Someone posted a comment to an old post of mine “The Amaranth Solution”, which is pretty buried in the blog, so I thought I would revive it.
Aguaharinaysa posted:
Clever.
But terminology matters little. And in fact it works similar to a trademark, allowing someone who had a previous good experience in a given form to seek out a similar (new) experience in future – Bach and Vivaldi being both classical is a good example. Bach to Mozart , and even more difficult, over to Mozart and Satie, for example, this becomes more difficult as then the label becomes unreliable.
So a sub-label (baroque, classical, post-romanticist) becomes useful, according to present usage.
There will be hard cases and outliers. I consider Satie a slightly hard fit into the system. But it’s not as bad as, say, the fit Metallica would have into the Romatic period of classical music.
The problem comes with implicit heirarchies and misuse. If it becomes good to appear like a certain format, then the predictor function of a label becomes distorted for short-term (hopeful) financial gain.
Many people misinterpret the amaranth solution since its just simply replacing the word classical with amaranth. You must be reading too much into my post.
Why replace the word? Because classical implies old, outdated, antique. Sure it works for the old and antique composers, dead and buried, but does it work for the contemporary composer? No.
I wasn’t implying that we end what you call sub-labels (or genre names). In fact, if anything it would make the classical genre much more clear cut to outsiders of the arts.
I’m not quite sure why anyone would consider Satie a hard fit into the system. Is that because you feel Satie is not “classical?”
As for today, lets end the myth. “Classical” music also includes:
Field recordings
Electroaccoustic
Soundscapes
Minimalism
Process music
+ much more and is ever growing
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