What's the difference between classical and pop music?

There's no need to perform it. I have exactly what Stockhausen performed in my music library. The Beatles were master of the 20th century and they, along with many other masters, did not score their music, because it was not necessary. The common practice by mid century was to record your compositions. That is exactly what the purpose of the imperfect notation system was spose to do. The recording process is a more perfect method of making a record of a composition.

The change came with the introduction of audio recording. And common practice takes a decided shift with the methods of Louis Armstrong. the greatest masters of the 20th century were African Americans. So the question is political and racial. Scott Joplin is classical music. The same people who attend Haydn string quartet recitals go to hear Scott Joplin recitals.

So, we admit Sousa and Joplin as classical music? If not, then who, of the 20th, do you admit? And why?

I think you're right about that. But consider this. If you are going to look for another Bach in the 20th century, the effort will fail. But it will fail equally for the 18th and 19th centuries, right? Still, we selected certain composers from each period as the best. After Bach came Mozart and Haydn and Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Ravel, Satie, and all along the way there were great paradigm shifts, new discoveries were made, counterpoint had to be abandoned to make room for explorations in homophony. we selected the masters based upon the fact that they recorded their music. There may have been greater masters living on the top of Mount Everest for all we know, but these entered the competition for greatness by recording their works. Isn't is odd that the greatest are always the most prolific, also? These masters lead us in a sense of what is good. Otherwise, we don't know what is good. Who knew what good pop music sounded like until the Beatles recorded? We didn't have the slightest idea.

Now you could go to a music school and the professors will tell you what is good. But how do they know? They know that these works survived in written form and therefore can be referred to and examined. Then they write theory books which cite the common practice of a period. The most prolific are cited more often, which reinforces their stature. From this we get the roster of masters and the canon of selected works. Every 50 or 100 years there are paradigm shifts and the theory books are revised.

If the faithfulness of recording the music and reproducing it is a valid criteria, then who can oppose the common practice of making audio recordings of the finished products? If a composer is a master because s/he works with a written score, how much more the composers who recorded on discs? The accuracy of rhythm, intonation, pitch and note values are immensely more accurate than a written score could ever achieve. We only need look at the numbers to prove this conclusively. We can accurately measure those elements to within a 1000th of a second for a note duration, within a .001 hz of intonation and pitch, not only for the whole scale but for each individual instance of a pitch. the note A can occur as 440 in one instance followed by 441 or 445 in the next instance and it can be precisely recorded. We can record intricacies of rhythm that were impossible to notate. We can modulate by a quarter tone with ease and faithfully record it.

Let's look at some more numbers. We'll use Beethoven as an example, though you could equally use Bach. Beethoven is tinkering at his new pianoforte (the electric guitar of the day.)
He improvises a little passage and goes over it a few times. The metronome is at 60 beats per minute. Then he turns off the metronome and plays it with feeling. the are 60 beats per minute and each measure is 1 second long. That means that an individual beat, a quarter note, is .250 seconds long. Yet Beethoven doesn't play it like that. He's playing one beat at 249 and another at 251, and so on, stretching and contracting the notes, yet each one of those precise note durations has a specific sense and meaning to him. then he goes for his staff paper and pen, and writes 4 equal quarter notes. This same problem was a handicap even up to Schoenberg. The notation is imperfect and does not accurately convey the sense.

The great paradigm shift happened in common practice with Louis Armstrong. For the first time the improvisation could be directly recorded. An African rhythm could be faithfully put down in an audio recording. it was necessary to improvise because of the new opportunities that audio recording opened, and it was the responsibility of the masters to shed old ways and usher in the new. Louis Armstrong is a master. And others followed in his footsteps, including the Beatles.

The problem is that there are more than one paradigm shifts in the 20th. By mid century, the combo assumed the role of composer. There is a democratic aspect to music composition in the 20th. We cannot compare any one composer to any composer from the past eras. We have to compare a whole collection to another collection. The task is to compare all of the music produced in the 20th to all of the music produced in another century. The 20th is more prolific. More music was recorded than in any other century and it's that prolific output of recordings that will put the previous centuries to task to prove themselves. In the world of art, it's the most prolific who set the standards. You find this over and over again, in literature, in visual arts, in filmmaking. The proof is that you were unwilling to raise Sousa and Joplin to great heights. It's mainly because no individual was prolific enough in the 20th. But the collective voice of the 20th century is quite prolific. And a collection of the greatest pop music of the 20th is incredibly vast and deep, and worth revisiting again and again and again. It's an astounding achievement, kind of like the moon landing. The musical voice of the 20th century stands up quite nicely to the complete works of any previous century. Plus, Bach didn't have to write lyrics for an unknown, new, humanistic meta-narrative. He had the clergy deliver the words to him every Monday. It might be worthwhile to examine Bach's methods and compare them to modern methods. They're just different ways of doing things.

The topic is far from moribund. And with that, I turn the forum back over to Marc Sabatella, who will lead us in holy prayer.