Why do people who like classical music always think they know better than the rest of us ?

Obviously the shortest answer to that is that we know how to appreciate forms of music that you don't, and/or that we know how to appreciate them more deeply than you do. IF you knew how to appreciate Serious Music well enough you wouldn't be asking the question would you? I see from a post that you have left on another thread that you claim for example to play Petrushka before a pop recording etc. and you claim this is 'rounded' listening. Maybe you just havn't got the stamina to stay with CM. I doubt whether you have even tried listening to anything other than the most popular pieces of CM which have been shown to have some sort of appeal even to people who otherwise only enjoy popular music. But this is not the sort of appeal that requires the same appreciation that's needed for less accessible pieces. So don't think that because you have a couple of pieces of very popular CM in your collection or on your ipod that it proves you can understand it. Only when you develop a sort of addiction to many varieties of it will you have some reason to claim that.
Be dammed to rounded listening. The point is do you know the difference between one and the other.
And no, it doesn't work the other way round as we all know how to appreciate popular music as most of us have done that all our lives. Some of us are even connoiseurs. I for example have very strong feelings about what is good in popular music and why it is good.

I have given a deeper answer as part of the other Discussion about whether Serious Music is regarded as being for older people.
The two (3 or 4 or 5) musics deal with different forms of life (and I don't mean people) and different forms of experience.

I have to agree with Basiledes. The understanding of music has developed over centuries to arrive where it is now, with 'popular' music. By merely listening to and appreciating 'popular' music now can therefore be considered somewhat anachronistic, because there is no understanding of context, of where the music has come from, where it is likely to go (or even why it seems to be going nowhere at the moment). Not only this, but the 'rules of sound', which dictate how and why harmony, melody, structure and form work and sound like they do, have developed and changed over the same period of time. If a person only appreciates the rhetoric and musical language of 'popular' music, then again they are merely appreciating some intrinsic quality it has, without the context... and quite often without understanding. A wider appreciation of music will allow someone to understand 'why' they enjoy a particular piece of music, whether it is Salieri, Simpson or System of a Down, which can only add the the enjoyment, not detract from it.

I think you need to be well rounded musically, and that does tend to come with age - I enjoy Heavy Metal in all it's subgenres & hardcore punk, some of the better hip hop as well as Classical Music.
There is a certain elitism to Classical, and I'd like to see those barriers broken - the more crossover that artists indulge in, and people enjoy the better - as long as the quality is still maintained!
If it hadn't been for Metallica's S&M album, and the soundtracks for the likes of Lord Of The Rings & Gladiator, I would never have discovered the Symphonic Metal genre and great bands like Therion, Nightwish & Dimmu Borgir, who all used full on orchestras to compliment their already very powerful music. This then provided a bridge to the Classical world that I never really dared to have crossed before, and all in all I have discovered more music of worth to me in the past 3 years, incl the Classical & Crossover genres, than in my previous 37 years.

[Deleted by the author on 11 Nov 2009 11:00 GMT]

Another way of putting it is in terms of information. The information required to write down a typical pop song could be written on one half of a postcard; a few chords and some words which don't even have to rhyme or scan very well. The information required to describe even a short classical piece will be several pages, in a synatx that takes a long while to learn to read. So from an information point of view there is much more information in pretty well any piece of classical music than what passes at present as popular music. This is not an opinion this is a scientific fact of information theory. With the information level goes the skill level. It takes about six months of serious effort to acquire the skills necessary to strum pretty well any song from the rock/pop repertoire. Whether you've got the voice to go with it is a matter of luck. The skill level required to play any classical music to any serious level will take several years of hard work, after which you can keep going and going depending on how deeply you want to commit.

So given the greater information and skill involved in creating and playing the music there is also a corresponding effort involved in the listening side. With rock/pop one simply exposes oneself to the releveant tune and then enquires of the relevant brain cell whether you liked it or not. With classical music it's not so simple. Most people who get into classical music start out by noticing some of the big moments in the more popular classical pieces, Planets, Four Seasons, etc. But to then fill in the gaps and pay attention to the whole thing including all the bits between the big moments requires a certain amount of effort and the development of certain listening skills. These listening skills come down to developing concentration and the capacity to follow a thread that doesn't have a catchy repetitive cycle to make it obvious. These are skills that anyone can learn but take time and patience. Because of this factor, classical music becomes a medium like no other in which what you get out of it is proportional to the effort you put in.

