So I've recently thought about how music nowadays has become significantly more dull, lifeless, and artless and I've decided that the concept of rhythm is to blame for the condition of the music industry.

In the Baroque period, an emphasis was placed on melody (much of it was church music after all) and even polyphony, incorporating several melodies. In the Classical period, polyphony was not stressed so much and melodies became somewhat simpler--not necessarily for the pianist but for the listener. In the Romantic period, polyphony was just about eliminated and rhythm began to show up in several pieces (especially the Russian late Romantics). Lastly, the 20th century placed an emphasis on rhythm rather than melody. I remember reading a quote by Stravinsky or some contemporary of his saying something along the lines of "music is rhythm." Now, we are in the 21st century and, dare I say, the music business has entered a quagmire full of garbage and noise. Rap, which is just rhythmic noise, is used to encourage dancing rather than thought or an emotional response. Lyrics of songs don't mean anything, just as long as one can dance to the "beat."

Therefore, I've concluded rhythm is the root of all evil. What do you guys think?

P.S. Please don't take anything I've said too seriously. I'm probably being overdramatic!

Hey hey hey, lots of modern (Prokofiev, Scriabin, etc.) is very rhythmical, and I think it invokes much thought.

I think you're wrong in all cases.

In the Baroque period, counterpoint was emphasized. Eventually this led to uninspired canons of nine voices and similar drivel. A push toward homophony and a focus on melody led to the classical period.

Then, an obsession with form and replacing "forms for formulae" as Liszt said, led to a stagnation. Revolting against this were Beethoven, Schubert, and the Romantics, who continued to use counterpoint and classical forms, but bent them to their own aesthetics.

Can you sincerely claim that Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Schumann, Liszt, Godowsky, Reger and Rachmaninoff didn't use counterpoint? Eventually, the romantics become too over-indulgent and new directions were sought. These included impressionism, which focused on sound.

In the twentieth century, a whole panorama of possibilities and experimentation opens up. We have nationalism, serialism, atonality, mixed tonality, tone clusters, extended tonality, avant-garde, and many other styles. It is far from the straitjacket dissonance you seem to perceive. Rhythm is a major element in Messiaen, Bartok, and Prokofiev. However, it is also a critical element in Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt, and Bach.

More accessible composers include Barber, Vine, Janacek, Copland, Carter, and early Messiaen, which is very much like Debussy. As early Beethoven is to Haydn, early Bartok is to Liszt, early Messiaen is to Debussy, and early Scriabin is to Chopin. These composers all played, respected, and understood the music of the past.

Give it some time, and try to enjoy it. You'll be surprised what a variety of wonderful music there is once you give it a try.

akonow,

Well, I'm with Stravinsky on this: "music is rhythm."

Is it a coincidence that 4/4 is called "common time"? It's been a fundamental driving force in music from Baroque to the present, though your impression that 20th century music emphasis on rhythm at the expense of melody is contrary to my own. (I'm thinking of music with frequently changing time signatures or where the metric pulse is subtle, transient or missing entirely.)

Whether in a Beethoven symphony or a disco anthem, good old-fashioned four-on-the-floor common time remains common. It's a force of nature that cannot be denied.

BTW, I notice that one word is conspicuously absent from your Western music evolutionary synopsis-in-a-nutshell: harmony.

Steven

p.s. The title of this thread sounds like a PBS documentary!

The trouble is, what passes for rhythm in much of today's popular music is often just a monotonous, zombie-like beat which is often produced synthetically.
Oh, for a return to the "fascinating rhythms" of the 20s and 30s!

This was not true in France, where dance (ballet) was the primary job of the court composer. Nor was it true of the early baroque in England with all those Pavans and Galliards.

Counterpoint has remained very important, figuring prominently in the work of Prokofiev, Stravinsky, and Shostakovich; and voice-leading drives the harmonies used in jazz, from Duke Ellington to Keith Jarrett and everything in between.

Dance and rhythm have always been an important aspect of music. Bach wrote Polonaises and Minuets. Beethoven wrote Polonaises and Minuets. Chopin, one of the greatest melodists in the history of music, spent an enormous effort on Waltzes, Mazurkas, and Polonaises.

Music nowadays is very far from lifeless and dull. Composers with obvious melodic gifts like Ewazen and Whitacre enjoy a great deal of popularity, and even on the popular side, songwriters like Tom Waits, Regina Spektor, and Peter Mulvey draw crowds with their melodies, not their rhythms. Hip hop relies very heavily on counterpoint, albeit the counterpoint of ideas more than the counterpoint of notes, and if lyrics didn't matter, then Herbie Hancock's "River" wouldn't have won best album last year.

I'm afraid you're falling victim to too much TV and Radio. Turn those off and get in touch with what people are really doing, and the field of music starts to look varied, interesting, healthy, and very much alive.

Nevermind then... I guess I don't know enough about music to make such assumptions.

