Classical Music is the Best Music
Classical music is the best music.
I know to many of you these are fighting words. And indeed, I’ve written them precisely because I’d like you to react to them.
But I’m not here to pick bones about who’s particular favorite genre actually is the best. Simply put, objectively speaking, classical music is the best music there is. Even if I didn’t like it tremendously (which I do) and even if it was super popular (which it isn’t), I think it would still have to be considered the best.
By this I don’t mean other music has no qualities that are equally great and worthy of respect and awe and the title of genius. In fact, I’m quite sure a great many do. But other genres generally fail in the one crucial respect that classical music benefits from…time.
Imagine if rock music were represented in the future 100 years from now by The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Bob Dylan or fill in your favorite artists, leaving hundreds if not thousands of possibly once great bands in the historical dust. Imagine if every genre had only one or two people who represented a style of music and epitomized it in an unimpeachable way. Then you’d have something that approached classical music.
For you see, the reason why classical music is the best is that decades and centuries have all but eliminated the crap, the mediocre artists, the trendy one-hit wonders, the fakers, and the wannabes. It is best by default because if we’re listening to it that means it stuck around and struck a nerve.
For example, the classical period from 1770-1820 (I’m just approximating) is represented by three people, Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn. Three f-ing people! Now it’s a fact that they were all situated in the musical capital of Europe, Vienna, and basically knew each other. So we’re not only talking about three artists during the same time period and general geographical area, but also the same social circles. And of all the music we’d like to remember this period by we chose three who were dedicating their music to each other, teaching each other, listening to each other’s music…seems rather incestuous.
At the same time, they were pushing themselves and genres they were inventing. Each one had to top the other guy. And Vienna was so uber competitive anyway that they had to keep the wolves at bay. Actually, it’s probably safe to say our classical trio may have been eclipsed in fame at certain points by composers and musicians most of us have never heard of. Does it mean those unnamed musicians were necessarily crap? No. But by the simple virtue of their music not really sticking in the culture, it has to be said that maybe it wasn’t the best.
By contrast, rap’s been around for 25 years? Rock’s been around for 60 years maybe? Jazz for 100? The Blues? They’re kids in the grand scheme of things. Classical is more like 500 years, more if you count “early music.”
This theory that I’ve just elaborated is called “The Test of Time.” Unfortunately, this theory can be just as full of crap as it is true. How many mediocre Beethoven pieces must we continually listen to and celebrate just because it was written by Beethoven? If time can keep the bad stuff away, it also has the ability to rejuvenate bad stuff with good pedigree. So yes, hardly a perfect system.
But just as 1930s-40s Hollywood produced dozens of masterpieces and the 1960s-70s produced great rock music, classical music had its heydays in classical period of Vienna, the romantic period of 1835-1890 (again approximately), and the experimental avant garde of early 1900s Paris. These periods give a false sense that we can understand history. Yet, you can’t argue with the fact that the works that came out of them are still being played, still studied, still providing people with aural stimulation.
And as more things fell away and only the best stuck around, we as children were given the keys to the kingdom…”don’t mind yourself with those minor things, here are the best ones.” Of course this gentrifies the whole process. There’s nothing worse than someone enjoying music for the prestige rather than just enjoying the way it sounds.
That’s how classical music should be heard…as a series of sounds that connect to some kind of emotional reality. Just as Chaucer’s English is the same and yet different from ours, so too is Beethoven’s thunderous heavy metal different from our version.
Context here is key. Unforunately, we only have the good stuff to listen to. However, where you can find it, I hope you to listen to the bad stuff (if only to figure out what makes the good stuff so good). Those concerts that featured terrible classical music made me truly appreciate how spoiled I am with the gentrified taste we are given to start with. Listen to something weird out of the blue by an obscure guy and Mozart’s air-tight constructions start to take on the aura of genius. That my friends is the story of Salieri in Amadeus.
Speaking of context, Wendy Carlos did this nice version of Bach’s A Major invention, which sounds like the Main Street Electrical Parade. A testament to the versatility of Bach, a genius.
