Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Know any remixed classical music?

+1

+1

And might I add.....Maksim?????? I don't remember who posted the suggestions for him, but cmon! You CAN'T be serious? I'll not say more, lest I get myself started...

Your musical suggestions may or not be better but I think your reasons for disliking the above works don't make much sense. The Hallelujah Chorus is not "ubiquitous" for teens, and one does not have to know anything about history to find the choral finale of the Beethoven extremely appealing.

Just to clarify, I am not against the arrangements, per se, but am against the pretense that it is classical music. It isn't. It is pop music borrowing stuff from classical, which isn't the same thing.

I didn't say that I disliked Handel's Messiah or Beethoven's 9th (though I would prefer to hear both in their entirety, rather than a bleeding chunk).

What I was getting at is that neither the Hallelujah Chorus (definitely) nor the final movement of Beethoven's 9th (probably) are likely to grab young people by the balls in the same way that some of the more visceral music that was written in the C20 is likely to.

Actually I prefer the other movements of Beethoven's 9th to the choral finale - the first movement is truly remarkable and the slow movement touches the sublime. (It's not for nothing that you can clearly hear the influence of the first movement and the scherzo in most if not all of Bruckner's symphonies.)

A step towards is better than no step at all.

I doubt it. One little tidbit I've learned from experience is that the only thing teenagers (especially those into mainstream rap/pop) dislike more than classical music is classical music they've never heard before.

If you really want to try to spark something that even resembles interest, stick to the most popular of the popular -- Beethoven's Fifth, Hungarian Rhapsody, William Tell, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Canon in D (ok, maybe not this one), The Blue Danube, Ride of the Valkyries, Stars and Stripes Forever(a little past the classical era, but oh well), Flight of the Bumblebee etc.

Then, maybe, after a while, you can ease into slightly more obscure pieces -- Mozart's 40th, Also Sprach Zarathustra, O Fortuna, The Barber of Seville Overture, Toccata and Fugue (less known than you might think -- no one really recognizes anything outside of the first 10 seconds of each section), etc.

It might not work -- then again, not much will -- however, as others have mentioned, I don't think that presenting remixed classical themes is likely to produce any appreciation for the real thing.

Or it's classical music borrowing stuff from pop.

If listening to souped up classical gets them interested, why does it matter how anyone classifies it? It's certainly far closer to classical then the pop music most teens listen to.

What was the orchestra that did of medley of famous and beautiful pieces of music?

I think it is debatable whether it is a "step towards". Judging from the video suggestions so far, most of which I've at least listened to part of, I think if I were one of the kids, I'd probably think it was pretentious weirdness and probably somebody's idea of a joke, rather than being cool. I think the kids who like that kind of stuff probably are already aware of it, but then, I don't know what age group or location you are talking about.

Obviously, there must be an audience for crossover somewhere, because various permutations of it have been around for a long time (e.g., "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows"). I doubt that significant numbers of people start getting seriously involved in real classical music because of it.

One could argue that Lang Lang has been the crossover artist that has helped significant number of youth get seriously involved in classical music globally.

I disagree with the "expose them to the real thing or don't do it at all" attitude.
I believe its hard to spark interest in something that is completly unrelated to the things they already like, and by using Popmusic/Classical crossovers you might be able to bridge that gap.
If they like films, use classical-style filmmusic or classical music used in films, If they like videogames, use classical style videogamemusic. Maybe not everyone who listens to videogamemusic or filmmusic or watches movies with classical music eventually developes a passion for classical music, but some do. Classical Videogameconcerts are sold out half a year prior to the performance and I think thats a great opportunity to bring classical music to a younger audience.
There is a good and relatively wellknown videogame where you actually play as Chopin in a dreamworld which uses alot of Chopin's music and tells the story of his life.
I myself discoverd Chopin's music mostly by watching the film "The Pianist"
. Clair de Lune appears in the first Twighlight film and I bet a lot of young moviegoers heard it there for the first time and discovered they liked it very much. Things like that are the opportunity to tell them that there's more stuff like that.

Based on my own experiences, I would steer away from crossovers and totally overplayed classics. I think that the Hallelujah chorus and Ode to Joy sound somewhat naive, and most crossovers are just weaker than the originals - not really more interesting.

I think the reason I disliked classical music when I was a teenager was that a) it sounded too happy b) it had this weird fade-in fade-out phrasing thing instead of a pulse. Perhaps minimalists are more accessible?

