# I made a track that sparked a debate about Neo-Classical music



## sIR dORT (Oct 21, 2019)

Had a little go, and had a blast composing it. 



Any feedback is more than welcome as always.


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## Rowy (Oct 22, 2019)

This is film music, not neo-classical music.


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## synkrotron (Oct 22, 2019)

What is "neo-classical."

I read most of this and I still don't understand:-









Neoclassicism (music) - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





And it seems to be a term that was applied retrospectively.

Also, could neo-classical music also be used as film music?


Anyway, the piece, as short as it was, was quite a pleasant listen


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## Willowtree (Oct 22, 2019)

synkrotron said:


> What is "neo-classical."
> 
> I read most of this and I still don't understand:-
> 
> ...


It was essentially a return to classical ideals after the massive, ambitious works of the late romantic era.

Neo-classical music tends to be absolute. That is, it isn't telling a story and doesn't attempt to have an inherent meaning, as opposed ro program music.

Film music tends to owe more to program music than absolute music.

You could argue absolute music is intended to be enjoyed for the sake of it being music, whereas program music attempts to evoke certain emotions in the listener. As such, film music is inherently non-absolute, and couldn't draw much from neo-classicism.

Anyhow, neo-classicism is more of a period in history than a genre so to speak.

(wrote this hastily on phone so excuse the brevity, if you ask more I'll answer later)

EDIT: And to not get off-topic, I'll listen in an hour or two and post my thoughts, @sIR dORT


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## Rowy (Oct 22, 2019)

synkrotron said:


> What is "neo-classical."



What willowtree wrote. I just want to add to his reply, that a return to classical ideals should also be a return to classical standards, and that isn't always the case.


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## Willowtree (Oct 22, 2019)

@sIR dORT I enjoyed listening to it. Very pleasant, mixing sounded good, piano had a very pleasing sound to it. Strings provided great texture. However, I cannot see any neo-classical inspiration in this, and it seems to be more inspired by modern film scoring than neo-classical music.



Rowy said:


> What willowtree wrote. I just want to add to his reply, that a return to classical ideals should also be a return to classical standards, and that isn't always the case.


It's her. We exist too. 

Anyhow, I'm not entirely sure what ou mean by classical standards, but if you mean, say, a _classical default_, I at least to some degree do agree. Though, a lot of neo-classical was essentially more what composers imagined the classical to have been like, and there was plenty of baroque elements in it (which of course led to the coining of the less common term neo-baroque, ironically a subset of neo-classical).

As I'm sure you know, the baroque era was very different to the classical era. Essentially, neo-classical reflects what composers thought were the classical ideals, but it's very different from proper classical in a lot of ways.


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## sIR dORT (Oct 22, 2019)

Proof that I have no idea what I'm doing.


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## sIR dORT (Oct 22, 2019)

Much better title now.


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## synkrotron (Oct 22, 2019)

sIR dORT said:


> Proof that I have no idea what I'm doing.



With you on that one, although I'd put you a fair distance above my own personal knowledge and end result


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## Rowy (Oct 22, 2019)

Willowtree said:


> It's her. We exist too.



I'm a woman too


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## ism (Oct 22, 2019)

Willowtree said:


> It was essentially a return to classical ideals after the massive, ambitious works of the late romantic era.
> 
> Neo-classical music tends to be absolute. That is, it isn't telling a story and doesn't attempt to have an inherent meaning, as opposed ro program music.
> 
> ...



I think the reference to 'neo-classical' here isn't the early 20th century 'neo-classical' movement, but the more recent 'neo-classical' movement of the like of Olafur Arnalds, Max Richter, Johann Johannson, Jane Antonia Cornish et al.

There's a sense it which it's just a marketing term, almost single handedly created by the London based Erased Tapes label.

And in this sense it's an entirely dubious terms. But then, most new terms that try to take a huge body of expressive ideas and crush them into a single thing usually are.


