A study in contrasting approaches:
Scott Spiegelberg says sensible things about introducing people to classical music.
A. C. Douglas makes me less likely to listen to classical music any time soon.
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Physics, Politics, Pop Culture; formerly on ScienceBlogs
A study in contrasting approaches:
Scott Spiegelberg says sensible things about introducing people to classical music.
A. C. Douglas makes me less likely to listen to classical music any time soon.
Comments are closed.
Yeah, it’s a good thing that sort of derisive putdown never happens with pop music, so that when I tell pop-lovers I’ve listened to some pop music recently, and really love these “Spice Girls”, they always respond in a spirit of friendly dialogue and openness.
Oh, I’m not foolish enough to claim that there aren’t indie rock dorks who are every bit as insufferable as A.C. Douglas. I’m no fans of theirs, either, and if I see a similar exchange of blog posts between a sensible pop fan and an “anybody with a major label deal is a sellout” style jackass, I’ll happily post about that, too.
Douglas just happens to be the abrasive pompous ass who’s drawn my notice at the moment.
Also, your ability to unerringly lock in on the very worst that pop music has to offer is the stuff of legend. I mean, if it makes you happy, more power to you, but damn, you like some dreadful music.
Interestingly, I couldn’t stand to listen to any kind of classical music until I was around 40. I found even the quietest pieces, and the most melodic symphonic music, positively abrasive when I was younger (and this is coming from someone who still regularly cranks up Gang of Four!)
I actually like it now, but for what I think is an unusual reason. Symphonic and operatic music seems to pass right through my brain, organizing my thoughts along the way, without engaging emotions of any kind. I still like rock, pop, and punk, especially from the 80s, but if I listen to it, I get too emotionally and physically involved in it and can’t concentrate on anything else. (It also dredges up irritating memories of playing in a garage band that fell apart spectacularly.) If I tune in to the NPR classical station at work, though, my productivity goes way up.
I actually like it now, but for what I think is an unusual reason. Symphonic and operatic music seems to pass right through my brain, organizing my thoughts along the way, without engaging emotions of any kind. I still like rock, pop, and punk, especially from the 80s, but if I listen to it, I get too emotionally and physically involved in it and can’t concentrate on anything else.
That’s pretty much the reason why I don’t listen to much classical music– it just fails to leave any impression. I have the same problem with some pop/rock artists– Iron and Wine gets a lot of critical praise, but the couple of songs of theirs that I’ve got on iTunes pass by me so smoothly that I’ve managed not to rate them, despite having played them a half-dozen times each (I finally got one of them today, but only because it was followed in the shuffle by something new, and I clicked over to rate that…).
As for the distraction issue, I’ve gone so many years with a constant background of pop music that I don’t necessarily notice that, either. Particularly good or bad songs will distract me long enough to note the name or change the station, but other than that, it’s not much of a real distraction.
That’s pretty much the reason why I don’t listen to much classical music– it just fails to leave any impression.
I think this is a difference in the way one receives music. I can hardly imagine more emotionally moving pieces of music than the beginning of Bach’s St. John’s Passion, for instance. Definitely not in the realm of pop culture, though I have my favourites there, too (Iron Maiden’s “Fear of the dark” :)).
That’s pretty much the reason why I don’t listen to much classical music– it just fails to leave any impression.
That is what I thought and what most people think because they have only been exposed to the composers that tend to personify classical music, like Bach and Mozart. There is a lot more variation in classical music than people think. I am a college student and occasionally I will put in a classical song on a mix for a friend and often they will confess that they actually liked it.
Melissa makes a very good point. There is too much of a tendency to regard classical music as monolithic, when it is more varied than popular music. (It has a much longer history, thus more opportunities to be varied. Plus classical music has a talent for subsuming popular music styles, so we regard the pop hits of 1550 as classical.) This variety of style is another reason to get away from the attitude that all classical music is worthy of worship. You say you don’t like Bach or Mozart, that’s fine. Then I might suggest some Mahler, Dougherty, Stravinsky, or Torke. I might be able to find some specific Bach and/or Mozart that you would like too, depending on the reasons why you didn’t like the particular work.
That’s pretty much the reason why I don’t listen to much classical music– it just fails to leave any impression.
