The fact that you're reduced to talking about movie soundtracks that 99% of the audience don't care about cause they're busy watching the film is kind of evidence that it's not relevant.

#1 selling CD of 2016 was Mozart. Relevant.

CDs are still relevant?

I hope they are relevant enough to stay around. That's my way of owning music.

It's one way of investing your money, more interest than a savings account.

You really think jazz emits emotion well? I'm not a fan of it, but I always felt it didn't do to well with emotion.

Money's still relevant post-recession? I figured everyone just bartered with socks, sex, and souls.

You probably just don't know enough of it. Technically, jazz is 100% emotion. The song Strange Fruit is probably one of the more classic examples as it's so moving.

Depends what kind of Jazz you are listening to like Free Form, or Cool Jazz etc. etc. daddy-o.

Autumn Leaves was 50s movie starring Joan Crawford. It was original called "The Way We Are" but the movie had a name change to ride on the coat tails of songs success and popularity. The movie uses Nat King Cole's version. I thought Stan Getz did a very emotional rendition on saxamaphone.

Stan Getz-Autumn Leaves

Yeah, for a 200 CD box set that kind of artificially inflates the numbers.

If you said that Mozart was the most streamed artist of 2016 then I would say it is relevant.

Blah blah blah blah music goes so much further than the charts blah blah tenderized horse flesh blah it's not the 80s dude blah blah whack whack whack you don't know what relevant is babble babble what was once niche is now accessible to everyone not just tiny local scenes like it used to be blah blah. Blah.

I think the fact that it sold 6250 units still says relevant. It costs 550 dollars on ebay. That's a good chunk of money. And if 6250 people had the money to spare, I'm sure an even larger number of people wanted it but couldn't afford it.

Basically old people wanted it meaning they could afford it/fans. The genre overall still isn't popular in comparison to other genres. The question posed in the OP doesn't talk about if there are or aren't still fans of classical music. Clearly there are and I'm one of them. The question is more about classical music's presence outside of the fans and it being shoved at music theory students faces.

I have also admitted that it does have it's niche audience and of course soundtracks come into play but when you compare them to other genres there is no way that you can say they are on the same level.

#assumptionville
#bitchitsjustaspopularasseveralgenres
#youredeadwrongdeejjjustacceptit

Well I'm not so superficial, but you know, a movie without a soundtrack is a half movie.

A very good music soundtrack can make a movie even better. I like to listen to classic (movie) music when I'm studying. :)
The advantage of most classic music is that there are no lyrics, which is an advantage while you study.

I used to do that. The studying thing but you can do it with any instrumental music. It doesn't have to only be classical music.

Lyrics don't distract me anyway. This was and is my favourite study/focus piece

EVen I can admit a smoky sax solo can make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
What about silent movies?

Also, I think you may be labouring under a misapprehension here. Most of the composers you've spoken of in the last few posts are not classical composers. They compose classical-like music, but that doesn't mean it is classical. I think you'd be hard pressed to find too many movies which rely on a completely or even partially actual classical soundtrack. The music prevalent in films these days does indeed often sound classical, but that doesn't make it classical. Williams, Jarre, Barry etc are all working in this field and you couldn't call them classical composers. If anything, they're film composers. They often use classical tropes, but they're not writing classical music.

Do you mean Classical Period music or just classical music?

Also, when people who don't like or listen to jazz think the genre doesn't portray emotion well, that tells you a lot about how uninformed that opinion is.

.

You are a bastard. There's just no two ways about it.

There's lots of type of jazz and some of it just technical wankery that's not very interesting in terms of melodic expression, so I could see how someone would think all jazz is like that.

I have really been stuck on Take Five lately. It's not particularly obscure, but it's 5/4 so that's fun.

It's a very complex question, then the idea of anything being relevant in the first place. Relevant to whom?

Contemporary classical music is definitely relevant but not back up as much as it NEEDS to be. If you don't back up the composers that are composing, living and innovating currently, then the genre is doomed for museum disposal.

