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Classical Music

How does one distInguish between good and bad classical music?

Posted by Elizabeth on June 1, 2010 in Music with 4 Comments


Michael


I just listened to Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D Minor and it sounded amazing. I don’t ever listen to classical music, so I’m wondering how a classical work could be considered mediocre or bad? What is there to listen to in classical music that lets one decide how good it is?

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4 Responses to “How does one distInguish between good and bad classical music?”

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    June 4, 2010 - 9:10 am
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    If it’s by someone well known, it’s most likely a work of art. If it’s by someone who’s only got one famous work, or none at all, then probably it’s mediocre. But in the end, it all comes down to taste. Would you rather have this steak, or would you rather have this lobster? (Okay, so more people don’t like lobster than steak, but I couldn’t think of something else to match steak.)

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    June 6, 2010 - 9:27 am
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    Most of music is subjective. What I look for in music is objectivity (or some semblance of it). This is why I am interested only in contrapuntal music. The fugue either fulfills the requirements of the fugue, or it does not, and therefore the fugue is either “good” or it is “bad”. There are, of course, many layers to music and subjectivity plays a defining role on many of these, but on this basic level, I think that “good” music follows and adheres to a mathematical structure. Bach wrote what he called “works of musical science”. I guess this is why I love Bach!

    Since you’re talking about Mozart (and I assume you consider him good), I would say that you do not see music as I do, as needing to have some direct architectural power, and instead like music only to speak in a certain language, to follow some guidelines, but being basically subjective (needless to say, I do not like Mozart!). In that case, you might make judgments purely based on your own taste (something everyone, I hope, does!). In that vein, why don’t you listen to Mozart’s “Musical Joke” ( ) , which is a markedly simplistic piece of music that opposes Mozart’s understanding of musical language.

    It is very hard to answer your question, though, because in the eyes of some people and composers (Strauss?), atonality might be the mark of a “bad” piece, or in the eyes of others, as I said above, the worst sin a musical work can commit is inadherence to the strict guidelines of well-put together counterpoint. But, really, it all comes down to taste. What you like, you like. Who cares how many other people disagree?

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    June 9, 2010 - 5:54 pm
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    You are going to hear a lot of things from some very smart people, and some not-so-smart people. Most will be well-intentioned; most will also be wrong.

    They will tell you to avoid program music like the plague, or that it is the most accessible of all classical music. That strict counterpoint is static and unimaginative, or that serialism is. Or isn’t. That you’ll hate opera. That you should love it. Some will insist great music died with Bach. Others that nothing truly great has been composed since the great vocal polyphonists of the Renaissance. That Wagner is a god of music. That he is the Anti-Christ in the form of a composer. That Liszt was all show, or that he led the way to Impressionism’s subtelties.

    In short, if anyone really knew what made music “good,” there would be no bad music. After all, who would knowingly write badly?

    I would suggest, as a novice, that you listen to as much as you can, and not worry about what makes it “great.” Take the recommended listening lists of history books and contributors in here as a starting point; ignore anyone who tells you not to listen to something – you’ll miss a lot of good stuff.

    Well-designed pieces can be boring; flashy and “epic” can be soulless. Simple can be profound; emotional can be deeply complex in constuction. I think that if history teaches us anything about what makes a composer “great,” it is perhaps that he or she does not have to scarifice elegance of design to stir our passions, nor become so lost in their own cleverness that the music fails to ignite our imaginations in some way.

    Welcome to classical music, where the finest musical minds of the last thousand years have yet to decide what is actually “good” and “bad” in music, but have without doubt been responsible for some of the most remarkable feats of creation of which the human mind is capable. I’m sure you’ll find much to enjoy.

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    June 11, 2010 - 1:20 pm
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    It is safe to say that any classical music over one hundred years old which is still being performed and recorded is considered pretty great by general audiences as well as connoisseurs.

    I’ll just say it flat out, math is in all music, western classical, contemporary classical, American blues, Chinese classical, etc. etc. etc. Those Bach only nuts drive me nuts. Very narrow view, wonder if they love music or something only they imagine when they hear just the one type of process or period of harmony. They are often ignorant of or do not recognize many later pieces also brilliant with counterpoint, including fugues, because those do not sound like Baroque music!

    Western classical music goes back well before the 1200′s. But that date marks the beginning of regularly notating music so it could be reproduced / performed by other musicians.

    There is eight-hundred years more classical music before the era called ‘modern classical’ beginning in 1900 – 1960. (Contemporary classical is from 1960 to the present day.)

    Many are undecided on ‘Great’ for a lot of music composed after 1900, but I am not. Much of it, for me, is as great as Guillaume de Machaut, Monteverdi, Bach, Rameau, Mozart, and all other ‘greats’ of earlier western classical music.

    Have a look at the general article in Wikipedia on Classical Music. It covers early music and composers up to the present, era by era. It names composers and pieces, which you can then look for on youtube and decide for yourself what appeals to you. It is only through the experience of tons of attentive listening (a long-term and pleasurable task) that you develop the ability to define for yourself what qualities you think make a piece ‘great.’

    Welcome to an immense array of great and wonderful sound and sounds.

    best regards, p.b.

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