Don't Support Devilish Music (Opera/Classical)

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KDB said:
In this thread:
Lost Wanderer is so full of win I am going to overlook the Mormon vampire thing.

Back on topic:
I really think the whole millennium s long argument that music is or can be “evil” comes down to this:
When humans hear a rhythm they tend to move in time to it. I don’t believe there is any clan or tribe anywhere on earth that does not dance. It feels good and it relaxes us.
While doing so the females specifically tend to,
ahem…
shake it.
This tends to set in motion a chain of events that disrupts social stability and in general can cause stress and conflict. Everyone gets all overstimulated and the old folks have to stay up till it’s all settled down.
I honestly believe that it is just that simple.
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Hmmm…you mean like “Carmina Burana”? (Which is classical, so, yeah, that makes it devilish and Satanic.) “Carmina Burana” is easily one of the most “tribal” and “rhythmic” things ever recorded. Ever. Ever, ever, ever. It’s that influential. You’ve probably heard it countless times before on movie trailers…it probably felt good to you when you heard it…and you were indulging in Satanic influences. Here’s a YouTube link to “Oh Fortuna”/“Carmina Burana” (be careful, it’s Satanic):
youtube.com/watch?v=7HMQOX3h7ZI
 
Lost_Wanderer said:
FYI, smooth sounding classical music bores me and makes me cranky. Whatever soothing effect you think such a form of music does when played in an airplane, it doesn’t exist in my mind.
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That’s an interesting point. Actually, ambiguity is one of the qualities that draws me to music. Different people can take vastly different interpretations from the same piece or song. And when I hear something that’s typically classified as “rock,” one of the first things I do is compare it to other genres of music. For example, if I hear a song by Yes, I might say that the dynamic layering of many different instruments makes it sound like classical music. If I hear a song by The Police, I might say that the bass and drum lines interact a lot like reggae.

Also, keep in mind that the western interpretation of music is not the only one. We tend to think of minor keys as “sad” and major keys as “happy.” Most other cultures do not have this idea. Many of them don’t even use the same scale tones or counting patterns. And I personally think that if whatever piece of music you’re writing can only be described with kindergarten words like “happy” or “sad”, or if it only conveys one thought or emotion, you’re not doing a very good job. Or you’re playing for the wrong audience. 😛
 
CTA1967 said:
Right, that topic! I say we should start a petition telling Debussy to stop setting such a bad moral example. I mean, just look at this** authoritative **Wikipedia article about his horrendous private life! (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Debussy#Private_life) Surely, he should turn his life around.

Oh, wait. :rolleyes:
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Ha! Ha! “authoritative”. 😛

We probably should also demand this same petition of every person who ever lived on this planet - including you and me. I know I am definitely not perfect even though I try to live a good and moral life despite my failings. I’m sure when I’m dead and gone someone will conjure up some story about me or exaggerate some failing about my life. Perhaps we should just stop listening to any kind of music altogether - don’t even create new music. Because, almost every person on the planet has done questionable things in regards to morality and how they lived their lives must be emanating through their music - thus it’s ALL SATANIC!!! :rolleyes: 😛

It’s just so silly.
 
havana1 said:
Hmmm…you mean like “Carmina Burana”? (Which is classical, so, yeah, that makes it devilish and Satanic.) “Carmina Burana” is easily one of the most “tribal” and “rhythmic” things ever recorded. Ever. Ever, ever, ever. It’s that influential. You’ve probably heard it countless times before on movie trailers…it probably felt good to you when you heard it…and you were indulging in Satanic influences. Here’s a YouTube link to “Oh Fortuna”/“Carmina Burana” (be careful, it’s Satanic):
youtube.com/watch?v=7HMQOX3h7ZI
Click to expand...
Despite the fact that Orff could never compose anything else that didn’t sound like this work (thus I don’t really hold him in the highest esteem as a great composer), it’s interesting to note that many of the poems that he set to music were written by clergy during Medieval Europe. hmmm…

Having seen the work performed as a ballet numerous times and have seen it live as a concert version, etc. I also wouldn’t necessarily consider it one of the most tribal and rhythmic pieces ever written. It’s rhythmic, but so is most music. It all depends on the movement and the poem. “O Fortuna” is about fate and fortune, so it really has nothing to do with anything “tribal” per say, either.
 
CTA1967 said:
Also, keep in mind that the western interpretation of music is not the only one. We tend to think of minor keys as “sad” and major keys as “happy.” Most other cultures do not have this idea. Many of them don’t even use the same scale tones or counting patterns.
And I personally think that if whatever piece of music you’re writing can only be described with kindergarten words like “happy” or “sad”, or if it only conveys one thought or emotion, you’re not doing a very good job. Or you’re playing for the wrong audience. 😛
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This is true. Maybe it’s because I’m a musician and love music, but there are many works of music in the minor key, which I personally find uplifting, poignant, meaningful and dare I say, “happy”. There are even a few occasions when even art songs which have a positive text are written in minor keys. I also think it is the musician’s responsibility to find nuances in the music to convey various emotions or thoughts. I know in my training on the piano as well as my training in voice, it was important to place various thoughts and emotions in the music by looking at the different layers of the music. In vocal training, there was a lot of vocalises (no words) and one had to create various emotions with a vocalise no matter how simple the work is. So, there is that responsibility of the musician. But you are also right that if a composer or music writer has no depth and layers in his/her composition, he/she probably isn’t doing a good job.

The we also have to think about people’s backgrounds and exposure to certain kinds of music. There are people who were raised to believe that almost any kind of music is sinful and devilish, so as soon as they hear a piece of music, they will automatically have a psychological or even physical reaction to that music which corresponds with their upbringing and blame it on the Devil and sin for making them feel a certain way. Other times, people are raised to think that classical music is for sissies, so they will automatically associate it with sissy-like people.

One other extreme example: For many centuries, it wasn’t considered proper for women to sing in church, borderline sinful and immoral. It even wasn’t considered moral for a woman to sing secular music either. So, those who felt this way would automatically look at a female singer as on the same level as a whore or just above it and would treat her as such - even if she might have been a very moral and upstanding woman. It is one of the reasons why castrati became so popular for a couple centuries. These poor boys were castrated prior to puberty usually at the choir schools and at the height of popularity was even done by their parents at birth hoping that the boy would have a voice and provide some sort of income to the family - hopefully a wealthy income. So, since it was immoral to have a woman singing on stage or in church, it was better to have a castrated male singer doing the female roles or singing male roles written in the treble cleff. This was especially if the voice part demanded a stronger voice and better pitch which a boy could not produce. I will say that the Church did not condone this practice and it was eventually “outlawed” in the late 1800s/early 1900s (by that point, the castrati were literally a dying breed and not as popular as they were in the 17th, 18th and very early 19th centuries), but it also wasn’t unusual to see castrati in the church choirs singing the soprano and alto lines through those centuries. I suppose one can say that kind of practice was rather “devilish” on the males and has created a strange phenomenon now of either male countertenors singing in falsetto (which I personally cannot stand - most countertenors sound so “false” to me) or altos/mezzos singing “pants” roles in order to do these roles which were originally written for castrati. BTW - there are a number of solo sacred works for liturgy written originally for castrati during the 17th and 18th centuries and can now only be sung by women. I guess we should call them “devilish” as well because it was originally written for men whose genitals were mutilated.
 
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