Classical music is like every genre, it EVOLVES. My username gives a que to one of the many directions it's gone in the past 50 years, all incredible music!

Yes it's relevant, but relevancy is complicated. Is Beethoven relevant for instance? his style is old, dated and very simplistic compared to the music of today, is he relevant? I don't know

Batcrap
 

You're a pre-teen, aren't you?

If not, then ---

What the **** is a "Neward Thelman"?

Get help. You're very, very sick.
 

Why are you posting here?

I've just seen your posts and the links you've left at the bottom.

You're mentally ill. You're a deeply, frighteningly disturbed individual.

Those links describes acts that I could never have even imagined in all of the many years of my life. Not ever.

This is more than disgusting - it's the effluvia of a profoundly disturbed mind.

I sincerely wish that the moderators would permanently ban you from this site.

Damn, sounds awesome.

*masturbates*

Oh! Me next?

*Neward Thelman uses Shame*

*Batlord gains 10 hp*

Any Vampire Weekend fans in the house? Their first album, which had great commercial and critical success, has a whole lot of classical influence (Chopin, Bach, etc). They incorporated plenty of "world" influences as well (afrobeat, ska). I wouldn't say either of those areas of music are "relevant" to a lot of people, but Vampire Weekend certainly is. (they're my favorite band so pardon my bias).

I also love this quote from the writer Susan Sontag: "And I’ve certainly learned something as a writer from the way Schnabel plays Beethoven, Glenn Gould plays Bach, and Mitsuko Uchida plays Mozart." That's from an interview in 1995, and Sontag is most certainly a "relevant" writer. Tolstoy wrote a whole story named after Beethoven's Kreutzer sonata, Nietzsche cited Beethoven and Wagner plenty in his philosophical works, which continue to influence the cultural elite. And how about Kubrick's use of classical music in his films? Strauss in 2001, Penderecki in The Shining, Beethoven in Clockwork Orange. Personally, since the US 2016 election, I've been fascinated by the music of Shostakovich (composed under Stalin's totalitarian regime) and Wagner's operas, particularly the ring cycle (horrifically appropriated by the Nazis, but beautiful, wildly sensual music nonetheless).

Besides that, classical concerts in the US, and moreso in Europe and Asia, continue to sell out audiences in huge concert halls. The Metropolitan Opera's livestream of Renee Fleming's final performance as the heroine in Strauss' opera "Der Rosenkavalier" was the highest-grossing in box offices a few weekends ago. The Elbphilarmonie, a MASSIVE and extremely expensive new concert hall in Germany, just recently opened as well. There's plenty of evidence for classical music's continued relevance.

But more important than any of that, I think, is if it's relevant to you personally. Does classical music (whether it's Bach, Beethoven, or Boulez) make you feel something? Do you get joy out of it? Does it clarify things for you? Is it interesting to you on a purely intellectual level? Do you get joy from playing it yourself, or watching your friends or loved ones play it? That, I think, is what matters, not simply whether it's enjoyed by a large enough swath of the population or gets enough playtime on the radio. Regardless of whether it's relevant, it exists, the recordings are out there, plenty of people listen to it, it continues to exert outsized influence on modern popular culture, and we ought to seek as much enjoyment as we can from it. :)

I would agree that it's relevant (see my other posts in this thread), but I think this point is confounded a bit by how classical music (especially operas) are sort of a status symbol among many people. There are still plenty of fans in the audience, but I think that there's a significant number of people at those sold out shows who have no interest in the music whatsoever.

