IX. the composition exists in an odd way “outside
of time”
Comments
I’m joking, of
course, but . . .
. . . and of course I don’t really mean “better.” It would be more precise to say that I am
listing reasons why popular music might be more appealing, rather than better,
than classical music. And that
classical music has a different sort of appeal.
“Louder,” “sounds better”
What I mean is that over most sound systems I’ve
dealt with, a well-produced pop recording sounds immediately more
engaging. There is just more sonic
detail spread over a wide range of frequencies, so that even a bad system
sounds good. In the early days of rock,
recording engineers would listen to adjust mixes over both studio monitor
speakers and transistor radio and car speakers.
Around 30 years ago, composer Roger Reynolds
suggested that ‘Classical Music radiates, rock music envelopes.’ Definitely true with today’s sound systems!
“II. it is longer”
and “VI. greater emphasis on musical
relationships”
Perhaps this is the reason that classical music has the reputation for
being “intellectual.” Many examples
from all types of music can sustain considerable cogitation, as shown by Philip
Tagg’s famous (well, famous among certain music grad students) book, Kojak--50
seconds of television music, which runs to 300 pages or so. But given the general lack of words, images,
etc, what does classical music have to be meaningful with? Only musical relationships, and those
self-spun “webs of significance.”
Relying on that and stretching across time gets some listeners to a
place that can only be reached by such methods. It takes time to investigate musical time. Certainly one can find webs of significance
on Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, and there are plenty of
classical pieces that don’t seem very self-ramified, but works by Beethoven and
Mozart seem to be the champions on this field.
“3.
THE BEAT” and “IV. a larger range of rhythmic possibilities”
I refer the reader to Greg Sandow’s discussion
of groove, but also would add to it a reminder of the Stravinsky-Bartok
expansion of classical rhythmic language.
(It shows up in Zappa and other exploratory rock music, too, but it is
more a part of the 20th-century common language in the classical
lineage.)
11.
“IT’S POPULAR”
9 & 10 and VII-IX
Popular music revels in the illusion of immediacy; much classical music can be a bit more removed. A waltz by Chopin could be danced to, sort-of, but the musical idea has been removed from its original function; it is not dance music, it merely refers to dance music. Pieces like this are what they are not. This emotional remove is perhaps one of the reasons classical music is less popular. In recent decades, if a character in a film performs classical music (unless that character is a child overcoming obstacles in a heart-warming story) that character is an evil villain. To be detached from one’s own emotions is monstrous, and the love of classical music is a sure symptom of such a condition (Silence of the Lambs and Hard Target, for example). (If not out-and-out evil, the character is at least dysfunctional, and usually gets set right by rock’n’roll. See for example the film Awakenings. The sit-com character Frazier is another example of an emotionally inept lover of classical music.) While pop culture hates classical music and wants you to hate it too, it is making a point of some insight. Classical music culture does seem to be uncomfortable with certain ways of displaying certain emotions; the documentary on Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg is evidence of this. Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and her many fans are of course evidence of a countervailing tendency within the classical music culture. Ah, but that coolness, that remove, can be an attraction in and of itself. I will return to this point, after I discuss delayed gratification, but for the moment I want to continue with this idea of emotional distance, using ballet as a parallel example.
The dual nature of a certain kind of art is captured in this writing on dance by critic Edwin Denby:
When you watch
ballet dancers dancing you are observing a young woman or young man in fancy
dress, and you like it if they look attractive, if they are well built and have
what seems to be an open face. You
notice the youthful spring in starting, the grace of carriage, the strength in
stopping. You like it if they know what
to do and where to go, if they can throw in a surprising trick or two, if they
seem to be enjoying their part and are pleasantly sociable as performers. All this is proper juvenile charm, and it
often gives a very sharp pleasure in watching dancers.
But you are ready too for other qualities
besides charm. The audience soon
notices if the dancer has unusual control over her movements, if what she is
doing is unusually clear to the eye, if there are differences of emphasis and
differences of urgency in her motion.
Within single slow movements or within a sequence you enjoy seeing the
continuity of an impulse and the culmination of a phrase. Now you are not only watching a charming
dancer, she is also showing you a dance. [emphasis added] [more thoughts on observing
dance here.]
This sense of the thing-itself coincident with an awareness of that thing is sometimes a part of classical music. I hear it other music, too. The White Stripes and the Talking Heads would be examples from the popular tradition.
Perhaps that coolness, that remove, has become too emphasized, and it became the dead and stuffy part of the classical music subculture. Critic Alex Ross shakes his fist at it:
I hate “classical
music”: not the thing but the name. It traps a tenaciously living art in a
theme park of the past. It cancels out the possibility that music in the spirit
of Beethoven could still be created today. It banishes into limbo the work of
thousands of active composers who have to explain to otherwise well-informed
people what it is they do for a living. The phrase is a masterpiece of negative
publicity, a tour de force of anti-hype. I wish there were another name. I envy
jazz people who speak simply of “the music.” Some jazz aficionados also call
their art “America’s classical music,” and I propose a trade: they can have
“classical,” I’ll take “the music.”
The part about delayed gratification will go here, but for now you will have to wait.
~~~
*Spinal
Tap.
"How to Judge a Dancer," in Looking at the Dance, Edwin Denby. First published in 1949. Horizon Press, New York, 1968.
Alex Ross, “Listen To This,” The New Yorker,
February 16 and 23, 2004; on-line at
http://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/05/more_to_come_6.html.
Draft-in-progress May 2006
MUS202 music appreciation
David Meckler
Cañada College