How do venue and audience effect if you determine if music is classical?
It’s been suggested with a few questions lately that because music is written for film or video games that it is not classical.
While I generally don’t think of film music and video game music as being classical, isn’t the choice of intended venue, purpose, and audience a weak justification for that position.
Do you think that’s a valid justification? why?
Try a thought experiment and ask yourself if these exact same pieces were presented in a concert hall as classical and you had no knowledge of what they were written for how would you react?
The venue and audience have absolutely no bearing on whether or not a piece of music is classical.
In general, film music may or may not be classical. In general, incidental music in movies is not. Video game music rarely has the depth or complexity to even be considered classical. Instrumental classical music generally does not "serve" or is not subordinate to another art form. Even in the case of opera, where theatrical performance is part of the body of the work, the singing by far outweighs the importance of the acting.
Whatever my reaction to the performance is, it would not be changed by how the music is classified.
The venue and audience have absolutely no bearing on whether or not a piece of music is classical.
In general, film music may or may not be classical. In general, incidental music in movies is not. Video game music rarely has the depth or complexity to even be considered classical. Instrumental classical music generally does not "serve" or is not subordinate to another art form. Even in the case of opera, where theatrical performance is part of the body of the work, the singing by far outweighs the importance of the acting.
Whatever my reaction to the performance is, it would not be changed by how the music is classified.
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I think it has something to do with the idea of absolute music which movie and video game scores can’t lay claim to.
Personally I don’t go in for this idea that movie soundtracks shouldn’t be discussed along with classical music.
Otherwise it’s hypocritical to acknowledge pieces like Vaughan-Williams Sinfonia Antartica,
Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky - film scores
yet dismiss most everything else because they don’t match them for diversity or because the composers wrote exclusively for that medium . Often film scores are here pilloried for being repetitive and lacking invention and not without justification.
Very few ever rise above mediocrity and even those that do,
to me at least are part and parcel of the film experience and would seem out of place listened to out of context,say in a concert hall or even on a CD.
Ultimately I always try to judge a piece of music on it’s own creative merits regardless of it’s intended source or audience.
Regards
Mephisto
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~ A gallon of red house paint in an art gallery is just a gallon of red house paint. ~
The syntax of the music, and not the venue, is the primary factor in what determines ‘art’ music from other utility music.
So often the (well-composed and orchestrated) music for films and video and the original scores for some anime have little or no development.
One European emigre classical composer, transplanted to Hollywood, Ca. pre World War II, was approached about composing film music. He wrote to a colleague that he looked into it, but realized it was ‘composing with a stopwatch’ and he had no interest in that.
Classical music, even the contemporary, has some kind of organizational factor (form) which often seperates it from the other genres of music. There is often development over time in classical pieces, or something which satisfies a sense of development: the element is usually absent in scores for anime or films.
The longest unbroken strand of music you hear in films is under the opening and closing credits and that may run all of two and one-half minutes. If it runs longer, it will often jump or segue to another ‘theme’ or motif from the film score.
A brief five-minute classical piece is more sustained and more developed. Most classical music is very much about a theme or motif which is developed and the overall sound of the music is very dependent upon what is going on in the middle and bottom as much as the top.
The music for films and other tend to concentrate on a highly recognizable theme or tune with the rest of the instrumental texture as support harmony, and never takes those themes or tunes beyond multiple basic reiterations. Very similar to how an overture to a musical is laid out: a very recognizable sequential oleo / medly of ‘tunes.’ This is enough to qualify as ‘pop music’ regardless of the harmonic vocabulary or orchestration.
If a string trio is playing Haydn in a coffeehouse where the venue better known for is Jazz and Folk music, it does not transform the Haydn into Jazz or Folk.
best regards, p.b.
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"The longest unbroken strand of music you hear in films is under the opening and closing credits and that may run all of two and one-half minutes. If it runs longer, it will often jump or segue to another ‘theme’ or motif from the film score."
The score composed "for credits" (or maybe rather for the soundtracks, then used in the credits), at least in the cases I’m aware of, are mostly autonomous compositions (as opposed to the rest of the score which is written to somehow fit the scenes), and can very well last up to 5 minutes.
When it "jumps" to the next, it’s because it’s *another track*, which is usually found separately on the CD.
"A brief five-minute classical piece is more sustained and more developed."
Can the same be said about a one-page long miniature, like Schumann’s "Kinderszene" no.1?
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"Classical" describes a period, not a style. Some say there were only four classical composers (Brahms, Beethoven, Bach, and Bartok). Prior to that was "Baroque" and after that "Romantic" (yes, Tchaikovsky was a Romantic, not a Classical composer).
Not to say that there isn’t some great film music. Think about Richard Wagner, who wrote operatic music so large that he went into debt building theaters that could accomodate it and included things like huge water tanks to flood the stage. Remind you of anybody today? I think John Williams, who has composed the bulk of the Spielberg scores, comes close to Wagner’s genius and scope.
The fact that something is so good as to endure for centuries, however, does not make it "Classical."
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