I am not plugged into a community of musicians these days, but in college and the decade afterwards we were hearing, performing music written by contemporary composers. Choral music, mostly. But cello concertos, crazy harpsichord binges, and banging on drums were there, too.
A "Classical vernacular" these days would be blockbuster movie soundtracks! Are you (the article, its author) telling me that doesn't matter?
To say nothing of new venues and art forms. I learned about Christopher Tin's song cycles via a soundtrack bundle marketed to video gamers. I am not a gamer, but I think I was shopping for a gift for my kids and holy cow I love his work.
Symphonies and opera houses perform fun and popular works during the summer season in the US. So now would be a good time to find stuff you might not expect.
A lot of video game music was created by people trained in classical music. The Nintendo themes, a lot of Square / Enix games, etc. etc.
There are plenty of videogamers who take music damn seriously. The OC Remix guys are absolutely superb at what they do for example.
For less of a "Classical" feel, there is MAGFest (Music and Gaming).
In any case, you will find plenty of "serious" musicians trying to celebrate video games and music. I think that symphony orchestras have begun to realize how much video gamers enjoy music and are learning to merge the two fields. But Video Gamers have known this fact for many years already!
Ultimately, I welcome our classical music brethren to the party.
What an incredibly short-sighted article, I have so many points of rebuttal I'll offer just two:
- Firstly, millions of people can now listen to brilliantly-performed classical music and no- or low-cost. As compared to the few who could afford the luxury of the concert hall or wait for the radio to play such music.
- Secondly, the idea of the lone, genius composer is obsolete. Conservatory-style composition classes focus on teaching classical harmony at first, later expanding into modern concepts and compositional devices. This may seem to lead to the image of a Beethoven-esque composer, writing notes and conducting ensembles and orchestras, but the reality is that the composer of the 21st century is more of a collaborative structural-architect who grapples with technology as much as with harmony, melody and timbre: designing instructions and working closely with performers who provide, in turn, virtuosity.
I grew up listening primarily "composed" period music for ensembles and orchestras, and still have a great and profound love for it, but I have an increasing admiration for modern composers and musicians who have embraced all the aesthetics of their surroundings and the influences of their peers. Modern composer/performers/musicians have enriched music for us in all styles of music from pop to alternative to country. It's a wonderful time to be a listener, and it doesn't require a Rachmaninoff concerto to be impressed (though, we can still be impressed by Rachmaninoff..)
Exactly, music is absolutely incredible these days. In any genre you pick, you will find very inspired, innovative and beautiful examples.
Some people who say "music is bad these days" try to contrast pop music with 18th/19th century Western classical music. But that makes absolutely no sense because there are heaps over heaps of beautiful classical music composed in 21st century. You just need to go out there and find them. E.g. there are Unsuk Chin, Jennifer Higdon, Fred Lerdahl, Michael Torke, James Yannatos etc... There is no shortage of beautiful classical music produced today, if you care to look outside of household names.
Similarly, when people contrast pop music with classic rock (e.g. mid-to-late 20th century Rock and Hard Rock), I think they're once again failing to find the right kind of aesthetics. There are Greta Van Fleet, Heart, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club etc... All kinds of artists who make great Rock music. But since they're not mainstream anymore, they're not exposed to masses as much as Rolling Stones, Queen, Led Zeppelin etc...
Orchestral music is a tough racket because it costs $50,000 to get an orchestra out of bed, and then you're competing against 200 years of great stuff that's in the public domain. I do think that soundtracks are where it's at for orchestral music. Music that's not simple pop had a shift from churches and courts to concert halls in the 1800s because that's where the money was, and now most people experience it in film or videogames for the same reason. Williams, Zimmer, Shore, and Elfman have all done great stuff.
Dig a little deeper, there are plenty of modern classical music composers. Just last year I saw the opening of John Adam's Become Ocean and it was fantastic modern classical music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGva1NVWRXk
Nobody would call modern art music "classical music."
When I was high school/college age, I certainly paid attention to the composers who were writing for film, or synthesizers, etc. I just don't think enough kids today are positioned to be able to appreciate it.
The artists performing this aren't all old men, for the most part they're a diverse group of young people.
