I noticed on the thread 'what is the best music of all time' that almost no one put trad. I mean - what tha?
Almost everyone put classical stuff? So my question is this, if you all think that classical is the best music of all time, then why are you on this site? Is there no classical mustard board?
I personally think that trad is the best music, but I do also love heaps of other stuff - but irish trad always comes in as my personal favourite, and I amnt trying to have a dig - but for me (my personal taste) Classical doesnt come close.
I'm really amnt having a go - i was just very interested to see so many people put classical stuff down.
You can't get much more trad than bird song, and they have accents too, depending on what part of the country their from. Have you ever heard a Yorkshire Blue Tit or a Lancashire Shag? And I should hardly have to mention the pigeon groupings in London...
Best for what? Listening to? Dancing to? Communicating a story? Communicating emotions? Playing? I like traditional music, and I like tunes better than songs. That's just me. I like certain kinds of 'classical' music, mainly baroque, classical and some early 20th C. I like early music, swing, 60's pop, really loud rock . . . but which is best - the best music is the music which fulfils its function best. All else is personal taste.
I think it may have been partly because of how the question was worded, "what is the best PIECE of music?" I figured that people may like trad better, but when comparing a Beethoven symphony to a two part trad piece, they may have thought that the symphony had a bit more depth and complexity going for it (as well as about 45 minutes!). Just my brainstorming though. I had no idea what to put...maybe a Palestrina mass or something.
c.g - best for everything. As i said - I like alot of different types of music, everything from The Beatles to Ole dirty Bastard to Jimi Hendrix to The Bens to Cold Chisel to ADCD to Snoop Dog etc etc.
But - 90% of what I listen to is trad, 90% of the things I do revoloves around trad (sessions, festivals, gigs, travel etc) and almost all of my friends are somehow involved in trad. Of course there are a couple who arent, but only around 5 or so.
I wasnt actually asking what people think the best music of all time is - I was actually asking why everyone keeps saying Classical music is the best.
But see - one of the reasons I think Trad is so interesting is because anyone can play a two part tune, but hardly anybody can make it sound amazing. Thats where it gets interesting.
And?? What is your point? Just because something is harder does not mean it is better. Personally - and this is just personal mind...I just feel nothing when i hear classical music.
Also - if trad is so easy - the llig - can you please explain to me why there are so many completely crap players about?
Oldstrings - i did read the title orginally, amazingly enough I even understood it. And I still do not find best piece of music (personally) to be classical.
Oh my god - listen, if you choose to misunderstand me that is your problem - but the original point to the post FYI is just that I wanted to know why 99% of the posts in the original thread were about classical music. Is that really that hard for you to understand oldstrings....Really? Did it somehow offend you oldstrings? Well -I honestly wasnt meaning to offend you, I was just asking why everyone was choosing classical music. That is all.
Why do you want to know so desperately, if it's all a matter of taste in the end? If classical music doesn't move you, so let it be. It moves me deeper than any music. But if I don't want to be moved deeply, I choose trad. Lightens up the spirits, makes the sun come out and makes you want to get to work or whatever.
And: there are so many trad tunes of about the same level, hard to choose. Shostakovitsh's 1st violin concerto is unique.
I completely agree with you BB.
I love all sorts of music. The whole lot. Thats why I'd never respond to a post title like the previous one you mentioned.
However I don't know who you are, or what you do, but over here, and for me personally, I coudn't subscribe to this at all:
'...90% of the things I do revolves around trad (sessions, festivals, gigs, travel etc) and almost all of my friends are somehow involved in trad. Of course there are a couple who arent, but only around 5 or so....
I personally couldn't think of anything worse. Maybe cause I'm in Ireland its different. Its so full of little clique's and ego's. I hang around with a few muso's my own age. I play with one of them in our sessions 2'ce a week. Most of the time, I'd play with the older farts. Drink porter slowly, and talk about other stuff than the music. There's much more to life. For me.
Look to be honest, it was just something I thought was interesting, Its not that I want to know desperately, I just thought it was worthy of note. I've changed my mind now though.
Its not an ego thing, its just when you spend so much time playing tunes, then its only natural that you make friends who play tunes too. Its was the same when I lived in Ireland, I had one or two friends who didnt play tunes, the rest did. Not a snobbish thing, its just the way it works out sometimes.
I love my classical and resort to it when I have time to grab a bit of piece and quiet. I can be profoundly moved by it if it's a good performance I'm listening to and if I'm in the mood. Sometimes I think I'm in the mood but then when I put on the music I find I'm not after all. I can be profoundly moved by traditional music too, and probably am a lot more often than with classical, because I'm usually either involved with it directly or am up close to a person or people who are playing it and I can feel or see or hear the wonderful interaction between the flesh and blood and the instrument and the tune and each other . It doesn't have to be a incredibly intricate tune either. Music is an interaction, or a whole complex of interactions, not a tune. I'm not keen on "either-or" comparisons between trad and classical. The comparisons just break down all the time. Plainchant is the "simplest" music it's possible to have - no harmonies, no accidentals, just a single vocal line - yet most people here would probably regard it as "classical" in the broad sense of that word. Simple, but not easy to bring off! Just think of slow airs - a single melody line, but "easy?" I don't think so!
I know these are slightly silly threads but human beings have an intrinsic need to be harmlessly silly at times and this is such a time.
And there are so many crap trad "players" around because it sounds easy, diddley-dum, you can buy an instrument reasonably cheaply, and there are opportunities to join in. And because we're all so bloody nice to 'em so as not to spoil a beautiful day...
I honestly didnt mean either or - I was just interested. And totally take your point Steve, maybe it was just slightly silly on my part. I should know better than to start silly threads. Some people just never learn - obviously I am one of them
Llig said it first - Classical music's much harder to play. I take his word for it as he has, I believe, learnt and played it, and trust his statement is not just a Heffalump trap for people such as me.
But if it is, I'll jump in by declaring that one of my motives for starting to learn trad in my late teens was that it seemed so much easier to get somewhere in this music without prior musical experience than to realise the odd boyhood daydream of being a classical player / singer / composer when I had not gone through mountains of childhood tuition and practice. (I certainly had the chance as a small boy, but refused it.) Trying to play trad to folk club audiences (how they suffered!..) was a whole lot more instantly gratifying than would have been practising Grade 2 piano in total obscurity.
So I've got a bit of a personal inferiority complex about Classical music, mitigated by the warm and broad-minded interest taken by time-served Classical musicians I know in all manner of music that they think deserves any respect, including trad.
I don't get much satisfaction from listening to CDs of Irish trad. I can be inspired or impressed and pick up a few ideas for my own playing, but not often moved. The occasional slow air by Frankie Kennedy maybe (but that's loaded too, innit?) I think people tended to put down classical pieces because those are our passive listening pieces for coming back to again and again. Discrete reference points in our own aesthetic experience. The thread prompted the naming of names, and you can't do that if what you really want to say is "whatever I'm playing and enjoying playing at the moment," which is obviously the best music of all time - for now!
Obviously everyone just wants to appear "cultured" and I'm sorry, saying The Bucks of Oranmore just doesn't leave you looking like the most cultured individual. You will, however, sound like a geek. : p
It is interesting how many people on this board came to trad through, or at least after, classical music.
I explore classical music from time to time, but have no gut feeling for it, not having grown up with it. Whereas some old bloke with a flat dry voice singing a corny song about a horse can have my rapt attention. Extraordinary how potent cheap music is
That's because you fully engage with the old boy while he's singing it. Music doesn't exist if it isn't being played. Dots are not music. A CD in its box is not music. A tune is not music. Music is the engagement between all the constituent parts, the tune, the instruments (or voice), the listeners (who could also be playing) and the human beings making the sounds.
But yes, why choose a favourite piece that is Classical, not trad or some other genre?
I'd say that a Classical symphony or other extended piece creates a whole coherent world in the way a novel or a play does. Well, a sonnet or a reel can create a little world, but it is a littler world and far more people can do it - write a sonnet, compose a reel, write a wistful or angry song - than can write a proper novel or play. A good symphony is the product of an extraordinary person whose musical imagination and skills enable him to develop territory uniquely his own and, as I've put it, make a world within it. We are free to enter it and put aside our own preoccupations, if we can. I think that to do so is good for us - a corrective against the ego-trips we can go on doing / playing / making our small stuff and making out that it's *that* important or unique. That's a reason I'd choose a Classical piece.
