Art music
Encyclopedia
Umbrella term
An umbrella term is a word that provides a superset or grouping of concepts that all fall under a single common category. Umbrella term is also called a hypernym. For example, cryptology is an umbrella term that encompasses cryptography and cryptanalysis, among other fields...
used to refer to musical traditions implying advanced structural and theoretical considerations and a written musical tradition. The notion of art music is a frequent and well defined musicological distinction, e.g., referred to by musicologist Philip Tagg as one of an "axiomatic triangle consisting of 'folk', 'art' and 'popular' musics." He explains that each of these three is distinguishable from the others according to certain criteria. In this regard, it is frequently used as a contrasting term to popular music
Popular music
Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...
and traditional or folk music
Traditional music
Traditional music is the term increasingly used for folk music that is not contemporary folk music. More on this is at the terminology section of the World music article...
.
Definition
This term is mostly used to refer to music descending from classicalClassical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
tradition. This is the common definition referred by many musicologists and scholars including Susan McClary
Susan McClary
Susan McClary is a musicologist associated with the "New Musicology". Noted for her work combining musicology and a feminist music criticism, McClary is Professor of Musicology at Case Western Reserve University.-Biography:...
, Lawrence Kramer
New musicology
The New Musicology is a term applied to a wide body of musicology with focus upon the cultural study, analysis, and criticism of music, with influences from feminism, gender studies, queer theory, and postcolonial studies...
, Theodor Adorno,Deryck Cooke
Deryck Cooke
Deryck Cooke was a British musician, musicologist and broadcaster.-Life:Cooke was born in Leicester to a poor and working class family; his father died when he was a child, but his mother was able to afford piano lessons. Cooke acquired a brilliant technique and began to compose...
, Joseph Swain, Nicholas Cook
Nicholas Cook
Nicholas Cook is a British musicologist and writer born in Athens, Greece. In 2009 he became the 1684 Professor of Music at the University of Cambridge, where he is a Fellow of Darwin College...
, Nicola Dibben, Philip Tagg, or Gregory Booth and Terry Lee Kuhn. Many of these authors, however, tend to be critical or prudent with respect to certain implications of this classification. Those authors most particularly associated with critical musicology
New musicology
The New Musicology is a term applied to a wide body of musicology with focus upon the cultural study, analysis, and criticism of music, with influences from feminism, gender studies, queer theory, and postcolonial studies...
movement and popular music studies like Tagg tend to reject latent social elitism that has sometimes been associated with this classification.
Some other authors interested in music theory may define art music differently. Musician Catherine Schmidt-Jones for example defines art music as "a music which requires significantly more work by the listener to fully appreciate than is typical of popular music." In her view, "[t]his can include the more challenging types of jazz and rock music, as well as Classical."
While often used to refer primarily to Western historical classical music, the term may refer to:
- The classical/art music traditions of several different cultures around the world;
- ModernModernism (music)Modernism in music is characterized by a desire for or belief in progress and science, surrealism, anti-romanticism, political advocacy, general intellectualism, and/or a breaking with the past or common practice.- Defining musical modernism :...
and contemporary art musicContemporary classical musicContemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to the period that started in the mid-1970s with the retreat of modernism. However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to all post-1945 modern musical forms.-Categorization:...
, including serialismSerialismIn music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...
, electronic art music, experimental (art) musicExperimental musicExperimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
and minimalist musicMinimalist musicMinimal music is a style of music associated with the work of American composers La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass. It originated in the New York Downtown scene of the 1960s and was initially viewed as a form of experimental music called the New York Hypnotic School....
, as well as other forms; - Some forms of jazzJazzJazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, excluding most forms generally considered to be popular music. Jazz is generally considered as popular music. (AdornoTheodor W. AdornoTheodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher, and musicologist known for his critical theory of society....
for example refers to jazz as some kind of popular music.) But some more technical forms of jazz have blurred borders between art music and popular music.
While earlier musicological approaches tended to consider art music in an elitist way, stating art musics superiority over other forms of music (for example Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher, and musicologist known for his critical theory of society....
), many modern musicologists (most particularly ethnomusicologists) dispute the notion of superiority. In a recent international musicology colloquium dedicated to music and globalization, some ethnomusicologists such as Jean During insisted that no matter the technicity and difficulty of music, every musical tradition has the same dignity and no one can claim any superiority over another.
Furthermore, many art music composers have made reference to popular music including Milton Babbitt
Milton Babbitt
Milton Byron Babbitt was an American composer, music theorist, and teacher. He is particularly noted for his serial and electronic music.-Biography:...
, Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
, Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
, Vincent D’Indy, Guillaume Dufay
Guillaume Dufay
Guillaume Dufay was a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance. As the central figure in the Burgundian School, he was the most famous and influential composer in Europe in the mid-15th century.-Early life:From the evidence of his will, he was probably born in Beersel, in the vicinity of...
, George Gershwin
George Gershwin
George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...
, Josquin des Prez
Josquin Des Prez
Josquin des Prez [Josquin Lebloitte dit Desprez] , often referred to simply as Josquin, was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance...
, Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud was a French composer and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as The Group of Six—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and make use of polytonality...
, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition...
, Manuel M. Ponce, Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
, Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
, and William Walton
William Walton
Sir William Turner Walton OM was an English composer. During a sixty-year career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera...
, while others like Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
, Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...
, Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene...
, John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
, Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
, Antonín Dvořák
Antonín Dvorák
Antonín Leopold Dvořák was a Czech composer of late Romantic music, who employed the idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. Dvořák’s own style is sometimes called "romantic-classicist synthesis". His works include symphonic, choral and chamber music, concerti, operas and many...
, Lou Harrison
Lou Harrison
Lou Silver Harrison was an American composer. He was a student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and K. P. H. Notoprojo Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 – February 2, 2003) was an American composer. He was a student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and K. P. H. Notoprojo Lou Silver Harrison...
, Zoltan Kodaly
Zoltán Kodály
Zoltán Kodály was a Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist, pedagogue, linguist, and philosopher. He is best known internationally as the creator of the Kodály Method.-Life:Born in Kecskemét, Kodály learned to play the violin as a child....
, François-Bernard Mâche
François-Bernard Mâche
François-Bernard Mâche is a French composer of contemporary music. Born into a family of musicians, he is a former student of Émile Passani and Olivier Messiaen and has also received a diploma in Greek archaeology and a teaching certificate...
, Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...
, Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...
, Maurice Ravel
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
, Steve Reich
Steve Reich
Stephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...
, and Claude Vivier
Claude Vivier
-Biography:Born to unknown parents in Montreal, Vivier was adopted at the age of three by a poor French-Canadian family. From the age of thirteen, he attended boarding schools run by the Marist Brothers, a religious order that prepared young boys for a vocation in the priesthood. At the age of...
have drawn influence from regional or extra-European traditional music
Traditional music
Traditional music is the term increasingly used for folk music that is not contemporary folk music. More on this is at the terminology section of the World music article...
.
Moreover, in some cases the distinction between popular and art music has been blurred, particularly in the late 20th century. For example, minimalist music and postmodern music
Postmodern music
Postmodern music is either simply music of the postmodern era, or music that follows aesthetical and philosophical trends of postmodernism. As the name suggests, the postmodernist movement formed partly in reaction to modernism...
in particular got closer to popular music and rejected older cleavages. Conversely, some popular experimental musicians developed a special interest in the minimalist and postmodern approach, thereby incorporating certain aspects of art music into popular music. Therefore, some may consider certain forms of popular-based music such as art rock
Art rock
Art rock is a subgenre of rock music that originated in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, with influences from art, avant-garde, and classical music. The first usage of the term, according to Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, was in 1968. Influenced by the work of The Beatles, most notably their Sgt...
art music. However, in the strict, original sense these forms of music cannot really be regarded as pure erudite music because they do not match most of the criteria.
Characteristics
The term primarily refers to classical traditions (including contemporary as well as historical classical music forms) which focus on formal styles, invite technical and detailed deconstruction and criticism, and demand focused attention from the listener. In strict western practice, art music is considered primarily a written musical tradition, preserved in some form of music notationMusical notation
Music notation or musical notation is any system that represents aurally perceived music, through the use of written symbols.-History:...
, as opposed to being transmitted orally, by rote, or in recordings (like popular
Popular music
Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...
and traditional music
Traditional music
Traditional music is the term increasingly used for folk music that is not contemporary folk music. More on this is at the terminology section of the World music article...
). Historically, most western art music has been written down using the standard forms of music notation that evolved in Europe beginning prior to the Renaissance period and reaching its maturity in the Romantic period. The identity of a "work" or "piece" of art music is usually defined by the notated version, rather than a particular performance of it (as for example with classical music).
