Smetcalf 03 Towards the end of his life he was. What many don’t know about him is that he was of Moorish descent, which means that one of the biggest European composers in all of history would have had a hyphen
@@colinrussell2017 I mean... Japanese, Koreans and Chinese already started getting into Classical music in this era. Best examples to see their Classical soundtracks are in some of their movies, TV shows and video games. If you want Black folks to start producing Classical music, then maybe let/tell them to listen to dozens of Classical masterpieces by various composers, then maybe they could appreciate them enough to start their own.
@@dde1fy Literally just semantics, I can make the same comparison with say, Soukous, a dance music from the Congo... That doesn't have 'Congo' or 'Africa' in the name, it's still 100% Sub-Saharan African though. You're fucking ridiculous dude.
@@dde1fy the whole concept of "classic" is very much a product of a certain time (the XVIIIth century) and place (western europe). A classic as some unchangable, unmovable piece of work that stands the taste of time and remains ad perpetuum in platonic perfection doesn't collide well with most of the rest of the world more oral traditions, since it's mostly based around the idea of permanence and inmutability, and the perfection of the act of "putting it down" (best way i could think of explaining it, sorry). either by writing it, like a play, a book, a poem or in this case a piece of music, or by constructing it like a building or a garden. There's also the whole idea of the "author", which clashes violently with the more annonymous and collective nature of most of the rest of the world's cultural heritage. There's a lot of super interesting essays and thesis written about how euro-centrism tried and failed to apply this very particular concept onto the rest of the world's "classics" and how all those experiments turned out.
@@dde1fyIn Kenya, they call kenyan folk music folk music. In Scandinavia, when you say folk music you mean scandinavian folk music. In Japan, when you say folk music you mean japanese folk music. The reason classical music only refers to Europeans music is because that's where it was invented, and the only thing it encompasses. It's European music. Why does that make you mad?
@@marcopivetta7796 It's the classical era of arts/music, following the Boroque era. Not, like, classic like that though Unless I am misinterpreting what you're saying.
A real human unironically conceived this idea, unironically found it rational, unironically typed it up on Twitter and unironically hit the send button.
It is funny to assume these bottom-feeders who live and breath via cancelling random people online, to have any sufficient level of intelligence or common sense.
I feel like this is kind of a redundant argument, classical isn't a "genre," it's a period constructed by historians to demarcate certain compositional trends and techniques found in (mostly) 18th century Europe, like "baroque" in the 17th century and "romantic" in the 19th. It just happens that most of the people writing music in 18th century Europe were white and male because non-whites and non-males weren't allowed to participate in artistic life in an equal capacity.
@@isetmfriendsofire if we don’t put all modern songs from the last 80 years in a genre because they follow the strophe - refrain - strophe - refrain - bridge - refrain rule or some variation of it we shouldn’t be so ignorant to treat epochs of music as a genre
Were there a massive number of non-whites in Europe at that time? They’re a minority in Europe now, but I imagine they were an even smaller minority back then.
@@katybee3891 Well, I mean, there are standards of the sound of the era, and for the convenience of a genre, you find music that shares a lot of sound qualities. The whole topic of genre is arbitrary anyway, so it wouldn't be hard to say "This is classical, like, from the era, but doesn't really fit into how we are defining it as a genre"
Man these mini lets argues are cool. You should try combining a few of them into one video. Almost like a compilation of several hot takes that you answer all in a row. Something like, 10-15 minutes long maybe? You know full of multiple different questions. That’d be pretty cool
What a meaningless criticism. Putting a blanket over all of Europe and just calling it "white" completely downplays the diversity of the continent. Imagine criticizing all of the culture of China, Japan, Thailand, Korea, etc. by saying it focuses too much on "asianness". This is criminally reductive.
When you put race in the issue everyone goes apeshit. Why can't we just acknowledge the bigger issue which is the fact that there's more to music than the theory most people know? If we address that at least everyone wins.
@@DiabolicalPaperClip dude you’ve showed yourself in this entire comment section to be a laughable joke. You hate white people, just admit it and scram already.
I thought it was bit much at first too, but I think it makes more sense when you remember that contemporary classical music is a thing, lol. I don't know for sure what they meant but I have to assume they were saying that the contemporary classical music scene is still too white and male, cause when talking about 18th century and 19th century classical it just doesn't make sense. Although there definitely were some classical composers back in the day who were women and Poc that don't get much attention, so it's an understandable grievance to say they should be studied more even if they were vastly outnumbered.
i'm sure she thought her tweet was dripping with virtue, but the sentence, "IT focuses way too much on white men, and ends up sectioning off other music styles in order to uphold white supremacist values" makes zero sense. Who is this "it"? Classical music? I didn't realise a genre had a personality and the ability to focus too much on people of a certain skin colour and gender. And "classical music" sections off other styles? It is a style in of itself, how can a style section off other styles? And where is this racist motivation? Who is forcing people to like Schubert, Beethoven and Mozart over whatever non-white, non-man composers she wants to be relevant? Is it an evil spirit? Is it the KKK hypnotising people? What is she talking about?