Most people have the capacity to respond to some music with a chill down their spine or a lump in their throat. What most don't realise is that there are many variants and nuances of these feelings and sensations to be had. What they also don't realise is that the big peak, heard enough times will go stale, and that it's more about how you get to the peak and how you come away from it that tells a story. The classical music lover is committed to exploring this world in all its subtle delicacy. It's really the same sort of difference as between a bottle of plonk and very fine wine.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that popular music doesn't have it's place. Must of us folks on the classical forum have interests outside of just classical music; jazz, rock, metal, world, even pop. They all have their time and place. Pardoxically, you will find that the classical fans have a far broader range of tastes than your typical muso, who tends to be rather narrowly focussed on one kind of thing, often because that thing has an associated sub-culture with fashions, catch-phrases and attitudes with which the devotee identifies.

Great post John; I started off with the big moments too, but am now listening more 'in depth'.
I agree Robert - Take Girls Aloud (all of them anyday!) - they must induce a vegetative state in the brain, although they do offer alternative forms of stimulation!

[Deleted by the author on 11 Nov 2009 11:01 GMT]

I think it's a mistake to rest a defence of Serious Music on relative complexity of purely musical information per second, or rather per 3 or 4 seconds, for several reasons that I've set out in previous posts. The obvious objection which I made before is that familiarity soon levels out the sort of complexity that concerns nerve ends. But there are various kinds of complexity: one of those that concerns nerve ends is simply additive detail which can often be found in plenty in good pop music production. Micro-structural detail can simply be added with permutations as in much Baroque music.
Charles Hazlewood the conductor and music educator recently said in a TV program about pop music that a pop song could be as satisfying as a symphony. He was wrong of course but the reason he was wrong is that he should have said that a good pop song could be as satisfying as three minutes of a symphony. The point I'm making is that the complexity of CM has a lot to do with the length - and the length has to do with the complexity of semantic and emotional and imaginative meaning that can be woven into the work. John Ferngrove has also indicated this level of complexity in his post above.
But in any case the issue of complexity is only one of degree and not of essence.

Apart from this there is the crucial ONTOLOGICAL difference in KIND between popular music and Serious Music which I dealt with in my other post. It has always amazed me how little thought people have given to the difference in essence between pop and jazz and blues and folk and Serious music.
I've hardly ever met anyone who even understands the issue. And I've met even fewer people who have recognised that Jazz and Serious Music are like chalk and cheese while pop and rock relate to it in a similar way to folk music. - Now that should provoke a few people.

Challenge yourself. What is the ESSENTIAL difference, THE DIFFERERENCE IN ESSENCE, between these different musics? What are the things that each of these genres can DO that other genres cannot do?

I think we should stand firm on 'elitism' nothing is to be gained from pretending that everything is on the same level or of the same kind. If that means being accused of elitism then so be it. More valuable converts are to be made that way than by dumbing down or condescending. Those who are worth having on board will always be culturally aspiring.
I have no objection to popular music adopting elements from CM and I'm only surprised at the lack of progress in this area considering how excited we were 40 years ago when the Beatles started this.
Results are not so happy when the crossover influence goes the other way though and this can mislead people about what Serious music actually is and seriously mislead them in matters of taste (I mean taste as in good and bad).

Personally I found the Video of 'Love Machine' most stimulating and not numbing at all. The rhythms of the picture editing complemented the music contrapuntaly. But I have to admit that when I tried listening to it without the pictures that it was just plain boring. I guess that really is a case of needing a certain amount of complexity/distraction.

My apologies for the muddled syntax of my post this morning. I was in a hurry and wanted to get the first response in.

