The Death of Classical Music

[Oolooloo]

It completely depends what you're brought up with. I'm 18, from Australia and I've been playing the trumpet since I was about 7. Started playing in orchestras outside of school when I was around 11 and I'm now about to start my second semester of studying music at university.

Getting to the point, I love concert band music, and orchestral music in general appeals to me more than many types of jazz. All throughout high school, my music teacher (a professional jazz musician) always tried to get me to play jazz, I just never really got into it. So I assume if you're playing the music more, you're more likely to listen to it. Solution: get kids playing at a young age.

In Sydney, the opera and the Sydney Symphony aren't dying. A lot of the performances I go to are sold out. They do a good job of performing works which will obviously attract a larger and more diverse crowd (ie. Lord of the Rings and John Williams or Final Fantasy, etc), but the concerts for more regular goers still have a substantial audience. They're just finishing up the complete Mahler symphonies, and the performance of No. 9 I went to a couple of weeks ago was quite busy.

Also, there's a program called Meet The Music, where four times a year the Sydney Symphony will play pieces taken straight from the high school music curriculum. These are always full and they discuss aspects of the works relevant to the music course for everyone across the state.

Classical's not dead... It's just in a rebuilding stage.

[JohnChips]

If everything else in live evolves including our very own molecular stucture, why would you want to be stuck in the old ages?

Appreciate the past, but enjoy the present and create the future.

[AlexDaCat]

Originally Posted by JohnChips

If everything else in live evolves including our very own molecular stucture, why would you want to be stuck in the old ages?

Appreciate the past, but enjoy the present and create the future.

The past holds the key to the future...

[JohnChips]

Originally Posted by AlexDaCat

The past holds the key to the future...

:D Not really, the past doesn't exist, and neither does the future. So something not existing anymore can't really hold anything. Only the present holds the key to the future. What we do NOW is going to be in radios in the future, not what was hot 30 years ago. Past just has a ton of rusted keys in a giant toolbox.

[AlexDaCat]

Originally Posted by JohnChips

Not really, the past doesn't exist, and neither does the future. So something not existing anymore can't really hold anything. Only the present holds the key to the future. What we do NOW is going to be in radios in the future, not what was in the present. Past just has a ton of rusted keys in a giant toolbox.

So not true, when one is R&D, one has to look back to see forward...lol

[khai]

Something to bear in mind is that "classical music" has always needed State funds whether from kings or modern governments. Bach would have been a priest or a street musician without royalty. In Europe classical is still going strong because orchestras are heavily subdized, especially here in France where we're lucky to have a government that finances stuff like the IRCAM, that attracts so many young foreign composers.

Also it's interesting to have a look at 1950's US charts. Apart from Dave Brubeck's "Time out" and maybe a few others there's no jazz album that hit the charts, despite the super high quality of the production then. It's all Elvis, Doris Day, Percy Faith and lots of Broadway musicals…

[AlexDaCat]

Originally Posted by khai

Something to bear in mind is that "classical music" has always needed State funds whether from kings or modern governments. Bach would have been a priest or a street musician without royalty. In Europe classical is still going strong because orchestras are heavily subdized, especially here in France where we're lucky to have a government that finances stuff like the IRCAM, that attracts so many young foreign composers.

Also it's interesting to have a look at 1950's US charts. Apart from Dave Brubeck's "Time out" and maybe a few others there's no jazz album that hit the charts, despite the super high quality of the production then. It's all Elvis, Doris Day, Percy Faith and lots of Broadway musicals…

The nu patrons are the Labels...lol Tho there are individuals who will privately fund the arts, just as they did back then..

[gambetti]

Originally Posted by AlexDaCat

Was FREE alcohol involved? like, specially RUM...lol

Never thought about that. I was a child then.
You could be right

[AlexDaCat]

Originally Posted by gambetti

Never thought about that. I was a child then.
You could be right

An I bet they stuffed themselves on FREE food...lol Then on top of that AWSOME SOOOOOOOOOTHING music.

Instant recipe...lol

[gambetti]

Originally Posted by AlexDaCat

The past holds the key to the future...

Not so sure about that one...

[gambetti]

Originally Posted by AlexDaCat

An I bet they stuffed themselves on FREE food...lol Then on top of that AWSOME SOOOOOOOOOTHING music.

Instant recipe...lol

Perhaps our playing was simply boring?

[AlexDaCat]

Originally Posted by gambetti

Perhaps our playing was simply boring?

Never!!! Twas the greed of the practicers of polytrickery...lol

[aracu]

Originally Posted by gambetti

" From my experience, experimental music provokes a wide range of reactions, from anger to enthusiasm. That is a real strength isn't it?

When you use the term "experimental music" I get a sense that you are
referring to specific art movements or composers that you identify with and consider to be experimental, suggesting that other music is not experimental.

To believe that some music is "conceptual" and other music is not, or to believe that some music is "experimental" and other music is not, is to
have a fragmented way of catagorizing and evaluating music which conforms to a status quo.

concept: an object concieved by the mind

experiment: an operation designed to discover something unknown

[gambetti]

Originally Posted by aracu

When you use the term "experimental music" I get a sense that you are
referring to specific art movements or composers that you identify with and consider to be experimental, suggesting that other music is not experimental.