June 12th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
[…] This aforementioned article was titled Classical Music is the Best Music. After reading the article for the first time I began to agree with it. There was one paragraph in particular that caught my eye. For you see, the reason why classical music is the best is that decades and centuries have all but eliminated the crap, the mediocre artists, the trendy one-hit wonders, the fakers, and the wannabes. It is best by default because if we’re listening to it that means it stuck around and struck a nerve. […]
June 30th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
‘By contrast, rap’s been around for 25 years? Rock’s been around for 60 ears maybe? Jazz for 100? The Blues? They’re kids in the grand scheme of things. Classical is more like 500 years, more if you count “early music.”
This theory that I’ve just elaborated is called “The Test of Time.”
Wow!! What a sophisticated means of surveying half a millennium of human activity. I would like to point out some glaring contradictions in your argument though.
1. If music is to be judged by what survives ‘in the Grand Scheme of things,’ then how exactly can you say that ‘Context here is key.’ Surely if specific historical and cultural contexts matter to an appreciation of music then we can’t subscribe to what a context-less ‘grand scheme’ of history deems worthwhile.
2. Your understanding of musical history - some work is good and some is not - would make no meaningful distinction between the work of Palestrina and the work of Stravinsky: you just call it ‘classical music’, despite the fact that these two composers, being 400 years apart, thought about, produced, and disseminated their work in completely different ways. That’s fine actually. But if you are going to take that sort of historically reductive approach to music appreciation then how can you possibly say that the work of either of these composers is different from (if not OPPOSITIONAL to) the work of the Beatles or Led Zeppelin, or David Bowie, or Radiohead? By your logic - they would all be working in the same ‘grand scheme’ of musical history and will all be judged on the same criteria. So why does your argument imply that ‘classical music’ and ‘rock/jazz/blues/rap’ are different from each other?
3. You refer to ‘Classical music’ as a genre – then later you talk about ‘genres [Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven] were inventing.’ That doesn’t make sense. What do you think a ‘genre’ is? You have such a broad idea of what the word means that your use of it renders it meaningless.
So where do I stand personally then?
I don’t agree that you are doing justice to the history of music by summing it up under the grand heading of ‘Classical’. It is not just one big homogenous mass. It is not a ‘genre.’ I don’t even agree that you are doing justice to The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, or Bob Dylan by lumping them in together as ‘rock music.’ That label betrays your lack of understanding about their music just as your ‘classical’ label betrays your lack of understanding about anything else in musical history.
My point is this: ‘Classical Music’ is not ‘objectively speaking…the best music there is’, because the concept of ‘Classical music,’ as you use it, is illusory. There is a ‘musical history,’ but The Beatles and Led Zeppelin are as much a part of it as Mozart and Debussy. None of them can be separated from each other anymore than they can be compared to each other. There is a ‘best music,’ but it is not objective, it is always subjective. In other words – the best music is whatever floats your boat.
July 1st, 2007 at 12:21 am
Gabriel, thanks for responding but I’m afraid you’re taking my essay in a knee jerk way…which admittedly I was kinda asking for.
I’ll just respond according to your numbered points.
1. My whole point is that the grand scheme test of time thing is absurd…hence the silly idea that three composers can represent an entire musical period that was very rich and varied. Thus the true way of determining their actual worth (as opposed to faith in the test of time) is to understand their context and the other composers who have fallen away…Salieri is the most obvious example.
2. Yes, I’m aware that classical music is a reductive term. However, I’m also aware that people who may read my article may not know any difference between baroque, romantic, classical, serialist, renaissance, etc. I’m glad that you seem to know, but my lumping was simply a way to address it, because that’s how OTHER people lump them together. (See my article Classical Music Doesn’t Exist: http://howardwho.com/blog/2007/06/27/classical-music-doesnt-exist/). However, I would say that the difference in more recent music (rap, rock) is that it is created in the context of recording and amplification and broadcasting, etc…which had a direct impact on the type of music that was created, so yes there is a historical reason for this I didn’t mention.
3. When I said “genre” in this context, I didn’t mean a category in a music store. I meant “genre” as in symphony, string quartet, piano sonata, mass, theme and variations, etc…i.e. various types of pieces. I guess the analogy would be to call a “concept album” a genre. And yes, those three were involved at relatively earlier stages of those genres.