Music academia, most likely. An "it" institution that used and still uses the standard of white european classical music as the only language to teach a variety of music styles from other cultures, and insists on teaching the history of Contemporary music from the perspective that "first came classical music, and everything else followed suit"
The poorly laid out thought, was probs in the regards of the ethos/motives behind the institutions that uphold classical & its musical theory as the pinnacle of high-art in the classroom, which is much of Adam Neelys video. Similar to the "dead-white-male" syndrome of visual arts curriculum, both well documented & analyzed phenomenons that contemporary educators seek to fix. _Your comments a bit disingenuous, no?_
@@nicholasmichalfaul946 WLR wasn’t that bad lol. It was just overhyped… so people were thinking it was gonna be a transcendent album when it actually was just decent.
There's plenty of diversity within classical music, Americans just have a narrow view of the word. Mozart was Austrian, Beethoven was German, Dvorak was Czech, Erik Satie was French, Chopin was Polish, and so on and so forth. Europe isn't a country.
I, Elijah S. Ford discovered America on February 22nd, 2005. I discovered it when I was born there. I was immediately incredibly bored by it, so I fell asleep.
@Ivory_ Lagiacrus_YT no one’s ever called me a chad before, so this title is relatively quite new to me. However, I’ve always considered myself one whilst being introspective.
My point didn't come across too well in the tweet, but I mean that we focus too much on European classical music. Which heavily favors a world view that white people made fundamentally the best music
Someone complaining that classical music is too white is like complaining that afrobeat music is too black. No shit, it's white. It's a European style of music.
Everyday I'm more convinced that Fantano hates music but loves everything else. Like, most people would hear Beethoven and love the music while Fantano would try to analyze it's impact on socio economics and the rise of of prices or some shit like that. Those who see on music more than it, just pretend to.
@@BubblesTheBard I think Rainbow Road, DK Snow mountain (forgot the name lol) have better songs, but Mario Kart Wii really shines in it’s menu music, ending music, etc.
LET'S ARGUE: Hot takes from Twitter about there being 'too many white males' and equating that with white supremacy, should not be given the time of day
@@beatrixxxkiddo Exactly. I swear, woke people use the same words all the time. It's like they were all told by their English teacher to write something using the 10 or so vocabulary words of the month
@@8nicopink868 not to mention the “too much white” argument is usually, and I mean USUALLY, made by white people. Like you can smell the self-hatred. It’s like if a Crocodile hated other crocodiles because they weren’t alligators.
@@hightower2277 it’s like saying hip pop “upholds black supremacist values” because it was invented by black people and is mainly comprised of black people, just a really weird take, like they could just say they don’t like the genre instead of making it into some weird race thing and making weird claims about it as a genre
Here is a list of great composers who are of color and or female: William Grant Still, Olly Wilson, Florence Price, Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Alvin Singelton, Luther Henderson, Anthony Davis, Terence Blanchard, Scott Joplin, William Levi Dawson, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Julius Eastman, Joseph Bologne, George Walker, Jessie Montgomery, Margaret Bonds, Amy Beach, Joan Tower, Ellen Taffe Zwilich, Hildegard von Bingen, Jennifer Higdon, Francesca Caccini, Barbara Strozzi, Isabella Leonarda, Louise Farrenc, Lily Boulanger, Fanny Mendelsohn, Clara Schumann, Teresa Carreño, Cẽcile Chaminade, Rebecca Clarke, Germain Tailleferre, Ethel Smith, Judith Weir, etc………..The list goes on in both categories.
I feel like classical music explored tonality and harmony to such a great extent that by the early 20th century there was nowhere to go, and we're still suffering from that today because most classical music is either atonal and has no popular appeal, or is just pop chords played by an orchestra. People forget that almost all "jazz chords" can be found in classical music from decades prior.
I completely agree. Rachmaninoff's music had such lyricism and individuality, and had jazz woven throughout. Mahler was big and triumphant, and both were staunch Romantics, and had torn away from the redundancies of Mozart or Beethoven (getting lazy after the openings or repeating bars throughout the piece more than twice), but also weren't atonal and thus losing some form of lyricism and individuality. The modernists really fucked themselves by focusing only on evolving "technique" instead of focusing on making good, beautiful music. But idk, maybe I'm just not white or privileged enough to like anything the modernists made.