"Difference in essence between pop and jazz and blues and folk and serious music". I'm my naïve and puerile understanding, I would make the following observation about what divides these genres... each is governed by two things: the rhetoric of the music - an intrinsic quality and the aesthetic or "artistic ideal" both of which are linked more to the overall artistic tendencies of the time and context the music is written in. For instance, the aesthetic of pop music could be said to be as simple as "to entertain" or even "to capitalise on". Whereas the aesthetic of a single piece of classical music could be very different to that of another by the same composer. The rhetoric as I see it falls into distinct categories, which are also linked to aesthetics. With music pre-1800, the aesthetic of music is often described as one which attempts to imitate speech, or song and so could be called Eloquent or Rhetorical in its purest sense. The aesthetics in the 19th century took on different paths, bound up in heroism, romanticism, nationalism but the rhetorical language of the music is more one which "paints" or "depicts" than one which "speaks". In the 20th century the aesthetic revolution could be described as a move towards art with no intent or purpose, all that is required is that it IS art... so the natural progression is for music which no longer speaks or paints, it simply is. To exist is all that is required, the ultimate deconstruction of the artistic ideal. However popular music, be it folk, or pop or rock could be viewed as a reaction to "serious music", in some cases an example of anti-intellectualism.

In past centuries there was a distinction in aesthetic, but not rhetoric... often composers would write "serious works" with one aesthetic, and "popular works" with another, but in the same rhetorical idiom. Now there is a schism in different directions. As I see it, Jazz has taken a similar aesthetic to serious music, it considers itself an art form, and subscribes to the ideal that all that is required is for it to be art, and that is the definition of art. Some other genres, generally elitist genres, the more esoteric branches of indie, metal etc, subscribe to this. On the other hand is the popular genres, as I described before which have different intent. However there seems to be a seperate division in rhetoric. The language of "serious music" is often deconstructed, so that it adheres to it's aesthetic as an artistic whole, however in popular music we have had a return, almost full circle. The rhetoric of popular music, including rock, much electronic, metal, rnb, indie - is now music which "speaks". Other genres have moved more into the rhetoric of music which paints, like ambient electronica, some fusion genres, and again the more esoteric branches of the more popular genres. But the division still exists.

I'm not actually sure, reading back, that any of that made sense... but then it's all opinion so it doesn't really matter if it's wrong.

An interesting reply but one which I shall have to absorb slowly. I recognise the approach in terms of rhetoric as one I also find useful as you may know from my previous posts. However, as you say or imply, one of the general music types can employ different rhetorics at different periods which suggests that the rhetoric does not define essence. But I think you have made some very interesting points. I don't understand why someone would give you a negative vote.
The point about 19thc music moving away from speech is contentious of course if one takes opera into account as it was in that century that setting of words became much more natural and less stylised and conventional or formulaic. So was it true of instrumental music? I'm not sure about that.
What do you mean when you say it's all opinion and that it doesn't really matter if it's wrong? I think it matters a lot in the long run but there is no harm in trying things out if that's what you mean.

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So if you are as deeply into CM as you claim what is the meaning of your question? In what way are you suggesting that we know best? As the question stood on it's own it obviously meant that you wanted to know why CM listeners dismissed popular music.
What do you think we think we know best?
The way you have trailed all those names means that you have fallen into the trap of proclaiming your own elitism as you attempt to prove our ignorance of what you regard as important music. At the same time you seem to be saying that they are 'just as good as' the CM names. Well they aren't because at the end of the day they are just popular music. Some of them may be as good in their own terms but there is a big difference in terms of reference and difference in kind. It's obvious really - that's why they sound so different. Don't you get it? They ARE different. So exert yourself. WHAT is the difference?
If you don't at least sense the difference, even if you can't articulate it there is something seriously wrong with your awareness of what sort of a thing you are listening to at different times.
For God's sake can't you at least hear that one is just more SERIOUS than the other - in the most obvious straightforward way?
And by the way all the CM names you mention are all the usual ones that your type of muso goes in for ( all 20thc modernists or proto-modernist in the case of Debussy). What I see on both sides of your very low cultural fence is cultish fashion with the usual self congratulatory form of esoteric elitism or snobbery.