Of all the suggestions listed so far, I liked Holst's Planets most. Teenagers probably haven't heard it, and I don't think anyone can immediately forget Mars, the Bringer of War. I've noticed that many rock listeners are looking for "aggressive classical" as their first steps into the classical realm and "Mars" is definitely the thing to recommend. There's even a steady beat. Another pieces that would fit the description are Inferno from the Dante Symphony and O Fortuna, but the latter is overplayed. Perhaps even Contrapunctus I might work?

As Masume already observed, many teenagers often like film and video game music. I definitely agree that film music is the door to classical music. One day a film music fan listens to a Kubrick film soundtrack and checks out who was the composer... From original compositions, Kronos Quartet's Requiem of the Dream soundtrack is a powerful one. From the video game side of things, piano versions of Final Fantasy soundtracks are excellent.

Personally, Gould's 1981 Goldberg Variations was the thing that tipped me into the classical realm for good. I guess it was the contrast: Gould presented a great composition with absolute clarity, while pop musicians hide mediocre compositions with interesting sounds and lyrics. Of course, I had already listened to film and video game music my entire life.

olavi, what you say makes a lot of sense.

Another piece with a powerful motor rhythm and a somewhat aggressive feel is Prokofiev's Toccata Op 11. (Martha Argerich's early recording is on YouTube.)

I remember there was this underround techno club in Madrid that onlyplayed trance music. Heavy trance.

Every session, just before closing the bars and turning the lights back on at 9 am , they closed with Carmina Burana ... everybody loved it. it only lasted for 5 minutes or som, but poeple enjoyed it.

I agree with what s been said. I would expose people ti the real thing, which is far more interesting than the crossover stuff. I think the main problem with many `poeple about classical is the length of the works.

I discovered some classical music through the work of Isao Tomita who managed to play on some FM rock stations in the 70's due mainly to the newness of the instrumentation. (moog synthesizer) Many of his selections are on youtube, including a great version of "Pictures at an Exhibition". Although this approach is now old, I thought it worked a lot better than putting classical tunes to a drum track. Those always sounded like a joke.

errr... that would've been me. And, yes, I was serious, for these reasons:

1.) The O.P. asked for suggestions to 'expose' a younger audience (presumably high school or middle school students) to classical music.

2.) This is an audience that, due to its lack of experience with classical music and the constraints of a short piece played over the public address system, will be incapable of distinguishing between truly great and less-skilled performers of a given classical piece.

3.) The O.P. will only have a couple of minutes to grab their attention.

4.) No matter what else you might say about Maksim, he is indisputably attention-grabbing, and he accomplishes an important goal: Showing that one does not need to be middle-aged or old, dressed in a boring suit or tuxedo, to enjoy and play classical music.

5.) A ton of psychological research on persuasion demonstrates conclusively that if you want to change a person's attitude, you are more successful if your attempts fall into the person's "latitude of acceptance" rather than attempt a radical change in one move. In other words, you will have better luck persuading a hip-hop oriented group to like 'crossover' classical remixes first, and then--one hopes--proceeding to the genuine article, rather than convincing the same crowd to trade in T.I. for Horowitz in one fell swoop.

So I still think Maksim was a good suggestion for the O.P.'s original request. Had the O.P. asked instead, "what is the best example of Handel's Sarabande out there?", Maksim's name would have never crossed my keyboard and I would've faded quietly into the obscurity of AB forum.

I agree with this. A lot of Clair de Lune views come from Twilight fans. Playing music that's in movies is a great way to catch someone's attention. There's this guy on Youtube who plays very little-known pieces, but the one which has by far the most views is Yiruma's River Flows in You, also from Twilight. Similarly, a lot of people heard Chopin's Prelude 15 for the first time in the Halo 3 commercial and connected to classical music through there. It doesn't matter how they got there: they're hooked, they're interested, and they will probably check out other similar music. The hook is most important.

I would also suggest Saint-Saens pieces, especially the Carnaval des animaux and Danse Macabre. Both are great at drawing a picture: the Carnaval des animaux has all kinds of different animals, while the Danse Macabre is just the absolute pinnacle of haunted mansion music. By the way, in the Carnaval, pick the Aquarium if anything. The Aquarium was used as the basis of a piece in Beauty and the Beast, and people will know it.

It was also used in a fairly recent film trailer, I think it was Benjamin Button. A haunting, mysterious sounding piece nonetheless.

5.) A ton of psychological research on persuasion demonstrates conclusively that if you want to change a person's attitude, you are more successful if your attempts fall into the person's "latitude of acceptance" rather than attempt a radical change in one move. In other words, you will have better luck persuading a hip-hop oriented group to like 'crossover' classical remixes first, and then--one hopes--proceeding to the genuine article, rather than convincing the same crowd to trade in T.I. for Horowitz in one fell swoop.


[/quote]


+100 to this. Bring on the social psychological research Monica.