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I'd put the issue a little differently, because I don't think the more knowledgeable folks are necessarily turned off by the early popular works, so much as feeling that it is unfortunate that the general audience doesn't have a similar enthusiasm for the "grown-up" music of those same composers.

Or, said differently, it is too bad some listeners (and pianists) stay stuck in the "ear candy" stage, because there is so much more wonderfulness to be had in classical music if they can just get past wallowing in the low-hanging fruit (to mix a few metaphors).

I think that you've hit the nail on the head with the 'ear candy' comment!

I think I wasn't too clear or specific with my OP (and further I was too busy to take part), but this includes most of my thoughts really...

Well, being one out of the general audience and not from the knowledgeables, I can underline what others answered already: The impressive emotional effects (may it just be loudness or speed, or a maestoso or sad tone) attract a lot, and if they are even coming in an easy to remember tune, then the word will be spread on it.

Music is first of all emotion and not a contest, and thus not well received by the 'general' listener if for listening having to work on it. If I feel like entertaining myself by concentrating, searching and analysing, then I can also open my physics books. Actually, if I read in a physics book, then I can stay relaxed by listening at the same time to some popular piano music, but I couldn´t split my concentration on physics and on a masterfully enriched piano act at the same time.
So - 'generally' spoken -, keep things simple but beautiful.

Why?

Most great musical art doesn't strike me as being very simple, and it often isn't "beautiful", either. There is little "beauty" in the first movement of Beethoven's 5th Sym., but it is generally recognized as a great artistic achievement.

1. Music is not necessarily entertainment.

2. Your analogy to a physics book is incorrect. When I listen to complex music, I am not concentrating, searching and analysing any more than when I listen to simple music. This is because I have been listening to lots of different kinds of music for a long time to the point where any 'understanding' that needs to happen has become innate, just like the 'understanding' that happens when most people listen to Fur Elise.

3. It's rather patronising to suggest that anyone who listens to music that doesn't resonate with you is only doing so as an intellectual pursuit rather than because they receive genuine musical enjoyment from it.

Nobody mentionned Dvorak's Symphony 9 "The new world" ? It seems to be both a super complex and super popular work to me.

Herein lies my exact point, and I'll use your definition to prove it: what happens when someone who is knowledgeable disagrees with someone else who is also knowledgeable?

I disagree that art is 100% subjective.

Then you have a disagreement. So what? It's not algebra.

Not really. It's a consensus of knowledgable opinions, not one knowledgable person's opinion.

A seismologist and a paleontologist are both knowledgeable people, but one has more of a say about earthquakes than the other.

I totally agree. This is why you are the knowledgable. But I, as the 'only general' listener, do not have this experience and therefore most likely favor other pieces than you would do it, and subsequently I become one in the mass making the other piece popular, although it might not really be such masterwork.

There are also very complex pieces being very popular, but I have the impression that this is because it is possible to listen to them and to 'feel' their beauty also in a simplified way: catching only some superficial but satisfying theme out of it without having to get into all fine nuances of it.
[added: think about the popular pieces in the sheet books for beginners: there we often find transcriptions from complex pieces to simplified arrangements; that´s not so easy to do with all of the masterworks, but with some of it is possible...]

Well said. Many of us here might disagree with that last part, I think there's no doubt that it's true for the great majority of music listeners -- and there's nothing wrong with it: it's human nature. For the most part, we don't want to have to "work on" things that we do for enjoyment or leisure.

BTW, an aspect that has been mentioned but (I think) not emphasized: LENGTH. Nikolas asked about Fur Elise vs. the Hammerklavier. If the Hammerklavier were somehow as short as Fur Elise, I think it would have a chance to be as popular and well-known. People in general have a certain desired attention span for things, and for music, it seems to be mostly something like 2-4 minutes, maybe up to 5; it's no accident that most popular songs are about that long, likewise most of the classical pieces that have achieved great popularity.

Interesting that Debussy composed the Pavanne (Passepied) three years after Faure wrote his Pavanne. Debussy certainly would have been familiar with the Faure work.

