How do you define understanding classical music?

I define understanding classical music as being able to identify the trasnformations and recapitulations of different motifs and themes throughout a piece of music and along all four time periods of classical music (this doesn’t mean that you have to like all periods, but understand them, because without this clause, people who understand that a melody in a classical style piece by Mozart or Haydn is recapitulated exactly the same at the end, but know nothing else about it would be grouped with people who understand the transformation of different motifs in really complex works such as a fugue, a complex classical sonata or a Liszt sonata). It doesn’t have to be a composer specifically

Share your thoughts

Manuel

The purpose of this is not to criticise, but rather to make a reflection on how I (and I think many others) have changed and developed an understanding of classical music

9 hours ago, Jqh73o said:

and along all four time periods of classical music (this doesn’t mean that you have to like all periods, but understand them

But it is always possible to invent some new style of music which people who understand all the other styles that came before wouldn't be able to understand.  Say for example a style of composing music in which all the musical material has to be derived from quotes of other composer's works (this might be a sort of a form of musical maximalism).  One wouldn't be able to understand the music very well without a wide ranging familiarity with works which might be quoted in the newly composed piece of music.  Hence according to your definition, wouldn't be counted among those who understand classical music.  And to say the least, the 20th century especially is full of a plurality of musical styles which are much more difficult to understand than previous periods in music history, which means that according to your definition people who don't understand spectral music or that can't hear tone rows in 12-tone serialism would be counted among those who don't understand classical music, which I think is a bit extreme.

Edit:  sorry I just realized that what I wrote might be a bit critical of your definition.  I just think that it's enough that people understand those pieces of classical music which they find most palatable not necessarily all periods of classical music.

Edit no.2:  I'll copy and paste what I wrote in the chat box here as well:  I personally believe that there are many people who are capable of understanding classical music (unless you're talking about more recent 20th century innovations) but, say for example Mozart's music I believe to be very lucid and easy to understand and admire by a common populace ... look at for example the popularity of the movie "Amadeus" in which Mozart's music is very liberally used as the soundtrack to the film .. I don't think it was anything outside of the capability of common people to understand.

Composers who lived and worked in the classical era and their music followed trends at the time.

Understanding any of the nuances of how they typically ended a phrase as opposed to the Romantic era or whatever are really not relevant, especially not for listeners.

What matters is that people often lump all (old) orchestral music in with "classical" which means that tragically, second Viennese school garbage gets lumped in with the greats and tarnishes their good name.

I feel that might've been by design...

 All you really need to do to make people understand is when they say "Classical music? You mean like Hans Zimmer?" is say "No, like Mozart".

Hello @PeterthePapercomPoser

57 minutes ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

Edit:  sorry I just realized that what I wrote might be a bit critical of your definition.  I just think that it's enough that people understand those pieces of classical music which they find most palatable not necessarily all periods of classical music.

Don’t worry, you were just expressing your thoughts on my definition for music’s sake, and I have to admit that I also thought my definition may have been offensive and seemed too agressive, so that is why I had to reply to clarify that I did not mean to discourage people that don’t fit my description. I think this is a heated topic for everyone.

1 hour ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

But it is always possible to invent some new style of music which people who understand all the other styles that came before wouldn't be able to understand.  Say for example a style of composing music in which all the musical material has to be derived from quotes of other composer's works (this might be a sort of a form of musical maximalism).  One wouldn't be able to understand the music very well without a wide ranging familiarity with works which might be quoted in the newly composed piece of music.  Hence according to your definition, wouldn't be counted among those who understand classical music.

This is a really good example and I didn’t think about it, it was so good that it made me change my mind about my definition (take that as something good because I am really stubborn). So, now taking this exceptions and similar ideas you mentioned as the serialism that are completely different. How would you define the understanding of classical music? Would you define it as the understanding of a specific form? Specific style? Specific form and style? Specific composer? Specific piece?

Thanks for sharing your opinion

Manuel

Hello @AngelCityOutlaw

55 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

What matters is that people often lump all (old) orchestral music in with "classical" which means that tragically, second Viennese school garbage gets lumped in with the greats and tarnishes their good name.

Why are you calling serialism “garbage”. I myself don’t like it. But is it to be called garbage? I don’t think so: it is complex and has the potential to be expressive. What is garbage about it according to you?

55 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

 All you really need to do to make people understand is when they say "Classical music? You mean like Hans Zimmer?" is say "No, like Mozart".