Funny, I have rather the opposite reaction. I love pop/rock/dub/all kinds of non-classical music, but very little of it generates in me the same kind of visceral response that (some; my favourite) classical music does. Part’s Tabula Rasa literally, physically, left me breathless the first time I heard it. The first time I heard Shostakovich’s String Qtt#5, it was on the car radio — and I had to pull over and stop driving.
Chacun à son goût, as Prof Spiegelberg would no doubt say. (I’m not inclined to care what ACD would say.)
This variety of style is another reason to get away from the attitude that all classical music is worthy of worship. You say you don’t like Bach or Mozart, that’s fine. Then I might suggest some Mahler, Dougherty, Stravinsky, or Torke. I might be able to find some specific Bach and/or Mozart that you would like too, depending on the reasons why you didn’t like the particular work.
The problem is, I don’t particularly dislike it, either. It’s not like somebody starts playing classical music and I start screaming “Aaaaiieee!!! Turn it off!!!”
I like most classical music just fine while it’s playing, and I even find some of it moving. While it’s playing. The next day, I wouldn’t be able to tell you the first thing about it, other than “it was pretty cool while it was playing.” It really is a matter of failing to make a lasting impression, one way or another. I can’t say that I don’t like Bach or Mozart, because I couldn’t tell you which is which, or which of them wrote any given piece of music.
The piece called something like “Fur Elise” gets name-checked a lot– I think it’s Beethoven– and on at least four occasions, I can recall it being played and identified by name in tv spots of one form or another, and saying “Oh, that’s what that song is.” And the next time it came around, I had exactly the same reaction. I still couldn’t tell you what the tune is (I think it’s a tinkly piano thing, but I’m not sure…)
I’m not a total cretin– I can identify a handful of classical pieces, but it’s mostly because they’re associated with other events– the “O Fortuna” from Carmina Burena is on a half-dozen movie soundtracks, Pachelbel’s Canon was the soundtrack for any number of charity appeals in the 80’s, etc. I don’t know them because of the music, I know them because the music was associated with something else.
The same thing is true of a lot of jazz– I really like “Begin the Beguine,” but that’s largely because I remember playing it in jazz band when I was in high school. Most other jazz songs just fail to leave an impression. So does a lot of instrumental pop.
I’m just a lyrically driven guy.
I’m just a lyrically driven guy.
Then I would suggest a variety of English-language songs. Ned Rorem, Phil Kline (the Rumsfeld Songs), Aaron Copland songs, Benjamin Britten, etc. Same in the jazz realms, listen to Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitgerald, Louis Armstrong’s vocal stuff, etc.
I don’t see any problem with focusing on lyrics more than melody. I do have two questions for you: do you like listening to poetry as much as pop songs? If not, what does music do to make the lyrics pleasing for you?
I grew up listening to classical music and had to “learn” to like pop and rock music. I was introduced to folk music in my twenties and love dancing to it – I can’t not dance to certain folk music. Recently I started listening to jazz.
When I go to a classical concert I quite often space out and away. If something interesting happens in the music or in the way it is played, it will bring me back to the present and to the music. It seems to largely depend on the conductor especially for composers I know well.
I also sing in a choir that performs large orchestral pieces. This has taught me about how the parts of a piece of music go together. My mother says that when I shared this knowledge with her, it taught her a new appreciation for choral music.
Then I would suggest a variety of English-language songs. Ned Rorem, Phil Kline (the Rumsfeld Songs), Aaron Copland songs, Benjamin Britten, etc
If you can name a handful of things that I could get off iTunes, I’m willing to take a listen. I’m going away to a conference next week, and I’ll have some time on the plane.
The Phil Kline songs are available on iTunes (“As We Know,” “That Many Vases,” and “Near-Perfect Clarity”); are Benjamin Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings; many Rorem songs (I’d recommend “The Waking” and “Visits to St. Elizabeth’s”); Copland’s Old American Songs (pick a few, they’re all good); and Charles Ives’ “Memories.”
My “classical music for the pop music guy” recommendation is John Adams’ Nixon in China. Nobody likes opera, and nobody likes modern classical music, but I really think that pop music aficionados would like this. It’s rhythmically driven, it’s got lyrics in English, and it’s got memorable tunes. About the only obstacle I could foresee is an aversion to Opera Voice.