I'm sure you're right, but how would we know how many people are there to just show off/rub shoulders with the hoi polloi? Besides that, I think it's fine to have intentions besides pure musical enjoyment for going to a concert. To me, besides the music, it's thrilling just to watch the musicians play and communicate with each other and the audience. Theater folks with no interest in classical music may go to the opera just for the dramatic elements. Last year, the opera in my city put on Das Rheingold in an absolutely fascinating and innovative production, with much of the orchestra on stage, cyperpunk-inspired costumes, etc. Not to mention, quite a relevant story for November 2016. All this to say, I don't think there's anything wrong with people having different reasons for going to live performances of classical music, so long as they aren't there to disrupt the experience of other people. I actually think it's kind of great that people can get so many different things out of a classical music performance than just the music itself. The halls are often beautiful, and for me, even being in the presence of the performance of a Beethoven symphony or the like makes me feel connected to a long, long cultural tradition. Even if I were deaf, I would probably still enjoy going to the symphony just for that reason.

BUT THEY'RE POSEURS!

As childish as that sounds, I do actually kind of have a problem with people going to concerts just to be associated with the wealthy. It somewhat dilutes the concert experience and connects an unnecessary power distance to the genre that I think would be better done away with.

Is this something you've seen a lot of, or you know people who do this? I have a hard time imagining people spending money on orchestra tickets and sitting still for two hours just to be associated with the wealthier folks in the audience. I worked as an usher for a while for the orchestra in my city, which is quite accessible to people of all class backgrounds, but I've never observed anyone coming to a concert just for that reason. And if they did, I'm sure they got more out of it than a chance to be in the presence of the 1%. I'm just curious as to where you've seen people doing that, or how you'd identify it if they were.

It's a pretty common place for people to go dress up, be nice, and feel classy for a night. I've had workmates (I work in the mortgage industry in San Diego, so yuppies are abound) say they were going to to the orchestra and when I follow up with classical music discussion (which composer? what kind do you like?), they usually say something along the lines of "oh I just go because it's nice." These people are typically desperate slaves to social custom and would break their fingers if it was the socially correct/propelling thing to do.

I actually think it's becoming less common the more we move away from classical music being exclusively for kings and royal elite, but it's still present.

I think this kind of exclusion is a big part of what turns ordinary folks off to classical music--the pretense that you have to know something about 19th century music to be able to enjoy it, or even be accepted by the audience at the hall. I know next to nothing about sports, but I'd be a little put off if one of my coworkers drilled me on teams/players/stats after I mentioned that I'm going to a basketball game that night. Does that make me a slave to social customs?

You're right about classical music having a strong association with aristocracy and royal patronage, but I think that hurts it a whole lot more than it helps it. I think a lot more people would be exposed to and benefit from classical music if there weren't such a strong perception that you need education, insider knowledge, wealth and power to enjoy it. If someone wants a good excuse to get dressed up, have a nice dinner and enjoy the whole concert hall experience, why should you stop them? After all, they're putting their money into the same orchestras that folks like you and me are, which allows them to keep performing that beautiful music. You shouldn't need any cultural credentials to enjoy or be welcome at the symphony.

This doesn't really reflect what I described though, it's more that their lack of knowledge reflects how they view the genre.

If you were going to the game to get laid or something, then the answer is yes.

I'm not stopping them. I'm just saying that their prevalence weakens your point of concert attendance proving classical music's relevancy. Also I find that kind of person to be annoying.

See this is actually why I don't want people to go see an orchestra for the reasons mentioned earlier: it reinforces the idea that you do need cultural credentials to be welcome at the symphony.

Also very happy to see a new member so willing to get into a deep discussion. Hope you stick around mate.

I see what you're saying--concert attendance is only a reliable metric of relevancy insofar as the music is relevant to the people in attendance. That's an important point, and one that I'd agree with. Apologies if it was lost on me.

I generally agree with you here, especially since the people who know the least about classical music are the most likely to dismiss it as an archaic, aristocratic, or irrelevant genre of music. Those kinds of people annoy me too. But, we should be more forgiving of people who are at least willing to give it a try, even if their intentions aren't totally pure. What better way to begin an education in classical music than at the concert hall?

It's easy when it's folks who are as thoughtful and intelligent as you! Thanks for the warm welcome :D