Re: Re: Re: Style vs. genre of music


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Posted by Rick Denney on February 27, 2003 at 16:31:24:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Style vs. genre of music posted by Mark Wiseman on February 27, 2003 at 15:51:09:

No. Classical and Jazz are both genres, and also styles. You can play Bach with a rock style and get Switched-On Bach. The genre is the category of the music, and the style is how the musician plays the music. Switched-on Bach is a mix of genres (or a specialized genre that would be called baroque-rock), but it is played with only one style (rock).

Thus, your lists of examples would include the same words, but the genre list would be describing the music, and the style list would be describing the approach taken by the musician or the composer. The distinction is subtle, but it is there.

But it is true that a genre is defined by the style and the content, not by the period. Thus, I can compose something in the Baroque style that would be classified in the Baroque genre, even though it is composed in 2003. That's why "classical" is a dangerous word. Unlike "jazz", it is used by historians to define a certain period. In that usage, it is a period, not a genre (or a style). There were Baroque composers after 1750 and musicians who played in the Baroque style after 1750, just as there were Romantic composers before 1825 who composed Romantic works and groused because musicians kept playing them in the Classical style and audiences kept expecting to hear Classical music. Those who use "classical" to describe architecture, for example, are looking for a particular set of visual features in the building being described. They are looking for the style that characterizes the genre. That building may have been built in 2003 in Chicago or 23 AD in Rome. "Classical" is an even more dangerous word in regards to music because the modern usage has broadened it to mean any music whose recordings are in that other room where the long-hairs go to get away from the loud rock-n-roll.

Rick "interested in words and their meanings" Denney


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