Historically though, I'd argue that this particular flourish of the 'neo-classical' takes an outsized influence of Arvo Part and certain other forms of minimalism, but also arises from a younger generation of composers that who find themselves not so much rebelling against the intellectual strictures of modernism and the academy (as Part was, quite explicitly) but who find themselves both

a) not being particularly bothered by the anxiety of this influence , and

b) able suddenly to find markets for their 'neo-classical' work. Olafur is particularly eloquent on this where he talks about going from playing tiny venues to playing the Royal Albert Hall almost overnight, just because someone (presumably the good folks at his Erased Tapes Labe) coins the term 'neo-classical', which makes it suddenly a thing.


This simplifies the story considerably of course. And I came across a thesis at one point written by an American grad student that documents how American musicians not only worked to innovate some of the features of this new 'neo-classical' movement (I think its often branded 'indy-classical' in American circles, but it strikes as a variant on much the same thing) but also to create the market space where musicians and composers could find audiences and actually make a living.


Musically, though, I've been puzzling over what exactly this new 'neo-classical' flourishing is for a while.


And I don't think there's a simple answer. But I do think that while it takes influences from film and ambient music, reducing it to merely film or ambient music misses something.

I do think that it does involve classical elements of, for instance contrapuntal texture. Which is why the above piece - which is very lovely incidentally - strikes me as perhaps a touch more ambient or filmic that what I think of as 'neo-classical'. Which is not a bad thing at all, just a quibble over (ultimately unimportant) marketing terminology.


Along with these conventional elements I think its also fair to say that at the heart of this new 'neo-classical' moment we also have a particular intensity in attention to texture.


Perhaps there's a parallel with late Beatles records. Which for instance, musically, tends to feature much more defined bass lines that the early recordrdings. I suppose that you could argue that Paul is getting better at writing bass lines. But it's also that by c. 1967, recoding technology is much better able to capture the kinds of frequencies at the low end. So in the same way that 50s film score feature lots of trumpets, just because that's what the recording technology of the era is capable of reproducing well, early Beatles records are writing towards what the technology is best suited to record, and the bass lines of period Beatles reflect this.


Similar, if you check out the immense detail of every nuance of a cello or even a piano on, for instance, an Olafur Arnalds track, there are entire musical dimensions of texture and nuance that aren't easily notated or reproduced in the technologies of early eras. And while nuance cello performances are obviously nothing new, there's a number of things about this present moment that make composing in such dimensions a 'thing' - enough for marketers to coin the term 'neo-classical.

In this sense, it's surely no accident that Olafur starts out as a recording engineer. No one knows how to close mic a piano like Olafur.



Spitfire's Tundra library, at least arguably, exists in the space also. The Marketing explicit referenced Part and the "Holy Minimalists" (another entirely dodgy marketing term). And I think that the ability to make a sample library entirely around ppp dynamics is not just something that no one had thought to do before, but also relies on advances in noise reduction technology to make it viable.

But suddenly, with Tundra, having an entire palette of these 'edge of silence' textures I feel that it's not simply nice simply couple new ppp articulations, it rather that it opens up entirely new dimensions of expression in which to write. And this spaces is entirely new, at least, to those of us who were previously suffering with, for instance, with VSL SE. 

(Or, you can just play a couple of chords, call it a song, and share it on soundcloud. Which can make for breathtakingly beautiful ambient mush. But not quite what I would understand as neo-classical.)


Here's an earlier attempt to express some of what I feel around this via Tundra.




__





Albion v tundra at the edge of silence - worth $199?


It is a godsend for quirkiness, imperfections, subtlety and texture. At this price, I'd buy it just for the extended woodwind & brass palette. The bends, multiphonics, overblown, air, etc. artics are what I've been missing. The strings and other instruments are just a bonus. edit: and...




vi-control.net






Of course there are many other influences running through moment. Jane Antonia Cornish is one of my absolute favourite 'neo-classical' composers (whether or not she things of herself this way). But while she certainly has filmic influences, she's also very grounded in a certain tradition of British Chamber music.

Similar, the likes of John Luthor Adams comes out of the experimental perhaps even avant guarde America scene, but at the very least, his work significantly shares the intensity of "Erased Tapes" neo-classical composers concern with texture, which is what I was trying to get at here:






John Luther Adams: Tundra, Time Macro and The Neo-classical Manifesto.