Is it really fair to compare rap/hip hop and other popular music to that of Beethoven, Bach, and all the others mentioned above? Clearly they are in a different class, their music created for a different purpose and aesthetic. Popular music is generally mass-produced with the goal of selling CDs or mp3s. It is an "industry" rather than an art.I do agree that the way many are playing music these days is in general less "romantic" or emotive (I haven't heard everyone, but those that I have heard). I don't think rhythm is to blame, but the changes in societies and their expectations.

The second half of the 20th century saw the unleashing of a tremendous force in music: the timbre.

This happened while the intellectual establishment was looking the other way, focusing on melody, harmony, rhythm and form because these were the elements where the composer's creativity could be expressed in a time where variety in timbre was limited to the instruments in the orchestra. This led to hopeless experimentalism in exhausted mediums (integral serialism, for heaven's sake!!) that ended up estranging the audiences for decades.


As usual, innovation didn't come from academia*, it came from real people making real music for other real people to enjoy. Academia is slowly catching up and will ultimately come to view the last decades as some of the richest in the history of music.


I do agree that most crap you hear on commercial radio is predictable and basically worthless. You'd expect it if you consider that what we call the "music industry" (a telling designation) lives by dumping fake dreams on a huge mass of 15 year-olds who already have plenty of purchasing power but still haven't developed a personality.

Yet, the "music industry" shouldn't be confounded with "music nowadays". The "music industry" is just a drop in the Ocean. An oil drop. A huge spill actually!

Another issue is navigating on the wealth of music being made every minute, the 21st century problem of overload of information. In the early 18th century, young Bach would have traveled 400 km to watch Buxtehude play his stuff. On one hand, in our days he'd just have to download Buxtehude music from his website (BuxDaMan.myspace.com). On the other, how would he know that Bux WAS "Da Man" among the hundreds of millions out there? That's a whole other question...


*well, in part it did, just not as big a part by a long shot as Academia likes to think

Casting intentions aside and focusing on the product, aren't Western art music and Western popular music—generally speaking, of course, without regard to any particular sub-genre—far more alike than different?

Rhythm is but one of the common denominators, but "common time" has persisted over time as the most common rhythm in any case.

Steven

Yes and no.

If we're talking about Beethoven in the 21st century vs. Hip-Hop in the 21st century, then the two are very different.

If we're talking about Beethoven in the 19th century vs. Hip-Hop in the 21st century, then both were written for the same purpose - public consumption. The biggest difference is the delivery method - 21st century music is disseminated by recordings, whereas 19th century music was disseminated through live performance and sheet music. (That was, after all, the whole point behind transcriptions - so people could enjoy opera's greatest hits at home.)

there is plenty of music out there that is very melodic and also very rhythmical. you can't associate pop music with classical music because pop music is terrible. look to other genres...

I see a non-sequitur there.

"Plenty of music out there that is very melodic and also very rhythmical" just happens to be pop music.

I'm not one to cast stones of elitism, as any of us is equally vulnerable to that charge. But statements like that one sure go a long way to bolstering other people's negative perceptions of classical music lovers—if not as elitists, then as having rigid tastes and closed minds at the very least.

The depth and breadth of "pop music," after all, is categorically vast. I'm sure that comes as no surprise to most people here, who would likewise not be shocked to discover that the variation in quality is vast, too.

Steven

Agreed, and I think time is an important factor.

There was plenty of garbage published and performed in the 18th and 19th centuries, but over time, those works and composers (people like Cramer, Zelter, and Kirchner, to name a few that history still remembers) have fallen out of favor and are very rarely performed.

Go to a concert in 1800, and you'd likely hear lots of music from people nobody has heard of today.

The same is true now, except that time hasn't weeded out the garbage. Take Rick Astley for example. Extremely popular in his day, currently the subject of the Rickrolling internet phenomenon, and probably completely forgotten in 50 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickrolling

On the other hand, some pop artists have extremely durable careers that grow and evolve much like the best of classical composers. Madonna and Carlos Santana have lasted through decades, and both will likely be remembered (for how long, who knows?)

Not to mention Herbie Hancock and Joni Mitchell!

Steven

I really don't feel the need to argue about this so I won't, but I would think it would be fairly obvious that pop music is an umbrella term for music that is very mainstream and commercial.

There is plenty of music that falls outside of that classification, not just classical. There is not some broad categorical distinction between classical music and everything else.

I didn't say "classical is the only great music". The OP said today's music is "dull, lifeless and artless" and that simply isn't true. Maybe crap on the radio is, but there is far more to music than britney spears and 50 cent.

