In continuation of the 1st part:
Connect >> Chitchat >> Thoughts on "art" music pt. 1
So now we've arrived at a conflict. The Wikipedia definition should place non-artificial music in the forefront as it should the greatest influence on the general populus. Classical music would place outside of significant influence by sheer quantity. Who heard a single piece from Iannis Xenakis for example? Additionally, it would exclude the majority of music that's been written. Mozart, Bach, Haydn and many other pre-romantic composers primarily wrote utilitarian music and yet we place them as the high art composers. So is fine art just an arbitrary status symbol?
Yes and no. I think the definition is a little mean-spirited or um... copium to an extent. The romantics wanted their meaning of life back and with the individualism of the time, being eternally known for having made good music sounds good. It may seem that I've been ignoring the fact that it wasn't the one composer alone who defined their status. The general public and versed music critics (usually composers themselves) had a big saying. Yet most people who had a saying in what piece of art is a masterpiece with large impact were involved in high society somehow. My statement here ignores significant class crossover however.
Our current society since the latter half of the 20th century is (or at least was) lead by popular music. Often included in albums. Albums could express a larger concept or story throughout several pieces. Certainly not dissimilar to a symphony, although the thematic selection is more variable. Why it is the long format that has the ability explore concepts of higher intent is honestly something I don't really understand. Perhaps it's only my understanding/misunderstanding of fine art in popular music. Regardless, there are albums that catapulted certain artists to stardom, and albums that we deem very culturally significant.
And therefore, I think there is art music amongst popular culture.
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I'll continue with this. You'll see why. Or not.
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Ima lay you down... and imma eat it
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Art music should, in my understanding, fulfill at least 3 of these categories.
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Here's my basis by which I'd categorize art music:
Art music should be:
1. 'Sufficiently inventive within its contextual sphere of cultural influence and challenging to the audience's familiarities and habits'
That just means that within the context of adjacent genres, artists, time period, political and overall world climate and in regard to the artists own work, the music explores significantly new topics, adapts new sound approaches.
2. 'Communicate it's message originally, creatively, but clearly without straying too far from its intended message.'
How I see it, this is meant more in terms of purely the music itself. This is almost solely defined by the tension/release nature of music. If the music is too simple or formulaic, indiscriminately follows genre conventions, or simply has an imbalance in melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, color and dynamic movement, it usually lacks the impact to leave a mark. On the other hand, extremes and indiscriminate chaos are hard to perceive and remember. These rules do not always count, however, they do most of the time. High art needs to communicate clearly. If every note contributes to the pieces logic, there is no added self-fulfilling effect and truly all is coherent within the piece, that is what I'd call absolute high music. Success in these areas means evoking strong feelings that are ideally more complex. The classicism era was famous for this ideal of composing.
3. 'Its main purpose is art, not profit'
In popular music especially, more profit and stability comes from sticking to the rules, going with the wave and hopping on a trend. While it would be diminutive to call all trend related music low art, in popular music, most of the time this music doesn't really challenge the habits of the listeners. Obviously people are to be properly rewarded for their work, but higher artistic expression should come from the need of the artist themselves to express themselves, to develop culture and develop aesthetics.
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4. 'Disciplined'
Art music should be built on logic and on the composer's success of putting their work on paper as closely to the original visions as possible. This includes stochastic and random approaches as long as that was the intention of the artist. It's helpful for an artist to build on a larger theoretical basis from literature or history, being able to communicate music terminology, understand the inner workings of sounds in relation, understanding the mechanisms of human perception and reception. Being critically able to evaluate decisions in composition and being able to add as well as remove parts to create over-composed, and perfectly edited music.
5. 'Impactful'
It doesn't matter whether the piece had impact on 3 people or billions, as long as it produces a strong emotion or a lasting impression on the recipient (this includes the composer solely themselves), it fulfilled one of the most important requirements for art music.
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I was going to write out examples of higher concept music, but I somehow managed to delete the majority of the text and I'm too lazy to think of everything again.
Anyway, there's a reason why I even came up with this whole thing. I think everyone wants to make good music that will hold its value for a long time to come, to make truly impactful music that isn't just easily digestible, but compositionally interesting and logical. That's what I'd like to do anyway. I've always had the dream of becoming my favourite artists or rather making music as important as theirs. I still want to. Perhaps a theoretical basis could help achieve these goals.