[Deleted by the author on 24 Feb 2009 01:10 GMT]

I think what I mean is that the rhetoric (or 'language' I suppose but not the ideal word) of music along with the aesthetic define it's essence. I do think that one of the general types of music can employ different rhetorics in different periods. Taking Opera in the 18th and 19th Century as an example. I wouldn't say that 18th century opera was necessarily less natural. There was a different emphasis yes, and I think that emphasis was on speech through music. The use of secco and accompangato recitative and arioso is a case in point. Even arias were set based around speech inflections, but more subtly, the voice (particularly in Baroque opera) is integrated into the whole, with the orchestra providing other "voices", if you like, you could write words to the orchestral parts and sing them. This is what I mean by the Eloquent or Rhetorical style. In the 19th Century, the "aesthetic revolution" that supposedly then places the artist in the position of hero, in opera elevates the soloist in importance above the instrumental parts. The parts now provide a backwash, or a paint a colourful counterpoint to the soloist, but no longer speak in the same way as with an 18th century aria. Also, the inflections are moved towards what we would now call songlike instead of speechlike - and so the speechlike recitative had no place musically, and was eschewed in favour of pure speech or pure song. This is my understanding of how rhetoric can differ in one genre over time. In fact, in the 18th Century there is no distinction between the way vocal and instrumental music was written, which is an aspect of the rhetoric then. As there was no distinction either between solo, chamber and orchestral music. Arguably, the concept of a virtuoso soloist existed in the 18th Century, but this is what I mean by the aesthetic of the music... for instance, an 18th Century concerto was literally a "contest" between the concertino or soloist and the ripieno. In the 19th Century, with the concept of the "hero-artist" a Concerto became a piece of music to showcase the technique of the soloist alone. I started meandering again, sorry. But in conclusion, I think my point was the essense is both rhetoric and aesthetic. Saying that, there are broader aesthetics which run through several periods... to express beauty could arguably be claimed to run right through all of musical history. Even 1930s coffee-circle art movements could be said to do this, by showing a dichotomy with the grotesque, which illuminates beauty implicitly rather than explicitly.

Don't get upset dude. Stick with it. We're all learning about ourselves, and each other, and the ways in which we are the same and different from each other. Whatever the difference between the various sorts of music this IS an interesting conversation. We're all of us full to the brim of emotions that we don't think others can imagine. That's why we're all on this thread trying to get to the bottom or at least a bit closer to understanding what we each see in the music we love and to develop a language that might help to describe it to others. The langauge doesn't actually exist but just trying is illuminating. Just giving us a list of people you like and telling us we couldn't imagine the emotions is not helpful. Any one of can do that. You have to tell us how Otis Rush makes you feel and how Pteruchka makes you feel and what the difference is? What time of day would you put the one on the and what time of day the other? Otherwise I'm not really sure what reaction you were hoping for when you started the post. Did you think we were all going to say "sorry dude, you're right, the music we like is only as good as the music you like". That was unlikely to happen. The very fact that the classical music forum is marked out by an eloquence and a thoughtfulness that is not there in other music threads shows that the classical folks think very hard about why they like one thing and not another, and want to understand more deeply by comparing notes with other people. If it's wrong or elitist or arrogant to seek that understanding then I'll stand accused.

I do not claim to be ' into ' classical music, I merely dabble in it, like I dabble in world, rock and roll, folk, pop and country. I'.m into soul, jazz, blues, some rock and reggae. Nor have I ever denied my elitism as any one on your popular culture sites will tell you. But why do people keep posting discussions on your pc sites which have an underlying assumption that what we listen to is not ' worthy. '
As a student of culture ( and a rampant post-structuralist ) you should avoid using the word ' obvious ' ( common sense, inevitable etc. ), all they do is articulate power which is actually the basis of your argument.

Mr Fowler - Yes, as I said, if CM can use different rhetorics at different times then we are not talking about the essence which distinguishes all CM from rock and pop and jazz which also have different essences corresponding to their different names but with their essences remaining through relatively long periods of their historical development over decades.

I use these terms as logically necessary to indicate to you that they are logically necessary conclusions that you have no choice but to agree with. If you don't think so then you can try and evade the obligation through an argument of some sort.
I still don't know what you meant by your question. I have not seen any discussions on 'our' sites suggesting that what you listen to is not worthy.

