Jasonconfused
If We Make It We Can All Sit Back and Laugh
Gender: Male
Location: Washington
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- #21
- Posted: 03/28/2013 03:00
- Post subject:
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| purple wrote: | This is a completely legitimate question. I think the people that consciously don't include jazz and classical in their charts have unknowingly made a wise decision. I personally have a little bit of both jazz and classical in my charts, since the primary objective of my chart is to roughly represent some of my favorite music.
As I've preached elsewhere, some modern philosophers of music consider classical a fundamentally different genre from rock. In fact, they consider three fundamental genres: classical, jazz, and rock. These are broad classifications based on how the music is intended to be performed and intended to be heard, and perhaps where the musical work exists (if it does) in each genre. These genres are so broad that classical would include everything from sonata form to symphonies, jazz would includ everything from big band to free jazz, and rock would include everything from jam bands to hip hop. Classical is intended to be performed live according to a score, with very little to no room for improvisation (unless specified by the score, as in a cadenza) outside of the subtle performance interpretations, and is intended to be heard as a live performance (largely to hear the performance interpretations not explicitly in the score, though a listener would expect each performance to sound similar); jazz is intended to be performed and heard live, like classical, except that jazz is dependent upon improvisation, meaning that every time they play, their music is different; rock is intended to be performed live, and the live performances are not intended to sound like the recordings, which is how rock is intended to be heard. Those are just the larger conclusions (which I've likely botched) and if you want some discussions and arguments, PM me an email and I can send you a few papers. Of course, there are exceptions to each genre, e.g. Charlie Parker composed scores for some of his pieces. Anyways, the main point of all this is to say that three fundamental kinds of music, only one of which (rock) is dependent upon recordings, the format upon which this site is based. Thus, it makes sense to only include rock in a chart. However, since jazz is freely allowed here, it's just a slippery slope until you allow classical. Example: consider putting John Coltrane's Ascension on a chart; the music is explicitly 100% improvisation and if played live, no two performances would ever sound the same, yet we allow that one recording of Ascension to stand as the definitive "work" that is the album in this site's database. Example: consider recordings of Bach's Cello Suites; there are performances from Casals, Rostropovich, Yo Yo Ma and many others, and this site allows them all, because their is no definitive recording since the music is based on a score. Example: consider listening to The Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter"; your familiarity with the track is based on the recording, and when you hear them perform it live you don't expect to hear it sound the same (due to "studio trickery"), and may even evaluate the live performance based on the recording. Anyways, sorry for the wall of text; I felt like some rambling might encourage what could be an interesting conversation.
As a side note to swedenman, evaluating music based on whether the composer of the music performs the music is one of the most inane and absurd thoughts I've seen lately on this site. Classical composers explicitly intend their works to be performed by others, and there are several scores that have been composed specifically for a composer's favorite performer. Consider the score; a composer is not writing down the music so they can remember, but rather because they intend others to learn and perform it. It sounds like you would consider a play to be an inferior work if the playwright did not direct it or play the leading role. And though it may not completely follow, it also seems like you automatically believe all rock covers to be inferior because the original composers are not playing the music. Ultimately, personal evaluation is personal evaluation, but I've never imagined anyone would evaluate music based on that criterion.
tl;dr I ramble about the differences between classical, jazz, and rock and, as usual, I disagree with swedenman |
Long, but still read. I enjoyed the explanation on the three genres of music. I can see your argument against swedenman, and in a way, I agree with you. However, I do place some sort of value on originals over covers because I do take into consideration the work that was put into the writing process. I wouldn't go so far as to say that the original is automatically better, because in a lot of cases it's not, but have a level of respect for the original.
As far as the performer not being the one who wrote the music, again, I don't evaluate the music itself on that, but, at least for me, I do respect a musician that both writes and performs because it shows their variety of talents. So I think that for that aspect of it, it is fair to evaluate someone in that sense, although on a more human level than a musical level, since as you mentioned, classical composers specifically write for other people to perform it.
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