(Also, despite my semi-snarky comment in the first post, I agree with your general point. I’m exactly the sort of person that A.C. Douglas probably hates — I know squat about squat, music-wise, and just listen to the music I like. It happens that it’s 99% classical music, which means that I have essentially the same sophisticated relationship to Dvorak and Sibelius that millions of other people have to Kelly Clarkson and Jay-Z…)
For most of my life I had the same reaction to music as Chad’s. Classical music used to make no impression on me despite my having been forced to learn the piano for eight years and having heard it played regularly in the car and at home. I would hear a good tune and think “that’s nice”, but was never really moved by it. It wasn’t until I sat down and really concentrated on listening to a piece of music (eyes closed, doing nothing else) that I got completely hooked. If I don’t concentrate I only notice the pleasantness (or otherwise) of the melody and miss all the most interesting aspects.
Another thing is that you shouldn’t expect to be hooked by a piece of music immediately. Most of the pieces that I now love, I found unremarkable on my first listenings (even if I was concentrating fully on these listenings), but grew into them. Unfortunately people are reluctant to spend time listening to the same piece over and over again unless it catches their attention immediately. Especially not when the piece is an hour-long symphony. So you need to have a modicum of faith in eventually “getting it” to do that.
Best way to listen to something over and over: Put it in your car’s CD player, and then be too lazy to change discs for a month…
I guess it all boils down to the question: can ‘susceptibility’ to art music be learned, or is it something that just takes time to develop and might never be acquired by some people?
The Phil Kline songs are available on iTunes (“As We Know,” “That Many Vases,” and “Near-Perfect Clarity”); are Benjamin Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings; many Rorem songs (I’d recommend “The Waking” and “Visits to St. Elizabeth’s”); Copland’s Old American Songs (pick a few, they’re all good); and Charles Ives’ “Memories.”
I picked up pretty much all of these this morning (classical music is cheap, at least…), and threw them on the iPod. I’ll let you know what I think (possibly as early as this afternoon, as I’m going to be a classic East Coast liberal elite, and go listen to it while reading the New York Times…).
I like the arrognat fool’s comment:
Obviously the twit have never really experienced any really angry venting.
I know classical music, have listened to it since I was a kid, since my parents felt that it was part of what I should be taught to appreciate (as well as ballet, art etc.). I like classical music still, but I don’t listen to it much, since I have to be in the right mood for it.
Douglas’ is right that people who don’t know anything about classical music, are uncultured, but only in regards to music, and a subset of music at that. We all have areas of culture where our knowledge and appreciation is lacking (in music, my big field of ignorance is Jazz, though there are other wast areas of dispairing lack of knowledge). I am sure that there certainly are many areas in which Douglas is uncultured (if nothing else, then obviously in general etiquette), yet because his focus is on this specific subsphere of culture, he fells quite competent to call other people incompetetent.
Well, I guess we all are incompetent, it’s just a matter of finding out which areas we are so.
Scott Spiegelberg’s piece is the most condescending piece of writing I have read in a very long time. Apparently people who do not think like him disconcert him. If he is only now just beginning to accept that other people’s reasons for liking or disliking something may have some validity (although they can still be wrong, out of ignorance), when it comes to interacting with other people he has a lot of catching up to do.
Alphonse: Scott Spiegelberg’s piece is the most condescending piece of writing I have read in a very long time. Apparently people who do not think like him disconcert him.
Huh?
Are you sure you’ve got your names right? I didn’t get that from Scott’s piece at all.
Preliminary classical music review: I dislike “Opera Voice,” to use Mike’s term. The recommended songs have lyrics in English, but many of them are nearly incomprehensible because they’re sung in such an ornate and artificial way. I’ll listen to them some more later, to give them a fair chance, but my immediate reaction is that I dislike that mode of singing pretty strongly. There’s something almost perverse about the Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts” getting the Three Tenors treatment…
Chad Orzel said “The recommended songs have lyrics in English, but many of them are nearly incomprehensible because they’re sung in such an ornate and artificial way.”