So first, clearly I lied in the title here since there's obviously no such thing as the "Neo-classical Manifesto". But it's a convenient fiction. And it's the sort thing I've been thinking about while listening to a lot John Luther Adams in the last few days as I try to convince myself that...




vi-control.net







In any event, a very lovely piece. It certainly has neo-classical textures.

To really distinguish it as 'neo-classical' as opposed to ambient or filmic, I think I'd like to see, perhaps some more contrapuntal elements. Or something (no idea really). But this isn't to say that would make it better music, just that it would make it more easier to confidently slobbering a different marketing term over it.


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## synkrotron (Oct 22, 2019)

@sIR dORT I think you may need to change the title of your topic again, as this is developing into a rather interesting discussion about neo-classical stuff  


As for the discussion itself, I would like to throw in that it would be nice to perhaps create stuff without any boundaries, perceived or otherwise. But then I would say that, not knowing very much at all about music which has the word "classic" associated with it.


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## ism (Oct 22, 2019)

synkrotron said:


> As for the discussion itself, I would like to throw in that it would be nice to perhaps create stuff without any boundaries, perceived or otherwise



I certainly appreciate the sentiment of this. But I'd argue that the nature of genre (in the sense of literary genre theory in which all texts necessarily and always-already function through conventions and structure and contracts of genre, not in the contemporary bookstore sense that distinguishes the 'star trek' section from the 'literary fiction' section) whether or not we know the label(s) of the genre(s) a particular composition is referencing and participating in, they are always-already active in creating the experience of any piece of music, heard by any person in any context.


(Also, I find it kind of fun to theorize about).


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## synkrotron (Oct 22, 2019)

The whole genre thing can be a nightmare for some. We often have discussions about the genre thing on the ambient forum I am a regular at.

Yes, it is important for peeps on the lookout for a particular "thing" that art is pigeonholed into the right compartment.

Still, a nightmare, all the same...

I leave the experts to it, as I should. I would get most labels/genres totally wrong, except for the genres in which I am most actively listening to or creating.


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## ism (Oct 22, 2019)

synkrotron said:


> The whole genre thing can be a nightmare for some. We often have discussions about the genre thing on the ambient forum I am a regular at.
> 
> Yes, it is important for peeps on the lookout for a particular "thing" that art is pigeonholed into the right compartment.
> 
> ...




Absolutely. The strictures and limitations, and the way that generic conventions police a text (or composition) can be oppressive (post colonial literary theorists have some especially incisive insights into just how oppressive generic structures can be).

I guess my point is that the way to resit and transcend the strictures of genre isn't to deny they exist, but to understand how the function, for good or ill.


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## ism (Oct 22, 2019)

Possibly of interest:

I don't necessarily think this bit of journalism manages to get to what I find so compelling about the neo-classical (in fact "transpose to a rock setting" wildly misses the point), but it does give some context.


And moreover, its a lens through which the OP can be seen as something other than film music. (In that I think that "Experimenting with Neo-classical" was a perfectly accurate title", when contextualized)









Just don't call it 'indie classical'


Nico Muhly, Olafur Arnalds and a new generation of composers are successfully transposing classical tropes to a rock setting




www.theguardian.com


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## sIR dORT (Oct 22, 2019)

@synkrotron better?


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## synkrotron (Oct 22, 2019)

sIR dORT said:


> @synkrotron better?



Excellent!


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## sIR dORT (Oct 22, 2019)

ism said:


> I think the reference to 'neo-classical' here isn't the early 20th century 'neo-classical' movement, but the more recent 'neo-classical' movement of the like of Olafur Arnalds, Max Richter, Johann Johannson, Jane Antonia Cornish et al.
> 
> There's a sense it which it's just a marketing term, almost single handedly created by the London based Erased Tapes label.
> 
> ...


Yeah, but what does Neo-Classical mean


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## CT (Oct 22, 2019)

synkrotron said:


> As for the discussion itself, I would like to throw in that it would be nice to perhaps create stuff without any boundaries, perceived or otherwise.