Here's a recording (piano roll) of Faure playing his Pavanne ...(you can skip the ad after 5 seconds)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUsGh2xYYQg

I searched the internet and found this "slower" version of the Debussy Passepied played by Claudio Arrau. Debussy marked the piece "Allegretto ma non troppo." Arrau's tempo is consistent with that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6fTuLb5PO0

That was me! I totally agree, but something interesting to think about: The first movement of Beethoven's Fifth symphony is one of the most recognizable pieces of music, however, it's not often played in full when used. Not even the whole symphony itself, but the entire first movement. I'd say most people haven't even heard it in full. Same with the ninth symphony.

With the fifth, you usually hear the dramatic opening, and a minute or two after that. I feel that these are popular because of the mood they create perfectly within these "pockets" of music, as opposed to the efficient 3 minute piece such as Fur Elise.

Again, I think the main components to the popularity of these pieces are a combination of melody, length, and in the case of piano pieces, the fact that many people have learned them at some point. I know people that took piano lessons as children that played Fur Elise, but now can't even read music. Like I said in my last post, I imagine more people on the earth right now can play Fur Elise than the Hammerklavier. To me that is a BIG reason why it's so popular. It also has a nice melody that is flowing and harmonically simple that people can attach too. And lastly, as we are saying, it's nice and short!

I think the important thing to take away is that composers and performers need to provide a range of works to their audience.

Let's not forget that Beethoven wrote both the Hammerklavier AND a number of variation sets and trifles on popular tunes of the day.

You see the same from performers - Horowitz would play both colossal masterworks AND throw in a popular Chopin waltz, Schumann Traumerei, or even the Stars and Stripes Forever.

I think that is exactly what I am saying. Two knowledgeable people disagree on what is masterful. One says it is. The other says it isn't. To extrapolate: two groups of knowledgeable people have a similar disagreement. What then?


I had to smile when I read this. It never fails that science always comes into a discussion of art.

In this case, we are talking about math. Quantifiable results. "If 'x' happens, 'y' is the quantifiable result." Seismologists study the x's in order to mathematically determine the y's. A paleontologist knowledgeable of the relationship between x and y could make the same exact prediction as the seismologist (much like a chemist can understand physics, especially physics that another physicist has already explained).

In the case of art, we are largely talking about taste (or 'belief'--I'll come back to science on this), or to extrapolate beyond the individual level, collective taste. For me, to say otherwise is to try to turn art into science, and that, to me, is discrediting and devaluing art.

To bring it back to science, as promised. The parallel I see would be cutting-edge science. Things that have yet to be proved. Even in science, we can see scientists lining up on opposite sides of the line to debate a hot new topic. One side believes one thing, the other side believes is opposite or a variant. Once proven mathematically and logically, the side that is literally wrong has to accept they were wrong and move on.

This is the absolute beauty of art, that exists in no other endeavor on earth: no one is wrong. What you believe is your reality. To tell people they are wrong about what they feel when they partake in art is, to me, the greatest error one can make regarding that art.

It's that line of thinking that brought me to comment on "masterful" disagreements, and the ultimate subjective nature of art.

Who said anything about people being wrong? But, now that you bring it up, you're wrong. If artistic endeavors and people's responses to it were as solipsistic as you imagine, we wouldn't have any, because there would be no commonality of experience.

But there is some kind of commonality. And there are also varying degrees of talent, experience, and education in regards to it, as well, on the parts of everyone participating.

Of course, anyone can have whatever private experience they want with it, and can value it to whatever extent they like. And that isn't wrong. What's wrong is to imagine that one's personal reaction to art is the only valid criterion by which an entire culture is measured.

The basic tempo Arrau chooses seems about right to me. But, love him as I do, that's almost the only thing that seems right about his interpretation. There are a couple of spots where he seems threatening to drift into Pogo the Slow territory.

It's interesting how some extremely gifted musicians have, shall we say, "explored" unusually slow tempos. Arrau, Pogorelich, Celibidache, Richter and Sokolov are a few, off the top of my head.

You seem to have assumed I was trying to bring science into the discussion in a way which I was not. I only meant to make the point that 'knowledge' can't be measured as linear surfaces are, and that therefore grouping people into 'knowledgeable' and 'general' is a misdistinction.

However, I disagree with your point about art being outside of science. The fact that a perfect fifth sounds more consonant than a quartertone is because of physics, not personal preference.