I grew up listening to Classical (not a vast amount) long befor I heard any Irish music. Thence, I naturally see Irish trad as allied to Classical because of its melodic beauties - a sub-species, such as hymns or operetta. The alliance may not be very strong in fact, but is there in some aspects such as the centrality of the violin and the simple-system flute, and the Baroque interests of Carolan (is there a *better* single Baroque tune than Carolan's Welcome? In a crowded field, it seems to me as good as any).
I also found it strange that a load of trad musicians should cite some kind of classical music as an answer to "what's the best music". I would suggest, Beebs, that many people on this board are like Hugo Chavez, and don't obsess about this music to the extent that they do it all the time and only have friends and partners who have some connection with it. That's ok though. All sorts of people would browse a website like this. Fortunately it doesn't mean you have to be their friend or socialize with them outside of the website, so I wouldn't worry about it. Silver Spear's point that people would cite classical pieces in order to appear "cultured' probably has some truth in it, and that's sad and disturbing, I think. It's almost like people are going out of their way to let other people here know "Hey, I have a fantastically interesting life, and am very cultured and listen to diverse kinds of music all the time". For some people that may be true, but others will be just trying to create themselves a fake online image. The reality is that they have about 20 trad CDs, go to the pub twice a week, and when they're not working they're slouching in front of the TV watching Judge Judy and Big Brother.
But the real issue I have with all of this is not the answers people gave to the question, but the question itself. "What's the best music of all time?". Totally pointless and meaningless question. Why would you bother even answering?
I'm like slainte, I hate Classical music, in it's "capital C" sense, which is presumably what he means. I loathe Mozart. I view his music as being the McDonalds of the Classical period. It's ubiquitous and everyone listens to it, therefore it must be good. But it just isn't. It's trite and totally unexciting. It sounds like it was written by an 8 year old, which a lot of it was anyway.
I grew up listening to both classical and trad. I don't/can't play classical music. I've never had any formal music lessons and I think it would be hard to play classical violin to a high standard by ear alone.
bb asks, why play diddley music if you prefer classical? My "diddley is easier" was a direct answer that. When I was younger I didn't have the opportunity to play classical - and doubt whether I'd have had the patience anyway. And diddley music was cooler - re Donal Lunny's hair. Now I think I do have the patience, but lack the time.
The phrasing of the original question is important. "What's the best piece of music?" If you take two pieces, the bucks of oranmore and schubert's quintet in C (the one with two cellos) is it true that you cannot say one is better than the other? I don't think it is. I think schubert's quintet is an immensely superior piece of music. It's an astonishing piece of human creativity.
However, if you ask me whether I think my favourite recording of schubert's quintet is better than matt molloy playing the bucks, I'd choose Matt Molloy any day.
I recently got vengarov doing it. on the sleeve notes he talks about it being technically demanding for the time, but with modern day violin technique, it's relatively easy. So he had to get him and his playing chums to try to get into a mindset that it was difficult - to put the edge back in it.
Interesting, in that it's the total opposite of the whole ethos of the best diddley.
The best piece of music qualifies as one of the sillier topics to appear here but the question of why so many chose classical is indeed worth considering. But at the same time can you imagine the ridicule someone on a classical music site would be subjected to if he mentioned a piece of traditional music.
Ignore Dow, Michael, as he's just being silly about Mozart on purpose. Dow, do what I said and bung the last movement of the Jupiter on the CD player. I recommend Mackerras and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Turn it up. Then tell me he's boring crap. Michael, is that the Sinfonia Concertante? Bloody masterpiece if ever there was one.
Took six years of it as a child and hated it. I was good at it, but for me it had no passion, no soul. It was like solving a math problem. Seemed like an academic exercise, not at artistic expression. I actually stopped playing for years because I was prevented from studying traditional fiddle styles, which I found terribly exciting, full of passion and expression.
To each their own, and everyone's different, which is why subjective threads of this nature are pretty damn silly.
First of all, the answer to the question is obvious. (I can't believe no-one else has said this). People chose classical pieces because they *are* superior, as Michael has said. What no-one has said (ujnless I've missed it) is that the real worth of trad is *not* in any individual piece or pieces, but in the whole body of trad music. Now *that's* worth something. Each individual piece? A piece of trash. Worthless in itself; gold in conjunction with the rest of the tradition.
Secondly, I'm really fed up with people regurgitating that old nonsense that Beethoven's music, or Mozart's music, or whoever, was "the rock and roll of it day" or "the pop music of its day" or some such. No it wasn't. It was the art music of its day. Of course, there was more interest in art music before film and telly than there is now, but it wasn't the pop music of its day. The pop music of the day was other music, like folk music, songs down the pub, a bit of fiddle, maybe later on some music hall, and so on. But it definitely wasn't classical music.
And lastly, *of course* us traddies like a good bit of Beethoven or Mozart. We're *musicians*. Why on earth wouldn't we appreciate good music?
(btw, while I'm in rant mode, I abolutely *loathe* Vengerov and every note he has dragged whining and protesting out of his poor abused instrument, liberally dosed in saccharin and molasses.)
I think it's pretty sad that you have such a narrow view of what is "better" or "superior". Just because something is more complex or more difficult doesn't mean it's better. "Better" is always a subjective thing. I think you have a pretty naive view of human culture and human existence itself if you think one person's creation is better than another's just because it's more complex.
I like playing trad, but I love listening to certain classical pieces and have even enjoyed seeing some incredible performers (Itzhak Perlman playing Mozart's Violin Concerto outdoors at SPAC - he broke a string in the middle of the performance. He handed his violin to the concert master who gave him his violin. Perlman continued to play, the concert master restrung the violin and they exchanged them back.)
I got married to the Canon in D by Pachbel (who hasn't) before it was so fashionable.
What I can play and what I like to listen to are two different things.
"There are three subjects with a special ability to divide people. The first two are well recognised for their divisive qualities: Politics and Religion are subjects well avoided at most dinner parties unless you really want to upset someone. The third may not cause quite the same degree of passionate debate but it defines and divides individuals just as powerfully. I refer, of course, to Music."
It warms my heart to think that if this had been a real session someone would have drowned out this classical music discussion nonsense with a nice long blast of reels by now.
Steve, if that is you're referring to my post, I didn't say that only bigwigs would have liked them. But people generally did have a clear understanding that this was art music and there was also the other stuff, mainly, I guess, 'folk' music.
And I'm guessing Dow is having a go at me by putting words into my mouth as well, in suggesting that someone - me? - was saying that classical music was better because it's more complex. For the records, I didn't say either of those things. I didn't say it was better. And I didn't say it was more complex. I'm not saying the opposite of those things either.
... of course, I'm probably just being paranoid in any case ...
When I play music, I prefer to play Irish or Scottish music or bluegrass or ragtime or blues or folk music and I also enjoy listening to all of these types of music.
I don't try to play so-called "Classical" (or Baroque or Renaissance) music because it is too difficult for me but I still like listening to almost all of it (except for the four symphonies by Brahms).
I first discovered the music of Debussy and Stravinsky when I was a teenager and I still enjoy listening to their music.
But I didn't put words in your mouth. Since you've left God's own country, I wouldn't like to think where it's been.
Steve, 'art music', 'classical music', 'serious music' ... all terms which are seriously flawed but have been used at various times to identify a subset of music which I think everyone can identify but for which there is no adequate term in language.
"Classical music" is accepted generally. If you mean music from the so-called classical period you can always specify that's what you mean. Anything else is just pretentious. Like me.
My point being, Steve, that these terms change over time and are therefore always ambiguous. That term wasn't generally accepted when I were a lad - not where I was, in Cardiff Uni music department, anyway. 'Western Art Music' was the accepted thing at the time. That was just about when all the books on semiotics and semiology were coming out, so it was, admittedly, probably quite a pretentious time ...
benhall, a lot of classical music (of the tine, say 18th century) was played at say a dance right along side of other dance tunes..there really wasn't much of a designation...folks of the time went to a dance, and they danced the popular dances of the time to tunes written by Hayden, Mozart, Gow, Marshall and other tune composers. The musicians played "music" no matter the genre...it really wasn't as split up as it is today like "oh, I am an Irish or Scottish fiddler"...at the time, you were a musician, one class above the poop scoopers
and don't worry much about Vengerov, ( although Rostropovich seemed to enjoy his company)...it seems he has put down both his violin and viola due to some injury and is turning his head toward conducting
"a lot of classical music (of the tine, say 18th century) was played at say a dance right along side of other dance tunes..there really wasn't much of a designation"
I'd be interested in your source for that statement, sunnybear. I can just about imagine that tunes either written by, or, more likely, already purloined by, Haydn (no 'e'), Mozart etc, might have been played in less formal occasions. But, unless you're talking about the extremely upper-class stuff in huge private houses, where I totally accept that there might have been a mix of dance and 'classical' music ... well, I can't imagine any other circumstance, actually. And it's *still* not true that there wouldn't have been a distinction made.