This is where I come down on it, too. 

I'd rather spend time making music than worrying about what to call it. I just don't find it all that useful, however interesting the discussions about it may be in the moment. I think John Adams says all that need be said in calling himself a "post style" composer. That's pretty much where we all are, at least until future academics categorize us, if they bother.

Nice music, by the way. But it's clearly post-neo-baroque ambient.


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## ism (Oct 22, 2019)

sIR dORT said:


> Yeah, but what does Neo-Classical mean



I’m assuming that’s a joke, and that you you’re not actually inviting me to write another essay on the subject ... because otherwise we really could be all day


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## sIR dORT (Oct 22, 2019)

ism said:


> I’m assuming that’s a joke, and that you you’re not actually inviting me to write another essay on the subject ... because otherwise we really could be all day


Yes, I'm just joking  I just say that because although I would like to think that I've learned a good deal about music over the last couple of years, I don't think I could externalize as well as something like that.


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## BlackDorito (Oct 22, 2019)

I've got to smile because the piece by the OP is stylistically remote from the neoclassicism of the early 20th century. I don't see any similarities to the neoclassical pieces I admire by Stravinsky (e.g. Dumbarton Oaks) or composers as late as Walter Piston. Overall, these piece would be considered 'dry' today in that they used Classical/Baroque forms with modern harmonic practice that wasn't geared toward evoking emotions. The result was often dry and intellectual music. It's intriguing to imagine that Arvo Part would be considered part of a neo-neoclassical movement - his pieces are very evocative for me. Just shows that the term 'neoclassical' can encompass a lot of music.


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## ism (Oct 22, 2019)

BlackDorito said:


> It's intriguing to imagine that Arvo Part would be considered part of a neo-neoclassical movement


 
I don't think this term 'neo-classical' in the recent sense is meant to reference the earlier neo-classical movement.

Except perhaps that as the Stravinsky era neo-classicism reference an earlier classical form (perhaps pre-romantic), so the present coining of the 'neo-classical' references a return to an earlier for. Pre-modernist, or pre-12-tone or even pre-eary-20th-century-neo-classicism.

So 'neo' in a sense of a return to something, but in a different way. 


There's a sense that this 'returning' is inherent in Part c. late 70s. He's explicitly declaring modernism and serialism a dead end, and looking backwards to recover something that has been too hastily abandoned by the orthodoxy of the 'contemporary classical' of the day. In some sense the 'neo-' in Part, that in rejecting serialism, seeks a return to music with crazy notions like 'harmony' and 'melody' and 'music that actually sound nice to listen to' that the serialist movement (in more extreme forms) rejects as a gaucherie of the bourgeois. 

(Which was why Schoenberg is said to have been so enthusiastic about WWI when it started - finally a chance to eradicate all that bourgeois French art. I can't really ever hearing if he still it was such a great idea once the costs of the war were finally counted).


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## sIR dORT (Oct 22, 2019)

BlackDorito said:


> I've got to smile because the piece by the OP is stylistically remote from the neoclassicism of the early 20th century.


Since I am extremely knowledgeable regarding this topic, I'll contribute my essay regarding the definition of neo-classicalism shortly...


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## givemenoughrope (Oct 22, 2019)

ism said:


> I think the reference to 'neo-classical' here isn't the early 20th century 'neo-classical' movement, but the more recent 'neo-classical' movement of the like of Olafur Arnalds, Max Richter, Johann Johannson, Jane Antonia Cornish et al.
> 
> There's a sense it which it's just a marketing term, almost single handedly created by the London based Erased Tapes label.
> 
> ...



So it’s like Acid Jazz? Not psychedelic and not at all Jazz.


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## bbunker (Oct 22, 2019)

26 posts in a thread with neoclassicism in the title is too long not to have a little Ludus Tonalis:


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## ism (Oct 23, 2019)

Possibly of interest - I just posted something "neo-classical" thoughts on string quartet writing to this thread:

https://vi-control.net/community/th...ing-a-quartet-piece.86117/page-2#post-4448568 

which are in some sense an application of the ideas bouncing around this thread.


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