Classic Music

Yeah, good classical music is definatly somthing else, but i more perfer modern day orchestrated music. Metal Gear has some good orchestrated stuff if you like video game/ movie music.
But yeah, some classical stuff can blow your mind.

Originally Posted by Mr. Crowley

Of course. Before Beethoven no one had made as great music as Bach. However, I like Beethoven's music better when he was deaf, and then he could only recall Bachs music by memory, and I'm of the belief anyways that Beethoven strength as a composer grew past Bach after a while.

And also, Beethoven only said harmony, and for his time, Bach was a master of harmony. What Beethoven didn't know however, was that his unique sense of harmony ended up to be a founding principle in the romantic period and thus also causing the explosion into atonality in the 20th century. So Beethoven probably didn't know his eventual harmonic mastership.

There are also other qualities to a composer than the ones that are merely harmonic.

And I'm not trying to start a fiery discussion as I know tastes differ, and I am aware of that you at most were semi-serious. It's all fun and games!

Oh, I'm always serious when it comes to classical music. :)

Here's the thing about J.S. Bach; his music was, for lack of a better term, perfect. His ability to compose dense, highly rigorous contrapunctual textures that utilize tight motivic control from the smallest to the largest conceptual scale sets him apart from almost every other composer who has graced this earth. There are very specific rules to which Bach regulated himself almost exclusively in his music. Counterpoint can not be achieved by mistake or happenchance, and he was without a doubt the absolute master of the form. His alone is the most complex and intellectually challenging music ever written.

The above isn't intended to paint J.S. Bach's music as mechanical, however. Listen to the St. Matthew's Passion, a piece that seethes with emotion, yearning, piercing sonority and astounding motivic symbolism, all combined within a robustly dense musical texture that utilized incredible dissonances for it's time. During his Leipzig period he was required to write cantatas, significant pieces of music, for church service every single week, and these compositions are on their own merits alone truly remarkable. Bach also wrote The Musical Offering, St. John's Passion, The Well Tempered Clavier, The Art of Fugue, Mass in b-moll, The Brandenburg Concertos, The Goldberg Variations, The Magnificat in D-Dur, ect. Most great composers would be lucky to pen just one comparable masterpiece in their lifetime.

All the great composers, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, studied Bach's music rigorously. His work laid the foundation of everything that was to be in music after his death. There is no composer who is more studied, or more revered amongst the great composers as Bach.

As Brahms said, "Study Bach, there you will find everything."

I am fully aware of this. I'm not saying i dislike Bach. On the contrary, I think he is a fantastic composer. I think my bias toward Beethoven is because I don't like baroque music particularily. Bach is an exception, but he just don't give me as much as Beethoven. I know great composers have studied Bach's music and his music is exemplary. However, I don't believe that is a "seal of quality".

I love music without words, classical, romantic, new age, soundtracks. To me, they are fun to imagine and day dream to. Words ruin it sometimes. I'm all for instrumental music. 80% of my music on my iPod is instrumental. I'm a music ed major after all.

In fact, right now I'm listening to Gustav Holst's The Planets.

I honestly don't understand why people dislike classical music so much.

The problem is that it isn't "cool". Imagine coming to school wearing colonial clothing. You'd get made fun soooo much. Trends/styles etc. change overtime, and what is considered "in" changes. Because classical music is old/old sounding, many deem it not cool enough or whatever.

Not to mention classical music can never capture the energy that rock/metal music can.