Tunes from Haydn? Just the tune? Or the actual music he wrote? (Which would be a different thing altogether.)
I'm not sure I see the relevance, though. A bit like drawing conclusions about today's society and culture from what goes on in the Beckhams' house.
The rock and roll of Schubert's time was fiddles and Border Pipes and such, not Schubert. I imagine he and Beethoven were at a remove from rough trad(!) comparable with that of Vaughan Williams and Grainger from the folk/trad tradition of the early c20.
Mozart's Piano Sonatas - deft, delicate, dazzling, etherial: a musical equivalent to the most beautiful bits of intricate Celtic manuscript painting, or Ruskin's watercolours. Dauntingly lovely music - McMozart it isn't.
and I did not mean just folk dances where only folk (trad) music would be played
my point is that some of this music, both what we now call "classical" (it was not called "classical" back then..it was just music...there was no deliniation between baroque, classical, etc) was contemporaries of itself and it would not be uncommon to hear it being played alongside one another
Forget Molloy. Forget Mahler. What about the old West Indian lady who sits outside Brixton Station playing the paper and comb and shaking a tin of money?
sunnybear, one thing to keep in mind about those days was that the general public did not attend performances of "classical" (or whatever we need to call it) music. It was not until the mid 19th century that performances were open to the general public
Before that, the music was produced for entertainment at Court, or for the Church. Musicians were servants of a Lord. Mozart was the first composer to be able to work as a "freelance" composer, and look what happened to him! Stone dead in a pauper's grave by the age of 35!
if you look back into the history of western music, you will find that every time the medium of performance changed, so did the public conception of music. We have lived through one of these changes in our day and age: the advent of digital recording
Landed Gentry, huh? Not exactly 'pop' music then, eh? And with that sort of divide going on (some of which has been pretty wildly exaggerated in the above IMO) I think you can bet that there would have been a *very* clear distinction in the popular mind about the various types of music.
I'd love to know what Nate means by 'the general public' and whether said part of the populace was denied access to the original performance of 'The Messiah' in Neal's Music Hall, Dublin in 1742.
There is a larger comunity of music of which Trad is part, one which I can only admire: the music of materially poor people, played on things other people threw away, and it's so gorgeous that you have to listen.
Not trying to 'win', sunnybear. I just don't like assumptions like 'classical was the old pop/rock 'n' roll/whatever' when there's no basis and it leads people to make other assumptions about music - like that there wasn't any *other* important music around (important to ordinary people as opposed to nobs, that is). I can't even remember who suggested it now ... whoever, it's the *idea* I don't like, not the person.
I don't recall anyone saying or even assuming that classical music was "more important" than another..
that is entirely the point..it wasn't "classical" music when it was composed, it was just another form of music
rock'n roll wasn't around then either
but the music being composed at the time was just as groundbreaking to the people then as rock n roll was to folks in our time, so perhaps I misused the analogy a little
and it really doesn't matter that much to me anyway if someone doesn't like the way something is presented...I would like to think that people are smart enough to make up their own minds without making assumptions
Right on, posh, rich people listen to classical. Posh, rich people do not listen to Woody Guthrie or anybody with even a mild socialist agenda. I am not saying for a minute that ordinary folk do not listen to classical, they obviously do if the posts recently are to be believed, but upper class twits see it as an elitist platform from which to look down on us dispensibles. Do they understand classical? course not, they understand power and greed, they occupy the land where I live, they manipulate and defraud, they rule by deceit and derision, they take and do not give, they will pay a price but not understand value, they will preach that we cannot prosper, they will send us to fight foreign wars that are not our business, they will cry crocodile tears, they will remain my enemy.
It also included what was *then* called folk music, or something of that sort, but which I suppose we would now think of as trad, ie traditional at the time.
I've re-read this lot, and I think you and I, Sunnybear, are not arguing directly against each other's stance on this, but on completely separate, possibly equally valid, paths that will never meet. What I picked up on was possibly not what you meant. My point was that it was never rock 'n' roll, in that it was never any form of 'popular' music, ie music for the people generally. Being groundbreaking didn't make it that. It was always thought of as being posh, intellectual stuff. In fact, it's only recently that classical music of any sort has become at all 'popular'. I blame Andrew Preview ...
but I missed the part where we were talking about "music for the people"...
if that's the case, let's talk the good ole USSR...Shostokovich wrote music for the people, classical, yes, but music for the people...Bartok, too...Bartok even took field recordings of Hungarian "folk" music, also music for the poeple
just because music is classical or trad or whatever does not mean that it is not for the people...that's what I get tired of...because people may not (perhaps) understand it does not mean it is not accessible
Classical music is incredibly accessible. I'm a lot more musically-savvy than I was in my 20s, when I was completely untutored about any style of music (and I certainly wasn't playing it), but even then I soaked up classical music like a sponge. And I'll tell you what. Some of the stuff that's supposed to be the among the highest flights of the great masters (ahem) is the most approachable and accessible of all. The late quartets of Beethoven positively grab you by the throat, so direct and, dare I say it, simple is the communication. There is depth and complexity to be explored in much classical music but it's available on many levels to everyone of receptive mind and you certainly don't need to be a professor of music to appreciate it. In fact, it's far better if you aren't one.
"sunnybear, one thing to keep in mind about those days was that the general public did not attend performances of "classical" (or whatever we need to call it) music. It was not until the mid 19th century that performances were open to the general public"
Did you mean 18th century? I'm not sure even that is really accurate.
And since when was diddley music meant for the general public anyway? Can you imagine a popular radio channel, "diddley FM"? The truth is that classical music these days probably out sells diddley music 100s of time over. Even in Ireland.
there are many metal bands who are excellent musicians..Dream Theatre, heck even Metallica (I know this thanks to my kids) but in fact even if it is not my style I can respect that it is good for someone
now gangsta rap, on the other hand...
Bobbi, probably the 18th century is more accurate, when things really got going after the reformation...
Steve I agree about the late Beethoven..the Grosse Fuge is really something to wrap your brain around...
Just out of interest, and on a separate note altogether, I thought I'd check out just what is our favourite - ahem - 'classical' music. Here in the Uk, anyway.
BIGGEST SELLING CLASSICAL ALBUMS 2000 - 2007
1. Pure - Hayley Westenra
2. The Voice - Russell Watson
3.Encore - Russell Watson
4. Voices of the Valley - Fron Male Voice Choir e
5. Living a Dream - Katherine Jenkins
6. Second Nature - Katherine Jenkins
7. Bryn - Bryn Terfel
8. Sentimento - Andrea Bocelli
9. Serenade, Katherine Jenkins
10. Gladiator, Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard
Source: Official UK Charts Company
Ben, you know as well as I do that the list is as it is because of tireless and non-stop wearisome promotion of those artists on Classic FM. I often put Classic FM on myself, regarding it as relatively harmless though often mind-bendingly shallow. Before Classic FM came along most of that stuff, had it existed at all, would have been somewhere in the easy-listening racks, not in the classical section. Russell Watson et al. are to classical what Daniel O'Donnell is to traditional Irish music. Sorry to be distasteful by mentioning that name here, but Ben forced it out of me.
I like to have a lovely elitist platform to stand on so I can look down and sneer at all you lowly peasants slaving in the fields while I enjoy my dinner of roast swan.
Eat Ortolan.
First net your bunting, blind it, put it in a box. Feed it up on lovely things, wheat, spices, fruit. Kill it by drowning it in Armagnac and roast whole. Serve on a plate and eat with a cloth over your head. Pick it up by the beak and eat whole and savour the avine fat, the crunching of the bones and the heady taste of that birds entire life.
