SuperFob

Anything can be found anywhere. But yes, there are indeed a very disproportionate number of pretentious douchebags to be found in the world of classical music.

VEGANGELICA

Urban, I feel that saying one finds a particular song more beautiful than another is not pretentious or snobbery, but instead just shows a particular person’s tastes. For example, I don’t feel my musical tastes are pretentious...favorite songs of mine include the “Inchworm” song and Naked Eyes’ “Always Something There to Remind Me.” Yet after your post when I listened to Iggy & The Stooges “1969" main riff and Thin Lizzy’s “Waiting for an Alibi” baseline, I found I much prefer Bach’s Cello Suite No.1, i-Prelude because of the feeling I have when I listen to it. To me this Bach piece is beautiful while "1969" is not.

I am curious how it happens that people (almost all of whom I feel are fundamentally similar) develop such different musical tastes, because to be blunt I would actually prefer to listen to silence than to Iggy & The Stooge’s “1969" (except for the point several seconds after 3:40 when the lead singer makes a very funny gagging, strangled sound, which amused me...heh heh...I actually listened to that several times). My dislike for the song overall doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with liking the song or with that style of music, but the song and the riff just don’t affect me like they must affect you, Urban. I actually had a hard time forcing myself to listen to the whole of "1969," but I can handle the Bach cello piece very easily, enjoying it time and again:



SuperFob, I've been thinking more about your original question over the last several days while listening to Bach as well as other music, trying to come up with a clearer answer than the one I gave before. I feel that studying older classical music probably gives people a set of terminology and concepts with which to understand other types of music better, but older classical music doesn’t include all innovations in the musical world, obviously, and so can never be "better" than newer music...just different than more recent “classical” music compositions (such as those by Aaron Copland and John Williams) or other genres of music.

The reason an older form of classical music cannot really be a yardstick by which to measure the value of newer music was explained well by a classical musician, Stephen, who posts visual representations of classical music online (Music Animation Machine). When one of his listeners recently wrote, “I do firmly believe that J.S.Bach's music is the yard-stick by which all other classical music must be measured,” Stephen (my newly discovered hero) replied as follows:
One other little comment for SuperFob: my preference for lyrics is always to be able to understand them, too!

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stormjh

Theodore Adorno anyone?

[spoiler]He's an idiot[/spoiler]

Terrible Lizard

True, but most of them were aspiring Julliard fuckawks so it was only convenient to me at the time.

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“YOU ARE SCUM SLUT.”
-John Martyn

Urban Hat€monger ?

No no no no no, You totally missed the point of what I was saying.

I gave those examples of those songs I find to be just as beautiful as anything ever written by anybody. My point was basically if you totally dismiss modern rock music LIKE those songs just because they're not classical you're an elitist snob.

If you listen to them & decide that they're not to your taste I have no problem with that at all.

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VEGANGELICA

Oh! I see your point. Thanks for clarifying it. I guess most people I've met who hate particular songs don't hate them because of their genre but because of how they sound...which is sort of the same thing. I agree with you, though, that if people don't even *listen* to a song because they have been told it is modern rock and they think "modern rock is awful," then those people might be a bit pretentious or at least guilty of stereotyping, since songs within a genre are not all the same. A related example would be when a person who dislikes "Achy Breaky Heart" dismisses all country music because she doesn't like that song and also has the negative stereotype that "country folk are silly and uncool bumpkins, and country songs are always uninteresting, corny love songs."

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PartisanRanger

What makes you say that?

SuperFob

An uncanny ability to see the really obvious things most other people seem able to see as well.

Daniel Eboli

Humm, I dont think so. The composing styles and skills are so different.

What we have now is more a "popular" music, music for the people.

The great composers like Bethoven, Mozart, Wagner did not compose for the people. The goal is not to entertain the ppl, the goal is something bigger in my opinion. You have to have a certain degree of musical knowledge to understand what the great composers did. Not that you have to be a musician, no. But you have to understand formats and geaographical issues to fully understand some classical pieces.

Then here is the question: why dont we have more "classical-like" composers nowadays? Where are the great composers?

My answer to this question is: they are in the movies industry.

See Danny Elfman for example. His work is amazing.

music_phantom13

I disagree with that as well. You mean to tell me you think all music that gets created today outside the handful of composers is made to entertain a large group of people? I think the best musicians will always be the ones who make the music they like. Those that completely ignore what anyway says about them or their music and do what they enjoy. If you talk to a true musician they will often tell you they create music not just for fun but because they feel a need to do so.