daemon@decwrl.UUCP (12/19/83)
From: Ed Featherston HL01-1/P06 225-5241 <roll::featherston>
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Newsgroup : net.music
>From : GALAXY::MALIK
Organization : Digital Equipment Corp.
RE; terms for music
Trying to come up with unambiguous terms for the various styles,
approaches, & traditions in music is difficult.
One of the problems is establishing a clearly understood context
for the discussion. If we're talking about 'classical/serious' music
vs. 'popular/non-serious' music, then it's important to remember that
we are excluding a large portion of the world's musics. How would we
catagorize a Bantu chant? Is it 'classical' or 'popular'?
Even having established the limits of what we are talking about,
there are problems. Certainly, Beethoven is far more popular (more people
know about, like, buy records, etc.) than many a so-called 'popular'
band. It's silly to think of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, etc. as unpopular.
They may be relatively unpopular to 17 year olds living in America, but
then, the Ramones are relatively unpopular to 40+ year olds.
So, popular/unpopular gets us nowhere. Similarly, for serious/
nonserious. 'Art-music' is even worse. What's art? Everyone's got his/her
own definition for it; try to convince someone that something they like
isn't art - you'll end in a shouting match.
What to do? Like most things in life (and especially language),
you have to compromise. Accept that the terms are fuzzy and do the
best you can.
I favor 'classical' and 'pop' (if there's a jazz musician around
I'll usually add 'jazz' as a special catagory) as the most useful terms
I can think of. By 'classical' I mean, everything in the classical tradition
- up to and including the most extreem avant-garde. By 'pop', I mean everything
in the popular tradition - from Western folk to Public Image Ltd.
This has some problems. Frank Sinatra would seem to have more
in common with Schubert lieder than Captain Beefheart. Similarly, some
people find calling both Mozart and Cage 'classical' a bit hard to
swallow. But they are part of a living tradition that feeds on itself
for it's *MAJOR* influences.
So, what I'm saying is that the terms 'classical' and 'pop'
are useful in referring to separate traditions. They don't tell you
a thing about what the piece sounds like; nor do they make any
value judgements. They simply help to clarify what you are talking
about.
,Karl Malik
(UUCP) {decvax, ucbvax, allegra}!decwrl!rhea!galaxy!malik
(ARPA) decwrl!rhea!galaxy!malik@Berkeley
decwrl!rhea!galaxy!malik@SU-Shasta
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