I completely agree with this. Hans Zimmer and other composers like Ludovico Einaudi  are not classical, they just use classical ensembles. I don’t like their music to the point of calling it garbage, but I don’t think it is fair to call it garbage, since all music can be called garbage in some ways (Not saying it is, just, that if you really hate it you could say that is garbage because of something that it has). So I prefer to I say that it is overly simple, and  is unfairly popular because of the little effort and talent that is put to it and the massive attention it gets (this goes more for minimalism, but it applies to some extent to this “classical” composers)

Thanks for sharing 

Manuel

Edit: This is a really heated topic, so I might have described minimalism in a slightly too bad way, What I don’t like about it is more the attention that it gets over classical music rather than the music itself.

6 minutes ago, Jqh73o said:

Why are you calling serialism “garbage”

Because it is lol

More specifically, atonalism in general. I don't want to go too far into one my trademark anti-atonalism rants but to try to keep it short

7 minutes ago, Jqh73o said:

it is complex and has the potential to be expressive

Not really, but let's say for a moment that it is complex. Complex does not automatically equate to "good". The complexity must still be highly musical and intelligible, this is why John Williams is so revered in the film music world.

It also true that theoretically any performance can be "expressive", but an expressive violin performance of bad music is still bad music.

The point of music is to sound good at a minimum. What is "good or bad" meets a lot more consistent, objective criteria than modernists want to believe and is recognizable across generations and cultures.

Play a Mozart Sonata and one of Schoenberg's back to back for people who have no interest in "classical" music, in any country in the world, and you will find they prefer the Mozart one every time. Because it is a better piece of music.

The entire development of music as a craft, art and science is rooted in tonality and mastery of it. Atonality is therefore a rejection of this history and thereby music itself. It is thoroughly anti-music.

So I would say it is more than fair to call it "garbage".

16 minutes ago, Jqh73o said:

since all music can be called garbage in some ways (Not saying it is, just, that if you really hate it you could say that is garbage because of something that it has)

Because not everyone may share the same taste or precise aesthetics and not everyone can be pleased does not mean that objective standards of quality do not exist, however. Not everyone agrees that the world is round, but that does not mean that their perception of reality is equally valid. 

However, I do notice that most of the people who call John Williams' music "Kitsch" tend to be those producing the low-effort "garbage" I just finished disparaging, and I'm sure that is related.

In regards to Zimmer and minimalism, while it is true what I said previously about complexity, it is also true that you require a certain amount of complexity to be musical at all. This is a big reason for Zimmer's failure. The Dune score is nothing but boring drones and pads.

Why this is all relevant to your thread is that for the better part of 100 years now, corrupt academics and suits have promoted woefully unmusical examples of the orchestra or piano and this has caused laymen to dismiss "classical" music because they do not "get it".

33 minutes ago, Jqh73o said:

How would you define the understanding of classical music? Would you define it as the understanding of a specific form? Specific style? Specific form and style? Specific composer? Specific piece?

This whole discussion made me think of the galant schema and how people listened to music much differently back then (between the Baroque and Classical eras) and how nuanced it was at the time.  Today, people who listen to music from, either the Baroque, or the Classical eras aren't well versed in the different patterns of Galant music and could therefore be said to not really understand where Classical music itself came from.  Back in the 18th century it was the responsibility of any courtesan who considers themselves a respectably trained amateur musician to be able to recognize by ear the galant schema which music at the time was constructed out of.  Not only that, but they should be well versed enough to be able to seperate schema "of good taste" and "of poor taste" and be able to make suggestions on how to improve music "of poor taste".  Today, few are as well versed in the schema as to be able to recognize them by ear, much less to be able to have developed a taste for particular patterns over others (I started Gjerdingen's Music in the Galant Style, but have thusfar not finished it yet).

I think it's natural for music to evolve and for some types of music to become dated or obsolete.  Familiarity of such music, once it goes out of style diminishes naturally, and few people continue to champion it.  But I don't think the masses, for having moved on, should be counted out of being considered to be able to understand music that has been surpassed by a new style.  If you understand Baroque music, or Galant music, or Classical music, or Romantic music then you champion those particular musics.  I don't think there's a need to make any blanket statements about the whole of the oeuvre of the whole of music history. 

First of all, thanks for debating, even if we clearly have different opinions it is always good to debate, because it opens yourself to reflection on your own ideas and other ideas presented. I am learning so much about avant garde music just by thinking about it and also practicing my English 😂

1 hour ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

This whole discussion made me think of the galant schema and how people listened to music much differently back then (between the Baroque and Classical eras) and how nuanced it was at the time.  Today, people who listen to music from, either the Baroque, or the Classical eras aren't well versed in the different patterns of Galant music and could therefore be said to not really understand where Classical music itself came from.  Back in the 18th century it was the responsibility of any courtesan who considers themselves a respectably trained amateur musician to be able to recognize by ear the galant schema which music at the time was constructed out of.  Not only that, but they should be well versed enough to be able to seperate schema "of good taste" and "of poor taste" and be able to make suggestions on how to improve music "of poor taste".  Today, few are as well versed in the schema as to be able to recognize them by ear, much less to be able to have developed a taste for particular patterns over others (I started Gjerdingen's Music in the Galant Style, but have thusfar not finished it yet).

