Poster Lennon brought up something interesting in the "Best Bands" thread & I thought it was worth making a seperate thread. Here's what Lennon had to say:
~josh
(emphasis mine)
~josh
(emphasis mine)Please correct me if I'm wrong, Violin_Frenzy, but I believe the "it will blow the classical music out of your butt!" was a direct quote from the film School of Rock, right?
I certainly know very little about classical music, though I'm not so deaf to the absolute excellence of it as some of my peers may be. Of course, most of my peers are even deaf to the kinds of music I enjoy so we can't depend on their opinions. I love the Beatles and the Who. There are many others, of course, but those are the two I don't think I could live without.
For those who can appreciate the work of orchestras and whatnot, how do you feel about songs like Eleanor Rigby, A Day In the Life, the french horn solo in For No One, etc? Talking to other Beatles fans, we don't really get into the classical music elements of some of these songs and I would be interested in what the people here think or just about classical music in popular music in general.
This was really where I saw the influence the most.With progressive rock developing in the late 60s, you had groups like Yes, Genesis, King Crimson doing longer pieces of complex music... Ages ago I listened to these bands.
The Beatles are classical music. When visiting a few music CD shops worldwide, I saw them classified under "Classical". Admittedly, these shops had no (or very little) music older than the Beatles'.Classical influences found in Beatles music.
Absolutely. But it offends our sense of class independence here in the united states. After all, some idiot who knows three chords is serious too, and equally so because he's equal and free and stuff.In Polish (which I happen to speak as well), there is a great expression: muzyka powazna, which means "serious music". That's what we should be using in English, and it would avoid any misunderstandings.
I guess you wouldn't call it "serious" music, then. How about "actual" music? That's basically the difference between Marc Andre Hamelin and Gene Simmons.I personally find the term "serious music" ridiculous. I mean, classical music can be lighthearted too, sometimes even humorous - most symphonies after all have a "joke" movement (scherzos don't need to be lighthearted or humorous but often are, as the name scherzo implies). Mozart actually made a composition he called "A Musical Joke" and Haydn was known for his musical humor as well. And on the other hand, popular music (widely understood) can be deadly serious at times.
However I must admit that the other alternatives aren't much better. Classical music is very confusing term - it can be music from the classical era, it can mean music from baroque, classical plus romantic era, it can even include modernism there. Probably someone even uses it to refer to "classics" of music, in which case they would probably include some popular music and exclude some normally understood as "classical" music.
The term "(western) art music" is pretty bad too since it would imply that popular music (in the wide sense again) cannot be art. I find that kind of thinking arrogant, elitist and simply false.
Although some Beatles and post-Beatles music would have been different without classical music, there would have been rock music anyway. Rock is influenced/based on the blues, black gospel, r&b (not the schlock that is called r&b today of course) and even country music which have little (if anything) to do with classical music.Simply put - there would be no "rock" or "popular" music today without Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, et al. Surely the Beatles were greatly influenced by classical music, as were many other bands.