This thread is about Classical music (sorry for the inaccurate thread title)..

Because there should be at least one thread here about serious music.

Any questions anyone has to me about this...put em in here.

All I need on this side is some Shosty. Everything else, meh. Unless we count minimalists.

Lawl @ "serious music."

serious music = music where the notated score transcends any interpretation. Or to put it simply: music that's better than it can be performed or recorded. When you say 'great Beatles song' you're not really talking about something on paper...you're talking about a recording.

Serious music. Pfshaw!


But seriously, here's some classical tunes that rock my world, top of mind--

Mussourgsky, Pictures At An Exhibition
Holst, The Planets
Giannini's 4th Symphony, Movement 2.
Charles Ives, The Unanswered Question, Central Park In the Dark
Tchaikowsky, The Nutcracker Suite
Bach's Cello Suites
Mozart...Eine Kleine Nachtmusik of course, among others.
1812 Overture

That's retarded.

That's the definition. Pop tunes change from performer to performer. A string quartet stays the same.

Hope you appreciate the photo of Tchaikovsky then. The CSO is doing a multimedia 'Beyond the Score' program on The Planets very soon. John Williams shamelessly ripped off 'Mars' for Star Wars.

And Robert Fripp did that too in King Crimson's 2nd album. Personally, I love Emerson Lake & Powell's version.

Uum Emerson Lake and Palmer? Anyway didn't they do Pictures At an Exhibition?

What is a good Mozart album to start w/?

The self-titled debut album.

If you're serious though the best piano concertos are probably the best instrumental music ever written. 20-25 are the peak. Try 20...minor key goodness..

uh, I have a lot of "serious" music that has nothing to do with classical music. Hell some of the shit I've posted in my random uploads thread could be considered "serious" by your definition. You make it sound as if classical music is above all other forms of music. Pfft.

Palmer was too busy with Asia in 1985, so E & L got veteran prog drummer Cozy Powell to sit in. (worked out nicely that he had a 'P' name...)
MTV appearance
(no video sadly, but you can find 'Mars' on Torrent or Rhapsody. I highly recommend the self-titled album if you are into the ELP thing at all)
And ELPalmer did do 'Pictures At An Exhibition' but I think they cheat by only doing 3/4 of the piece and that boring Greg Lake "The Sage" song which has nothing to do with it.

Debussy, Satie, Fauré...that's kind of how I roll. Went through a little Wagner phase in college--like, I'm sure, a lot of us here did.

Ohhhh, isn't this lineup responsible for "Touch and Go"? Pleasure = guilt-ridden.

Like what?

I'm not implying pop musicians aren't serious about the music they create. But what they create isn't serious music.

Sorry dude but there's more to music then just melody + chords. If you do nothing but write songs...verses, a bridge and a chorus with an instrumental solo thrown in...you're not operating at the higher registers of what music is capable of.

Thematic development, variation, counterpoint...

man, tony, I was so proud of you for properly titling your thread. Really easy to see what it was about, might generate interest from some folks who enjoy this particular genre... but then you have to throw a jab at me (I guess, not sure I get it), and follow up by kinda putting down the rest of the board by identifying Classical as the ONLY serious music.

i dunno tony. you might wanna stick to the dead thread.

and one more thing. I prefer my music to be fun or moody or to have interesting or thought provoking lyrics, rather than be SERIOUS.

I don't listen to pop music, is everything that isn't classical music considered pop music to you? Talk Talk - Laughing Stock and Spirit Of Eden are waaay beyond that. Most everything I listen to doesn't have a typical structure unless it's pop music that I like for the fact of it being fun.

I was going to title the thread 'Serious music'. I don't like the title 'Classical' since it implies only one period in music history. Anyway would you prefer 'Art Music'?

There's been tons of great pop music over the centuries..but only post 1960s did people start operating under the delusion that a songwriter, even a very good one...is equvalent to someone like Bach. Can you imagine Stephen Foster or Irving Berlin making that claim? Now people like Tom Petty state that Brian Wilson is 'up there with Beethoven' ...proving himself a musical ignoramus.

I don't think you know enough outside of pop music to be making fun of anything modern, that's not in the pop scene.

When I say pop music I mean music where the recording is more important than the score. That's it. 'Serious' doesn't preclude fun...I could just as well have said Art music.

When you say 'That's a great song' what you're really saying is 'that's a great record'. The terms are used interchangably. When you refer to 'Penny Lane' you're talking about the recording. When you say Beethoven's 5th...or Hamlet for that matter...you're talking about something on paper that's stable.

Well, lots of terms for styles of art ultimately no longer accurately reflect the art itself. Even "pop" music is kinda a misnomer at this point. As is "rock" and even "folk" but regardless, Classical is the term that's been accepted.

And I dunno. I don't see why one can't make the argument that say, Groundhog Day is a better movie than Citizen Kane without being called names. Now, others can disagree, but hey, both are fine films. Both are films and it's legit to prefer either.

Same with beethoven vs. brian wilson. I personally think wilson's overrated myself.

You're still pretty much being a pretentious twat. Again, most of my favorite music has no structure and uses classical elements, the recording is never more important than the score.

