Talk:Music

Classical v. Popular Music

What is classical music? What is popular music? What were they used for?

Bring citations and examples here for consideration.--TerryH 07:53, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

The article seems to imply that "tame" music unlikely to cause riots is more moral than more raucous music. While it is obvious that music has a great deal of emotional content that affects one's moral behavior, I'm not sure if we want to implicitly support "tame" music over "wild music", so perhaps the last paragraph could be rephrased. ColemanFrancis 01:31, 27 March 2007 (EDT)

Hi, there. Good question, and I'll give you a straight answer, from one music lover to another.

We both agree that music has what each of us would call "emotional content." If you saw my footnotes, you'll see that I found one to substantiate my statement that music does more than reflect emotions; it induces them.

I also have heard story after story, taken from the police blotter and also making it to the front page, about rock-and-roll events that end badly. This is not necessarily true of every such event. But the last time we heard of a riot starting at a "classical" concert was the premiere of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Srping. I never heard, for example, of Eugene Ormandy or Leopold Stokowski starting any riots with any of their concerts.

So now we have to ask ourselves: How and why do certain genres of music cause riots? Do they truly cause the riots, or might they make the atmosphere conducive to riots? Or--is the "wild" music part of a subculture whose members characteristically abandon self-control on certain occasions--such as when they are "getting into" certain music that they know will drive them wild?

And ask yourself this while we're thinking of re-phrasing that paragraph you mentioned: why do the lives of so many of the performers and composers of such music often end badly? In fact, that seems to be a part of rock-and-roll that its artists and listeners brag about. I recall a motion picture that was all about a young rock-and-roll bandleader who drove his car off a bridge into a creek, while he was working on a rock-and-roll version of the Faust story. Maybe you remember the title: Eddie and the Cruisers.

Hm-m-m-m. Lots of Eddies out there, or so it seems to me. Think maybe their music has something to do with it? Not so much one exposure as a steady diet, day after day after day? Or as a doctor might say, not an acute effect but a chronic one?

Before this day is out, I'm going to take another look at that paragraph and think about a rewrite. But I'd like you to think about it, too, and to think about what I said above, in deciding how you would advise me.--TerryH^Talk 10:50, 27 March 2007 (EDT)

Excellent points. It's fairly obvious that music can induce different emotional reactions. However, I will suggest that riots at classical concerts were far more commonplace in the past than they are today (any biography on Liszt or Paganini will describe the madhouse-like atmosphere at their concerts, where women would literally rush up to the stage and try to grab a lock of hair or some other memento from the performer). One could argue that this became less commonplace as classical music became more of a mark of "high culture" (there's a reason why people don't riot when "The Rite of Spring" is played nowadays). In addition, I would caution against the use of the word "sedate": the vast majority of pop music these days is pretty sedate, while most classical (assuming a decent performance) is not. Obviously there's a reason why classical concerts are much less likely to start riots, and I'm not trying to discount the role of music in influencing human behavior, but I think much of the different sets of behavior corresponding to different sets of music comes from cultural expectation of a particular genre, and general differences in musical taste, which should be accounted for in the article. I'm sure many of these rioters have more in common than what music they listen to. ColemanFrancis 17:22, 27 March 2007 (EDT)

Thanks for writing back. You can see how I have modified the last section--and in fact, I found a way to quote Mark Twain, by way of suggesting how he might have taken the music controversy. Not to say that he was right; only to suggest what sort of position he might have agreed with.

I'll be going out-of-Internet-reach this weekend. But if I might suggest, you made an interesting statement about Franz Liszt having to deal with "groupies" in his day--and I suspect that Mozart had the same problem. Maybe we ought to start with those two composers, or someone's going to ask for a citation.--TerryH^Talk 18:06, 27 March 2007 (EDT)