But a great deal of the cultish stuff is not worthy to be listened to in preference to anything let alone 'Serious Music'. Far better to listen to Tamla Motown or the Beatles or James Brown.

Power is not the basis for my argument unfortunately. Havn't you noticed that the Levellers, or if you like the rampant post-structuralists, have the power now. You know the value of nothing. That's why I'm talking to you.

Anyway I'm glad we've established the fact that you only claim to dabble in CM and you're probably young so maybe there's hope for you if one of these days you are deeply moved by some piece of Serious Music (maybe after some serious life event) and you realise that the Blues is not so profound at all and that in fact all these popular musics cannot deal with certain dimensions of life or reality - just as CM cannot do adolescent sexuality or accompany your Saturday night on the razzle.

When I wrote etc. I included ' logically necessary conclusions that you have no choice but to agree with.'
Sorry, I thought you would have realised that. George Jackson, Philip Mitchel, George Perkins ( an insurance salesman cos he's Really popular. )

Two responses here:

First the complexity issue again. I'm starting to think that there's a wiring issue with my particular brain. My brain attacks music, all music, as if with analytical enzymes, trying to take the music apart, and I believe it is this very action that gives rise to the strong synaesthetic component of my musical experience. My emotional response to music tends to operate side by side in a seperate but related thread of consciousness so to speak. This must be so because I do have very strong emotional responses to music of many kinds as well. Having said that, if my analytical aspect is not challenged enough and the pictures don't come I get bored more or less immediately. This is why although my tastes are broad I don't really do rock and pop because the need for repetition, at two or more levels, (riff and verse) is actually built into the form and it just snips my strings straight away. I also feel that this analytical aspect feeds into my need to compose, if only in a small way. Since I was a child I have enjoyed long walks, in which sooner or later I start humming someone else's music in my head, which sooner or later becomes my own music in my head. Part of this process is actually taking apart what I hear in an attempt to be able to render it for writing down. I never acquired the freaky skillset required to write down what I hear. It was only with the arrival of good computers and sequencers that I was able at last to give some vent to this urge. So maybe that explains my (seemingly philistine) focus on complexity and disdain for local repetition.

Second thing. OK, I'm intrigued you've hinted at this difference in kind before and I wan't able to understand it. Could you try and render explicitly the form this ontological difference takes in your experience?

For me, in the music I like, it has all been a continuum, a spectrum, and while there are bands of colour I might put a name to, like classical, contemporary, crossover, jazz, prog (yes I'm one of those - but only the best), indian, latin, there are no strict boundaries in between those bands. In fact I have made it a lifetimes business to fill in the gaps, because that is where I find so much that is new and exciting emerges. Fraiser Trainer's Knot's album, with Viktoria Mullova, clearly points a way whereby the full richness of classical tradition might come into a healthy relation with the vibrance and bustle of modern popular culture. But no one wants to know. These people keep slogging away in the twilight, knowing full well that they're doing something amazing that needs to be listened to. But, it seems, it's the public that wants the barriers to be kept up. It's the public who want to identify with one or other corner of the spectrum. And it seems just as important to them that by identifying with one thing they are seen to be dismissing everything else. So you can see that I'm quite intrigued to see how you would evaluate ontological differences, especially if you assess that CM has more in common with wock/pop than the more sophisticated 'secular' musics.

S R Tulip - OK so you don't think that you are obliged to agree to logically necessary conclusions.

You have learned your post-structuralism well havn't you? In fact so much so it has taken away a part of your mind.

Yes I believe in power:the power of argument. Also power of Art and of beauty, and of nature (unfortunately) and the power of ignorance, bad faith and stubborness to prevent us from making progress.

John - not sure I've got the capacity left tonight for what is now a three way thing. I'm making too many mistakes in my typing. But you're asking the right question.

It's those mps again I'm afraid. How can you talk to someone who doesn't believe in logically necessary conclusions even in theory. And who admits to being an elitist I've just recalled - of course it has been pointed out that P-S has a strong totalitarian hidden agenda sourced from both extreme left (Marx) and extreme right (Nietzsche). Actually he/she is probably around 30-35. P-S is a bit old hat.