From: roger@crux.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Subject: Re: Classical Music for modern instrument (was Re: The shortest distance between two chords is...)
Originator: news@nimaster
Reply-To: roger@astro.princeton.edu (Roger Lustig)
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 21:56:57 GMT

In article <CB.93Jan21140340@tamarack13.timbuk> cb@tamarack13.timbuk (Chris Brewster) writes:
>Stephen Judd writes:

>   ... As I listen to the awful
>   music that over the years has constituted popular music, I have to wonder
>   why exactly it is so abysmally trivial.  I see no real reason that a form
>   such as, say, rock and roll, needs to limit itself to three chords.

>I've been wondering the same thing for a long while--not only the limited chords
>used, but the brain-dead harmonizing.  

As I pointed out earlier, what kind of harmonizing would be less brain-dead
and at the same time wouldn't interfere with the things the music's trying to
do, which is get people dancing or the like?

>We have centuries of harmonic development
>to draw from, but the only way pop musicians ever harmonize is in parallel
>thirds--not even intermixing thirds and sixths, and certainly nothing as daring
>as contrary motion or different note values in different voices.  And of course,
>when they get in a jam (which is all the time), they just stick in a fourth (as
>in harmonizing G-F-E in the melody with C-A-G above it).  Of the two aspects,
>chords and voice-leading, chords are more likely to get interesting in pop
>music, I find.

Like, "If I Fell" isn't good enough for you?  For something more subtle,
try "Nowhere Man" or "For No One" or the like.  

Anyway, so what?  Popular voice-leading isn't *supposed* to be fancy,
anymore than most Baroque solo vocal music is supposed to have fancy
part-writing.  You've got your melody, your bass, and that's it.  

>What's hard to figure is that some of these people are trained, such as,
>reputedly, the Eurythmics.  But the music of even trained pop musicians shows no
>evidence of their training.  This is not to say that untrained musicians are
>bad, or that good music can't be done with limited technical resources.  They
>often have good enough musical instincts that they can put together interesting
>things from whatever they happen to have discovered--the Grandma Moses approach,
>more or less.  But why not draw on some of the diversity of resources that are
>already available?

They do.  Eclecticism has been part of pop music -- a big part -- since 
the late 60's.  In the 70's we had to suffer through tons of pomp-rock
(things like Emerson, Lake, and Palmer; Yes; etc.), and what you hear 
since then is partly a reaction to that.  Nowadays, Paul Simon alone 
uses more different resources than most classical composers ever did;
and if you can look me in the eye and tell me that Billy Joel's songwriting
shows no evidence of his training (listen to his basslines!) we're miles
apart.

The trouble is, most of the "resources" of classical Western music --
tricky four-part writing, lots of modulation, chromatic harmonies, etc. --
are quite irrelevant to the purposes of most popular music.  Likewise,
the diversity of beats, and even the rock beat itself, are incompatible
with the Western musical styles of 1700-1900.  Just listen to the 
Swingle Singers or Jacques Loussier or the like; the part that's disorienting
isn't the scat vocalizing or the transpositions or the swing (notes inegales)
ornamentations; it's the beat underneath.

Remember also that we're talking about songs and dances, real ones for
singing and dancing.  Songs in verses, like poets have written for ages,
and which, except for a brief period, were almost always put to very
simple music that allowed the performer to be central in the performance.
Pop music is, to a great extent, about personalities -- not only since 
Elvis, either -- and the issue of musical composition is only one component
of the sum total of a piece of popular music.  What the performer does is
at least as important as what the composer did, even if they're the same
person.  (We wouldn't say that about Beethoven, even if we were to hear 
him play the Appassionata.)  Pop music must provide a space for improvisation,
for variation, for impromptu decisions about performance.  Nineteenth-
century classical music is about the *worst* model to use for such
activity.

>[Footnote: NPR had a segment about a new album by Elvis Costello with--yes--
>string quartet.  This is a definite exception to the above; it's surprisingly
>good.]

The Beatles used a quartet several times: Yesterday, Eleanor Rigby,
She's Leaving Home.  Yet much of their music didn't use anything like
that, and was just as good.  This is beginning to sound like the
Albert Goldman School of Criticism -- things with strings or big bands
are better, because more civilized and cultured and closer to the standard
of "classical" music than those that are not.  Is Charlie Parker With 
Strings your favorite Bird album?

Roger