Nice recipe Krick, but better with goose, and roast potatoes and veggies... I'm curious though, as not any old spices will work well, what spices would you recommend?
"Forget Molloy. Forget Mahler. What about the old West Indian lady who sits outside Brixton Station playing the paper and comb and shaking a tin of money?"
"Granama, there's no need to be so derogatory about my mother!"
Derogatory?? Not a bit of it - This lady's good! She may not have the studied technique of Molloy or the complexity of Mahler's symphonies, but she's got as much music in her as the two of them - and herself - put together.
The only problem is, if you want to drop in a quid, she has to stop to take the lid off her shaker. I tried standing and waiting for here to finish the tune, but realised after 10 minutes or so that she didn't do finishing - the music just kept flowing.
Floss - If I'd know she was your mother, I'd have given her a kiss from you as well.
Just pointing out, Steve, that the supposed 'popularity' of classical music might not be all it seems.
As for Shostakovitch - my all-time favourite symphonist, btw (5, 10 and *especially* 15 - try taking the contents of yer average UK city pub to a Shostakovitch concert. See how 'popular' it really is.
Bartok? Give me strength. He managed to take *genuinely* popular tunes and make them completely inaccessible even to people like me, let alone yer pub brigade. And I'm not being snobby about the great British public, btw - just realistic.
I think we should bear in mind that Jade Goody is a millionaire precisely because a large proportion of the population identify with her.
"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side."
No, no. My poor communication. Take the contents of your average pub *to* a Shostakovitch concert. Probably in a concert hall. The contents of your average city pub are quite often a good representation of the norms in society. They wouldn't like the experience. I would, but I play trad, so I'm clearly not normal.
And I see that you *do* consider classical to be upmarket then (ie not popular) - pheasant, MacDonalds 'n' all.
What's wrong with anyone's having Trad in their head along with some Shostakovitch? Maybe one has problems keeping them discreetly seperate. Is that such a terrible failing?
Having trad in your head makes you happy. Having trad in your head along with Shostakovich makes you more miserable than having nothing in your head at all.
Isn't it a lovely thing to go into a big concert hall once in a while? Just listen to the sound of all those violins without there being five or six players among them who are hopelessly tone deaf. Still, for all that, I prefer my music to be a bit more on the raw side.
oh my benhall we are so misunderstanding each other..I am sorry...I fail to communicate my real intention of words..perhaps I am too lazy to sort it all out..
but suffice it to say that I do not eat McDonalds or pheasant
Emm - not such a big failing, it only gets bad when said classical violinists choose to diddle but dont bother learning the trad style, and why is it that these said classical violinists whose tunes sound dead boring and classical end up getting all the gigs? Its funny because there is one particular one I'm thinking of - no names mentioned but this persons playing is plain embarrassing - but this person thinks they are amazing cause they played in some symphony or other. I mean - Its only lucky this person doesnt come and wreck the sessions otherwise I'td be really annoyed.
Anyhow - the origional thought behind this thread was that 99% of replies in the previous thread was about classical, and that is funny - cause every single trad musician I know would choose tunes first, so I just found it interesting. Thats all. Nothing wrong with it - its just different.
bb Cruella de vil, do you wnt the gigs too? It's only natural I suppose. Be content to have sessions without the dears. Their American bretheren come out to sessions here a lot, bless 'em. I've gotten used to it. What puts me on the boil, though, with or without the self-deluded characters present, is the prevalence of tone deafness. The culprits are invariably the happiest people there, and it would not do to make an issue of it.
I already do gigs - I'm just wondering how some people get gigs when they cant even play. Ooohh ooohh - you know what they do here, they like the whole irish begora thing so much that if you are a decent player with an aussie accent you are f*cked but if you are the tone deaf loser who cant play a note with an irish accent you do all the best gigs - embassy gigs and so forth. Its really lame.
All the best Cruella. This stuff never sorts itself out. It just can't in this life, not honorably. Work on your marksmanship. I'm off to watch our local fire works. G'night
The best music of all time...what tha?
The best music of all time...what tha?
I noticed on the thread 'what is the best music of all time' that almost no one put trad. I mean - what tha?
Almost everyone put classical stuff? So my question is this, if you all think that classical is the best music of all time, then why are you on this site? Is there no classical mustard board?
I personally think that trad is the best music, but I do also love heaps of other stuff - but irish trad always comes in as my personal favourite, and I amnt trying to have a dig - but for me (my personal taste) Classical doesnt come close.
I'm really amnt having a go - i was just very interested to see so many people put classical stuff down.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by bb
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
You can't get much more trad than bird song, and they have accents too, depending on what part of the country their from. Have you ever heard a Yorkshire Blue Tit or a Lancashire Shag? And I should hardly have to mention the pigeon groupings in London...
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by ceolachan
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
I love trad tunes and playing the Music is very satisfying. But it is not
the ultimate music. Don't hurt me.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Hup
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Bridie - I think trad's the best, personally I find classical way toooo perfect. Other than trad it's Irish songs, so all Irish anyway.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by camwebby
Discussion: What's the best piece of music of all time?
# Posted on July 2nd 2008 by mehitabel23
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/18309
Making connections...
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by ceolachan
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Some trad recordings are so highly produced that they go into
the 'too perfect' category. Some of the players too ...
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Hup
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Best for what? Listening to? Dancing to? Communicating a story? Communicating emotions? Playing? I like traditional music, and I like tunes better than songs. That's just me. I like certain kinds of 'classical' music, mainly baroque, classical and some early 20th C. I like early music, swing, 60's pop, really loud rock . . . but which is best - the best music is the music which fulfils its function best. All else is personal taste.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by c.g.
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
I'm here because the A. A. meeting is full and don't feel like redoing my 4th step. (grin)
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Lint - upon - Tweed
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Er I mean:
Pardon me, but would you happen to have any Grey Poupon?
classic (al)
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Lint - upon - Tweed
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
I think it may have been partly because of how the question was worded, "what is the best PIECE of music?" I figured that people may like trad better, but when comparing a Beethoven symphony to a two part trad piece, they may have thought that the symphony had a bit more depth and complexity going for it (as well as about 45 minutes!). Just my brainstorming though. I had no idea what to put...maybe a Palestrina mass or something.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by jasonb
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
c.g - best for everything. As i said - I like alot of different types of music, everything from The Beatles to Ole dirty Bastard to Jimi Hendrix to The Bens to Cold Chisel to ADCD to Snoop Dog etc etc.
funny...
But - 90% of what I listen to is trad, 90% of the things I do revoloves around trad (sessions, festivals, gigs, travel etc) and almost all of my friends are somehow involved in trad. Of course there are a couple who arent, but only around 5 or so.
I wasnt actually asking what people think the best music of all time is - I was actually asking why everyone keeps saying Classical music is the best.
Ceolachan
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by bb
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
But see - one of the reasons I think Trad is so interesting is because anyone can play a two part tune, but hardly anybody can make it sound amazing. Thats where it gets interesting.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by bb
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
classical music is much much harder to play
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by ...
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Please read the title, bb.
"The best PIECE of music"
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by oldstrings
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
And?? What is your point? Just because something is harder does not mean it is better. Personally - and this is just personal mind...I just feel nothing when i hear classical music.
Also - if trad is so easy - the llig - can you please explain to me why there are so many completely crap players about?
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by bb
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
And where did you see anyone say that "classical music is the best"?
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by oldstrings
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Oldstrings - i did read the title orginally, amazingly enough I even understood it. And I still do not find best piece of music (personally) to be classical.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by bb
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Oh my god - listen, if you choose to misunderstand me that is your problem - but the original point to the post FYI is just that I wanted to know why 99% of the posts in the original thread were about classical music. Is that really that hard for you to understand oldstrings....Really? Did it somehow offend you oldstrings? Well -I honestly wasnt meaning to offend you, I was just asking why everyone was choosing classical music. That is all.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by bb
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
time for a song of peace and love - everything I know about the sun came from this song by They Might Be Giants
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oyz7e8iQ6Uo
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by airport
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Why do you want to know so desperately, if it's all a matter of taste in the end? If classical music doesn't move you, so let it be. It moves me deeper than any music. But if I don't want to be moved deeply, I choose trad. Lightens up the spirits, makes the sun come out and makes you want to get to work or whatever.
And: there are so many trad tunes of about the same level, hard to choose. Shostakovitsh's 1st violin concerto is unique.