To believe that some music is "conceptual" and other music is not, or to believe that some music is "experimental" and other music is not, is to
have a fragmented way of catagorizing and evaluating music which conforms to a status quo.

concept: an object concieved by the mind

experiment: an operation designed to discover something unknown

Well, it's not that simple. First of all, it was you to bring up the term conceptual, not me.
Considering "experimental" music, this term is widely used (at least in Germany) to characterise the mainly Anglo-Saxon music tradition starting with John Cage and separate it from the "European Avantgarde" music. I'm referring to Michael Nyman's book "Cage and Beyond" when using this expression. I don't remotely deny other music's creative, experimental, conceptual or progressive peotential.
I'm not sure my English is up to task.

[matyas]

Originally Posted by Oolooloo

Classical's not dead... It's just in a rebuilding stage.

Great quote. I like this.

[aracu]

Originally Posted by gambetti

Considering "experimental" music, this term is widely used (at least in Germany) to characterise the mainly Anglo-Saxon music tradition starting with John Cage and separate it from the "European Avantgarde" music.

Think carefully about it. The majority of the composers were copying the same types of ideas to fit into a status quo. The name of the movement
was misleading.

experiment: an operation designed to discover something unknown

It was already known that if you release butterflies they will fly away
and it had already been established that anything could be called art.

[Plush]

Classical music is NOT dead at all.
There are 50 million classical piano students in China alone.

Record companies as we knew them are dead.

A lot of concert presenters, including bad orchestras, are dead or dying.

But Classical music itself is certainly NOT dying.

After age 45, alot of rock and roll people come over to the classical side too.
That's just the way it works.

[aracu]

Originally Posted by Plush

There are 50 million classical piano students in China alone.

That's a lot of piano keys.

[joelpatterson]

Originally Posted by aracu

That's a lot of piano keys.

And something like 500 million fingers!

[gambetti]

Originally Posted by aracu

Think carefully about it.

Good idea!

"Everything can be art" was transposed to "everything sounding can be perceived as music, even silence", one of the main findings of John Cage. The remaining compositional task was (and still is) to provide suitable settings for listening to the surrounding sounds. As manifold our sounding universe is, as different are the possible settings of perception, and creating a specific one is not at all trivial.
I never attended a performance of Young's butterfly piece, but I'm sure this would be a spectacular and fragile way of opening the ears for nature's sound with unpredictable musical results - therefore experimental.

Many experimental composers (I'll keep that terminology if you don't mind) were (and are) following totally different approaches, for example Robert Ashley's compositions based on sociological and communicative models.
Again precisely crafted pieces btw.

[aracu]

Originally Posted by gambetti

but I'm sure this would be a spectacular and fragile way of opening the ears for nature's sound with unpredictable musical results

Have you heard the cucumber quintet?

[David Spearritt]

Originally Posted by aracu

Have you heard the cucumber quintet?

Haven't they all got an e-Coli infection?

[aracu]

Originally Posted by David Spearritt

Haven't they all got an e-Coli infection?

That was the avocado oratorio.

[Liquid360]

Oh come on guys, do you really think anyone is going to be listening to rap music in 400 years? Trends come and go, but classical music will still be enjoyed long after we're all dead.

[JohnChips]

Originally Posted by Liquid360

Oh come on guys, do you really think anyone is going to be listening to rap music in 400 years? Trends come and go, but classical music will still be enjoyed long after we're all dead.

Uh I call bullshit. Rap is todays Rock & Roll. It's certainly way more popular than classical is. Throw a classical song on the radio and see who doesnt barf. 400 years from now all the people that like classical will be dead, and since rap is a new generation it'll have a better chance of surviving. Rap is a good way to listen to stories and lives of artists and learn how the world was, no one is gonna listen to classical in trying to figure out what struggles we went through during the year 2003 or 2011. With rap you can pull up an exact timeframe and listen to their words and learn a ton about what was going on and what was popular (from a research standpoint, whether or not you like rap).

[Liquid360]

No one will care what we were doing in 2010 by then. You are arrogant to think so. Rap is a "flash in the pan" historically speaking.

[JohnChips]

Like I said, from a research standpoint no one is gonna listen to classical to learn anything about our lives. Classical is boring as it is, if anyone listens to it 400 years from now I feel sorry for them.

[Liquid360]

[David Spearritt]

Originally Posted by JohnChips

Like I said, from a research standpoint no one is gonna listen to classical to learn anything about our lives. Classical is boring as it is, if anyone listens to it 400 years from now I feel sorry for them.

Rap is a good way to listen to stories and lives of artists and learn how the world was, no one is gonna listen to classical in trying to figure out what struggles we went through during the year 2003 or 2011. With rap you can pull up an exact timeframe and listen to their words and learn a ton about what was going on and what was popular (from a research standpoint, whether or not you like rap).

Great music, great art and architecture endures, and is what people continue to enjoy after hundreds of years. "Great" generally correlates with "achievement", "effort", something difficult, requiring years of training or study or requiring precocious or extraordinary talent to achieve by the very few, and NOT something that can be tossed off quickly, or without training or talent.

This is why Bach, Mozart, Monteverdi will continue to be listened to and performed for 400 more years and why rap will not.

[JohnChips]

Yeaaaah all that but classical as "great" is an opinion of those who are into it. For the newer kids who aren't, and that's a higher amount, it's not as interesting. I don't see what's gonna replace rap. Classical got replaced and phased out.