whodknee said:

Again, I don't subscribe to the idea that music or art is "good for it's time", truly great art transcends its time. I also don't buy that Michelangelo couldn't "hold a candle" to Picasso. That's totally apples and oranges, they made completely different types of art. Michelangelo might not be able to make a cubist landscape, but Picasso could never make something like the David or The Sistine Chapel. If the idea that music and art improves with time was true, than current music would be superior to all the music of the past which it clearly isn't, if anything popular music has steadily declined in quality since the 70s as far as I'm concerned even though the technology has become more advanced because it's been used to compensate for talent and musicianship and music has lost it's organic feel, becoming more mechanical and synthetic. Yes there are resources that modern artists have that artists of the past didn't, but the techniques and materials of art are completely different from the substance, which is what's really important.
[Edited 5/9/05 19:58pm]

I appreciate Mozart, but.... I'm just not in2 that orchestral stuff. Im a dancer, how can I dance to that? It would be too complex for me.

This girl at my job tried to make me listen to Incubus 2 albums at work and some classical...I was like this is coo..but I'm gonna fall asleep if I dont get the funk.

I feel Mozart is beyond my genre of taste because i never grew up listenin 2 that...though a few tunes are really good...still...


FUNK is better than classical, country, and rock in my opinion.

Let the stones be thrown at me...

I think it would be the other way around. Regardless of who is more talented, the artists of the last 50 years (especially beginning with the Rock and Roll era to the present) would laugh Mozart out of here strictly for the "type" of music he makes.

You get no argument from me. You like what you like....same as everyone else. I've expanded my tastes a little over the years (never to the point of classical) but nothing has or ever will beat funk for me.

Mozart couldn't program a nifty beat in his lifetime.

Novabreaker said:

Agreed--I'd love see see Mozart light up the dancefloor with his beats. What did he know about the funk???? Nothing. A great musician to be sure--funky??? Nope.

Hmmm, very interesting comments. I run into this situation alot with people I know. Very few of them seem to like all the genres I like. For example, I'll be able to talk about Type O Negative, Cradle of Filth, Michael Jackson with one person, but they can't stand Prince or James Brown.

Or sometimes I'll be talking to a person who loves Prince and Michael Jackson, but they can't feel Rush or Depeche Mode.

Or sometimes i'll talk to a technohead that loves Paul Oakenfold and things of that sort, but they can't get into Santana or Tito Puente or Miles Davis

Myself, I enjoy all of the above artists, but I think it's because I've been a musician since the age of 4 (I'm 26) and have played piano, sang, and played drums as well as electronics(sequencing with keyboards) for most of my life. I grew up playing classical, funk, R+B, blues, techno, pop, soul, and prog rock. Perhaps this is what happens when being born into a musician family. But it's just really frustrating for me because I only know about 5 people that can see the brilliance and are moved by all of these styles.

Any thoughts or theories on this?

By all accounts, Mozart, like Bach, Beethoven and others, was a truly brilliant improvisor, who in performance would treat the score as little more than a starting point for flights of musical imagination. This is something that has been well and truly killed in 'classical music' from the mid 19th century.

Mozart was a gifted multi-instrumentalist, who I believe was among the foremost violin and keyboard masters of his time. He mastered almost all the musical forms of his time (a little like Prince in the modern pop music world). If alive today, he may well have dug jazz and hopefully he would have shaken up the horribly conservative contemporary music scene.

He could also have given Prince a few tips on improving 'Kama Sutra'!

yes!

sosgemini said:

CO-SIGN.

Miles said:

, I used to play Mozart's variations on the folk tune "A vous dira je maman" on the piano (melody that evolved into "twinkle twinkle little star") and from what I've heard he came up with all these variations more or less on the spot in a competition with another composer over who could create the most interesting embellishments of the tune, and I must say it is some fascintating and difficult shit to play.

paisleypark4 said:

Funk fans should listen to Bach, not Mozart. Mozart is about melody, Bach is about layers.