But OK: Eileen Curran:
http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/132
Satisfied ?
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Henk Bos
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
I completely agree with you BB.
I love all sorts of music. The whole lot. Thats why I'd never respond to a post title like the previous one you mentioned.
However I don't know who you are, or what you do, but over here, and for me personally, I coudn't subscribe to this at all:
'...90% of the things I do revolves around trad (sessions, festivals, gigs, travel etc) and almost all of my friends are somehow involved in trad. Of course there are a couple who arent, but only around 5 or so....
I personally couldn't think of anything worse. Maybe cause I'm in Ireland its different. Its so full of little clique's and ego's. I hang around with a few muso's my own age. I play with one of them in our sessions 2'ce a week. Most of the time, I'd play with the older farts. Drink porter slowly, and talk about other stuff than the music. There's much more to life. For me.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Hugo Chavez
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Eileen Curran is a great tune indeed.
Look to be honest, it was just something I thought was interesting, Its not that I want to know desperately, I just thought it was worthy of note. I've changed my mind now though.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by bb
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Its not an ego thing, its just when you spend so much time playing tunes, then its only natural that you make friends who play tunes too. Its was the same when I lived in Ireland, I had one or two friends who didnt play tunes, the rest did. Not a snobbish thing, its just the way it works out sometimes.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by bb
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
I love my classical and resort to it when I have time to grab a bit of piece and quiet. I can be profoundly moved by it if it's a good performance I'm listening to and if I'm in the mood. Sometimes I think I'm in the mood but then when I put on the music I find I'm not after all. I can be profoundly moved by traditional music too, and probably am a lot more often than with classical, because I'm usually either involved with it directly or am up close to a person or people who are playing it and I can feel or see or hear the wonderful interaction between the flesh and blood and the instrument and the tune and each other . It doesn't have to be a incredibly intricate tune either. Music is an interaction, or a whole complex of interactions, not a tune. I'm not keen on "either-or" comparisons between trad and classical. The comparisons just break down all the time. Plainchant is the "simplest" music it's possible to have - no harmonies, no accidentals, just a single vocal line - yet most people here would probably regard it as "classical" in the broad sense of that word. Simple, but not easy to bring off! Just think of slow airs - a single melody line, but "easy?" I don't think so!
I know these are slightly silly threads but human beings have an intrinsic need to be harmlessly silly at times and this is such a time.
And there are so many crap trad "players" around because it sounds easy, diddley-dum, you can buy an instrument reasonably cheaply, and there are opportunities to join in. And because we're all so bloody nice to 'em so as not to spoil a beautiful day...
(What do I mean, "em?" I'm one of 'em! )
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Steve Shaw
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
I honestly didnt mean either or - I was just interested. And totally take your point Steve, maybe it was just slightly silly on my part. I should know better than to start silly threads. Some people just never learn - obviously I am one of them
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by bb
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Llig said it first - Classical music's much harder to play. I take his word for it as he has, I believe, learnt and played it, and trust his statement is not just a Heffalump trap for people such as me.
But if it is, I'll jump in by declaring that one of my motives for starting to learn trad in my late teens was that it seemed so much easier to get somewhere in this music without prior musical experience than to realise the odd boyhood daydream of being a classical player / singer / composer when I had not gone through mountains of childhood tuition and practice. (I certainly had the chance as a small boy, but refused it.) Trying to play trad to folk club audiences (how they suffered!..) was a whole lot more instantly gratifying than would have been practising Grade 2 piano in total obscurity.
So I've got a bit of a personal inferiority complex about Classical music, mitigated by the warm and broad-minded interest taken by time-served Classical musicians I know in all manner of music that they think deserves any respect, including trad.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by nicholas
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
I don't get much satisfaction from listening to CDs of Irish trad. I can be inspired or impressed and pick up a few ideas for my own playing, but not often moved. The occasional slow air by Frankie Kennedy maybe (but that's loaded too, innit?) I think people tended to put down classical pieces because those are our passive listening pieces for coming back to again and again. Discrete reference points in our own aesthetic experience. The thread prompted the naming of names, and you can't do that if what you really want to say is "whatever I'm playing and enjoying playing at the moment," which is obviously the best music of all time - for now!
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Steve Shaw
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Obviously everyone just wants to appear "cultured" and I'm sorry, saying The Bucks of Oranmore just doesn't leave you looking like the most cultured individual. You will, however, sound like a geek. : p
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by DrSilverSpear
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Oh, and classical is much harder to play. I played French horn for about seven years and sucked at it.
(hmmmm... I think there is someone vomming in front of the building across the street)
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by DrSilverSpear
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
You should try blowing instead of sucking.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Conán McDonnell
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Some of us compromise by doing both, though I'm told I suck nearly all the time. I don't follow that.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Steve Shaw
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
It is interesting how many people on this board came to trad through, or at least after, classical music.
I explore classical music from time to time, but have no gut feeling for it, not having grown up with it. Whereas some old bloke with a flat dry voice singing a corny song about a horse can have my rapt attention. Extraordinary how potent cheap music is
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Bren
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
That's because you fully engage with the old boy while he's singing it. Music doesn't exist if it isn't being played. Dots are not music. A CD in its box is not music. A tune is not music. Music is the engagement between all the constituent parts, the tune, the instruments (or voice), the listeners (who could also be playing) and the human beings making the sounds.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Steve Shaw
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
But yes, why choose a favourite piece that is Classical, not trad or some other genre?
I'd say that a Classical symphony or other extended piece creates a whole coherent world in the way a novel or a play does. Well, a sonnet or a reel can create a little world, but it is a littler world and far more people can do it - write a sonnet, compose a reel, write a wistful or angry song - than can write a proper novel or play. A good symphony is the product of an extraordinary person whose musical imagination and skills enable him to develop territory uniquely his own and, as I've put it, make a world within it. We are free to enter it and put aside our own preoccupations, if we can. I think that to do so is good for us - a corrective against the ego-trips we can go on doing / playing / making our small stuff and making out that it's *that* important or unique. That's a reason I'd choose a Classical piece.
I grew up listening to Classical (not a vast amount) long befor I heard any Irish music. Thence, I naturally see Irish trad as allied to Classical because of its melodic beauties - a sub-species, such as hymns or operetta. The alliance may not be very strong in fact, but is there in some aspects such as the centrality of the violin and the simple-system flute, and the Baroque interests of Carolan (is there a *better* single Baroque tune than Carolan's Welcome? In a crowded field, it seems to me as good as any).
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by nicholas
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
I also found it strange that a load of trad musicians should cite some kind of classical music as an answer to "what's the best music". I would suggest, Beebs, that many people on this board are like Hugo Chavez, and don't obsess about this music to the extent that they do it all the time and only have friends and partners who have some connection with it. That's ok though. All sorts of people would browse a website like this. Fortunately it doesn't mean you have to be their friend or socialize with them outside of the website, so I wouldn't worry about it. Silver Spear's point that people would cite classical pieces in order to appear "cultured' probably has some truth in it, and that's sad and disturbing, I think. It's almost like people are going out of their way to let other people here know "Hey, I have a fantastically interesting life, and am very cultured and listen to diverse kinds of music all the time". For some people that may be true, but others will be just trying to create themselves a fake online image. The reality is that they have about 20 trad CDs, go to the pub twice a week, and when they're not working they're slouching in front of the TV watching Judge Judy and Big Brother.
But the real issue I have with all of this is not the answers people gave to the question, but the question itself. "What's the best music of all time?". Totally pointless and meaningless question. Why would you bother even answering?
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Dr. Dow
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Bridie, this is one of my favourite youtube clips: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-apIrjK5mUw
He is also a nice conductor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVxwuirUX-M The flautist, Wilbert Hazelzet, is among my favourite musicians too.
Anyway, I hate classical music in general. Woe to the people who can't tell Baroque music from classical music.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by slainte
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
I'm like slainte, I hate Classical music, in it's "capital C" sense, which is presumably what he means. I loathe Mozart. I view his music as being the McDonalds of the Classical period. It's ubiquitous and everyone listens to it, therefore it must be good. But it just isn't. It's trite and totally unexciting. It sounds like it was written by an 8 year old, which a lot of it was anyway.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Dr. Dow
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
I grew up listening to both classical and trad. I don't/can't play classical music. I've never had any formal music lessons and I think it would be hard to play classical violin to a high standard by ear alone.
bb asks, why play diddley music if you prefer classical? My "diddley is easier" was a direct answer that. When I was younger I didn't have the opportunity to play classical - and doubt whether I'd have had the patience anyway. And diddley music was cooler - re Donal Lunny's hair. Now I think I do have the patience, but lack the time.
