Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Classical Music 101

Starting point is 00:00:00 Even if you're not a fan, you are likely familiar with classical music to some extent. You've heard it in movies, television commercials, and perhaps at concerts. It's been around for centuries and can still be heard today. But it's been surpassed in popularity by many different genres of music. However, many people don't listen to it because they're intimidated by it, because it's so different from the music they're used to. And if that's you, fear not. I'm here to help.

Starting point is 00:00:26 Learn more about classical music and the basics you need to know to have. appreciate it on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Did you ever hear about the selfie that solved a murder or the jury that used a Ouija board to speak to a victim? If that made you pause, you need to listen to Morning Cup of Murder. I'm Karina B. Minasurfer, and every single day on Morning Cup of Murder, I tell one chilling true crime story tied to that exact day in history. With over 2,500 episodes to binge, you'll never run out of dark stories to start your

Starting point is 00:01:10 morning with. go listen to Morning Cup of Murder wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, stay safe. I've been thinking about doing this episode for a long time, and I finally decided to pull the trigger. The goal of this episode is not necessarily to convert you into a classical music listener if you are not one. Even if you despise classical music, and I honestly don't think anybody can make such

Starting point is 00:01:36 a broad statement, it is probably worth knowing more about it so you can at least speak about what you don't like more informatively. For many people, classical music is daunting. It's different than regular popular music in ways that people can't quite put their finger on. There is more to it than just an artist recording a song on an album. Some terms often appear nowhere else in music, and if you don't have a background on the subject, you would have no reason to ever know what they mean. So with that, let's get started with The Big Question.

Starting point is 00:02:08 What is classical music? If you recall my episode on taxonomy, scientists have divided up all life forms into various nested categories. Plants and animals are divided further up the tree of life, and trout and bass are separated much further down. We can do something similar with music, although it's much more challenging. The division I'm going to start with begins at the very top of the music tree and separates what we call classical music from pretty much everything else. Defining classical music, is very difficult. People have tried to do it by instrument or by sound, and it's not really satisfying because there are so many special cases. And before I go any further, lest some pedantic

Starting point is 00:02:51 person out there bring it up, I am aware that there is a particular period in history known as the classical period, which is usually dated from about 1730 to 1820. I'm using the broader definition here, not that specific one. Due to the confusion, many people have attempted to use a different name for classical music. Art music and serious music have been suggested, but neither of those have caught on. After having spent far too much time researching this question, there's one definition I've come to agree with that provides an adequate definition of classical music, even if it isn't perfect. And oddly enough, it has nothing to do with sound or the music itself. Classical music is music that is composed, or that is to say it is first written.

Starting point is 00:03:38 down. Or to put it in another way, the authoritative source of a classical music piece is the written score, not a recording. This very basic definition is like the plant versus animal distinction on the tree of life. On one side you have classical music and on the other side you have almost everything else. Pop, rock, EDM, blues, hip-hop, country, metal, ska, reggae, and almost every other popular music genre you can think of. On that other other side, you can think of, on that side of the divide, recordings are usually the authoritative source of the music. There are certainly covers of songs, but they're considered just that, covers. You can buy sheet music for the most popular songs, but it's often created after the fact and rarely by the original songwriter.

Starting point is 00:04:27 Most of the talented popular musicians of the last 100 years didn't know how to read or write music. Prince, Paul McCartney, Eddie Van Halen, Eric Clapton, Stevie Wonder, Taylor Swift, and many, many others cannot read or write music. They're clearly very talented, but when they create something, they tend to record it as their means of preserving it rather than writing it down using musical notation on paper. Popular music in this tradition is usually passed down orally, or at least aorily. On the other side of divide, is what I'll broadly call classical music. This includes much of what you think of as classical, but also film scores,

Starting point is 00:05:08 and even some artists like Duke Ellington, who you might not think of as being a classical artist. In classical music, the written score is definitive. When an orchestra performs a Beethoven symphony, they aren't considered to be performing a cover. And that's because there is no definitive reference recording. There are simply different versions and interpretations of what Beethoven wrote down. With that out of the way, there are a host of different terms for various classical works that you may have heard of, but don't know exactly what they mean.

Starting point is 00:05:40 And let's start with a symphony. A symphony is a large-scale work for an orchestra, typically in four movements, although the exact number can vary. The movements typically follow a pattern, a fast opening, a slow lyrical section, a dance-like section known as a skirzo or a minuet, and then finally a lively finale. but there are exceptions to all of those. Symphonies are meant for concert performances showcasing the full range of orchestral instruments. Similar to a symphony is a concerto. A concerto is written for a solo instrument,

Starting point is 00:06:16 usually piano, violin, or cello, but it could be anything, and is accompanied by an orchestra. Its purpose is to display the virtuosity of the soloist while engaging with the rest of the orchestra. Most of these follow a three-movement four. Fast, slow, fast. Chamber music is written for a small group of instruments, such as string quartets, piano trios, and win quintets. It's designed more for intimate settings rather than large orchestral works. A chamber orchestra is just a smaller orchestra, and a chamber ensemble would usually just be a few players. A string quartet is a type of chamber ensemble that usually consists of two violins, a viola and a cello. A sonata is usually a work for a solo instrument, often piano, or for a small duo like violin and piano. The structure usually consists of three or four movements.