Miles said:

You're totally right. It's not that well known how much music was improvised way back when, particularly piano music. It was very similar to jazz, where the changes were the structure and the melody was improvised upon.

jacktheimprovident said:

Sure Picasso could make David and the Sistine Chapel. Those are representational pieces. Picasso was proficient in that mode by his late teens. Cubism was a very brief period of his career and isn't very representative of his work as a whole-- not that one particular style is. Michelangelo, unlike Picasso, wasn't a forward thinker. He was reaching back to the classical Greek art. That doesn't apply to Mozart though. I'll give him that much.

My point is that being a modern master means having to internalize and incorporate all of the theories and styles that came before you and make them relevant to your time. That makes one implicitly better than those that came before you (assuming that no cultural boundaries existed). The chances of somebody having the ability to do as such in later time periods is very slim, so I concluded that Mozart would most likely not be able to based on that chance.

Art does have it's timeless qualities on the most basic levels, however, art like everything else is constantly improving. Just as athletes get better over time and technology improves, so does art.
[Edited 5/12/05 15:30pm]

whodknee said:

Picasso could paint in the classical style early on, yes, but I've never seen anything to indicate that he could do sculpture like Michelangelo. He did a bit of sculpture for a while, but nothing spectacular. The statue of David is maybe the greatest scupture ever.

Your point about incorporating styles is partly right. People take what's relevant from the past, but not the whole story. They take the highlights. It would be impossible to incorporate all of art/music history into one mind & two hands. So Prince does things Mozart didn't and vice versa. It's a trade off where new things are learned and other things are forgotten. Though it is very optimistic to think that humans have that capacity for improvement.

You are right that athletes constantly improve on the old statistics, but many sports fans think that they have also lost something compared to the older athletes as well.
[Edited 5/12/05 15:56pm]

andyman91 said:

Michelangelo's David was very short on imagination. Why would Picasso devote his efforts to reproducing what he saw? That's not the job of an artist and more importantly it had been done. The Greeks had perfected that style long before Michelangelo so there was nothing earth-shattering about it when he did it.

The more elements you incorporate into your music the more compromises you have to make so they can work together as a whole. It becomes increasingly difficult the more instruments and influences you add to a song yet the rewards are greater. If you consider that Prince has to factor in lyrics, voice inflections, musical styles, multiple instruments, etc.-- things Mozart and all musicians before that time didn't-- you know you can't perfect each part. That's why Prince isn't the greatest lyricist or guitarist,etc. However, when you put it all together the song is better as a whole because when done right there is a synergy between each element and the work pleases on various levels. Artists like Prince and Picasso have such disparate audiences because there's something for almost everybody.

If you only like "classical" art then Michelangelo and Mozart are the artists for you. I like that type of art but I prefer more complex works.

Realize that I'm talking about modern masters being better, not all modern musicians. The same goes for athletes. Michael Jordan is better than any NBA player before him because he benefited from watching the likes of Dr. J before him and built upon that. Sure on the whole the quality of sports and music has deteriorated over the past twenty years in particular due to the cultural rut we're in but that doesn't apply to the greats. There will always be somebody better that comes along. That's just how it is.
[Edited 5/12/05 19:37pm]

EMattP said:

How do you know? Have you spoken with him about this topic or are u speaking on his behalf?

Definitely vomits on this quite of dedain.... most people who like classical music havent even put the effort to LISTEN to popular music, feel the magic that it can carry, the expression, the personal lyrics.

In my view good popular music (yes, there were bad classical composers also) is an art-form by itselve, hugely underrated by the peeps who mostly listen to classical music, because they dont seem to understand what its about: personal expression, feelings, soul... songs you can relate to on a personal level, which might sound simple on the outside, but have an emotional / spiritual impact on the inside, that can be as deep (or even deeper) as some classical piece.

Okay, Mozart might be a genious when it comes to his compositions and arrangement skills, but that doesnt necessarily make him a better 'musician' then all the artists playing 'popular music'.