The phrasing of the original question is important. "What's the best piece of music?" If you take two pieces, the bucks of oranmore and schubert's quintet in C (the one with two cellos) is it true that you cannot say one is better than the other? I don't think it is. I think schubert's quintet is an immensely superior piece of music. It's an astonishing piece of human creativity.
However, if you ask me whether I think my favourite recording of schubert's quintet is better than matt molloy playing the bucks, I'd choose Matt Molloy any day.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by ...
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Dow, give mozart's double violin viola concerto a go.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by ...
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
I recently got vengarov doing it. on the sleeve notes he talks about it being technically demanding for the time, but with modern day violin technique, it's relatively easy. So he had to get him and his playing chums to try to get into a mindset that it was difficult - to put the edge back in it.
Interesting, in that it's the total opposite of the whole ethos of the best diddley.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by ...
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
or the violin sonatas G, A, or E minor..some great fiddling there...
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Sunnybear
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
keep in mind too that at the time that music was written, it was the rock 'n roll of the day...groundbreaking stuff as you think of it
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Sunnybear
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
The best piece of music qualifies as one of the sillier topics to appear here but the question of why so many chose classical is indeed worth considering. But at the same time can you imagine the ridicule someone on a classical music site would be subjected to if he mentioned a piece of traditional music.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by leoj
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Ignore Dow, Michael, as he's just being silly about Mozart on purpose. Dow, do what I said and bung the last movement of the Jupiter on the CD player. I recommend Mackerras and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Turn it up. Then tell me he's boring crap. Michael, is that the Sinfonia Concertante? Bloody masterpiece if ever there was one.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Steve Shaw
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Re: Classical
Took six years of it as a child and hated it. I was good at it, but for me it had no passion, no soul. It was like solving a math problem. Seemed like an academic exercise, not at artistic expression. I actually stopped playing for years because I was prevented from studying traditional fiddle styles, which I found terribly exciting, full of passion and expression.
To each their own, and everyone's different, which is why subjective threads of this nature are pretty damn silly.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
"You should try blowing instead of sucking."
So THAT was my problem all those years.
At least with the pipes, as Pete has observed on one of his t-shirts, you can blow and suck at the same time.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by DrSilverSpear
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
OK. A few points:
First of all, the answer to the question is obvious. (I can't believe no-one else has said this). People chose classical pieces because they *are* superior, as Michael has said. What no-one has said (ujnless I've missed it) is that the real worth of trad is *not* in any individual piece or pieces, but in the whole body of trad music. Now *that's* worth something. Each individual piece? A piece of trash. Worthless in itself; gold in conjunction with the rest of the tradition.
Secondly, I'm really fed up with people regurgitating that old nonsense that Beethoven's music, or Mozart's music, or whoever, was "the rock and roll of it day" or "the pop music of its day" or some such. No it wasn't. It was the art music of its day. Of course, there was more interest in art music before film and telly than there is now, but it wasn't the pop music of its day. The pop music of the day was other music, like folk music, songs down the pub, a bit of fiddle, maybe later on some music hall, and so on. But it definitely wasn't classical music.
And lastly, *of course* us traddies like a good bit of Beethoven or Mozart. We're *musicians*. Why on earth wouldn't we appreciate good music?
(btw, while I'm in rant mode, I abolutely *loathe* Vengerov and every note he has dragged whining and protesting out of his poor abused instrument, liberally dosed in saccharin and molasses.)
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by ethical blend
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
I didn't say pop music, what I meant was shi1t "art music".
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Dr. Dow
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
I think it's pretty sad that you have such a narrow view of what is "better" or "superior". Just because something is more complex or more difficult doesn't mean it's better. "Better" is always a subjective thing. I think you have a pretty naive view of human culture and human existence itself if you think one person's creation is better than another's just because it's more complex.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Dr. Dow
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
I like playing trad, but I love listening to certain classical pieces and have even enjoyed seeing some incredible performers (Itzhak Perlman playing Mozart's Violin Concerto outdoors at SPAC - he broke a string in the middle of the performance. He handed his violin to the concert master who gave him his violin. Perlman continued to play, the concert master restrung the violin and they exchanged them back.)
I got married to the Canon in D by Pachbel (who hasn't) before it was so fashionable.
What I can play and what I like to listen to are two different things.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by grumblingoldwoman
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Mozart and Beethoven were very popular in their day and not just among the bigwigs.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Steve Shaw
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Ah - Schubert's string quintet. A good choice indeed. I came across an interesting review of this a while ago -
http://cd.ciao.co.uk/Schubert_String_Quintet_in_C__Review_5339530
Personally, if I HAD to name "best music of all time" I'd probably lean towards the Mahler symphonies, but please don't make me choose
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by domhnall.
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
I know that Massachusetts has liberalized its marriage law, but is it legal for a woman to marry a Canon?
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by GaryAMartin
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
What a great quote from the Schubert review:
"There are three subjects with a special ability to divide people. The first two are well recognised for their divisive qualities: Politics and Religion are subjects well avoided at most dinner parties unless you really want to upset someone. The third may not cause quite the same degree of passionate debate but it defines and divides individuals just as powerfully. I refer, of course, to Music."
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
It warms my heart to think that if this had been a real session someone would have drowned out this classical music discussion nonsense with a nice long blast of reels by now.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Steve, if that is you're referring to my post, I didn't say that only bigwigs would have liked them. But people generally did have a clear understanding that this was art music and there was also the other stuff, mainly, I guess, 'folk' music.
And I'm guessing Dow is having a go at me by putting words into my mouth as well, in suggesting that someone - me? - was saying that classical music was better because it's more complex. For the records, I didn't say either of those things. I didn't say it was better. And I didn't say it was more complex. I'm not saying the opposite of those things either.
... of course, I'm probably just being paranoid in any case ...
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by ethical blend
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
I put words in your mouth in retalliation for putting words in my mouth. C'mon Ben, let's have a fight. We haven't had one in ages. C'mon ya wuss.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Dr. Dow
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
I don't know what art music is. Pictures At An Exhibition I suppose.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Steve Shaw
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
When I play music, I prefer to play Irish or Scottish music or bluegrass or ragtime or blues or folk music and I also enjoy listening to all of these types of music.
I don't try to play so-called "Classical" (or Baroque or Renaissance) music because it is too difficult for me but I still like listening to almost all of it (except for the four symphonies by Brahms).
I first discovered the music of Debussy and Stravinsky when I was a teenager and I still enjoy listening to their music.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by fauxcelt
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Fight? Oh fair enough Dow.
But I didn't put words in your mouth. Since you've left God's own country, I wouldn't like to think where it's been.
Steve, 'art music', 'classical music', 'serious music' ... all terms which are seriously flawed but have been used at various times to identify a subset of music which I think everyone can identify but for which there is no adequate term in language.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by ethical blend
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
LIsten to Mary Bergin playing Beethoven's Sonatina in G on Jigs To The Moon. Gorgeous.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Steve Shaw
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
"Classical music" is accepted generally. If you mean music from the so-called classical period you can always specify that's what you mean. Anything else is just pretentious. Like me.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Steve Shaw
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
You don't wanna know Ben, lol
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Dr. Dow
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
My point being, Steve, that these terms change over time and are therefore always ambiguous. That term wasn't generally accepted when I were a lad - not where I was, in Cardiff Uni music department, anyway. 'Western Art Music' was the accepted thing at the time. That was just about when all the books on semiotics and semiology were coming out, so it was, admittedly, probably quite a pretentious time ...