Starting point is 00:07:11 Unlike symphonies and concertos, sonatas are more intimate and suited for chamber performances. Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata is a well-known example. An etude, which is the French word for study, is primarily written to develop a performer's technical skill on an instrument. But many atudes have also become popular concert works, because, of their musical brilliance. A suite is just a collection of shorter pieces, often dance-inspired, grouped together to be played in a sequence. In the broke period, suites were literally collections of dances. Later composers, such as Chikovsky, who wrote the Nutcracker Suite, used the form more freely as sets of related pieces. A full orchestra or a soloist can perform

Starting point is 00:07:52 suites. An overture is an introductory orchestral piece, written initially to precede an opera or stage work. Over time, overture has evolved into stand-alone concert pieces such as Chikovsky's 1812 overture, which are covered in a previous episode. A mass is a musical setting for a liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church, usually for choir, soloists, and an orchestra. It has a very strict structure as it has to follow the form of the mass. A requiem is just a mass for the dead, which is performed at a funeral. They're often somber and dramatic, and examples include Mozart, Requium and Verde's Requiem. While it could be the subject of its own episode, opera is also considered a form of classical

Starting point is 00:08:38 music. It's very closely related to musicals, which, according to the definition I've provided, would technically fall closer to classical music. The differences between an opera and a musical are subtle. An opera is usually all music. The orchestra usually never stops playing with only maybe brief pauses, and all dialogue is sung. In a musical, there's usually spoken dialogue between the musical numbers. There are other big differences in the training and style of singing involved. Opera singers

Starting point is 00:09:09 trained for years in a very particular style of singing. Performers and musicals tend to be good singers, but probably couldn't cut it in an opera. And there are some edge cases such as Porgy and Bess and Les Miserables, which are closer to operas by my definition, but are usually performed as musicals. If you want to listen to classical music recordings, there are also other issues that you don't have to face when listening to popular music. The metadata for popular music is relatively simple. A song is typically associated with an artist who could be an individual or a band, and then is often linked to an album, although it can also be a standalone single. When you search for the Beatles or Taylor Swift, you are almost always looking for music that they performed and recorded.

Starting point is 00:09:54 classical music is much more confusing. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Sir Simon Rattle is conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven's violin concerto with Hilary Hahn as the soloist. Who is the artist in this scenario? Is it the conductor? Is it the soloist? Is it the orchestra? Or is it Beethoven, who's been dead for almost 200 years?

Starting point is 00:10:20 This problem is why Apple Music recently spun off classical music as a completely separate app. It had nothing to do with the music or the streaming and the technology, but it had everything to do with how much more complex the organization of the music was. That being said, most people will be searching by composer. And here you might run into something else. Many composers have a large number of compositions that they created throughout their careers. Things like symphonies and concertos are pretty easy to number,

Starting point is 00:10:53 but there might be a whole slew of different works that don't easily fit into such numbering systems. Some composers have what are known as opus numbers assigned to their works. Opus is just the Latin word for work. Under this system, everything they published is assigned an opus number based on the order in which it was published, not the order in which it was created. For example, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is also called Opus 67, meaning that it was the fifth symphony he created, but the 67th musical work that he published overall. Some composers have different numbering systems because publication dates weren't available. Mozart's works are catalog under the cultural catalog and are designated by the abbreviation

Starting point is 00:11:38 K. So his symphony number 40 in G minor is K-550. Bach, Schubert, Heiden, and Vivaldi all have their own unique numbering systems. So now if you want to go and actually listen to a piece of classical music, where should you start? And the short answer is, anywhere, find something that you've heard before that you like. That's all there is to it. But you might encounter a confusing complication. I've mentioned before the concept of a cover doesn't really exist in classical music.

Starting point is 00:12:14 However, there are multiple versions of the same piece that have often been recorded. In fact, for very popular works, there might be dozens of versions of the exact same work. I did a search for Moonlight Sonata on Spotify, and although it didn't provide me an exact number of search results, there had to have been over 100, and I wouldn't be shocked if there were actually several hundred. So where do you start? Again, the answer is anywhere. I'd start by selecting any version that lists the soloist or orchestra as opposed to, to just something generic where you have no clue who performed it. And again, this is just a starting

Starting point is 00:12:54 point, so don't be too worried. At first, you may have a difficult time distinguishing between different versions. The differences are much more subtle than when a band covers a song. I have a playlist on Spotify with every version of Aitoude No. 2 by Philip Glass that I can find. I currently have 52 different versions of it in my playlist. Some are radical. different and utilize entirely different instruments, while others are simply variations of solo piano, which is what it was originally written for. Once you've found a few pieces you enjoy, then you expand by just finding works by the same or similar composers, or works from the same period, or recordings by the same conductor, orchestra,

Starting point is 00:13:38 or soloist. You're under no obligation to like everything. Classical music enthusiasts have their own favorites and dislikes. I was recently watching a YouTube video of a guy who is the editor of a very popular classical music website. The entire video was about how he didn't get Beethoven's fourth piano concerto for decades until he heard a particular version of it. One thing that classical music usually does require is more attention. Music is ubiquitous nowadays, as it's available anywhere with a smartphone and a set of earbuds. Most people find that classical music is best enjoyed when sitting down and devoting their attention to it rather than just having it play in the background.

Starting point is 00:14:20 But that being said, many people, myself included, listen to classical music when they're working because they find it less distracting. Classical music doesn't require anything special to enjoy. You don't have to be rich or fancy or have studied it in school to be able to appreciate it. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible.

Starting point is 00:14:54 And I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord. That's where everything happens that's outside the podcast. And links to those are available in the show notes. As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you two can have it read in the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Classical Music 101

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