Re: musical genres

[R.A.S. <richards...>]

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 05/05/2003 at 10:26 I. Oppenheim wrote:

>I would say that music can be classified in
>genres (Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic,...)

Even there you'll soon run into problems, certainly by the time you come to
the classical and romantic composers. Unless you want to use the terms
purely as references to specific periods; and even then, no matter where
you place the cut-off and cut-in points, there'll always be huge overlaps.

>> let's play a little game. Genre-classify the
>> following five artists
>
>This is an entirely different question! Artists cannot
>be classified the same way that music is. Artists and
>music are different categories. If one would classify
>artists it would be according to their musical
>approach, such as playing style, etc.

This is applicable, to a limited extent, within the realm of the Western
classical tradition. In practice, artists commonly _are_ squeezed into
narrow 'genres', never mind how inaccurate or inappropriate.

In the final analysis, all such categorisations or classifications are,
however, pretty meaningless. It doesn't matter how you want to categorise
the music, Western classical, jazz, Chinese classical, klezmer, whatever,
nor whether it fits into any such category or categories. Likewise, with
artists. All that counts, ultimately, is the music itself.


Richard
"Renaissance Man"


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