I think it’s the first ever Fantano video about Classical music. It can be nice to get a bit more, including maybe one video of simply Fabtano’s general basic thoughts and feelings regarding classical music
The people writing and performing contemporary classical music are actually quite a diverse bunch, so the issue of classical music being too white and too male really ties into the widespread rejection of any classical music written after 1940
One classical female artist that deserves more credit is Clara Schumann, My personal favorite piece by her is "Romance op.11 no.1 in e flat minor" played by pianist Tomer Lev :)
Black composers to check out: Adolphus Hailstork, William Grant Still, Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, Undine Smith Moore, George Walker, Ulysses Kay, Jessie Montgomery, Daijana Wallace, Tyson Davis
The Moonlight Sonata does NOT need updating. It is timeless. The emotion it invokes is as relevant today as the day it was written. Label him whatever you want. Beethoven was a tortured genius.
Beethoven himself remarked that he had "written much better things than the c# minor sonata". And he wasn't depressed most of the time. Accounts from his contemporaries show that he was quite a humorous person.
What's the difference between "artists of color", and "colored artists"? Can we just be human beings, appreciate each other for our talents and abilities, and quit obsessing about someone's skin tone?
Let's agree: the person who tweeted that is clearly from the USA and does not have a grasp on the fact that in the outside world there are plenty of cultures which are not inherently the same just because the people are white. Also, the fact that classical music is not necessarily the main focus nowadays is the real reason why classical music made by women and POC is not being noticed and why the genre's associated with the famous composers from centuries ago when it was more popular.
They can’t accept that their forefathers were truly despicable people even by the standards of the time they were living in. Were Europeans at the time racist? Probably. As bad as the Americans? Certainly not.
Yeah but you could argue other geniuses who were ignored at the time should have more focus put on them. There were a few female composers and a few black composers at the time who are still not talked about much today. Also no amount of slightly annoying tweets is gonna nock Beethoven or Mozart off their pedestal lol, you're kinda clutching your pearls over nothing.
@Luke B Japanese people are obsessed with jazz (there are jazz bars here where you aren’t allowed to speak while the band is playing) so loving hip hop is a logical byproduct.
We’re not “cancelling” anything, instead we’re just saying that it’s important to reckon with the history of classical music. Adam Neely has a good video called “music theory and white supremacy” which is a good watch if you have the time that goes in depth on how some aspects of (european) classical music were used to further white supremacy.
Just a pro tip if you don't know already: I wouldn't listen to or believe anything, in the area of social issues or politics, that those professors tell you.
The thing is, “classical music” is already a generalization of various European cultures, eras and genres. In reality every culture has its own cultural classical music. Sadly the umbrella term of “classical” has been monopolized by Europe. The true scope on a global scale is m a s s i v e.
The notes and scales we use today are called "western music theory" and emerged from Christian church music. Any music that uses the western scale is essentially a biproduct of classical music which was a biproduct of what came before. That is why it is simply referred to as classical, all other music is based on it. Now there are some styles that do not utilize western theory and can therefore be considered a separate development. But because these styles are less common, they are often specified with the name of the culture they emerged from such as "Chinese guzheng music". Basically, classical is called classical because it is the precursor to almost all music that exists today.
BTW this is extremely simplified, obviously western music probably predates Christianity but Christian music was the first time it was approached in a systematic way and with comprehensive records that let others build on it, so it is considered the origin of the modern musical theory and tradition.
@@ANJROTmania The vague naming just perpetuates the idea that white men ruled every facet of history, when all there is that white men just had their side of history written and spread the most. Colorism and colonial mentality (very much so prevalent in my country) still have lasting effects on many countries even hundred year after. Adding terms like "Western" (albeit making it wordier and semantic-ish) might just be one of the things to start acknowledging and correcting propaganda in the minds of people.
@@cheesecakelasagna Black men never called white men white men just men, until they learned to call white men white men? No...just no, stop...colorism is a thing but it wasn't "invented" or "applied strictly by" white men.
The more crazy shit like this I see the happier I am because its demonstrating to increasing numbers of people just how absurd and sociopathic critical race theory and related ideologies are
@@auzzgames is it not obvious what is meant by that? the exact demarcation of what I am pointing to is totally irrelevant. Its obvious what the rough set of ideas I am referring to is. Which is enough for the purposes of what I'm saying.
@@auzzgames ok so you were asking the question because you think that people who talk about critical race theory are just parroting a term they don't understand- because they are in a bubble and not thinking?
