Most of the world listens to what is generally called popular music.
Music of the people.
The music that almost everybody likes.
Downloads of pop music outnumber those of classical music about 30 to 1.
But most of this course will be concerned with listening to classical music.
What does that mean, classical music?
The term applies to any music,
indeed any object, that's been around for a long time.
That's been passed on from one generation to the next.
Likely, there's a vocabulary of terms to discuss that music or that artifact.
And finally, that music has certain universally appreciated qualities.
Balance, proportion, that sort of thing.
We have classics in automobiles, timepieces, paintings, architecture, and
of course music.
The classical objects are associated today with so-called high-end art.
For Western art music the term classical didn't appear until rather late,
the 19th century.
Again, in Germany when audiences began to
demand that concert programmers go back and replay older music.
The music of the late 18th century.
Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven.
Up to that point, when you went to a concert, you'd always hear new music.
Why would anyone want to go and hear old music?
But now, in the 19th century, concert goes start to
look backwards to the now called classics of Mozart, and Haydn, and Beethoven.
How does popular music differ from classical music?
Well, here are five important ways said quickly.
Popular music often uses electric instruments, electric guitars and
electric keyboards.
This is an electric instrument.
[MUSIC]
Made to sound like, made to sound like a keyed string instrument, but
it is an electric instrument.
Classical music, on the other hand,
uses acoustic instruments, instruments generating sound from natural materials.
Pop music, pop music also has a text,
lyrics, they tell you what the music is about.
Classical music on the other hand is usually purely instrumental.
Usually purely instrumental.
The music it's self has to tell you what it's about.
It has to sound out it's meaning.
Third, pop music tends to have a strong beat.
In classical music, the beat is more subdued.
Let's demonstrate now these first three points by comparing a pop piece
by Jon Bon Jovi to a classical one by Peter Tchaikovsky, a piano concerto.
Let's start with the Bon Jovi.
[MUSIC]
So we hear a lot of electronica here, a very strong beat,
especially when the drum enters, and the text, we've got it going on.
Well, we've got it going on in classical music too.
Here's a piece,
indeed, a piano concerto by the classical composer Peter Tchaikovsky.
[MUSIC]
Well,
that
piece
has a
strong
melody.
And actually, also, a rather clear beat.
A clearer beat than most classical music.
[MUSIC]
And so on.
Maybe that's why we like it so much,
because it does have a pretty clear beat there.
Finally, two last points.
Popular music tends to be short and sometimes repetitious.
The melody, the tune, gets sung again and again.
Classical pieces are often longer.
They can be 20, 30 minutes, even more.
And they unfold more continually.
And fifth and
finally, popular music is usually performed without musical notation.
When you see Madonna at Yankee Stadium, she's not singing from sheet music.
That'd be ridiculous.
Same thing with Kanye West or whoever might be your favorite pop artist.
There is not prescriptive written document for pop performances.
And many different artists can interpret a song in a particular way,
do a cover of that song.
Classical music, on the other hand, tends to be performed from a written score.
It's old and it has to be done, more or less, the same way each time.
And because there is a prescriptive document stipulating precisely how it
should go, classical music tends to stay more on message.
Classical performances really don't differ all that much from one performance to
the next.
Here on the screen, you'll see an orchestral score of the famous,
Rite of Spring, of Igor Stravinsky.
Now more than 100 years old.
Look at all those parts, sounding together.
Indeed, it's complicated.
So you have to write out this musical code, so that everything fits together so
that the performers play all together, when they're supposed to.
[MUSIC]