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by ethical blend
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
benhall, a lot of classical music (of the tine, say 18th century) was played at say a dance right along side of other dance tunes..there really wasn't much of a designation...folks of the time went to a dance, and they danced the popular dances of the time to tunes written by Hayden, Mozart, Gow, Marshall and other tune composers. The musicians played "music" no matter the genre...it really wasn't as split up as it is today like "oh, I am an Irish or Scottish fiddler"...at the time, you were a musician, one class above the poop scoopers
and don't worry much about Vengerov, ( although Rostropovich seemed to enjoy his company)...it seems he has put down both his violin and viola due to some injury and is turning his head toward conducting
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Sunnybear
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
"a lot of classical music (of the tine, say 18th century) was played at say a dance right along side of other dance tunes..there really wasn't much of a designation"
I'd be interested in your source for that statement, sunnybear. I can just about imagine that tunes either written by, or, more likely, already purloined by, Haydn (no 'e'), Mozart etc, might have been played in less formal occasions. But, unless you're talking about the extremely upper-class stuff in huge private houses, where I totally accept that there might have been a mix of dance and 'classical' music ... well, I can't imagine any other circumstance, actually. And it's *still* not true that there wouldn't have been a distinction made.
Tunes from Haydn? Just the tune? Or the actual music he wrote? (Which would be a different thing altogether.)
I'm not sure I see the relevance, though. A bit like drawing conclusions about today's society and culture from what goes on in the Beckhams' house.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by ethical blend
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Has to be 'Country and Irish'
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Free Reed
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
The rock and roll of Schubert's time was fiddles and Border Pipes and such, not Schubert. I imagine he and Beethoven were at a remove from rough trad(!) comparable with that of Vaughan Williams and Grainger from the folk/trad tradition of the early c20.
Mozart's Piano Sonatas - deft, delicate, dazzling, etherial: a musical equivalent to the most beautiful bits of intricate Celtic manuscript painting, or Ruskin's watercolours. Dauntingly lovely music - McMozart it isn't.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by nicholas
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
not extreme upper class, but landed gentry
I did not mean sitting in the barn playing your flute to the sheep
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Sunnybear
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
and I did not mean just folk dances where only folk (trad) music would be played
my point is that some of this music, both what we now call "classical" (it was not called "classical" back then..it was just music...there was no deliniation between baroque, classical, etc) was contemporaries of itself and it would not be uncommon to hear it being played alongside one another
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Sunnybear
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Forget Molloy. Forget Mahler. What about the old West Indian lady who sits outside Brixton Station playing the paper and comb and shaking a tin of money?
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Granama, there's no need to be so derogatory about my mother!
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by MacCruiskeen
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
I love my thread spawning so many baby threads! Hee hee
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by mehitabel23
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Get in quarantine already, will ya? Look what you've done!
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
sunnybear, one thing to keep in mind about those days was that the general public did not attend performances of "classical" (or whatever we need to call it) music. It was not until the mid 19th century that performances were open to the general public
Before that, the music was produced for entertainment at Court, or for the Church. Musicians were servants of a Lord. Mozart was the first composer to be able to work as a "freelance" composer, and look what happened to him! Stone dead in a pauper's grave by the age of 35!
if you look back into the history of western music, you will find that every time the medium of performance changed, so did the public conception of music. We have lived through one of these changes in our day and age: the advent of digital recording
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Nate Ryan
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Landed Gentry, huh? Not exactly 'pop' music then, eh? And with that sort of divide going on (some of which has been pretty wildly exaggerated in the above IMO) I think you can bet that there would have been a *very* clear distinction in the popular mind about the various types of music.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by ethical blend
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
mehitabel, just because you spawned a load of baby threads doesn't mean they're *good* threads, ya little troublemaker!
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Reverend
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
yes, Nate...good point you bring up
benhall..whatever...you win..your's is bigger..I give, etc...give the shaky legger a shout if ya want
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Sunnybear
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
I'd love to know what Nate means by 'the general public' and whether said part of the populace was denied access to the original performance of 'The Messiah' in Neal's Music Hall, Dublin in 1742.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by MacCruiskeen
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
There is a larger comunity of music of which Trad is part, one which I can only admire: the music of materially poor people, played on things other people threw away, and it's so gorgeous that you have to listen.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Atahualpa Quigley
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Not trying to 'win', sunnybear. I just don't like assumptions like 'classical was the old pop/rock 'n' roll/whatever' when there's no basis and it leads people to make other assumptions about music - like that there wasn't any *other* important music around (important to ordinary people as opposed to nobs, that is). I can't even remember who suggested it now ... whoever, it's the *idea* I don't like, not the person.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by ethical blend
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Tell you what - it's the flip side of the same coin that had on the other side "the Beatles are the new classical music".
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by ethical blend
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Bugger - potential transatlantic misunderstanding in the offing: "nobs" = posh, rich people.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by ethical blend
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Benhall. 1., not to worry. Nob means the same thing over here. There is even a hill in San Francisco named for the local chapter.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Atahualpa Quigley
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Thank God for that, anyway. I thought I was in *real* trouble there for a minute.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by ethical blend
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
I don't recall anyone saying or even assuming that classical music was "more important" than another..
that is entirely the point..it wasn't "classical" music when it was composed, it was just another form of music
rock'n roll wasn't around then either
but the music being composed at the time was just as groundbreaking to the people then as rock n roll was to folks in our time, so perhaps I misused the analogy a little
and it really doesn't matter that much to me anyway if someone doesn't like the way something is presented...I would like to think that people are smart enough to make up their own minds without making assumptions
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Sunnybear
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
..and the music being composed includes what we now call "trad", too, be it English, Irish, Scottish, or Chinese
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Sunnybear
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Right on, posh, rich people listen to classical. Posh, rich people do not listen to Woody Guthrie or anybody with even a mild socialist agenda. I am not saying for a minute that ordinary folk do not listen to classical, they obviously do if the posts recently are to be believed, but upper class twits see it as an elitist platform from which to look down on us dispensibles. Do they understand classical? course not, they understand power and greed, they occupy the land where I live, they manipulate and defraud, they rule by deceit and derision, they take and do not give, they will pay a price but not understand value, they will preach that we cannot prosper, they will send us to fight foreign wars that are not our business, they will cry crocodile tears, they will remain my enemy.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by strayaway
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
It also included what was *then* called folk music, or something of that sort, but which I suppose we would now think of as trad, ie traditional at the time.
I've re-read this lot, and I think you and I, Sunnybear, are not arguing directly against each other's stance on this, but on completely separate, possibly equally valid, paths that will never meet. What I picked up on was possibly not what you meant. My point was that it was never rock 'n' roll, in that it was never any form of 'popular' music, ie music for the people generally. Being groundbreaking didn't make it that. It was always thought of as being posh, intellectual stuff. In fact, it's only recently that classical music of any sort has become at all 'popular'. I blame Andrew Preview ...
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by ethical blend
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
I find classical easy to play on the mandolin, but cannot/will not play jigs and reels.
Am I a genius or a freak?
And bb, to curry favour, I did opt for "Linerick's Lament" on the original thread.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by bodhran bliss
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
ok, perhaps so
but I missed the part where we were talking about "music for the people"...
if that's the case, let's talk the good ole USSR...Shostokovich wrote music for the people, classical, yes, but music for the people...Bartok, too...Bartok even took field recordings of Hungarian "folk" music, also music for the poeple
just because music is classical or trad or whatever does not mean that it is not for the people...that's what I get tired of...because people may not (perhaps) understand it does not mean it is not accessible
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Sunnybear
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Classical music is incredibly accessible. I'm a lot more musically-savvy than I was in my 20s, when I was completely untutored about any style of music (and I certainly wasn't playing it), but even then I soaked up classical music like a sponge. And I'll tell you what. Some of the stuff that's supposed to be the among the highest flights of the great masters (ahem) is the most approachable and accessible of all. The late quartets of Beethoven positively grab you by the throat, so direct and, dare I say it, simple is the communication. There is depth and complexity to be explored in much classical music but it's available on many levels to everyone of receptive mind and you certainly don't need to be a professor of music to appreciate it. In fact, it's far better if you aren't one.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by Steve Shaw
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Bill Withers and Wes Montgomery are amazing. Bye.
# Posted on July 3rd 2008 by 52Paddy
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
How do you turn a duck into a soul singer?
Put it in the microwave until its Bill Withers.
# Posted on July 4th 2008 by Steve Shaw
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
"sunnybear, one thing to keep in mind about those days was that the general public did not attend performances of "classical" (or whatever we need to call it) music. It was not until the mid 19th century that performances were open to the general public"
Did you mean 18th century? I'm not sure even that is really accurate.
# Posted on July 4th 2008 by Bob himself
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
And since when was diddley music meant for the general public anyway? Can you imagine a popular radio channel, "diddley FM"? The truth is that classical music these days probably out sells diddley music 100s of time over. Even in Ireland.