Yes, the idea that the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Bob Dylan are similar under the title of rock music is absurd. THAT’S THE POINT. So is lumping together Mozart, Beethoven, and Haydn…they are very different and very individual.
My concern is not so much whether classical music floats your boat or not. It’s about WHY does it float your boat or not. And my argument is that because we dont’ have “context,” ie. bad versions of classical music, to compare it to, the good stuff has less impact. On the other hand, we are better equipped to figure out the best rap or best rock music because we’ve probably heard it a lot more mediocre versions of it to compare it to.
Of course taste is always subjective, but the fact that we’ve chosen three to represent an historical period of infinite variety does mean something about the quality they produced. Soon I’m sure the other music I mentioned will surely have similar unimpeachable canons of music, absurd as they are.
July 1st, 2007 at 1:33 am
‘my lumping was simply a way to address it, because that’s how OTHER people lump them together…However, I would say that the difference in more recent music (rap, rock) is that it is created in the context of recording and amplification and broadcasting, etc…which had a direct impact on the type of music that was created, so yes there is a historical reason for this I didn’t mention.’
I guess what you are saying here is that whether i like it or not, there is a distinctive difference between the popular music of the last half-century and the music which preceded it - music predominantly performed to a standard of precision by orchestras and chamber groups. I know that - but i don’t accept that this fact means we MUST deal with popular music as a new and separate tradition - as you are doing here. Elvis and The Beatles and many others since are the true successors to Debussy, Elgar, and Schoenberg - and they should not be discussed as artists that worked outside that historical progression. You are, I am suggesting, alive at the most exciting, revolutionary period in the history of western music since the development of the printing press. Don’t treat it as if it is an unruly ‘kid’ that disrespects its more intelligent elders. There are artists and bands working today (perhaps many more than three) that will be remembered and cherished and honoured in hundreds of years’ time - people will wish they were alive to witness this monumental shift in musical history. Are you really contemplating spending your very valuable place in musical history hoking in archives and libraries for bits of Salieri on the off-chance that it will make Mozart sound better to you?!? The introitus to Mozart’s requiem blows me away every time i hear it - i don’t need a sophisticated insight into Viennese culture in the late eighteenth century to feel that. In fact, context is so unimportant, that millions of people adore Puccini’s aria ‘Nessun Dorma’ without ever having heard the rest of ‘Turandot.’ I haven’t either, incidentally, and that aria rips my heart out every time. In fact the most important musical encounter i ever had personally was completely without context. As a child I had no interest in popular music - i was trained at a music school and I ate up Handel and Mozart and Tchaikovsky while sneering at my peers who listened to Oasis and the Spice Girls. One evening, by chance, and without the context of any interest in any popular music, i saw a Tv clip of Radiohead performing the middle section of Paranoid Android at Glastonbury (1997). I was 14. That was when I realised that the musical history that included those conservatory-trained geniuses did not and could not exclude modern ‘popular’ musicians - because the only thing that mattered to me about that musical history is the work that affected me deeply, whether it was written by Mozart or Brahms or Radiohead. I can tell that music matters a great deal to you, as it does to me - so please don’t waste your time trying to solve the mystery of why the age-old orchestral sound has expired. Just accept that it is gone, along with the culture that understood it best. It has left us with some terrific pieces of music, you can be moved by Beethoven but you will still never understand Beethoven’s greatness as well as you have the opportunity to understand Radiohead’s or the Beatles or Bowie’s or Dylan’s. You cannot recover the past - so live in the present and you will be affected as deeply as anyone ever could be by music. Including some that was written five hundred years ago if you are lucky enough to hear it - and if, by chance, you don’t - it doesn’t matter. The best music is the music that works for you, as I said, but I would also add – it’s more than likely that that music, whatever it is, was written relatively recently. Even if you don’t want it to be.
July 1st, 2007 at 2:40 am
Thanks, Gabriel. I’m now understanding much better how I sound to people.
The purpose of my essays is to not sound snobby (which is what I think you’re reacting to), but to show that liking classical music is not and shouldn’t be snobby…that’s it is a decision to like music that has the great qualities we like in all music.
