The (fundamental) difference between Art Music and Non-Art Music.
March 16th 2007 11:57
What is the difference between Art ('classical') music, and non Art music: i.e. Jazz, 'Popular', and folk/primitive musics?
Complexity? No. Arvo Part is Art music whilst The Dillinger Escape Plan belong in the category of Popular. Some abstract sense of gracefulness, does Art music represent some moral good whilst pop is degenerate? In Le Sacre du Printemps a young girl dances herself to death. Does all Art music possess a superior sense of structure, do the musical ideas develop more? Are only composers concerned with proportions and elegance? Not really. Most good bands utilise multitracking to add counterpoint and manipulate the timbre of sounds, say in a final chorus or a bridge section to emphasise the form. Though there are perhaps differences between what a band or an inspired individual can do, however perceptive and gifted as opposed to a trained composer of more pedantic ability.
Which leads me to the only satisfactory answer to the question.
The difference is this: in Art music the Score is an integral part of the work, in a way it IS the work, whilst other music is either not written down at all, or the manuscript, however complex is merely a practical tool to create the real music: the sound itself.
Take this situation: I am due to play a jazz gig with a bassist; we discuss the set list, we decide to play Wayne Shorter's Infant Eyes but my bassist has forgotten the chord changes. So I take my pen and a serviette and scribble 32 bars of chords for him to read. He won't keep the serviette and hopefully he remembers the changes for next time. The harmony of Infant Eyes is far more complex than that in a Mozart Sonata. But the chords of Infant Eyes are only a means toward the many very different realisations in gigs, jazz clubs and recordings. But a Mozart Sonata looks like Mozart, it looks good, and has a particular, unchangable (editors notwithstanding) score. Even though its far simpler in its realisation, you couldn't write a Mozart Sonata out on a serviette!
Non art music exists only as the sound. The visual aspect of it has everything to do with the look of the players engaging in it, fashion etc and nothing to do with a score. In art music, the score is often more than 50% of what a work is, the realisation perhaps even being less important. By this I mean: all the beauty of, say Debussy's La Mer is to be found in the visual representation, the dots, squiggles and Italian or French terms. You can see fishes jumping out of the sea in the notes. Of course there is beauty to be found in the sound, and the realisation is also part the wonderful thing that La Mer is, but the inventiveness, the development of ideas, the emotions represented, the story told if it is programme music, the architecture of it, is fully represented in the score itself. The realisation is an added extra, an added extra that might overtake he significance of the score, yet the work was somehow complete without the realisation.
This is obviously a contentious conclusion. But whatever our opinion we have learnt something new about music: it can be experienced in three fundamentally discrete ways. 1) Music can be only sound. (or linked with visual images that are not a score) 2) Music can be experienced as score and sound simultaneously. 3) Music can be experienced as a score alone, without any literal physical sound, even in the mind. A silent music perhaps. But a silent music that is still somehow percieved as music.
Complexity? No. Arvo Part is Art music whilst The Dillinger Escape Plan belong in the category of Popular. Some abstract sense of gracefulness, does Art music represent some moral good whilst pop is degenerate? In Le Sacre du Printemps a young girl dances herself to death. Does all Art music possess a superior sense of structure, do the musical ideas develop more? Are only composers concerned with proportions and elegance? Not really. Most good bands utilise multitracking to add counterpoint and manipulate the timbre of sounds, say in a final chorus or a bridge section to emphasise the form. Though there are perhaps differences between what a band or an inspired individual can do, however perceptive and gifted as opposed to a trained composer of more pedantic ability.
Which leads me to the only satisfactory answer to the question.
The difference is this: in Art music the Score is an integral part of the work, in a way it IS the work, whilst other music is either not written down at all, or the manuscript, however complex is merely a practical tool to create the real music: the sound itself.
Take this situation: I am due to play a jazz gig with a bassist; we discuss the set list, we decide to play Wayne Shorter's Infant Eyes but my bassist has forgotten the chord changes. So I take my pen and a serviette and scribble 32 bars of chords for him to read. He won't keep the serviette and hopefully he remembers the changes for next time. The harmony of Infant Eyes is far more complex than that in a Mozart Sonata. But the chords of Infant Eyes are only a means toward the many very different realisations in gigs, jazz clubs and recordings. But a Mozart Sonata looks like Mozart, it looks good, and has a particular, unchangable (editors notwithstanding) score. Even though its far simpler in its realisation, you couldn't write a Mozart Sonata out on a serviette!
Non art music exists only as the sound. The visual aspect of it has everything to do with the look of the players engaging in it, fashion etc and nothing to do with a score. In art music, the score is often more than 50% of what a work is, the realisation perhaps even being less important. By this I mean: all the beauty of, say Debussy's La Mer is to be found in the visual representation, the dots, squiggles and Italian or French terms. You can see fishes jumping out of the sea in the notes. Of course there is beauty to be found in the sound, and the realisation is also part the wonderful thing that La Mer is, but the inventiveness, the development of ideas, the emotions represented, the story told if it is programme music, the architecture of it, is fully represented in the score itself. The realisation is an added extra, an added extra that might overtake he significance of the score, yet the work was somehow complete without the realisation.
This is obviously a contentious conclusion. But whatever our opinion we have learnt something new about music: it can be experienced in three fundamentally discrete ways. 1) Music can be only sound. (or linked with visual images that are not a score) 2) Music can be experienced as score and sound simultaneously. 3) Music can be experienced as a score alone, without any literal physical sound, even in the mind. A silent music perhaps. But a silent music that is still somehow percieved as music.
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