[Schilkeman]

In German we often use the terms “E-Musik” (E is short for “ernst” so this stands for “serious music”) and “U-Musik” (U is short for “Unterhaltung” so this stands for “Entertainment music”)

In music school we learn there are three kinds of music, Art, Pop, and Folk. In life, I’ve learned there are two kinds, Interesting and Boring. Of course, what we find interesting correlates directly with how much we know about something, so as I’ve gotten older, and as my ears have gotten better (even if some of the finer points of theory recede from my memory) it’s become mostly all Art all the time.

[Nick Zwar]

I never subscribed to the German split between E-Musik and U-Musik. Not in school, not now. It’s bollocks really.
First, the terms are misleading. Is all E-Musik “serious” and not entertaining? Is all U-Musik entertaining but not serious? That’s ridiculous. Apply that literally and Peter Gabriel’s Biko becomes E-Musik while Prokofiev’s First Symphony becomes U-Musik. Because one is more about being “serious” and one is composed primarily as an entertaining exercise. But no one uses these labels that way. Because these terms are ill advised and, in my view, come from a misguided intention to place one “type” of art above another. Note: I am not saying you cannot do that, I am just saying the way it’s been done has been misguided.
Because it is the same intellectual dead end as “Hochliteratur” vs “Unterhaltungsliteratur”, a dividing distinction that you will not find in that way in the Anglo-Saxon literature. I reject this divide because both distinctions smuggle in an evaluating hierarchy that cannot reasonably be upheld. At the core is a misunderstanding of art itself. Music and literature do not carry inherent value. Value is created in perception. Value lives with the listener, the reader. Exclusively.
So I used to search for a better lens, and found it (years, nay, decades ago, but still) when Leonard Bernstein nailed it in his Young People’s Concerts: The main difference between classical music and pop music, or jazz music is Western classical music is fixed. Written down. That is the main distinction. And it matters.
Because that fixation, those black dots on white paper, ironically unlocks a level of creative freedom pop music does not have. Because that Western classical music tradition enabled musical compositions and constructions of unprecedented complexity. A symphony can arc across an hour with precision and complexity no jam session could dream of. Pop thrives in the moment, it is tied to the performer. Classical thrives in architecture, in structures refined over years. Again, all borders are fluent, but this is still by far the clearest and best defined divide between classical and pop music.
Because it is not about “higher” or “lower”, and I think that is important. Not because you cannot divide and distinguish between “higher” and “lower”, of course you can and you should, but that distinction should be apart from definition. It is highly problematic if you impose evaluating terms on definitions, because evaluations are inherently subjective, but definitions should strive to be applicable and “true” regardless or personal perception.

So I had my issues with these terms as far back when I was in school, and now that I have read many more book since then and heard a lot more music since then, I think that way even more.

[Malte Müller]

I never subscribed to the German split between E-Musik and U-Musik. Not in school, not now. It’s bollocks really.
First, the terms are misleading. Is all E-Musik “serious” and not entertaining? Is all U-Musik entertaining but not serious? That’s ridiculous.

Fully agree, I never liked those terms, too. There is sort of good or bad work. Sometimes that judgement may depend on what it was made for or my current scope of knowledge as already discussed above.

[GerateWohl]

The funny thing is that the terms E- and U-Musik origined in a time when the so called entertainment music was particularly more complex and ambitious than some of the serious music today.

[Forfatter]

Innlegg