I don’t think popular music is separate from “classical” music. But the way music was created and more importantly, the way we consume it, drastically changed. Popular music is not an “unruly” kid, but it is a kid. For the record, I did grew up on gangsta rap, indie rock, and yes, (oh my god!) the weekly top 40, NOT classical music!
My qualm has nothing to do with reviving old traditions…they belong in museums. What I’m saying is that I dislike people dismissing the music, not based on how it sounds but how uncool it is. I actually spend far less time listening to classical music than trying to find my next favorite band (can’t wait for the next New Pornographers album to come out!).
So is “classical” the only music I love? Hardly (check out some of my other writings!). In fact, my favorite living composer is Steve Reich specifically because he addresses how “electronics” have affected our music making. And I also love The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Radiohead, Elliott Smith, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Sufjian Stevens, LCD Soundsystem, The Knife, Glenn Branca, Sonic Youth, Thomas Newman, etc. But I like them because the same great qualities they have are also inherent in older, pre-recorded era music as well.
My belief is that those great qualities remain the same.
July 1st, 2007 at 2:52 am
“please don’t waste your time trying to solve the mystery of why the age-old orchestral sound has expired.”
By the way, I should mention that I studied music history in college, and this topic is somewhat more than a hobby to me. So yeah, I don’t think I will ever give up trying to solve the mysteries of why or why not we like the music we like.
I’m sad to hear however that you looked down upon those who liked Oasis…
July 1st, 2007 at 4:04 pm
‘I’m sad to hear however that you looked down upon those who liked Oasis… ‘
Hehehe. I sort of still do. Though for entirely different reasons now. I agree with you that really great music transcends culture to some extent - i just don’t think Oasis do. I think they completely depend on the culture of mid-90s Britishhedonist ladism that spawned them - a culture which has been in retreat for some years now but of which remnants still remain. They are part of that whole aesthetic, musically, visually, and behavourially and can’t escape it no matter how ‘fresh’ they try to sound on each new (and increasingly awful) album. Their music will be forgotten in musical history, though their massive commercial success will be an interesting footnote to studies of British culture at the end of the twentieth century. Compare their clueless rehashing of the same old sound (this is actually deliberate - the first thing Noel Gallagher says about each new Oasis album is that ‘it’s our best since Definately Maybe) with the muscial trajectory of Damon Albarn - a man who was very much part of the same cultural aesthetic at one point but who has progressively developed beyond it, with great success not only artistically but commercially (as ‘Gorillaz’) - so much so in fact that his new ‘circus opera’ ‘Monkey: Journey To The West’, has just debuted in Manchester (of all places) to rave reviews. Now there is a musician who won’t be forgotten in a hurry.
I think i am getting a better sense of what you are interested in finding out about orchestral music’s demise. You write: ‘I dislike people dismissing the music, not based on how it sounds but how uncool it is’ - Well yes, me too, but today people do that as much with The Beatles or Radiohead or David Bowie as they do with Verdi or Wagner or Mozart. That’s not to say there isn’t a difference - there is an important difference, but it’s not so much to do with our ears as with the way that this older music is presented to our generation. Orchestral music and music schools receive more governmental subsidy than ‘contemporary’ music schools do (although James Purnell has just been made ‘Culture Secretary’ and I hear that he’s a big Blur fan), Classic FM maintains an elitist distance from other radio stations - even in the accents of the presenters, and even Orchestras themselves still perform wearing black and white – this all sends the signal that there is a ‘Classical Music’ which is separate and superior to ‘Popular Music.’ Your article, though striving to escape this trap, is simply helping construct it.
There is a second perspective which I hold on this question however, which you may like even less. The music of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven etc – is not just suffering because it’s presented as the music of the elite, but also because it is the music of the elite – an elite who increasingly don’t exist in modern society which is built (in theory) on social democracy and a free market. No matter how much you may want to paint these guys as rebels, there is no escaping the fact that they all functioned predominantly as part of an exclusive social network. They played at court, they had aristocratic patrons, and they subsequently had enough money to be able to devote their time to composition. They were hardly Rage Against the Machine. Their music (at large) was not, and could not be populist – largely because you needed to have the relative social respectability to get to hear their music properly in the first place.
