Category: Style
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‘Real’ instruments in popular music
“We’re seeing a big evolution of production, of recording techniques, and of the actual sounds. Everything’s getting sampled and synthesized…. When we do have an acoustic instrument like a saxophone, it tends to get processed to where [it’s] almost unrecognizable.” Jeff Harrington, saxophonist. Cited in, Kelsey McKinney, “Where Did All the Saxophones Go?”, https://getpocket.com/explore/item/where-did-all-the-saxophones-go?utm_source=pocket-app&utm_medium=share, accessed 29…
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Murray Perahia
“It’s a very reactionary viewpoint and I’m slightly ashamed, but I find it very difficult to access contemporary music. I am not prejudiced, but my work in tonal music leads me to believe nothing can be organic if it doesn’t have a [sense of] “home.” This idea of belonging, or home, can’t be an intellectual…
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Smooth jazz finds new way to reach audiences
With shifts in the commercial music industry away from smooth jazz, musicians are finding new niches for smooth jazz such as cruises. Twenty years ago, of course, smooth jazz wasn’t a code to be cracked so much as a wave to be caught. Like most species of pop, it felt ubiquitous and maybe a little…
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Adding quality music to the world
“My music is melodic. After all, why add to the world’s problem’s with bad music.” Alexander Prior, composer. Source: Classic FM, December 2009, p.9
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The framework of a symphony
The framework of a symphony must be so strong that it forces you to follow it regardless of the environment and circumstances: [it is] an “ethical necessity”. Jean Sibelius, to Jussi Jalas, 1 October 1939 Cited at: www.sibelius.fi [accessed 31 Mar 2010].
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It must be worth the effort
Martinu on creating beautiful music: “It must be beautiful, or it wouldn’t be worth the effort.” Cited in: Calum MacDonald, “Bohuslav Martinu: Cosmopolitan Dreamer”, BBC Music, August 2009, p.45.
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Against Gregorian
In Anglican England in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there was considerable opposition to the Roman Catholic Gregorian chant. The Parish Choir or Church Music Book, published by the Society for the Promoting of Church Music (October 1847), applauds those who “deal heavy blows at Romanism and every other form of dissent.” (1) Part…
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I write for all ears
When Mozart was writing his opera Idomeno, his father warned him to make sure it was accessible to all the audience. Mozart replied: As far as the so-called Popular style is concerned, don’t worry about it; in my Opera you’ll find Musick for every kind of listener = except for those with the long ears…
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Mozart on aesthetics
Mozart’s musical aesthetics are revealed in a letter to his father about Osmin’s first aria in The Abduction of the Seraglio (Die Entführung aus dem Serail). The Eighteenth century classical ideals of balance and refinement are evident: I have sent you only the beginning and the end of the aria. I think it will prove…
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Mozart on melody
“Melody is the essence of music”, continued he; “I compare a good melodist to a fine racer, and counterpointists to hack post-horses; therefore be advised, let well alone, and remember the old Italian proverb – ‘Chi sa piu, meno sa – Who knows most, knows least’.” The Reminiscences of Michael Kelly, 1826. Cited in: Marshal,…
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Eighteenth century aesthetics
Mozart was not at all a purely instinctive, intuitive artist. His remarks to the effect that he “loved to plan works, study, and meditate” and that “he preferred to work slowly and with deliberation” [demonstrate this] … On one level, Mozart’s musical aesthetic is informed by three fundamental and closely related principles that can be…
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American Western Film Soundtracks
“Morricone brought the electric guitar to the western. The great thing, though, about the electric guitar in the western is that there were no electric guitars, but somehow he did it so committedly that nobody ever questioned it. It was only much later people started to say, ‘How come there’s an electric guitar part there?’…
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Parry on choral music
Hubert Parry, who taught Vaughan Williams composition, instructed the composer to “write choral music as befits and Englishman and a democrat.” Vaughan Williams recalled that “this attitude to art led to an almost moral hated of mere luscious sound…” Vaughan Williams, cited in Holmes, Paul (1997) Vaughan Williams. London: Omnibus Press, p.17.
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Ravel’s influence on Vaughan Williams
In 1908, after a period of intense period of immersion in English music due to his role as editor of Hymns Ancient and Modern, Vaughan Williams “came to the conclusion that I was lumpy and stodgy, had come to a dead-end, and that a little French polish would be of use to me.” (1) He…
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The shelf life of popular art
“The fact is popular art dates. It grows quaint. How many people feel strongly about Gilbert and Sullivan today compared to those who felt strongly in 1890?” – Stephen Sondheim, composer. Cited at: QuotationsBook
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Vaughan Williams on sense of musical citizenship
Vaughan Williams wrote a series of articles for the Royal College of Music magazine entitled “Who Wants the English Composer?”. In these, he expresses his advocacy for an exploration of the English musical style: We English composers are always saying, “Here are Wagner, Brahms, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, what fine fellows they are, let us try and…
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George Gershwin on American music
George Gershwin, a pioneer of the fusion of jazz, musical theater and classical idioms, wrote two essays on the significance of jazz for American music: THE great music of the past in other countries has always been built on folk-music. This is the strongest source of musical fecundity. America is no exception among the countries.…
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The evolution of the jazz tradition
American jazz music is, in many ways, rooted in its “traditional” repertoire – the American “Songbook” of “standards”. There are, however musicians who emphasise the importance of a fresh approach: If jazz has a future, musicians like Matt Mayhall could help it get there. A lanky, bespectacled Reno native and graduate of Cal Arts, where…
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Copland on the integration of jazz into art music
American composer Aaron Copland discusses the influence of Jazz on his musical style: was a very important influence at one time. I wrote a Piano Concerto in 1927 which was largely based on jazz materials. Jazz, of course, is for us a very typical American musical expression, which we have not so successfully been able…
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Mozart’s musical aesthetics
Mozart’s comments on the musical style of his piano concertos (K. 413-415) portray his underlying aesthetic principle that music should be clear and accessible: I still have 2 concertos to write to complete my subscription concerts. – These concertos are a happy medium between what’s too difficult and too easy – they are Brilliant –…
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Beethoven our artistic brother
It is the function of art to bring to us emotions, thoughts, states of mind and heart which are larger and more exalted and more intense than those we can produce ourselves, but which we can still recognize as possible within the compass of our imagination, still lying within our capacity for thinking and feeling.…