Posted on 09/24/2017 12:04:34 PM PDT by EveningStar
How far back do you think the Literati thing goes? That’s a broad missive.
I think you misunderstood the definition I gave. If music derives its essence from the notated score then it is so called ‘Serious’ music (or Art music or Concert Music etc). That’s the conservatory definition anyway. Leonard Bernstein called it Exact Music. No snob he! He loved a lot of pop music. ‘Notational Music’ is a non Judgemental way to put it. I don’t recall Amadeus have any effect on how Mozart was regarded among music lovers. If anything it’s the middlebrow ignoramuses who claim he lacks passion or depth. People who don’t know the era.
Bump for later and recommended other movies
A long time. Basically as long as we have records of people discussing art there’s always been that crowd that wants to dismiss what’s popular. We’ve found the records of people whining about Shakespeare because the masses liked him. And I’m sure if you start digging up Greek reviews you’ll find a crowd that hates stuff just because it’s popular. Once people tie their ego to the entertainment they consume you get the d-bag crowd who crave obscurity.
It’s a crappy definition. Written largely to count jazz out. I definitely remember the “Salieri wasn’t that bad, Mozart was never serious” wave when suddenly everybody “knew” Mozart. Then of course popular culture moved on and the literati sighed in relief. They hated that big wave of Shakespeare movies too, though that could very well have legit since most movie made out of Shakespeare stink (mostly because the actors have no idea what they’re saying and don’t know how they should act).
Films of Shakespeare frequently don’t work because plays are plotted differently than films.
Do you have a better definition? The one I gave holds up more than any other I’ve seen. It’s the most commonly used. Salieri wasn’t that bad! He just wasn’t one of the all time greats. Amadeus spurred on recordings of his music for the first time and his stuff still gets recorded...and it deserves to be. Jazz is a strain of popular music. Now notated ragtime is indeed Classical. Scott Joplin appears in Classical music reference books. Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington do not. Although the latter did write concert works, they just haven’t found any sort of foothold in the repertoire. Not enough conductors are devoted to them (or maybe they just aren’t very good).
Interstellar was so long and rambling and took so long to get to the point that towards the end I just attributed everything that happened to magic.
Inception took the time to build the "science" and draw viewers in to the story, so when I started not to understand what was going on, it was more of a problem.
True. I thought Primer and Predestination were the most complex and confusing.
2001 was sort of poetical and mythic.
Maybe it's like the contrast between Christopher Nolan's Memento and David Lynch's Mulholland Drive.
Memento was confusing but once you got the idea it sort of "made sense." Mulholland Drive left reason and logical coherence far behind.
The whole concept of “serious music” exist solely for ego strokes, so I wouldn’t define it.
So what if jazz is a strain of popular music?! That’s a pointless dismissive statement. That’s what I’m pointing out, once you’ve declared something “serious” or “popular” all you’re doing is dismissing some stuff to inflate your ego. The whole division is stupid and useless and everyone that uses them should feel shame for limiting themselves and trying to limit people around them.
It’s either good or it’s not. Notated, popular, serious, blah blah blah is besides the point. It’s good or it’s not. And some of it is good enough to be great art. And anybody that thinks it’s not just because it’s “popular” instead of “serious” is a moron.
It’s not a qualitative judgment. A lot of popular music is much better than a lot of concert music. It’s purely descriptive. So what would you say is the difference between pop and Classical? Or are you saying there is no difference? Which is insane.
I never did get 2001. Still don’t. Not smart enough I guess.
But when one gets labeled as “serious” and the other doesn’t it most definitely IS a qualitative judgement. One is being dismissed as not serious.
On a functional level it’s just music. In the creation phase there’s really 3 methods: notated, un-notated but still pre-planned (which is most of rock music since almost none of them know how to notate and instead record demo tapes), and improvised (which usually involves some level of planning but it’s much looser). But really who cares how they got there. And really once you start categorizing you run into the kind of problems categorizers always run into, Frank Zappa wrote all of his music and demanded all his band members learn to read music, and yet he improvised constantly, so is his music notated or improvised? The correct answer is: who cares.
The important question isn’t how it was spawned but is it any good at being what it’s supposed to be. Trying to put artistic creations into boxes misses the point, and starts running into box limitations. Working on an SF convention we run into this a lot, especially lately as authors just don’t want to be in boxes and we start making new boxes like paranormal romance and urban fantasy. But we run into the same in music, all the punk acts worth a damn are heavily influences by Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard and other country acts. So does that mean punk is really country, or maybe Johnny Cash was making punk rock before there was even rock. Or you can just throw out the stupid boxes and enjoy the music.
No categories are 100% consistent but there has to be some definition that works most of the time. Notational music is the closest I’ve ever heard. If you play a Beethoven piano sonata faster than is indicated or play notes clipped where they were supposed to be held or change a harmony...then you are playing it wrong. In pop music these concerns don’t really exist. You can play a song any which way. The Serious-ness of it is that all aspects of a piece of music are important enough to be notated.
btw Improvisation has always been a part of the concert music tradition. Mozart and Beethoven improvised constantly and there are sections in concert works set aside for that purpose.
Of course that concern exists in pop music. It’s stupid to say it doesn’t. If you’re trying to replicate the song and you’re cutting notes off then you’re not replicating the song, regardless of the source. Anybody that’s suffered through a bad cover band knows that.
Of course meanwhile you can seriously rework ANY song, including classical music, as any ELP fan can attest.
So once again you show that indeed the whole “serious” category is purely a matter of ego stroking BS.
There is no single correct way to play a pop tune. Which version of Stardust is ‘correct’? See what I mean? And you can ‘rework’ concert music all you want. But then you aren’t actually playing said concert music but an arrangement of it. If someone buys a ticket to hear an orchestra play Mussorgsky’s ‘Night on Bald Mountain’ and they hear some Prog band’s arrangement of it, they will rightly feel that they were the victims of a bait and switch. Because what they heard was NOT Mussorgsky’s ‘Night on Bald Mountain’. Now if they were going to hear Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ they expect to hear that piece in the precise Ravel orchestration.
That’s quite simply a lie. Really we’ve had disagreements before but you never resorted to full on lies. We’re done, I don’t truck with liars.
There's not much to get. They're just not very good.
Which part was a lie? What I said is very common. That’s the primary difference. You’re reading value judgement where there aren’t any. These are technical matters. Talk to a Julliard Professor about this.
I have to disagree there. I think Interstellar is close to Nolan’s best.
Twelve Monkeys...the movie,
has held me spellbound
since I first watched it 2 months ago.
Cole was being setup thru a twisting
Time tunnel to cover a government
Plot to destroy a Major portion
of the World’s population.
The Le Matt Black Powder pistol
Was the big tipoff.
Twelve Monkeys...the movie,
has held me spellbound
since I first watched it 2 months ago.
Cole was being setup thru a twisting
Time tunnel to cover a government
Plot to destroy a Major portion
of the World’s population.
The Le Matt Black Powder pistol
Was the big tipoff.
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