You also needed an education. There was, at the time of these composers, a very lively tradition of folk music throughout central and eastern Europe – simply constructed, catchy, short-form music that was much-loved. How is Joe ‘eighteenth-century’ Bloggs supposed to comprehend even the basic form of one of Mozart’s symphonies (never mind Beethoven’s) with no musical background beyond knowing a load of folk tunes. In the unlikely event that he got to hear a symphony, of course. Today, it is not unusual that most people prefer simply constructed, catchy, short-form music – in a way we always have in the west. It is obtuse then, to pretend that we can do justice to Beethoven simply by ‘modernize[ing] it with the shortened song-form we’re more accustomed to…say like the Plunderphonics did with the last movement of the 7th’. That misses the point of Beethoven completely. He produced great music, without a shadow of a doubt, but let’s not pretend that Joe ‘21st Century’ Bloggs can enjoy him as much as Radiohead or The Beatles without having had a decent (Elite?) musical education. That would just be egalitarian posturing – Beethoven was writing for a musically educated ear and he knew it. And he was glad.
July 1st, 2007 at 5:48 pm
I admit Wonderwall has aged somewhat…and yes, Damon Albarn is a genius.
“They played at court, they had aristocratic patrons, and they subsequently had enough money to be able to devote their time to composition.”
And musicians today have to deal with record labels, promoters, DJs, MTV, critics…a social network. Not completely the same, but still a parallel.
“You also needed an education. There was, at the time of these composers, a very lively tradition of folk music throughout central and eastern Europe – simply constructed, catchy, short-form music that was much-loved.”
Yes, that’s a good point I failed to address. I will say that the history of pop music though has been how folk traditions were usurped by the mainstream. Hence Elvis’ singing style was actually a “cleaned-up” imitation of many other pioneering “folk” singers before him who were unable to play the social network game at the time.
“let’s not pretend that Joe ‘21st Century’ Bloggs can enjoy him as much as Radiohead or The Beatles without having had a decent (Elite?) musical education. That would just be egalitarian posturing…”
Perhaps. I think however the greatest musical education is the one we allow ourselves to have…and that comes from trying to listen to a variety of music and maybe even pretending that what you hear has something in common with your emotional life. That’s my hope at least…elitist though it may be. And I know people who are perfectly sophisticated but hate jazz…weird, but I have no less respect for them…
Anyways, I think we’ve come to some common ground…hope to keep seeing you in my little web niche.
July 7th, 2007 at 3:13 am
“Dude, if Mozart were alive today he’d be playing heavy metal.”…
I remember some guy telling me this at a party in college. I suppose it’s as probable as anything–but who knows what Mozart would be doing today? That’s assuming that a Mozart would even be possible in today’s musical culture….
July 8th, 2007 at 1:55 am
Actually, the one I hear and agree with is that Mozart would be writing film music.
Why? Because he was primarily an opera composer and needed to write music to suit the story. But I’m sure given his genius he’d find some time to rock out as well.
July 8th, 2007 at 2:25 am
Mmm, I think a lot of people would take issue wit the idea of Mozart as mainly an opera composer. He wrote a hell of a lot of instrumental music. Log into a library that has a good set of databases and check out his list of works at Grove Music Online.
July 8th, 2007 at 2:33 am
Sorry, I didn’t mean that he wrote only operatic music. It’s just that a large amount of his time was spent on the logistics of his many opera productions, and I believe he was most known for this in his time.
Yeah, I’m aware of the many symphonies, piano concertos, etc. that he wrote too. Kind of like how Philip Glass is writing tons of music for various things, but ultimately he’s kind of thought of (and speaks of himself sometimes) as a theater/film composer.
September 10th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
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November 17th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
The greatest music of all time is 1920s Jazz, Classical a close 2nd.
January 15th, 2008 at 7:07 am
I’d like to know what this mysterious piece of education is that make you actually feel that say Beethoven is better. Not in an intellectual “oh, how clever the development of the motive is” kind of way, but in a way that actually makes you feel the music more. Meaning enjoy it on a musical and not an intellectual level.
