# The Classical Music Thread



## Demensa (Jan 20, 2013)

Yeah, I know... Its _another _genre thread. I'm too lazy to come up with anything better right now.

Anyways I want to post and talk about classical music, not because I know all about it, but to _learn _more!
Post your favourite artists, pieces, etc. Talk about different interpretations of pieces by different performers. 

It doesn't matter if it's popular; post Beethoven's 5th if you enjoy it.
Also, I'm referring to the style of music when I say classical, not the period, so romanticism and contemporary etc. is welcome.

I'll start off with some of what I enjoy:
*Chopin: Piano Sonata #2 In B Flat Minor, Op. 35, "Funeral March"* - Performed by Ivo PogoreliÄ‡
This is one of my favourite Chopin pieces. The way he builds and resolves tension, especially in the first movement, is just stunning. PogoreliÄ‡ does a fantastic job of it as well, in my opinion.

[video=youtube;gHZHy2B6MCc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHZHy2B6MCc[/video]

*Bach: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565* 
Hardly an obscure choice (as well as the Chopin piece for that matter), but I do quite like this piece.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVJD3dL4diY

Also, unusual covers are also quite welcome...


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## Llamapotamus (Jan 21, 2013)

This has always been a favorite of mine, and somebody made a pretty cool video to go with it!

[video=youtube_share;4NjssV8UuVA]http://youtu.be/4NjssV8UuVA[/video]


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## aqxsl (Jan 22, 2013)

i'll be the first to go on the record here and say modern classical > classical

"minimalism" is where it's at

Arvo Part: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIbwtzw8A7A
Philip Glass: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il4VDf-ugPI
John Adams: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFj9NSh6x90
John Cage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5ssRFrgF2k
Marsen Jules: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3Pvr2vt52c (been really liking this guy as of late)



> Also, I'm referring to the style of music when I say classical, not the period, so romanticism and contemporary etc. is welcome.



but what is the classical style anyways?  seems like most people consider music that majorly resembles compositions of the "classical" era to define the genre, which by this definition I'd say contemporary "classical" is just experimental music.  What do you think?


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## Kit H. Ruppell (Jan 22, 2013)

aqxsl said:


> but what is the classical style anyways?  seems like most people consider music that majorly resembles compositions of the "classical" era to define the genre, which by this definition I'd say contemporary "classical" is just experimental music.  What do you think?


"Classical" is a term applied to music as a fine art of a particular culture. This thread is about Western Classical music, which is derived from the musical traditions of Europe, particularly court music.

 This is pretty
[video=youtube;CpQw0UH-YV4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpQw0UH-YV4[/video]


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## Kalmor (Jan 22, 2013)

[video=youtube;Mqmbz8W1-tA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqmbz8W1-tA[/video]

Just a fun fact, the composer actually studied in my highschool. We played this as an anniversary piece at one of our concerts. Such a honour (as well as being leader).


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## Aden (Jan 22, 2013)

I like 
Ravel

[yt]if5C7KsVD0I[/yt]


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## Avlenna (Jan 22, 2013)

Classic Berlioz "The Damnation of Faust-Hungarian March"  Has the best tuba part ever, and this is probably one of the few orchestra pieces that I'll willingly play.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4NG_NSXfIw
... and of course Franz Schubert's "Unfinished Symphony"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mnrHf7p0jM
... and of course a few solo pieces of my own instrument. . .
Frackenpohl "Concertino for Tuba and String Orchestra"  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keyzQa6d96o
Lebedev "Concerto in One Movement" version for tuba  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFgaqGShz_0 (I'm working on this one now; also, sorry that the tuba is kinda hard to hear--I couldn't find one that had a louder tuba part)


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## aqxsl (Jan 22, 2013)

Kit H. Ruppell said:


> "Classical" is a term applied to music as a fine art of a particular culture. This thread is about Western Classical music, which is derived from the musical traditions of Europe, particularly court music.
> 
> This is pretty
> [video=youtube;CpQw0UH-YV4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpQw0UH-YV4[/video]



oh really?