This is really interesting! It will change the way I understand classical and baroque periods for sure. Where did you learn about it?

1 hour ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

Because not everyone may share the same taste or precise aesthetics and not everyone can be pleased does not mean that objective standards of quality do not exist, however. Not everyone agrees that the world is round, but that does not mean that their perception of reality is equally valid. 

However, I do notice that most of the people who call John Williams' music "Kitsch" tend to be those producing the low-effort "garbage" I just finished disparaging, and I'm sure that is related.

In regards to Zimmer and minimalism, while it is true what I said previously about complexity, it is also true that you require a certain amount of complexity to be musical at all. This is a big reason for Zimmer's failure. The Dune score is nothing but boring drones and pads.

Why this is all relevant to your thread is that for the better part of 100 years now, corrupt academics and suits have promoted woefully unmusical examples of the orchestra or piano and this has caused laymen to dismiss "classical" music because they do not "get it".

As oppose as with atonality, I think we have similar ideas about minimalism. However, in what are you basing yourself to say corrupt academics are the reason why the music is in decadence now? I think it is more of an effect of social trends and lower attention spans given how the world is today, but I am open to read about your interpretation. If you have strong evidence that you can share, please do so.

Ps: Was the reference to the round world intentional? Lol 

32 minutes ago, Jqh73o said:

Expressive dissonance in romanticism or even sometimes extremely thick counterpoint in baroque style can sound “bad”. But with context it sounds even better than bland diatonicism or monophony

32 minutes ago, Jqh73o said:

Not to mention that in some cases, atonal music

But then, these are within a context of a hierarchy of tonality and consonance.

Dissonance is only beautiful within a hierarchy of consonance, or else it is just noise. Atonal passages may be appropriate in a horror film for example, but they must be surrounded by tonal cues in order to not just sound like the composer has no idea what he's doing.

32 minutes ago, Jqh73o said:

play a slow movement of a Mozart sonata (or even a more expressive composer like Rachmaninof or Scriabin) and sadly, people will prefer the catchiness and overused rhythms of the modern music

"My Heart Will Go On" is nearly 30 years old and just last year once again topped the charts and it is really not like a club banger.

"I want to spend my lifetime loving you" spent time in the top 5 in several countries when it came out.

Most '80s hairbands biggest hits were their slow ballad tunes.

You are of course correct that most will prefer Britney Spears to Mozart, but it's also not really true that people don't really like this "expressive" stuff. Celine Dion's song is at least as popular as "Oops, I did it again."

But here's the other thing: Lively and memorable tunes are also what most people like about Mozart and music in general, and always have. Most people, especially young people, will want music that has energy which is why they'd probably find Divertimento in D among his best pieces.

I visited your page and I notice it says you were born in 2009.

Two things about that.

1. Holy sh!t I am getting old...

2. Your present stance on this is likely a phase.

I don't mean point two to sound condescending by the way.

When I was 15, I agreed very much with what you're saying. I listened to a lot of progressive metal, hated on "pop" music and so on. I really wanted everyone to listen to my complex pieces and see my musical genius. 

Now, you'll find my playlist can go something like Tchaikovsky > Backstreet Boys > Mercenary > John Williams > David Lee Murphy lol

As Mozart himself said "Melody is the essence of music", and as long as the piece has a great melody (and the accompaniment works and the performance is good) then you have a piece of music worth listening to and people will recognize it. Whether it's as busy as John Williams polyphony, as slow and "expressive" as Schindler's list (also really popular piece btw), or just the Castellow girls singing and strumming some guitar chords, it really doesn't matter. 

24 minutes ago, Jqh73o said:

This is really interesting! It will change the way I understand classical and baroque periods for sure. Where did you learn about it?

Actually, the first time I heard about Galant schema is on this website, probably some discussion with @Luis Hernández.  I then used my local community college's online library resources to be able to access a PDF of Gjerdingen's Music in the Galant Style which outlines the most common schema.  I actually made this chance spinner on pickerwheel.com which you can use to randomly select a series of Galant schema:

Oh yes!  I forgot that there used to be a YCF member who was training his daughter in Galant schema and how to improvise in the galant style.  They told me that my Bourree in F minor used the La Folia schema and that was the first time anyone ever identified a Galant schema within any of my own music.