January 15th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Christian, I’d argue that quality and enjoyment are two separate matters. Some people don’t agree, which is fair enough, but if you don’t “feel” Beethoven, that doesn’t mean you suck…but it may mean that you’re not looking past the facade of the music.
For example, some pieces of music I didn’t connect until I heard it a couple times. Others I connected to right away and then by the 10th time, I was sick of it and felt it had nothing left to offer me. In a real way, the music that we connect to the most is often the ones that don’t reveal themselves right away and require some diligence.
I happen to think that people might enjoy classical music more as a gut emotional feeling if they could imagine the music the way people did pre-recordings, pre-amplifications, pre-mass media…then Beethoven starts to feel more rock n’ roll and less elevator musak. If however, you don’t connect, no worries…there’s enough around that you probably like something great which I am oblivious to.
January 18th, 2008 at 4:12 am
So you’re saying it’s not the technical or theoretical understanding that is important, but the historical context of the composer or piece?
I don’t really ascribe to the idea of inaccessibility equaling substance. I more regard it as a fault with the composition itself as much as a lack of substance is. A quote from Debussy comes to mind in which he says he didn’t believe repeated listening was necessary and that what ever you could gleam from a piece of music you could get on the first listen.
I think actual book learning could do nothing for someone’s ability to connect to the music on an emotional level. It could only lead to a deeper, non-emotional, intellectual appreciation of the technical aspects of the music or awareness of the cultural context and at best the zeightgiest of the time. In this sense the idea of people needing to be educated to connect with the music seems to have very little ground in reality and seems more like a symptom of the cultural elitism that surrounds classical music.
I think it may be an interesting side note to add here, that as far as I am aware much of the canon was built at a time when musicologists believed that they could objectively prove what good music through analysis was.
I find the argument of needing an education to be a very suspect. And one has only to look at the dogma wielded by the modernists (Schoenberg was virtually a cult leader), used to bully people into not believing in their own instincts, to see this at play within the elite itself.
I think people can only let their own sensibilities be their guide. They have to trust in their own responses and not be swayed by any “authority” on matters of subjective taste. Doing so will only lead to an impoverishment of the musical experience and, given enough people, on the art of music itself.
Can taste be cultivated? Perhaps, perhaps not. But any “evolution” that takes place should be natural, positive, honest and free from any outside ideas such as the desirability of liking certain music.
Is Classical music simply bluff and pretension par excellence? Is rock closer to a true expression of the human spirit devoid of the cultural constraints of the classical world? No one can give a cast iron answer to this question, be we can all feel what is true, and that is the only truth we should accept.
January 18th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Thanks for your thoughtfulness, Christian. And I have to agree and disagree.
Yes, everyone’s unique experience with music should be honored and not forced into accepting one truth or another. But there is a larger question for example of what music gets to be the music that artists learn from, what gets to be the music that gets performed over and over throughout time on the scale of hundreds of years, what music is seen as universal. So in a sense, I’m arguing not for the individual listener, but for a cultural force that happens whether or not you agree with it.
And keep in mind that I don’t think you need education to like classical music. Certainly it will deepen your understanding of it…as it will for any other kind of music. In fact, I would argue that we understand music partly because we are educated about it, just that we happen to be more educated about ubiquitous pop music in our society even though it feels instinctual.
I disagree with Debussy completely. Maybe he had powers of concentration and musical insight that allowed him to hear everything about a piece in one sitting. But even so, music is more than that. When we like music, I think we usually hear something that relates to other music we like and that has certain emotional suspensions and releases that are satisfying. So if the music doesn’t remind us of what we already know and like and if we can’t predict how the music is trying to give us emotional release, then our tendency is to say, “I don’t connect to this.” Your response, which I don’t agree with, is to say that this music has no substance. My response is to say, “Well, do I get what the composer is trying to do or am I just upset that this doesn’t conform to what I want music to do?”
I question and sometimes the question is fruitless, but when it’s bears fruit, you learn a new way of listening. This works also with listening to other classical musics, Persian, Indian, Balinese, etc. To expand your taste is in essence to find emotional connection to more art. The technical, theoretical, historical education comes later…imagination is more important.
January 30th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Liszt would be playing heavy metal. Mozart would be writing commercial jingles.
August 25th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
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