I have a physics teacher who recently told our class that in his opinion, music stopped progressing after Bach, and instead has degenerated since the classical period. Naturally, some music lovers in our class were offended by this statement and our teacher encouraged us to challenge him with submissions of new music for him to listen to.
Obviously it's mostly an opinion thing, but I'm still interested in showing him why I think what I listen to is beautiful. I mentioned to him that there actually are some similarities between metal and classical, and that I feel that *in some cases* metal is a modern extension of the classical genre.
So, I'm making a CD for him. If you were doing the same thing, and you wanted to show a lover of classical music that metal can be just as beautiful and complex, what would you put on the CD?
Any suggestions would be helpful.
Thanks-
Without derailing the thread (sorry, but I do find this aspect very interesting and have had this conversation with a number of people in the last few years):
Given how music evolved from Medieval (approx 500AD) periods up to the end of the Classical period (1820), your teacher is VERY correct.
However, he is not saying that nothing after the classical period (1750-1820) is not beautiful, but he is saying that music stopped
evolving. He is meaning this from the
theory and technique level with both instruments and voice.
Note, that with Western Art Music, voice is very much an instrument itself, and in periods of religious & profane music (15th century and earlier), instrumental accompanyment was actually written
around voice, and some instruments were designed to emulate the voice, down to materials used for the string construction of bowed instruments.
The music you submit to him will not prove him wrong, it is impossible, because from a theory perspective, he IS correct. There may be a handful of playing or singing techniques (growling is probably the only one) which may have evolved since, but other than this there is little to nothing.
However, your submission can prove to him that beautiful art does still exist. Good luck, I hope from that perspective, you kick his ass
...
I would choose music which is not based on brutality, but is rather more profane. Choose songs which display counterpoint strongly, with strong passages of tonal colour, as these are characteristic which resemble Bach, and he will appreciate them.
Shredding guitar solos could resemble Mozart in regards to the amount of notes played, but comparing an orchestra to one guitarist, who realistically is primitive in comparison, will not work.
The songs you submit to him will need to show the entire band rising and falling throughout the composition: virtuosity in modern music has little in comparison to that of Western Art music because of the amplification of modern instruments, they do not possess the timbre or colour of non-amplified instruments.
Opeth's Still Life is a good place to start as the poster above has mentioned.
PM if you wanna discuss further...