18 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

But then, these are within a context of a hierarchy of tonality and consonance.

Dissonance is only beautiful within a hierarchy of consonance, or else it is just noise. Atonal passages may be appropriate in a horror film for example, but they must be surrounded by tonal cues in order to not just sound like the composer has no idea what he's doing.

That’s a really good point. But to what extent do you define consonance, consonance can be atonal too, or a more tonal section in an atonal piece while still being mainly atonal. If there is a balance between consonance and dissonance an atonal piece can work just fine.

24 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

2. Your present stance on this is likely a phase.

I don't mean point two to sound condescending by the way.

When I was 15, I agreed very much with what you're saying. I listened to a lot of progressive metal, hated on "pop" music and so on. I really wanted everyone to listen to my complex pieces and see my musical genius. 

While I doubt it since the liking of uncomplex satisfying is a much more common phase, it may be a possibility that I stop seeing potential in some twentieth century styles and begin just to classify them as ununderstandable nonsense. But I think I will continue with my opinion on other styles of atonality (the better sounding one of Scriabin and Debussy for example) as I have already learned to appreciate them

30 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

As Mozart himself said "Melody is the essence of music", and as long as the piece has a great melody (and the accompaniment works and the performance is good) then you have a piece of music worth listening to and people will recognize it. Whether it's as busy as John Williams polyphony, as slow and "expressive" as Schindler's list (also really popular piece btw), or just the Castellow girls singing and strumming some guitar chords, it really doesn't matter. 

Right now, my motto is understandable complexity, and I know most composers had a similar idea in their youth, but I know that my style will evolve towards simplicity as I will grow older because I have common sense and I know that what happened to most composers who weren’t inventing innovative techniques throughout  their lives but rather had a “static” enough style (Rachmaninoff and Liszt for example. Rachmaninoff abhorred writing too complexly and Liszt wrote simpler pieces at the end of his life). That’s not the case for innovative composers who discovered atonality midway their careers, but that is not my case either because my music has already been corrupted by loose tonality and as you pointed out I am only fifteen. So I will write and like simpler pieces in the future. But right now, I have first to explore the limits of complexity before being able to write in a complexly simple style

@PeterthePapercomPoser

Hello

Interesting topic.
For a long time I have studied "music" in a disjointed way, trying to put the elements together (harmony, counterpoint, etc....).
But when a couple of years ago, I started to review Music from a chronological perspective, it opened my mind.
EVERYTHING leaves a great legacy in later movements or styles, although many times they are very blurred or modified.
The transition from modal and monophonic Medieval to polyphony and the beginnings of tonal harmony in the late Renaissance is a very long and fascinating transition.
The Baroque fully established functional tonal harmony and counterpoint, and all subsequent styles were influenced by it.
Romanticism is full of Baroque, Gallant style and Renaissance resources, but with one or more twists.
Even atonality was based on counterpoint and other ancient issues.

On the other hand, I'm glad you noted the importance of schemata. After I studied that very important book, I went on to do much more research and discovered many other schemata: prinner, bergamasca, hearzt, lully, corelli's leapfrog, pulcinella, etc, etc, etc.... I even described some new schemata myself, such as Le Temps.
All these patterns are alive in today's pop music.

On 8/12/2024 at 3:05 PM, AngelCityOutlaw said:

Not really, but let's say for a moment that it is complex. Complex does not automatically equate to "good". The complexity must still be highly musical and intelligible, this is why John Williams is so revered in the film music world.

It also true that theoretically any performance can be "expressive", but an expressive violin performance of bad music is still bad music.

The point of music is to sound good at a minimum. What is "good or bad" meets a lot more consistent, objective criteria than modernists want to believe and is recognizable across generations and cultures.

Play a Mozart Sonata and one of Schoenberg's back to back for people who have no interest in "classical" music, in any country in the world, and you will find they prefer the Mozart one every time. Because it is a better piece of music.

The entire development of music as a craft, art and science is rooted in tonality and mastery of it. Atonality is therefore a rejection of this history and thereby music itself. It is thoroughly anti-music.

So I would say it is more than fair to call it "garbage".

While complexity doesn't guarantee quality, I think musical value often comes down to how engaging and coherent the music is. John Williams, for example, combines complexity with accessibility, making his work widely appreciated. Music that is well-crafted and expressive will generally stand the test of time, regardless of its style or complexity. Preferences between composers like Mozart and Schoenberg can be quite subjective, but the key is how well the music resonates with its listeners.