To further explain my view: i compare classical music to classical painting, both forms of art are dealing with general issues and putting the emphasis on technical quality.
Popular music deals with personal issues and puts the emphasis on selfexpression.
Its like comparing Mozart and Michelangelo with Prince and Vincent van Gogh.

I live in the 21th century, i am a 'product' of a generation praising the joys of individuality and liberalism, and i feel very happy with that. Mozart and Michelangelo were a 'product' of their time: they were focussed on general issues (mostly biblical and christian themes and things like the changing of seasons), but those issues are very dogmatic in my opinion, while artists like Van Gogh and Picasso did put their emphasis on selfexpression and where searching for 'freedom'. Personally i can connect much more to the latter.

Another big difference between classical and popular music is: classical music tries to reach 'perfection' in technical aspects: songstructures, arrangements. While popular music is in the first place an expression of personal thoughts and feelings: love, hate, desire, passion, selfdoubt, spirituality. That implies that the music doesnt have to be technically perfect (bringing up the Sex Pistols as an example), but that popular music is ultimately about selfexpression, taking control of your own live, expressing yourselve like you want and feel too...

The 'gap' between classical and popular music has much to do with the changing of society, and the way people look at live in general and their own live in particular.... Classical music mostly deals with general, often dogmatic expressions, while popular music deals with the view of individuals.....giving popular music some intimacy and depth most classical music lacks.

To conclude this post: Mozart might be considered a genious when it comes to technical aspects like composition and arrangement, but it doesnt mean his music is better then some new band with rambling guitars, a singer forcing the high notes, but at the same time creating chills down my spine and creating 'magic' despite their technical inperfection....

whodknee said:

Sorry, but I just don't see classical art as short on imagination. People like to discount art that merely "looks real." The difference between what the greeks did and renaissance artists is that the Greeks stuff was highly stylized without much emotion. People say that the Mona Lisa is just a painting of an ugly woman, but there's so much expression to her face that people still talk about it.

Picasso was a creative genius, but I don't see the ability to capture genuine expression & character as any less complex or creative as an innovation.

And this--"If you consider that Prince has to factor in lyrics, voice inflections, musical styles, multiple instruments, etc.-- things Mozart and all musicians before that time didn't--" just isn't true. Sure Mozart didn't have multi tracking, so he didn't play each part. But In his operas he did all those things you mention. You have to know an instrument's capabilities (piano, violin, soprano, etc.) to write for it.

There is less of a gap between classical composers/ musicians and modern pop ones than one might think IMO, once we realise that the classicals were virtually always working for a patron (eg some duke or king). The composer would be made aware of what was required from the patron as regards type of music, mood, context, etc to varying degrees of control. The composer may well slip in the odd personal touch, but what Mozart wrote for money was probably very different to what he would have wrote for himself.

And today, pop artists signed to major labels often have to 'toe the commercial line', and produce stuff that is 'expected of them', eg love songs, angst songs, a few dancey numbers and a token 'save the world/ let's be nice to one another' song. I do not consider this to be 'self-expression' - trying to make money, more like.

Making music and art in general in the public domain has always been a pay-off between what the artist wants to do and what the 'patron' and the general audience wants and understands (and these days what they are told they should like). Eg real jazz bad, soft pop jazz good, cliched hip hop good, real jazz/rock/funk experimentation using spoken word bad. 'Give the audience what it knows and sit back and wait for the MONEY'.

And of course if you have a great and often willful artist like Prince signed to a major label for very long, you have a recipe for disaster ...

whodknee said:[quote]

EMattP said:

whodknee said:[quote]

jacktheimprovident said:

This thread is becoming more and more ridiculous.

skywalker said:

Actually, Mozart wrote quite a bit of dance music. Minuets and rondos are dance music. Mozart wrote popular music that appealed to the masses and people danced to it.

A tribute to his genius, yes, but Mozart is way overplayed today. Give me a little Shostakovich, Stravinsky or John Adams, and I'm much more entertained.

Actually i think he would dig the Wizzard of Woo