I think it is an error to call an operatic style of singing artificial, as opposed to a “natural” (I suppose) pop-music-way of singing : neither comes _very_ natural to the singer, and every style is a more or less conscious decision. The way some singers (e.g. Mick Jagger) slide into all the notes is as deliberately employed as a classical singer’s vibrato, or any other distinct stylistic feature.
Apart from that, I have more trouble at times understanding some pop singers’ English, be it Jagger, Stephen Malkmus or Mark E. Smith, than I do understanding this or that opera singer’s Italian.
May I recommend the works of my personal musical favorite: George Frederic Handel? This is a classical composer many of whose works elicit a strong emotional response in most people, including young children and people with little previous exposure to classical music. — Of course, if you hate coloratura, large parts of it may not be for you; also note that the majority of his English-language works have some form of religious connotation, while his operas and secular cantatas are all in Italian (which may be an issue for you if you are, as you say, “lyrics-driven”).
I did college radio back in the day; we prided ourselves on finding the good stuff in every genre. When I was a kid, it was a single-digit percentage of my listening; now that I’m old enough to have teenagers of my own, about half the music in the house is classical.
The thing to keep in mind about classical music: it’s not a hoax.
This is music that has endured, for centuries. People are not just pretending to like it in order to trick others into thinking that they are cultured. There is something quite real going on there.
This relates to the previous ‘faith/Faith’ discussion about science: you have to trust that the generations of listeners before us were on to something legitimate, and weren’t faking their conclusions. Classical music gets the job done. Maybe in non-obvious ways, in ways that require different timescales to ‘get’, but it works.
The stuff I use to reel in people who have indie-rock cred but no exposure to serious music is Stravinsky. Because, you know, Iggy Stravinsky rocks my world.
I dislike “Opera Voice,” to use Mike’s term.
I’m still going to stick with my Nixon in China recommendation, for two reasons:
1. A good portion of it is more choral or “normal” voiced.
2. In the parts that are fully operatic, the weird discrepancy between the banality of the language and the portentousness of the singing is an intentional effect.
Also, though, give yourself time to get used to things. A lot of the distaste people have for new genres (whether it be old people and rock back in the ’50s, old people and rap back in the ’80s, or old people and classical right now) is just the different and unfamiliar conventions, which don’t map onto their previous expectations.
Chad,
I can sympathise somewhat with Simple Gifts sounding odd when sung “operatically”. If you listen to the Britten Serenade recommended by Scott, I’d be surprised if you still find that classical singing as applied to those poems is in any way artificial. Personally I cannot imagine a better way of setting the Lyke-Wake Dirge to music.
I would also agree with syro0 that many pop singers’ English is harder to comprehend than classical singing, but perhaps I’ve been habituated to Opera Voice. The Copland and Britten songs should be easy to understand for anyone though. I don’t know about the others.
This is turning into a great discussion. I agree very much with Wowbagger:
and disagree very much with this, from Mike:
Some music is brain candy, and requires no real effort on the part of the listener, but other music requires real engagement. That’s why I disagree that leaving the disc in the car CD player is a good way to get lots of exposure to such “difficult” (for want of a better term) music — because you can’t concentrate on it properly if you’re doing *anything* but listening.
Another thing that turned me on to classical music, besides those pieces that grabbed me right away, was listening to educated music lovers talking intelligently (and intelligibly!) about the music they loved. Radio stations all around the world are still playing “Adventures in Good Music”, and it was from Karl Haas that I got the idea Wowbagger described — just sit and listen, not doing anything else. When you’re doing that, I find it helps to have some idea about what the composer was trying to achieve, the history behind the piece — all the kinds of information that a good radio presenter, TV host, author, etc. can give you.
I’d suggest checking out Holst’s Planets (Bernstein), Gorecki’s Third Symphony and Shostakovich’s 5th symphony.
