On Rock Music
Last December, the Oregonian ran a wonderful article on our group by David Stabler. In response to the question “Why Classical?”, I was accurately quoted as saying “”I think [classical music is] better music than rock music. The notes, rests, harmony and dynamics are better. There’s a reason Mozart is still popular.”
Ever since the article was released, this quote has haunted me because it makes it seem like I don’t value rock as good music. Which could not be farther from the truth! If only I could have phrased this sentiment more accurately. Well, now I’m gonna try and straighten things out!
First off – This was a blanket statement and of course there are going to be exceptions. There will be bands like Pink Floyd who use dynamics incredibly well in their music or groups like the Beatles who use surprisingly exotic chords (mostly 7′s) to spice up their tunes. I believe I was trying to make a more general statement about the state of rock n’ roll. Pop-Rock has gotten to a point where the commercialism of it has eclipsed the actual quality of music. And moreover, the accepted formula for a popular rock song is absolutely done to death in this day and age! Sadly, what has gotten lost amidst this never-changing soundscape is some of the best music our species has ever written! This is the real answer to “Why Classical”: Because it’s not represented well enough in modern popular culture!
Rock bands are everywhere, and there’s a reason they’re so popular: People like how they sound! A simple glance at the music scene of any town USA will show you how many people are going to the symphony every night, and how many are going to a bar to rock out. Classical audiences are dwindling globally. It’s a huge problem facing every opera and philharmonic around the world. A large part of this problem is that older generations are typically the patrons of classical arts. In order to survive over the long term, a performing group needs to reach out to younger and younger fans to ensure that their audience base will be large in the future. Electric Opera Company is trying to bridge this gap. We want to bring the wonderful quality and joy of classical music to generations that aren’t getting exposed to it! How do we do it? We bring it into the bar and let them rock out to it!!!
There are a lot of truly great pop/rock songs. I could name a huge list, but I’m sure you can do that yourself! But for every truly great rock song you can think of, I’m sure you can think of about 20 that you’d rather never hear again. The beauty of the classical repertoire is that those 20 have been weeded out by time. The classical repertoire that has survived in the 21st century is all Killer, no Filler! (to quote a Sum 41 album title…except it’s actually true about the classical repertoire, unlike Sum 41′s offering).
I love Metallica. I love Zeppelin. Hell, I love Journey. There’s a reason about half of my wardrobe consists of rock band t-shirts! Despite my immense love for each of these bands (and the fact that I know most of their songs on the guitar), I still champion the point that Mozart’s compositions sit on a higher plane of musical existence. You would have to combine songs from all of those bands to equal the amount of musical quality in just one movement of a Mozart string quartet.
For an example, let’s look at one of Mozart’s most famous pieces and one of EOC’s staple songs: The Allegro first movement of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (A little bit of Night Music). In only the first 15 seconds of music we can see some of the breadth of Mozart’s compositional toolkit. The apparently simple opening line of a rising and falling arpeggio leaves us in a bit of ambiguity. If you pause the music right after the initial arpeggios, you could make a case for the song being in D major, a minor, or C Major. However Mozart then takes off in the home key of G, thundering away with that familiar melody that I remember from my days watching Nickelodeon as a child. The tone is fast and aggressive, matching the Allegro moniker given to the movement. Mozart employs subtle counterpoint to the melody in the Viola (bars 6 and 8 ) and Violin 2 (bars 9 and 10). All throughout, painstakingly notated staccato marks, rests, and dynamic markings indicate phrasing to ensure a spectacularly unified orchestra. Before we know it, bar 11 takes us to a new place all together! This second subject establishes a second theme for us to listen for later in the piece. But unlike the standard verse-chorus-verse-chorus of modern pop/rock, Mozart will bring these themes back using the standard tenants of the Sonata form – by modulating through all sorts of crazy keys and presenting each of these themes in new and surprising lights. Indeed Mozart eventually changes keys upwards of 10 times throughout just this first movement of the piece. Not to mention the countless tempo changes, allargandos, rubatos, crescendos and diminuendos throughout.
It’s this kind of academic depth that has rightfully placed Mozart on a pedestal. This doesn’t mean we couldn’t do something similar with Stairway to Heaven, but I would argue that we could go much much much more in depth on any piece of Mozart’s…except maybe the first symphony he wrote (when he was 8).
So there it is in super long-winded form: I love rock music. I might love classical music more. But boy do I love the result when you smash their heads together!
Bobby Ray
PS – I’d love to discuss this and related topics further! Feel free to leave comments below or to slip us an email on the Contact Us page!
| Print article | This entry was posted by Bobby on March 28, 2010 at 4:38 pm, and is filed under Uncategorized. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
about 4 months ago
I was just reading Bobby’s comment and it piqued my interest. I remember reading the original article in the Oregonian, thinking to myself “that’s an interesting statement, what’s my core belief?” Is Classical music better than Rock? It seems silly, but this very question has nearly driven me all the way to the sanitarium.
Like many of you I’m sure, I find myself infinitely interested in the question “why do I like what I like?” or “To what point is taste subjective?” Let’s think about these questions in terms of music. Why is the music I like better than the music other people like? Can a barometer exist to measure the quality of one’s taste in music?
We could say that music with certain qualities (complex rhythm, dynamics etc.) requires a more in-depth investigation than others and is thus of greater quality. For example, Bobby very eloquently made a case for the elevation of Mozart’s Allegro movement from Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. The dynamics and wealth of key changes make Allegro more worthy of study than, say, Sean Paul’s epic “Just Gimme the Light.” I resonate with this view to a degree. When I listen to music, I often get sucked into the world of technical bliss. I nerd-out and say things to myself like “Gee-wiz, that was a cool chord voicing!” or “Holy shit! Did the meter just change again?!” Admittedly, I am new to classical music (Barber 1 was the first time I’d ever looked at a musical score) and will likely not be penning my own symphony anytime soon. And because of this, I’m often relegated to judging a piece of music not on its technical merit, but on the feeling it elicits (Well… hopefully “More Than a Feeling”). I ask myself, how does this piece make me feel?
This is the other side of the argument, the side that says that simply because a piece of music is complex- albeit to an inexhaustible level- it does not follow that it is necessarily better. This view, I think, hinges on a certain, more abstract evaluation of the purpose of music as a whole. In his treatise Either/Or, Kierkegaard argues that Mozart’s Don Giovanni is the apex of artistic expression in terms of understanding human eroticism. Kierkegaard thought that music, the most abstract of art forms, was the only medium that could properly communicate with the most abstract and unintelligible facet of humanity: raw emotion. He thought that words and images do not communicate with our feelings the way music does. And I agree. For me, the purpose of music is to understand that which cannot be articulated. Music is empathetic; it understands us in ways that we can’t put our collective finger on. Some pieces of music, like the adagietto movement of Mahler’s 5th or Radiohead’s “You and Whose Army?” have moved into carpool lane to my soul. This sounds very cheesy and artsy, but it’s the truth. Certain pieces, from virtually all genres, inspire deep feeling. If art seeks to understand what it’s like to be human, then both skill (technical and academic aspects) and emotion (FEELINGS!) should be brought into the picture. Picasso had to know something about painting to communicate his ideas. Music is the same. In my view, the best artists are those who know enough about music to use it to their artistic advantage. ROCK ON!