is absurd, because professional composers can dedicate their full time to music and, as a result, we can imagine that they reach a high level of craftmanship that it's difficult to reach if you have to dedicate most hours of your time to other activities).
Not surprinsingly, Mozart and Beethoven were professional composers.
A variation of this argument is that something is classical music only if the composer is free to write whatever he wants and that if the there is a client who tells you that he expects to receive X, X will be not classical music.
Basically, the idea is that in classical music there is not someone who puts his nose in your work, and since the works of the composers of soundtracks must be approved by the directors, the product will not be classical music.
So, what about the String Quartet No. 13 of Beethoven?
---------------
The Grosse Fuge was originally composed as the final movement of Beethoven's Quartet No. 13 in B♭ major, Op. 130, written in 1825; but Beethoven's publisher was concerned about the dismal commercial prospects of the piece and wanted the composer to replace the fugue with a new finale. Beethoven complied, and the Grosse Fuge was published as a separate work in 1827 as Op. 133
---------------
Regarding Beethoven, I could also mention that he had to recompose parts of his incidental music for Ruins of Athens because someone else changed the lyrics.
What about Mozart? The Emperor wanted to eliminate his ballet in "Le Nozze di Figaro". A the end he didn't, but this example shows us that the public authorities had the controls of arts in the classical period.
Now, if someone told me that the industry in the modern capitalism is more business/profit oriented and that the freedom of soundtrack composers is even more restricted in respect to the one of the old composers, I might understand the argument (although the notion should be seriously verified), but really... how do you determine where is the line? Which is the point from which the music stops to be classical because there are too many intrusions in the artistic work of the composer? Where is the point from which the intrusions become "too many"?
If it was a binary matter, 1 or 0, like "Beethoven and Mozart wrote music for themselves and they didn't receive money, while John Williams receives a lot of money from a big business-profit oriented industry", the distinction would make sense... but this doesn't describe the reality.
Basically, if we decided that classical music is not commercial music, we should eliminate the music of Mozart and Beethoven from classical music.
An other argument is that classical music is the music that has passed the test of time, but since the existence of contemporary classical music is recognized, this is an other huge error.
Furthermore I might ask: is the music of the the high numbers of the forgotten classical music composers not classical?
That poor man who has composed the spurious Violin Concerto No. 6 of Mozart, Johann Friedrich Eck, has not even a wikipedia page.
Does anyone thinks that this is not classical music?
Finally, someone told me that since soundtracks don't follow the forms of classical music (such as the sonata-form), they are not classical music.
The problem of this argument is that even classical music doesn't follows the forms of classical music.
In the classical period and at the beginning of the romantic period the composers used to follow a well-defined sonata-form, but later the form was broken and it became a very generic thing, like "write some themes and some development around them", and since the generic sonata-form (theme + developments) is also used in soundtracks, why can't we not say that even soundtracks follow the forms of classical music?
In conclusion, don't try to find mathematical rules to determine if something is classical music or not.
Whether something is classical music, jazz, rock, whatever... is determined by the istinct, by our subjective perception.
So, if most people who have to label musical works agree about the fact that the music of John Williams is classical, his music will be categorized as "classical". It's easy!
Here below examples of websites that consider soundtracks as a form of classical music.
https://www.allmusic.com/genre/classical-ma0000002...
https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/genres
https://rateyourmusic.com/genre/cinematic-classica...
https://halloffame.classicfm.com/2023/
Since the classification is subjective and not objective, determined by our istinct, we might not agree about the classification of one musical work... so what? Is it so important to determine if something is classical music or not?
Some people are even obsessed with the distinction between popular music and classical music, as if they had to be rigidly separated categories, but this was not the spirit of the great composers.
In the Symphony No. 9, Dvorak borrow elements from american folk music.
The people obsessed by categories think that the contemporary classical music must be completely separated from popular music and that if a composer borrows elements from the popular music of today, his music must be not considered classical.
So, why don't they ask to expel the Symphony 9 of Dovrak from classical music? And why should the freedom of the contemporary classical composers be so restricted if this dumb rule didn't make any sense in the eyes of composers who have made the history of classical music?