I feel the need to support my teacher (Professor Spiegelberg)- he is one of the few classical musicians who I can honestly say practices what he preaches. And if there are comments that he can’t take criticism well, I might point out that said ‘criticism’ was hardly constructive (I believe the description was 60s liberal mush- a very academic description the last time I checked). It was natural for him to respond defensively- it wasn’t a criticism, it was an attack. And a rather stupid, elitist one at that. It’s this type of person who dig up a piece of Mozart part writing and call it gold simply because of its composer, disregarding the volumes of other work out there to peruse. There’s a reason people are ‘ignorant’ of classical music today- we raise these composers to giant pedestals and say, “These are the greats… you do not deserve to hear them for you do not understand their meanings.” Guess what? Those pieces were the pop music of their time. They were written when hearing music was a special thing that you took the time to sit down and do because it couldn’t be reproduced- we have recordings now; things have changed. If we want classical music to survive, which, as Norman Lebrecht has aptly described, is highly unlikely as we hold onto our standarad repertoire scared to give hope to innovation, we’re going to have to try new things. If that means teaching people to understand music and the concept of leitmotif through film (as Prof Spiegelberg is doing this semester), so be it. If it means that you have to listen to someone make an uninformed remark, so be it. People are bombarded with hooky catchy tunes that repeat constantly and last for under three minute s multiple times a day- if you can get someone hooked on one aspect of classical music, maybe they’ll take the initiative to learn about more once they’ve been hooked the first time. Currently I find Vivaldi and Andrew Lloyd Webber uninspiring and repititious, but there was a time that it was that repetition that got me interested in classical music and musical theatre and I wouldn’t be pursuing opera today if it weren’t for them. So the morals to this response are: 1) Scott Spiegelberg had every right to reply in that manner- his ‘criticism’ was largely unfounded and attacking 2) Elitists can suck it up because if they want the classical music they ‘revere’ to survive they’ll have to get the peons to listen- a lecture won’t change someone’s mind.
P.S. I’d actually recommend Jake Heggie, specifically his art songs. They’re actually musical theatre and jazz inspired, so they have a kick that alot of ‘classical’ pieces lack. They lyrics are excellent as well- Heggie has a real sense for poetry and dramatic timing. I particularly like the cycles Paper Wings and Eve-Song. Then I agree with the comment earlier, Handel is a good step- if you’re trying to learn classical music, you might as well pick up a translation for any aria- they’re all on the web (a fact that I love). Though of course, Handel’s operas were written for an English speaking audience, so it doesn’t really matter if you know that his ‘Ombra mai fu’ is a love song to a plane tree or not. For shock factor, I recommend David Daniels interpretation- it always interests my friends to hear how much he sounds like a mezzo. But I will stop rambling now… I hope this helped a bit.
Cat Templeton – Those pieces were the pop music of their time.
I keep reading this time & again, yet I’m not quite sure what it means. Could you elaborate?
Bob Oldendorf wrote:
“The stuff I use to reel in people who have indie-rock cred but no exposure to serious music is Stravinsky”
I’m with you except for the implication that no indie rock is serious music….
I mean that people listened to the new Mozart piece like we would listen to a new Blink 182 piece. People would order sheet music of their favourite pieces and try to play them at home. Some of it was cutting edge, some of it was just a good tune- but it was new and for public consumption. Classical music at the time wasn’t ‘classical’- it was new stuff that’s out there. Does that make sense? There were people who didn’t like Haydn just as there are people who don’t like, say, Britney Spears (that is not to say that they are the same level of artist, but both had to appeal to the masses to get their music played). Concerts back then were the big social events of the year- and people like Paganini and Liszt were rock stars (Liszt, at one point, had over 300 hand specialists vying to make a mold of his hands- if that isn’t mass mania, I don’t know what is). The weird thing at that point in time was to perform old pieces, but now the weird thing is to perform modern pieces. Do you understand what I’m saying now?
anon: I’m with you except …
Ok, sorry. I was using “serious” as an alternative for “classical”, not as a slam against indie rock.
My own indie-rock cred dried up about the time I became a parent, but, yeah, I think we agree that whatever works, works. Good music is where you find it. The point is, there are good reasons why the stuff in the classical bins is still listened to.
To amplify Cat Templeton’s point above about ‘classical’ being the pop music of its day: The original Academy of Ancient Music was founded to revive really old stuff – – you know, stuff that people barely remembered because it was more than twenty years old. Before recording, ALL music was ephemeral.
