Art music v entertainment music

[PeterG]

Back in the day, i.e. in the infancy of radio and up to the 1960s, music was divided (in many Eurpean countries) into two main categories:

1. Art music - which included all types of "pre-20th c" classical music, opera, sacred and modern serious music (serialism, electronica etc.), and from the 70s onwards could have included a fair bit of "seriously composed" progressive music.

AND

2. Entertainment music - mostly for dancing to, and listening to at home, which was basically everything else, from folk to easy listening to jazz to pop.

Part of the problem (then as now) was that many people were still using the term classical music to refer to all art music.

In correct terminology classical is also a period of classical music, but apart from that even the catch all term "classical music" still doesn't cover everything under art music and is therefore a poor term to use.


Art music as a term can cover everything from early 20th c modernism, atonal and serialism to mid-century experimental, electronica, avantgarde and modern sacred to late-century found music, post-music, installation (event) compositions, electronic soundscapes and electro-drone and synth compositions. In other words everything from Messiaen to Stockhausen to Cage to Reilly to Reich to Oldfield to Tangerine Dream to Jarre and so on.

[JKL2000]

I'm a fan of art music, by which I mean of course modern sacred music and early Pendragon.

[PeterG]

I'm a fan of art music, by which I mean of course modern sacred music and early Pendragon.

Me too

[Trane]

Does art =/= entertainment, though

Or is it art for art's sake?

[moecurlythanu]

Does art =/= entertainment, though

Or is it art for art's sake?

Doesn't matter. It's all trumped by money for god's sake.

[Trane]

Doesn't matter. It's all trumped by money for god's sake.

or god for money's sake

[moecurlythanu]

or god for money's sake

20 demerits, Hugues. You're old enough to get the reference.

[Trane]

20 demerits, Hugues.

joieintense.gif

You're old enough to get the reference.

But too juvenile to resist

[notallwhowander]

Back in the day, i.e. in the infancy of radio and up to the 1960s, music was divided (in many Eurpean countries) into two main categories:

1. Art music - which included all types of "pre-20th c" classical music, opera, sacred and modern serious music (serialism, electronica etc.), and from the 70s onwards could have included a fair bit of "seriously composed" progressive music.

AND

2. Entertainment music - mostly for dancing to, and listening to at home, which was basically everything else, from folk to easy listening to jazz to pop.

Part of the problem (then as now) was that many people were still using the term classical music to refer to all art music.

In correct terminology classical is also a period of classical music, but apart from that even the catch all term "classical music" still doesn't cover everything under art music and is therefore a poor term to use.


Art music as a term can cover everything from early 20th c modernism, atonal and serialism to mid-century experimental, electronica, avantgarde and modern sacred to late-century found music, post-music, installation (event) compositions, electronic soundscapes and electro-drone and synth compositions. In other words everything from Messiaen to Stockhausen to Cage to Reilly to Reich to Oldfield to Tangerine Dream to Jarre and so on.

The whole thing reads like euphemisms for "high culture" and "popular culture." It is really little wonder that the term "art music" would be appropriated by musicians who weren't intending to create pop music, even though the instrumentation of their compositions is more akin to pop music than orchestral, choral, or other historic "high culture" forms.

[PeterG]

The whole thing reads like euphemisms for "high culture" and "popular culture."

Well, that is exactly how the BBC for example, as well music colleges etc, viewed the whole subject. We could go even further discussing how strongly they felt about it in the 1930s and beyond your "high culture" and "popular culture" which are also euphemisms and say what the old music establishment in its learned ivory towers really felt on the subject of those studied in music and those not. i.e. music (classical, sacred, choral) and non-music (folk, jazz, easy listening, operetta, music hall, variety)

[WeepingElf]

Much ink and bile has been shed on the distinction between "art" and "entertainment", but no clear boundary can be dawn; rather, there are many levels of "sophistication", and people who are into music on one level tend to look down on everything below, no matter how much is above them. There is a term for music that is somewhere between academic art music and commercial pop music - "middlebrow". And this range is enormous.

Also, of course, the categories "art" and "entertainment" are not mutually exclusive. There is a lot of music that nobody would deny its art music status that is nevertheless highly entertaining. Sure, there are people who attend opera and symphony concerts not to be entertained but to show off their "cultural refinement", but I think they are a minority. Most people who are into "classical" music find it entertaining. Or ask the average modern jazz (or prog) fan: he will opine that his favourite music is both art and entertainment.