There are some excellent 20th century pieces with lots of rhythmic vitality. Although heavy emphasis on a driving rhythm often leads to a more motivicly driven piece of music (i.e. Samuel Barber's Piano Sonata). Although their seems to be a more heavy emphasis on melodic line in classical music (i.e. Mozart) their are some exceptions. Beethoven is a perfect example of one of these exceptions. Take a look/listen at Beethoven's 5th Symphony; their is hardly a melody to be fine. In fact Beethoven's 5th Symphony is often referred to as a shining example of motivic saturation. Also Baroque music is definitely not melodically oriented it is motivicly oriented to a T. Look at any of Bach's preludes and fugues they are definitely lacking a well defined melodic line while a heavier emphasis is placed on giving the music direction through motive. It's not until the Romantic era that we see heavy duty emphasis put on a well definied melodic line. Both Verdi and Rossini are to thank for this....but there are always exceptions to everything I just said.

What I am getting at is that you can't pinpoint one specific era for one specific thing. There are ALWAYS exceptions and many exceptions to be had. I personally find 20th/21st century music (i.e. art music) to be more and more oriented to the ideals of the Baroque era than any other era with only major difference being the lack of conventional tonality.

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Also to mention Britney Spears and 50 cent. Although I don't care for the music and specifically don't care for Britney Spears one bit there are some extremely interesting things to consider in the music of 50 cent, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, etc. The rhythmic drive. I would like to see a Doctoral theory student try and do a rhythmic dictation of some of this music. It'll definitely send them in a tizzy! Sure it's not art music but it does have its merits and that is why it is popular. Find the good in the bad and chuck out the rest!

I've been using "pop music" as an abbreviation for "popular music." That's a generally accepted usage, but maybe I was being unclear.

To be precise, pop is also a subcategory of popular music that can be described—though not defined—as "very mainstream and commercial." "Pop" in that narrow sense describes a type of popular music, but, to use one of your own examples, 50 Cent is not pop! "Mainstream and commercial" are absolutely not a defining characteristics of popular music in the broader meaning.

The popular music "umbrella" embraces a very wide variety of musical genres that are not classical, and to that extent the broad categorical distinction that you deny does exist: show tunes, standards, rock 'n' roll, jazz, rhythm 'n' blues, electronica, country/western, rap, doo-wop, disco, etc. are all popular music forms. Some are mainstream and commercial, some are anything but.
No, you didn't. But you did say, "pop music is terrible."

Let's see, if pop is terrible but classical isn't the only great music ... then the only other great music must be ... well, what would it be, then?

What's your definition of "pop"? If you consider it anything that's mainstream and commercial, that describes many different subgenres of popular music besides pop. If you recognize that it's it a musical subgenre, 50 Cent isn't part of it. And if you believe it's anything that's "terrible," your definition is sui generis.

Steven

Sotto it's pretty obvious you love to hear yourself talk so if you really feel the need to try and nitpick word usage to try and make some witty point you go right ahead.

If you don't agree with my point of view you are welcome to your opinion. I am sure any reasonable person can infer what I was suggesting when I said "pop music is terrible" in response to the OP without the need to deconstruct all the potential meanings behind a 3 sentence comment on a message board.

I understand the difference between "pop music" and "popular music", but give me a break. Speaking about "popular music" in those terms adds nothing to a discussion about 21st century music.

"I've got rhythm, I've got music... Who could ask for anything more?"

Somehow, I missed what "pop music is terrible" adds to the discussion. I know what I inferred from it, though, and your further responses bolster my inference. Reasonable people don't generally say things like that, and certainly wouldn't refuse to re-examine them if they do.

If what you say on a public message board appears on its face to be imprecise, bigoted nonsense, you can expect to called on it. If you stand behind your words, then explain them. It's a reasonable expectation and needn't be met with insults, accusations of nitpicking or retreat into defensive dismissal.

Steven

No, it isn't. The notated music that classical composers deal in is not created in the same way as popular music, which is far more focused on idiosyncrasies of the performer, and not so much on the composition. I think it is safe to say that most popular music is notated after the fact, if at all. It is not unusual for a pop musician not to read music; many of them do what they do aurally and that's it. When popular musicians "cover" another musician's music, what is seen as admirable is how personalized they can make the music, with wholesale changes to any and all aspects of the original being not only acceptable, but a measure of their success, which is not at all how classical music works. Can you imagine a classical pianist programming the Chopin preludes, but what they actually play is a series of the most extreme variations on the original they or other composers could come up with? (Actually, that sounds like fun, but it would never be presented as a normal performance of the Chopin preludes.)

I find it practically impossible to think about a piece of music in terms of one of its elements, while playing it, creating it or listening to it. Taken in isolation, there are certainly rhythms I like more than others, harmonies I like more than others and melodies I like more than others. However, doing this has a feeling of artificiality about it because in practice nothing ever occurs in isolation. In the music I most admire, in idioms old and new, all the elements seem to feed one another to form a syncretic whole. Or again, that might just be my own limitations of perception.

Do musicians really tend to think more about rhythm than about the other elements these days ? Perhaps, perhaps not; I do not know enough musicians to pass a valid opinion.