h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Isn't it a legal requirement to play !When I'm 64" at weddings?

TRiG.

"Isn't it a legal requirement to play !When I'm 64" at weddings?" [TRiG]

I don't know. I've never been married.

I'm just very, very grateful that people are talking here about that song [which I've heard, and enjoyed] rather than something I'm not familiar with. But don't worry about me. I will *never* run out of music that I like to hear. Some of it was written hundreds of years ago, and some was written within this decade. I will adapt.

I try to be open to everything..but music should be about feelings.If a song,tune,opera leaves you with no emotion I'm sure there are others that will fill you up..

Bit like art I suppose.

Also music tends to be framed within our lives and what life events are taking place and the people we meet.We associate certain pieces of music with the best and worst times of our lives.

"music tends to be framed within our lives and what life events are taking place and the people we meet.We associate certain pieces of music with the best and worst times of our lives.' [Still Incognitas]

That's very well said. My sister used to play "Moonlight sonata" on our piano. The piano was old and out of tune, and my sister was not on her way to a career as a concert pianist. I can'tlistne to that piece nowadays without thinking of her renditions . My brother would play The Who's "Tommy" on his stereo for hours on end. I got mighty sick of it. Were it not for that, I might enjoy it.

I sang at my sister's wedding. I have a certain fondness for the hymn that she asked me to sing. I wrote a wedding march for my brother's wedding.

@quotes:

I do like the Scissor Sisters' version.

Yes - the Floyd's bleakness I get. Meh. There's other bands I go to for bleakness. Ah well. De gustibus thingummy whatsit. It'd be a damn boring world if we all liked the same things.

@paulh:

In my on-again-off-again attempts to investigate classical music, I find that I really can't be doing with anything pre-20thC. If it's got a tune I can hum I'm not interested. Odd. I *like* discord.

"Odd. I *like* discord" [Edward the Bonobo]

I promise I won't try to "cure" you. Nevertheless, it's going to make it hard for me to understand you. I really do want to understand where you're coming from. There may yet be common ground -- leonard Bernstein, or Chahrles Ives or Glenn Gould's exdperiments with vacuum players, perhaps.

Oh, I'm always pleased to be introduced to new pleasures.

The kind of 20thC classical I go for is sometimes thought of as the 'difficult' stuff. I promise I'm not doing it to show off or be pretentious - I really do like it.

(And we're probably not talking about the really difficult stuff, anyway. I mean stuff like Tippett.)

Have to admit, I don't "get" Jazz. Many years ago I had a short relationship with Jacqui Dankworth and one of the most excruciating 3 days of my life was a Xmas spent at her parents' near Milton Keynes. One continuous dinner party with a revolving door of jazz musicians doing impromptu "skits" at the behest of her mother - aaaargh!

Whilst stage managing a Jazz festival in Dundee I met what was reputed to be the best Scottish jazz trumpeter of his generation - a guy with one leg, I forget his name, but he did a set with 3 other old guys and I swear to this day it was just 4 guys with their hearing aids turned off playing 4 different pieces of music at once.

"we're probably not talking about the really difficult stuff, anyway. I mean stuff like Tippett." [Edward the Bonobo]

I've heard some Tippett on the radio, but don't have any of his recordings in my collection. He wrote a fantasia on themes of Corelli. Are you familiar with that.? Do you like Barber's "Adagio for strings?"

I've sung some rather difficult choral music, pieces by Daniel Pinkham, Karl Jenkins, Geoffrey Bush, Arvo Part, Jonathan Willcocks, etc. Had I not been a singer, I probably would not have even heard of many of them.

Hey - I'm no expert. Classical isn't my area. Yet. But I do like Pärt.

"Hoov saying 'Blur and Oasis' about halfway down Page 1 makes him sound like a grumpy old man who hasn't actually listened to any music released in the 1990s"

Quite the opposite. I listened to (and bought, as in paid actual money for, imagine that) a great deal of music in the 90s, a lot of it very good indeed. It's just that the media gave the impression that Blur/Oasis was Beatles/Stones done again, when it was very much not. Albarn did much better stuff with Gorillaz, and Oasis always feel to me like a pub band that got lucky. They were both the very definition of over-rated - each produced maybe one or at most two songs worth a replay, imo.

"There's other bands I go to for bleakness"

Who?

(As for soul, if the second guitar solo in "Comfortably Numb" doesn't make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, check your pulse because you must be dead. It's distilled bleakness. Shorn of context and the original performer, try this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB6hBP9c1h8)

Well - Like I said - It'd be a damn boring world if we all liked the same things.

Or maybe I'm dead.

I'm not and I'm still listening to up to date music .I do rely on my daughter to find me new interests such as PJ Proby and Jools Holland's show has introduced me to other new bands and singers(as well as reminding me of a few older interests).

Anyway can I ask just what is 20th Century Classical?Does it include Bill Haley?Glenn Miller(yes I like them too..part of my childhood along with The Laughing Policeman and The Goons I'm Walking Backwards For Christmas).
Or are we talking about what most recognise as classical?Handel,Mozart,Beethoven? Or only that composed in the 20th Century?In which case isn't that Contemporary written in the classical style?

What I find most confusing is the insistence in have music compartments and then adding sub genres..

Ah, yes. Deep House Trance Handbag Dub Happycore.

On the one hand...definitions are difficult. How can 'Classical' cover everything from Mozart to Stockhausen? An alternative term is 'European Art Music'. And does Rock'n'Roll cover everything from Robert Johnson to Coldpalay?

On the other hand...pinning something down to a genre is *blisteringly* unimportant.

*Although*...there was a period in the early 1970's when certain rock'n'roll musicians started to get above themselves and thought they were playing Important Music. This should not be allowed.

as with bookshops I wish music shops would just organise everything starting with A over there and ending with Z over here and just let us decide what we want to listen to. Looking for Joe Bonamassa was a struggle in one of those shops that divides everything by "genre" and we found it, in the end, in heavy metal...

"How can 'Classical' cover everything from Mozart to Stockhausen? "

Simple - it doesn't.

I used to have a partner who got quite cross about this. Anything composed between 1750 and 1820 gets to call itself classical, anything before or after that is Baroque or Romantic.

This is, I fear, one of those times when the minority of people who are right have lost the battle to masses who are wrong. I'm sure you can think of other examples...

as far as i understood the music buffs haven't quite given up the fight but grudgingly accept 'classical with a small c' when people mean (generally) orchestral music, and Classical, Romantic and Baroque (etc) when being pedantically correct.

Well as far as I can see, if Gorecki's Symphony No. 3 (1976) is played on Classic FM...

I mean...point fully taken. Nevertheless, Early (let's not forget that!), Classical, Baroque, Romantic...and whatever the hell came after that still fit loosely into a tradition. But like I say - who cares? Just so long as likes of Camel or Focus or ELP don't mistakenly get the idea that they can join in.

(Or - Christ - what was the name of that band fronted by John Williams that fannied about with Bach? I've censored their name from my memory.)