Just because music is contemporary to a period doesn’t make it the equivalent of ‘pop’ for that period, anymore than Gorecki or Adams are ‘pop’ today. The implicit assumption behind this characterization is that audiences approached music with the same intent and analytical style, then as now. After accounting for differences in music exposure, saturation, attention spans, competitions with other sources of entertainment, dominant functional roles of music, general levels of musical education, levels of musical appreciation, type of audience (aristocrats..) & size, I don’t think the relation between the audience and the works in each period is quite the same. So, listening to Mozart like Blink 182 doesn’t necessarily hold, although it might, for certain works written expressly for the purpose of broad consumption, like the divertimentis.
Composers did write music for broad appeal. Beethoven is known for publishing ‘light’ works to keep himself in the public eye. But there’s Wellington’s Victory and then there’s the Hammerklavier. Only one of these was ‘pop’ for its day, as evidenced by Beethoven’s hesitation before publishing the latter in its complete, original form and thinking of removing one or two of the movements entirely for their lack of accessibility. Most of the pop of earlier times, I suspect, hasn’t survived. Modern storage capabilities and accessibility, & fragmentation of market into niches, may ensure that a lot more of contemporary music will be preserved, so a lot of true ‘pop’ will “survive”, but that doesn’t apply retroactively.
Daksya-
I think you’d find that we’d agree more than you think. I was making no reference to the quality of listening- I completely agree, but would argue that this is one of the troubling consequences of recorded music (when music is something special and rare you listen to it differently- you treat it differently). I would also agree that most of the songs that have survived are not for broad public consumption alone. I was making a point more about the contemporary nature of these songs and the general public consumption- Beethoven, because of his fame and general ability to sell a piece (he might not have been a social butterfly like many composers, but he did know how to drive a bargain), could afford to write avant-guarde pieces. Moreover, as you pointed out, people’s ears were better acquainted with more difficult pieces. I would also like to point out that there is quality pop out there that is made both for public consumption and for musical value- I would argue that the White Album by the Beatles, for instance, is much like a high quality song cycle (though I know that many will argue with this point). Likewise not all music that has survived was made to be artistic- most of Vivaldi is the same fluffy piece (granted, a better fluff than now, but still fluff). Again, I was just making the point that most classical music wasn’t static… not that it was of the same quality of ‘pop’ music today, but that it held the same popularity level.
Again, I was just making the point that most classical music wasn’t static
Which is true of most musical styles, I suspect, but this is a different point. The term ‘pop music’ has a certain connotation, which I don’t think applied to lot of preserved classical music in their time. The relation between the Waldstein and Viennese audience of 1804 is not the same as that between Spear’s Toxic and today’s teens.
not that it was of the same quality of ‘pop’ music today, but that it held the same popularity level.
It couldn’t have. Telecommunications & ease of exposure, portability and direct accessibility, literacy (musical & general), other sources of entertainment & the things mentioned in above post mean that the audience base for pop music today is much larger & quite different. Thus, today’s artists have to accomodate a larger audience with very uneven grasp of music and a broader range of expectations (prominently “background ear candy”). In that light, saying that classical music was yesteryear’s pop gives, IMHO, a very wrong impression.
Telecommunications & ease of exposure, portability and direct accessibility, literacy (musical & general), other sources of entertainment & the things mentioned in above post mean that the audience base for pop music today is much larger & quite different.
Point conceded. I was not referring to pop music in the Britney Spears connotation, though I would say that there are quite a few pieces that are the equivalent. I was also including such artists as the Beatles, Rufus Wainwright, Ray Charles and Randy Newman in the general label of ‘pop’. And I would agree that the audience was much different, which would perhaps be a better point to introduce people to the simpler classical works before the heavier, which people of the time would have had more educated ears. I would still argue that, for the time (which includes the general lack of accessability and background music that is all pervading in modern times) this music is the closest comparison that can be made to the pop of today (using the above definition, not the specific late-90s brand of bubblegum, which I believe taints the general style)- it exceeded national boundaries, was widely published, and was played as a public attraction that actually garnered an audience. No, it’s not the same- you are absolutely right that I should have qualified that statement, but I felt that my reply was already at major rambling proportions- but it’s the closest for that time period.
“…and go listen to it while reading the New York Times…”
then don’t blame the music, when you don’t remember how it goes!