However, other cultural classical traditions may refer to oral transmission. Reliance on notation alone is believed insufficient to capture the exact pitches or finely nuanced ornaments demanded of classical Indian musicians, who typically act as composers as well as performers of preserved compositions. Treatises on the structural and theoretical considerations underlying Indian classical music have been available for millennia, notably the Natyashastra of Bharata, dated to between 200 BC and 200 AD. Some Western classical composers, notably Messiaen, relied on Indian rhythmic frameworks for their rhythmically more sophisticated compositions.
In some western modern or experimental forms, the written notation of art music may depart from standard musical notation and use a variety of new types of notation to facilitate the exploratory nature of these new forms of music. The inclusion of the new forms within the definition of "art music" is based upon the intention of the composer for the experience created by the music and upon the method of the composer in communicating the substance of the music to the performer. In other words, while the notation may not be formal or traditional, there remains an element of formality or intellectual discipline to the construction and communication of the content of the work.
Relationship with popular music
In general, art music is separate from popular musicPopular music
Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...
, although there are examples of certain styles or works that cross that boundary and are included within both categories. For purposes of illustration, one example of this would be Rhapsody in Blue
Rhapsody in Blue
Rhapsody in Blue is a musical composition by George Gershwin for solo piano and jazz band written in 1924, which combines elements of classical music with jazz-influenced effects....
by George Gershwin
George Gershwin
George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...
. This piece is written in formal notation and performed as written, as with classical music, and is generally considered to be within the realm of contemporary classical music. However, its sound includes elements of jazz and blues, becoming known in the mass market as a work of popular music while clearly it remains within the purview of art music as well. Other boundary crossing examples are the symphonies of post-minimalist composers Rhys Chatham
Rhys Chatham
Rhys Chatham is an American composer, guitarist, and trumpet player, primarily active in avant-garde and minimalist music. He is best known for his "guitar orchestra" compositions...
and Glenn Branca
Glenn Branca
Glenn Branca is an American avant-garde composer and guitarist known for his use of volume, alternative guitar tunings, repetition, droning, and the harmonic series. In 2008 he was awarded an unrestricted grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.-Beginnings: 1960s and early 1970s:Branca...
, which are written pieces as well as examples of experimental rock
Experimental rock
Experimental rock or avant-garde rock is a type of music based on rock which experiments with the basic elements of the genre, or which pushes the boundaries of common composition and performance technique....
. With this music Chatham and Branca blend the musical aesthetics of classical music with the aesthetics of punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
.
Relationship with traditional music
Art music is also usually considered separate from traditional musicTraditional music
Traditional music is the term increasingly used for folk music that is not contemporary folk music. More on this is at the terminology section of the World music article...
(often referred to as "folk music"). The earliest European art music was derived in part from the traditional music of the day. A few of the Romantic
Romantic music
Romantic music or music in the Romantic Period is a musicological and artistic term referring to a particular period, theory, compositional practice, and canon in Western music history, from 1810 to 1900....
era composers wrote works which incorporated tunes of the traditional music
Traditional music
Traditional music is the term increasingly used for folk music that is not contemporary folk music. More on this is at the terminology section of the World music article...
of their nations. Examples include Gottschalk
Louis Moreau Gottschalk
Louis Moreau Gottschalk was an American composer and pianist, best known as a virtuoso performer of his own romantic piano works...
's Fantasy on the Brazilian National Anthem, Liszt
Liszt
Liszt is a Hungarian surname. Notable persons with that surname include:* Franz Liszt , Hungarian composer and pianist* Adam Liszt , father of Franz Liszt* Anna Liszt , mother of Franz Liszt...
's Hungarian Rhapsodies, and Chopin's Polonaise
Polonaise
The polonaise is a slow dance of Polish origin, in 3/4 time. Its name is French for "Polish."The polonaise had a rhythm quite close to that of the Swedish semiquaver or sixteenth-note polska, and the two dances have a common origin....
s or Mazurka
Mazurka
The mazurka is a Polish folk dance in triple meter, usually at a lively tempo, and with accent on the third or second beat.-History:The folk origins of the mazurek are two other Polish musical forms—the slow machine...
s. As an example of the reverse, the sea shanty "Toll for the Brave" was written to the march from Handel
HANDEL
HANDEL was the code-name for the UK's National Attack Warning System in the Cold War. It consisted of a small console consisting of two microphones, lights and gauges. The reason behind this was to provide a back-up if anything failed....
's Scipione
Scipione
Scipione is an opera in three acts, with music composed by George Frideric Handel for the Royal Academy of Music in 1726. The librettist was Paolo Antonio Rolli. Handel composed Scipione whilst in the middle of writing Alessandro...
.