# Posted on July 4th 2008 by ...
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Death metal prob out sells trad, it doesnt mean its good.
# Posted on July 4th 2008 by bb
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
there are many metal bands who are excellent musicians..Dream Theatre, heck even Metallica (I know this thanks to my kids) but in fact even if it is not my style I can respect that it is good for someone
now gangsta rap, on the other hand...
Bobbi, probably the 18th century is more accurate, when things really got going after the reformation...
Steve I agree about the late Beethoven..the Grosse Fuge is really something to wrap your brain around...
# Posted on July 4th 2008 by Sunnybear
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Just out of interest, and on a separate note altogether, I thought I'd check out just what is our favourite - ahem - 'classical' music. Here in the Uk, anyway.
BIGGEST SELLING CLASSICAL ALBUMS 2000 - 2007
1. Pure - Hayley Westenra
2. The Voice - Russell Watson
3.Encore - Russell Watson
4. Voices of the Valley - Fron Male Voice Choir e
5. Living a Dream - Katherine Jenkins
6. Second Nature - Katherine Jenkins
7. Bryn - Bryn Terfel
8. Sentimento - Andrea Bocelli
9. Serenade, Katherine Jenkins
10. Gladiator, Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard
Source: Official UK Charts Company
# Posted on July 4th 2008 by ethical blend
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
I don't even want to know what's on the Australian list then :(
# Posted on July 4th 2008 by Hup
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Ben, you know as well as I do that the list is as it is because of tireless and non-stop wearisome promotion of those artists on Classic FM. I often put Classic FM on myself, regarding it as relatively harmless though often mind-bendingly shallow. Before Classic FM came along most of that stuff, had it existed at all, would have been somewhere in the easy-listening racks, not in the classical section. Russell Watson et al. are to classical what Daniel O'Donnell is to traditional Irish music. Sorry to be distasteful by mentioning that name here, but Ben forced it out of me.
# Posted on July 4th 2008 by Steve Shaw
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
I prefer King's College choir myself...
I like to have a lovely elitist platform to stand on so I can look down and sneer at all you lowly peasants slaving in the fields while I enjoy my dinner of roast swan.
(????????????????????????????????)
# Posted on July 4th 2008 by mehitabel23
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Oh...My...God! I love Roast swan - its my favourite!
# Posted on July 4th 2008 by bb
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Eat Ortolan.
First net your bunting, blind it, put it in a box. Feed it up on lovely things, wheat, spices, fruit. Kill it by drowning it in Armagnac and roast whole. Serve on a plate and eat with a cloth over your head. Pick it up by the beak and eat whole and savour the avine fat, the crunching of the bones and the heady taste of that birds entire life.
# Posted on July 4th 2008 by Krick Stahlschwanz
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Pheasant has more flavour...as do quaill and partridge... Swan can sometimes taste like a second rate fish. I'd much rather the fish.
# Posted on July 4th 2008 by ceolachan
Re: The best roast dinner of all time...what tha?
Nice recipe Krick, but better with goose, and roast potatoes and veggies... I'm curious though, as not any old spices will work well, what spices would you recommend?
# Posted on July 4th 2008 by ceolachan
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
"Forget Molloy. Forget Mahler. What about the old West Indian lady who sits outside Brixton Station playing the paper and comb and shaking a tin of money?"
"Granama, there's no need to be so derogatory about my mother!"
Derogatory?? Not a bit of it - This lady's good! She may not have the studied technique of Molloy or the complexity of Mahler's symphonies, but she's got as much music in her as the two of them - and herself - put together.
The only problem is, if you want to drop in a quid, she has to stop to take the lid off her shaker. I tried standing and waiting for here to finish the tune, but realised after 10 minutes or so that she didn't do finishing - the music just kept flowing.
Floss - If I'd know she was your mother, I'd have given her a kiss from you as well.
# Posted on July 4th 2008 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Just pointing out, Steve, that the supposed 'popularity' of classical music might not be all it seems.
As for Shostakovitch - my all-time favourite symphonist, btw (5, 10 and *especially* 15 - try taking the contents of yer average UK city pub to a Shostakovitch concert. See how 'popular' it really is.
Bartok? Give me strength. He managed to take *genuinely* popular tunes and make them completely inaccessible even to people like me, let alone yer pub brigade. And I'm not being snobby about the great British public, btw - just realistic.
I think we should bear in mind that Jade Goody is a millionaire precisely because a large proportion of the population identify with her.
# Posted on July 4th 2008 by ethical blend
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
[please put a closing bracket after '15' in the above]
# Posted on July 4th 2008 by ethical blend
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
going to a pub to listen to Bartok or Shostokovich would be like going to McDonalds to eat your pheasant
why on earth would you do that????
# Posted on July 4th 2008 by Sunnybear
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side."
~ Hunter S. Thompson
# Posted on July 4th 2008 by wolfbird
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
No, no. My poor communication. Take the contents of your average pub *to* a Shostakovitch concert. Probably in a concert hall. The contents of your average city pub are quite often a good representation of the norms in society. They wouldn't like the experience. I would, but I play trad, so I'm clearly not normal.
And I see that you *do* consider classical to be upmarket then (ie not popular) - pheasant, MacDonalds 'n' all.
# Posted on July 4th 2008 by ethical blend
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
What's wrong with anyone's having Trad in their head along with some Shostakovitch? Maybe one has problems keeping them discreetly seperate. Is that such a terrible failing?
# Posted on July 4th 2008 by Atahualpa Quigley
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Having trad in your head makes you happy. Having trad in your head along with Shostakovich makes you more miserable than having nothing in your head at all.
# Posted on July 4th 2008 by Steve Shaw
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Isn't it a lovely thing to go into a big concert hall once in a while? Just listen to the sound of all those violins without there being five or six players among them who are hopelessly tone deaf. Still, for all that, I prefer my music to be a bit more on the raw side.
# Posted on July 4th 2008 by Atahualpa Quigley
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
OK, so Shostskovich is out. Fine. What about Trad and Prokofiev?
# Posted on July 4th 2008 by Atahualpa Quigley
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
oh my benhall we are so misunderstanding each other..I am sorry...I fail to communicate my real intention of words..perhaps I am too lazy to sort it all out..
but suffice it to say that I do not eat McDonalds or pheasant
# Posted on July 4th 2008 by Sunnybear
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Lazy? With words? Hmmm ... me too ... assuming that's what you meant ... brain fuzzy ...
Anyway, enough of this ...
TUNES!!!
# Posted on July 4th 2008 by ethical blend
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
Emm - not such a big failing, it only gets bad when said classical violinists choose to diddle but dont bother learning the trad style, and why is it that these said classical violinists whose tunes sound dead boring and classical end up getting all the gigs? Its funny because there is one particular one I'm thinking of - no names mentioned but this persons playing is plain embarrassing - but this person thinks they are amazing cause they played in some symphony or other. I mean - Its only lucky this person doesnt come and wreck the sessions otherwise I'td be really annoyed.
Anyhow - the origional thought behind this thread was that 99% of replies in the previous thread was about classical, and that is funny - cause every single trad musician I know would choose tunes first, so I just found it interesting. Thats all. Nothing wrong with it - its just different.
# Posted on July 5th 2008 by bb
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
bb Cruella de vil, do you wnt the gigs too? It's only natural I suppose. Be content to have sessions without the dears. Their American bretheren come out to sessions here a lot, bless 'em. I've gotten used to it. What puts me on the boil, though, with or without the self-deluded characters present, is the prevalence of tone deafness. The culprits are invariably the happiest people there, and it would not do to make an issue of it.
# Posted on July 5th 2008 by Atahualpa Quigley
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
I already do gigs - I'm just wondering how some people get gigs when they cant even play. Ooohh ooohh - you know what they do here, they like the whole irish begora thing so much that if you are a decent player with an aussie accent you are f*cked but if you are the tone deaf loser who cant play a note with an irish accent you do all the best gigs - embassy gigs and so forth. Its really lame.
# Posted on July 5th 2008 by bb
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
All the best Cruella. This stuff never sorts itself out. It just can't in this life, not honorably. Work on your marksmanship. I'm off to watch our local fire works. G'night
# Posted on July 5th 2008 by Atahualpa Quigley
Re: The best music of all time...what tha?
GONG
# Posted on July 10th 2008 by gravelwalks