Groundhog Day and Citizien Kane are both narrative feature films. You have a basis for comparison.

But comparing a popular song to a large form structure like a symphony is insane. If you're going to compare at least make the form the same...compare a song to a song. And If Paul Mccartney writes a symphony (which he has) then compare that to another symphony (he comes up short).

and lo, the universe did implode

If only you knew that most everything I said in the 2007 album thread was tongue in cheek . I'm not all that pretentious, I don't go around proclaiming classical music to be superior to all other forms of music (and I love classical music, and brought up playing only classical piano and other instruments etc...).

At least Tony has tried to open the floor to this type of music without being too elitist. Hee, I thought I was going to be gently chided by him for enjoying Nutcracker Suite.

It's so hard to define it all, especially with the pop-crossover stylings that modern composers take a stab at, from Gerswhin's "Rhapsody In Blue", up through Duke Ellington's 'serious' music to minimalism and experiments from Joe Jackson and (ahem) Billy Joel.

If the score is stable then anyone else should be able to recreate it and play it in the concert hall. Just like a great play...btw do you also think the people who write sitcoms even very good ones...are equivalent to the great dramatists? The guys who write The Simpsons are great at what they do...are they up there with Ibsen and Sophocles? Do you think a sense of proportion applies anywhere in talking about music?

Anybody care to fish some Beethoven or Chopin by chance?

If anyone can play it, doesn't that mean the music is too simple? I'm gonna use Talk Talk as a example (yes they are my favorite band), but their last album was created from 9 hours of jam sessions(with vocals added later). It blows away any classical piece I've ever heard. You could never recreate it (they never toured for it for that very reason). Should serious music be able to be recreated by different people than those who originally created it?

Throw this name into the debate for further expounding upon...John Cage.

Hell throw in every minimalist, Phillip Glass, Tony Conrad, Rhys Chatham, Charlemagne Palestine, William Basinski... The list goes on and on.

Not at all. There are various piano pieces by Liszt and Rachmaninov that are accesible only to the hardcore virtuosos. Anyone else would make a mess of them. Paganini wrote violin pieces that are so difficult that people are advised to be careful in practicing them as injury to the hand could result. They say he had Marfan's Syndrome which is a connective tissue disorder and allowed him hyper-flexibility of the fingers and joints.

"Classical" music is occasionally fun to study and play, sure, but I'd much rather listen to D.R.I. or Hall & Oates. My 20th/21st century mind cannot force itself to give a shit about J.S. Bach's sophisticated chord progressions and counterpuntal labyrinths of ecstasy when I can pump some fucking PAUL MCCARTNEY & WINGS, sorry!!!

Unless we're talking about shit like Xenakis, in which case "classical" music fucking destroys all and makes me seriously question why La Legende d'Eer doesn't get thrown into the same section of the record store as Sheer Hellish Miasma and 1930. Maybe it has something to do with "intent"? In which case, fuck the "intent" of "classical" music. I don't care. Ligeti and Nancarrow are pretty good, though.

And Groundhog Day shits all over Citizen Kane.

oops double post

Talk Talk strikes me as an odd choice to be someone's favorite band.

And on the note of pretension. I truthfully try to keep music as down to earth as possible, which is why I share as much music as I can. I hate when people go on and on about their music being smug little shits as if they're superior to everything. I deal with far too many of these peoples within the group of friends I have at school here.

Xenakis and Ligeti are very respected modern composers.


I have no pretensions to anything. I just think songs are the simplest of musical forms. A perfectly respecatble form but a simple one. And Music has to be the least 'down-to-earth' of the Arts.

Uh, why? I only like their last 2 albums, but those two albums blow away anything else I've ever heard for sure emotional and spiritual content. Even their pop albums are very talented, but I'm not exactly a fan of pop new wave outside the Talking Heads stuff.

But, you're calling everything that's not classical or symphonic a "song". Listen to some Maeror Tri, those are compositions, not "songs", I also wouldn't call them "composers" though.

So you listen to the same two albums over & over again? Why don't you go find a new favorite band w/ a bigger discography to enjoy & maybe you won't come off as such a plunker.

What falls under the title 'Classical' is the most diverse bunch of music by far. We're talking everything from Gregorian Chants to Musiqe-Concrete to Ragtime. Stravinsky's Rite of Spring has more sheer energy and drive than 95% of pop music.

Paves, I think you would dig Rite Of Spring (based on your first post) if you aren't familiar already with it.

Uh, what, I don't think you even know me, or what I listen to.

idiot o'clock

At one point I could play some of those Rachmaninov pieces you speak of, but I gave up on piano because of severe pre bipolar depression.



Great Japanese post-punk

I picked this up at my local library back when I was a teenager, after seeing a TV special about the composer:



Mind blowing - I've never grown tired of it.

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please stop.
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no thanks.

Yeah, you're not playing Rachmaninov unless you're absolutely shit hot on the piano.

It depends really, I like classical, I like songs, I like Rachmaninov and Bowie about equally, both forms have their strengths and weaknesses.

I don't think you can really compare Talk Talk to Beethoven other than on the level of liking them more, though.

and I was shit hot...I took piano at one of the best music schools in the country with a world renowned professor for 12 years...