Indeed, and enjoyed regularly by packed concert hall audiences with a full live orchestra. Hans Zimmer, John Williams, Ennio Morricone etc. are arguably the great classical composers of the late 20th century.
Classical purists might argue that it's made for visual entertainment and for that reason doesn't count. But if music written for opera and ballet are a legitimate part of the classical canon - and indeed religious music, Bach's masses etc., which equally had a function beyond just existing for their own sake - excluding music from the movies on those grounds feels like little more than snobbery.
The same can be said even of the best video game soundtracks. Not really my world, but I can see the love, skill and artistry that goes in to it.
If you're looking for horns, Mark Ronson's band are worth a listen, they don't have the solo skill of the great jazz players but they hang together well as a band. Solo trumpet wise, Erik Truffaz is worth listening to. Still going strong AFAIK.
While I can name several modern classical composers whom I interested in* I think your point still stands and most people wouldn't be able to name an active composer after Beethoven, maybe Brahms. I have brief memories of an interview with Milton Babbitt about how classical music was no doubt on the way out due to advent of popular music, and i think he was right, these days classical music is only relevant in most peoples lives when mentioning an anecdote about how making their newborn listen to Mozart might increase their IQ.
Whenever I would go to a chamber music event or an orchestral performance there will generally be two sets of people there - the old school bougie folk and a handful of conservatory students - the casual audience member is far and few between. Orchestras will have a better chance getting an audience by performing pops or some program full of video game music.
Still, going to the symphony hall, being part of that scene, this might retain it's importance for the upper class / professionals, and this alone could be enough to continue to support more than a handful of orchestras around the United States.
* And the only reason I can is because I studied composition and theory at University.
I didn't really understand the premise of the article. Is the author talking about classical music, the genre that lasted about a century and got displaced by romanticism, or is he lumping all music done using traditional western instruments and musical ensembles in the same bag?
If it's the former, then certainly someone should have told him that the genre passed its peak more than two centuries ago. If it's the latter, I'm surprised that he hasn't visited a theater recently, or any of the concert halls that are frequently sold out when they play popular successes such as Williams.
To be honest, I suspect the real issue with the author is that his main line of business is to write about politics, and that this article is no exception.
> Oh also if you ever think "classical music doesn't have a cultural force anymore" please pay attention to contemporary film music that's not neo-romanticist. You'll see that there is tons of minimalist influence from Glass, Reich, Andriessen, Richter etc...
And music from horror movies and battle scenes if you want to hear the contemporary influence of serialism and new complexity.
The reason I make the distinction is that there are very specific composition trends and rules that make a musical piece "classical", and contemporary game or movie music is not following those at all.
It's not because music is played in an orchestra that it's the same genre as the popular orchestra music that was played x00 years ago. Unfortunately most people don't make (knowingly or unknowingly) the distinction.
>Today, most young people encounter classical music not as a popular art form but as a class signifier, a set of tropes in a larger system of encoded communication that commercial enterprises have exploited to remap our societal associations with orchestral sound.
Most young people? I'd venture that most children who attend US public school encounter classical music in K-5 at some point.
>The average American does not recognize the opening chords of The Four Seasons as the sound of spring but the sound of snobbery.
Rolled my eyes here. We're talking about Burger King, not a country club.
Edit: I disagree with the conclusion but the article is pretty interesting with the history of 'weaponized' classical music.
But in the baroque era, it was a 'new thing' to write music that was not written for god (although there was a lot of that as well) Remember all that Gregorian chanting? Well for a while there in the medieval era, music could only be gospel in nature.
Classical composers broke all the very strict Baroque conventions.
Romantic composers crashed the Classical guys conventions.
Modern composers broke everything.
And now - we do have a lot of 'art bands' ... i.e. the musical equivalent of Pollock paintings. It's been around since the 60's but maybe popularized a bit later on, and since computers ... well ... it's almost common.
And music and film have undergone the same, globalist total 'de-culturalization' as have other art forms.
To appeal to an ever wider audience, big films have to appeal to the 'global lowest common denominator' which is someone who is barely literate, has almost no education, likes explosions. so we get Transformers = no plot. Just long action sequences stitched together with a few words spoken by non-national, non-ethnic, non-demoninational characters with nothing to say.
And Taylor Swift. :)
... though there is still a ton of good music and cinema created today.
