But “classical” is just as bad when referring to Tchaikovsky as when referring to Boulez; the issue is the terminological collision with the Classical period in music history.
Heh.
Informally, though, “classical” music seems to be defined as anything written before the advent of jazz music in the 1920s.
I’d disagree. I think if you played most people works by, say, Britten, William Grant Still, Copland, Philip Glass, John Taverner or Pierre Boulez, they would recognise it as ‘classical’ music.
I think the problem here is the attempt to draw an arbitrary boundary around something that doesn’t really exist. There is no reasonable way in which, say, Boulez is trying to do the same thing as Bach, but neither are trying to do what the Beatles did. There are people in the pop/rock tradition (like Joanna Newsom or Scott Walker or Van Dyke Parks) who are doing very much the same thing that people from the ‘classical’ tradition like, say, Gavin Bryars, are doing. It makes far more sense to me to, say, put Boulez with Ornette Coleman, Gavin Bryars with Brian Eno, and the Beatles with Louis Armstrong, than to put Boulez with Bryars because they’re both ‘classical’, Coleman with Armstrong because they’re both ‘jazz’ and the Beatles and Eno because they’re both ‘pop’.
(The only ones of whom I have listened to a sizeable fraction of their works are the Beatles, the only other one of whom I’ve heard a non-trivial amount is Bach, and the only other ones I’ve heard about are Armstrong and Eno.)
Folk music on the other hand doesn’t seem to evolve with time that much—I’ve over- or underestimated the age of certain songs by as much as a century. I mean, would you have guessed that “Finnegan’s Wake” is [rot13: sebz gur rvtugrra-svsgvrf] whereas “The Fields of Athenry” is [rot13: sebz gur avargrra-friragvrf], just from listening to them?
Heh.
Informally, though, “classical” music seems to be defined as anything written before the advent of jazz music in the 1920s.
I’d disagree. I think if you played most people works by, say, Britten, William Grant Still, Copland, Philip Glass, John Taverner or Pierre Boulez, they would recognise it as ‘classical’ music.
What about traditional/folk songs?
Quite.
I think the problem here is the attempt to draw an arbitrary boundary around something that doesn’t really exist. There is no reasonable way in which, say, Boulez is trying to do the same thing as Bach, but neither are trying to do what the Beatles did. There are people in the pop/rock tradition (like Joanna Newsom or Scott Walker or Van Dyke Parks) who are doing very much the same thing that people from the ‘classical’ tradition like, say, Gavin Bryars, are doing. It makes far more sense to me to, say, put Boulez with Ornette Coleman, Gavin Bryars with Brian Eno, and the Beatles with Louis Armstrong, than to put Boulez with Bryars because they’re both ‘classical’, Coleman with Armstrong because they’re both ‘jazz’ and the Beatles and Eno because they’re both ‘pop’.
[pales, ashamed of his musical ignorance]
(The only ones of whom I have listened to a sizeable fraction of their works are the Beatles, the only other one of whom I’ve heard a non-trivial amount is Bach, and the only other ones I’ve heard about are Armstrong and Eno.)
Folk music on the other hand doesn’t seem to evolve with time that much—I’ve over- or underestimated the age of certain songs by as much as a century. I mean, would you have guessed that “Finnegan’s Wake” is [rot13: sebz gur rvtugrra-svsgvrf] whereas “The Fields of Athenry” is [rot13: sebz gur avargrra-friragvrf], just from listening to them?