maybe i didn't flesh out my question enough; i'm eluding to the idea of what we consider to be "classical" music today, particularly in reference to avant-garde and dissonance

does the term contemporary classical make sense?  when people think of classical as a genre, they tend think of music from a certain time period (aka Romantic, Baroque, etc)

but is modern composition stylistically similar enough to traditional western music to even be considered classical?  for instance, i've seen this man, Penderecki, often filed under classical even though his work is 
pretty much pure dissonance and is only rooted in western tradition to the extent of the instruments it's played on:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64045S7JDKg

so the salient question is, when someone writes "classical" music today, what does that mean?

another question of interest, is dissonant music rooted in a tradition?  and if it is, could you say that as musical style "evolves" does it tend to progress towards the structureless?  and why?
i don't know much music history, so is this is pure assumption, but is seems:

classical => dissonance
jazz => free jazz
rock => noise


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## Demensa (Jan 22, 2013)

Aden said:


> I like
> Ravel


Hell yeah! Gaspard de la Nuit is such a beautiful piece as well. (It's been linked in my sig for a while, but I might change it up soon.)
Do you have any other Ravel pieces to recommend me? I admit I haven't listened to much beside Gaspard de la Nuit and some of his other well known pieces (Bolero).



Kit H. Ruppell said:


> "Classical" is a term applied to music as a fine art of a particular culture. This thread is about Western Classical music, which is derived from the musical traditions of Europe, particularly court music.
> 
> This is pretty



Thanks, I forgot to distinguish this thread as Western Classical music explicitly (although my examples would have made this obvious) as opposed to Indian or Turkish classical music, etc. That piece was excellent, by the way. I love my share of baroque music. (Also, you seem to have a habit of forcing me to google things when you post - This time both the composer and the precise name of the instrument. I feel like I become a little more knowledgeable each time... which is awesome. I love learning new things.)



aqxsl said:


> oh really?
> 
> maybe i didn't flesh out my question enough; i'm eluding to the idea of what we consider to be "classical" music today, particularly in reference to avant-garde and dissonance
> 
> ...



Ah, some food for thought finally! First of all I want to say that those minimalist pieces you posted were amazing. I'm usually quite out of the loop when it comes to minimalist, ambient, etc. so learning some new names is always good. I did recognise Phillip Glass and John Cage (Who could forget 4'33''?).  

Now to (not really) answer the first question, I would say that the term 'classical' when applied to the context of contemporary music is simply much too vague and broad, simply referring to distinguishing features like: What is the instrumentation, what musical notation is used in the score, etc. It could also be defined (very loosely again) as the negative space between other easily characterised genres, like rock, jazz, etc. but that would not be very useful. What I would say after some reflection is that we should just use the subgenres when describing a piece, as classical could refer to a particular style, particular instrumentation and scoring or both. Using the example of Penderecki, while his music is very different to what most people would describe as classical, the instrumentation and the way it is performed could (I guess) place it in _avant garde or experimental_ classical music. Would you conversely classify a concerto written for electric guitar as classical? You would say it is _neo_-classical, an evolution of classical. And so you can see how it feels better to define things in terms of sub genres instead of the disgustingly broad 'classical', although I can see from the above post you hinted at this already. Hopefully someone actually educated in this can tell me what the real answer to this is instead of this random speculation.

A related question I have is, How much emphasis do you put on the 'genre' of music? Or in other words; how accurately or how 'far down' do you think we should categorize our music? Or for example you find a new experimental band with a fresh and unique sound, do you say they are experimental or do you invent a new genre for them? Do you think a balance needs to be maintained between the usefulness of genres to describe music quickly and easily to others and the accuracy of genres? 

The other question that you had interests me a lot as well. I, very generally, put it down to this:

People want to break out of the rules. They want something new and exciting. Unpredictable. Consonant chord progressions and scales have been done to death.
People can only listen to 'good' music for so long... 

I'd continue speculation, but I've been typing this post for FAR too long.

And to everyone else who posted in the thread, thanks. I listened to everything, and it all sounds great.