As a former wanna-be-serious classical musician I heartily echo your sentiment. The general movement in art (the various "modern" movements) seems to have been both to reject traditionalisms and designed to make people feel bad. It also happened in music. I've heard it called the "The Unbearable Irrelevance of Contemporary Music".
There's some kind of draw in the hyper-academic avant-garde-ish arts scene that seems to produce mostly forgettable rubbish. But if you take into account that "90% of everything is crap" then there seems to be (slowly) some interesting art trends emerging. American musical minimalism is something I came across only in my thirties, somehow completely oblivious to it as a movement even though I was familiar with a few notable composers like Philip Glass. Once I dove into it, I found it fantastic, joyful, energetic, and most importantly impactful.
I think the composer I found that most reflects our observation here is Steve Reich, who's early work is semi-interesting academic avant-garde-ish naval gazing. But he eventually finds a real voice and his later works are mesmerizing energetic journeys -- and he's had deep impact on modern music across a number of genres.
They've given me hope that I'll find similar artists in other fields that are producing novel, interesting, and ultimately beautiful and impactful work.
There is nothing wrong with being entertained by classical music, but to an initiate in the world of videogame music it is dissapointing if listeners don't want to engage with videogame music beyond reliving their classical experiences. There are so many more feelings an orchestra can inspire in a listener if they invest in absorbing that tradition. :)
There is good music and bad music, genres are just sets of constraints, none is inherently better than other, what matters is how composer use them. Good chiptune can be a better art than mediocre classical piece. And I would argue more "non-classicaly-trained" people know classical music (even by accident), than the other way around. Everybody have heard Vivaldi, Mozart, Bach, and Strauss at some point in life. Most people never heard Flimbo Quest or Zelda soundtrack.
In 100 years there will be people with PhDs arguing over the merits of classical SID chiptunes vs the Amiga era mods.
PS if you're interested in trying something different I reccomend this presentation about chiptunes - it's interestnig and gives you some idea about the genre constraints and stylistic choices https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEjcK5JFEFE
Based on the article, the author of the book under review seems satisfied that tonal, orchestral music has a new place in film scores. But, it should be observed that, as music for film, it puts music in a secondary role. There is a massive theme missing about (instrumental, ‘high art’ for lack of a better term) music no longer being an art form that most people pay full attention to. Who the hell (outside of a select few, including myself) sits down and just listens to a symphony or long concerto these days?
Not OP, but been playing classical music for ... christ, 17 years.
It often is.
"Modern" usually implies dissonance, syncopation, and sometimes downright atonality and free time.
These concepts are fun from a musicians standpoint, as they break away from formalities and rules, but do so within a complex musical context in ways that are very difficult as the instruments are balancing between having the cake and eating it against each other, simultaneously.
This is hard to pick up on, which in effect often leads to the sub-genre confining itself to musicians-listening-to-other-musicians demographics, eg. "are they high?"-jazz.
Similar comparisons can be made for Picasso and art in general I suppose(?).
Sort of related.. but I'd say classical composing. Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Vivaldi, Prokofiev, etc.
Where are the modern classical powerhouses? Contemporary classical is a scary, awful thing for my ears. The best I have found is actually in the movies - Danny Elfman and Hanz Zimmer, for instance. I sort of attribute them to modern Opera writers, though - they don't write full on symphonies.
I don't believe myself a snob, I listen to and enjoy modern metal, pop, techno. But I love the old classical as well. While techno and metal continue to progress and get better, classical has grown...weird
I am not plugged into a community of musicians these days, but in college and the decade afterwards we were hearing, performing music written by contemporary composers. Choral music, mostly. But cello concertos, crazy harpsichord binges, and banging on drums were there, too.
A "Classical vernacular" these days would be blockbuster movie soundtracks! Are you (the article, its author) telling me that doesn't matter?
To say nothing of new venues and art forms. I learned about Christopher Tin's song cycles via a soundtrack bundle marketed to video gamers. I am not a gamer, but I think I was shopping for a gift for my kids and holy cow I love his work.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IJiHDmyhE1A
Eric Whitacre! Arvo Pärt!
These are not obscure artists.
Symphonies and opera houses perform fun and popular works during the summer season in the US. So now would be a good time to find stuff you might not expect.
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