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## aqxsl (Feb 19, 2013)

hmm, I'm not entirely sure how to classify the guitar arrangement.  it  boils down to how are we are defining musical genre, is classification  more about composition or about presentation?  if composition, then I'd  say it's classical by technicality (since its the same music, just a  different instrument), else I'd say neo-classical.  but then again maybe  genre is a combo of both

I want to say that the definition of  genre 'accuracy' is ultimately meaningless and pointlessly esoteric, but  it exists and certainly influences the evolution of sound.  We've  discussed this before I think, but most "original" music is new only in  the sense that it's reactive to existing genres and that it's likely  impossible to develop a new sound "from the void"

If all new  music is reactive, then perhaps having well-developed classification of  sound will help foster even more "potent" reaction.  So I think you  could argue that classification is valuable as force of "change".
But  at the same time, you could argue that genre is trying to fit a model  to something that can't be modeled and by doing so, you are ultimately  constraining the flow of new ideas.  I'm not entirely convinced of this  though.  What's your opinion on genre?

I'm curious how dissonance  fits into the question of originality as well.  Since dissonance seems  to be the "endpoint" that music genres develop into, does this suggest  something about the potential scope of music evolution as a whole?  This  is being pulled directly from my ass, but is dissonance the "music  singularity"?  Like, as the well of semantic content in music runs dry,  will dissonance/meaninglessness be all that is left?


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## Kit H. Ruppell (Feb 19, 2013)

Glorious
[video=youtube;Jmk5frp6-3Q]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jmk5frp6-3Q[/video]


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## Demensa (Feb 20, 2013)

aqxsl said:


> hmm, I'm not entirely sure how to classify the guitar arrangement.  it  boils down to how are we are defining musical genre, is classification  more about composition or about presentation?  if composition, then I'd  say it's classical by technicality (since its the same music, just a  different instrument), else I'd say neo-classical.  but then again maybe  genre is a combo of both
> 
> I want to say that the definition of  genre 'accuracy' is ultimately meaningless and pointlessly esoteric, but  it exists and certainly influences the evolution of sound.  We've  discussed this before I think, but most "original" music is new only in  the sense that it's reactive to existing genres and that it's likely  impossible to develop a new sound "from the void"
> 
> ...



Yay... discussion!
I think I would tend to agree with the idea that classifying music into genres can 'help foster even more potent reactions', rather than hinder them. For example using a genre as a generalising identifier of aspects of music can easily allow people to mix them: 

"I think I want to make some cool new music! Well I'll just take some typical features from metal such as distorted guitars, harsh vocals and basic power chord progressions and mix them with something else!... Maybe I'll mix it with Ska! So now my new song will have distorted guitars, harsh vocals, power chords. BUT, it will also feature prominent bass lines, brass instruments and emphasis on the off-beat! 
I've just created something new and radical quite easily by using genres as higher level descriptions of musical features, rather than piecing together things from everywhere. 
But you see if you keep mixing the subgenres, you get a blurred mess in the end which does not conform to any set list of genres. Thus by using genres as a tool, you actually render them much less effective in the end.
That's why I use genres only on a very broad, surface level. When I _really _want to describe a piece of music to someone, I'll just make them listen to it.
Basically, I _completely_ agree with you.

Also, I've been thinking about the idea that music can only be a reaction to various influences (Original sounding music only means that the influences are a mix currently unknown to you)
and I find that at its basics it comes down to the idea that free will is an illusion and we are all just chains reactions of particles bumping into one another. (I don't really know where I was going with that sentence... but I'll leave it there.)

And the dissonance singularity? I really like those last couple of sentences. I'd say that even as we evolve towards the structureless, we always have to have variation as well.  And what varies from dissonance? As much as we don't want to go back to something overdone to death, traditional consonant music will still provide a contrast that is necessary in a dissonant musical diet.  I'll leave this line of thought for now with the question: 

Can we learn to perceive deep and meaningful differences in different pieces of noise? Most people hear all noise as 'noise' and nothing else, even if the sequence of notes, the rhythms, performing media, etc are different.

What I also find funny is that I started the thread saying that it was a genre thread (Meaning the discussion of classical music), but it evolved into a thread on the very nature of genre itself!

Oh, and have some classical:
[video=youtube;bviS_Wt3L6M]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bviS_Wt3L6M[/video]


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