Complaining that classical music is too white and male is like complaining that Hip Hop is too black and male. Classical music *is* white music. It originated in Western Europe, and most of the great composers were lilly white men: Mozart, blond haired, blue eyed. Wagner, blond hair, green eyed. Brahms, blond hair, blue eyes. Max Bruch, blond hair brown eyes. And yes, Classical Music is a reflexion of white European culture. Wagner constantly criticized Mendelssohn, who was Jewish, for "biting", because Wagner considered that music was an extension of a people's culture, which in it's essence relfects the tastes of a race. And in case you are wondering, no, Beethoven was not black. He was a swarthy western German, like many you see in Bonn and Bavaria today. All the outrage of Classical Music being too white and male comes from the ideology of "woke" American liberalism, which tries to deny Caucasians/European of any accomplshments on the grouns that the White Man just steals other cultures. This is asinine. I am non-white(my maternal grandmother is Native America and my paternal great-grandfather was black), but I have no problem admitting that Classical Music is white. Why are people so salty about this?
@@fb9552 Sure, because spelling is such a sign of intelligence, with spell-checkers and all, right? I could stop at this, but I will gor further: English is not my first language. I did not make spelling mistakes, you dummy. I typed a lot, and my fingers slipped on the keyboard. And everything I wrote are historical facts. Go cry some more.
Yeah... i think this person wants a more diverse representation for NEO-CLASSICAL artists. Classical music is white because... its literally from europe lol.
Their next tweet must have been "soldiers in WW1 didn't properly acknowledge that they were predominantly white europeans". What is the end game for these types of people? Yes, we can acknowledge that POC and women didn't get to play the most key roles in periods before they weren't recognized as property, but what good does this do now? Do we cancel Bach because of it? It's not only a moot point but it's a cultural smudging of important benchmarks and events that happened before the world went woke. I champion everyone being treated equally and properly by our governmental systems and the general public, but reaching back hundreds of years to try and make a statement about the standards of music as we see them currently is so stupid. These are the people giving actual progressive minded people a bad name.
@Luke B that's exactly what I'm saying. What is the goal or even just the thought process behind this? If you are competent enough to make these kinds of assertions about classical music then how are you not competent enough to realize that even though history is filled with racism/sexism/bigotry/etc it is also filled with good things that lead to the progress of government AND culture? The ironic part about it is that the thought process is just as backwards and regressive as the ideas of actual bigots.
I sorta vibe with the first part of the statement but I don't think the original tweet worded it very well. Classical music shouldn't be a genre term because if you get into "classical" much at all you find out the term itself only refers to music made during a period of time known as the classical period. Prior to that you have medieval and baroque and following that you have romantic and 20th century, and that's just the tip of the ice berg. So it's not exactly equivalent to calling all the music from Little Richard to Daughters "rock," because the term rock has never been tied to a specific time period. However there's the obvious question of, "well if we're not going to refer to everyone from Hildegard Von Bingen to John Williams as classical because that term refers to stuff from the time of Mozart and Beethoven, what are we going to call it?" And the question doesn't have an obvious answer. First off, I can't really think of a word that would be able to arch over all of those different time periods gracefully, and second off even if I could think of such a word, how do you get people to actually start using it when calling everything that sounds "classical" to them classical is so much easier than learning a new term and definition? So I think, despite the inaccuracy of the term, we're probably stuck with it... but hey, genre names have worse problems. Just look at "alternative."
You're joking right? That's been debunked many times. How could someone make a masterwork painting of him just by imagining what a black man would look like white and then paint it with all the facial features of a white man flawlessly? Also there's literally historical evidence that he was white.
One conductor I know works with great enthusiasm to program and champion works that are by composers who are female. There are some amazing works by the likes of Clara Schumann, Kaija Saariaho and Errolyn Warren for example. ‘Classical Music’ tends to be used as a broad definition for a lot of music that has many different catalogues. The range of works and explorations that occurred in the late 19th to 20th century with neo-classicism, Impressionism, expressionism and a whole load of other isms is astonishing and well worth looking into if this kind of music is your thing.
Could you imagine, Mozart with big fucking mommy milkers? He'd look like that vampire chick from RE 8. God damn please go back and make Mozart a woman.
There’s no “Let’s Argue” in the title, so I can only assume you are stating facts. I now know that classical music is too white and male. Thanks for the lesson!
My personal videogames ost are : 1- The legend of Zelda ocarina of time 2- Donkey Kong Country 2 3- Shadow of the Colossus 4- Super Mario Galaxy 2 5- Metal Slug 5 6- Castlevania. symphony of the night 7- Perfect Dark 8- Megaman X 9- F- Zero x 10- Super mario bros 3
Hans eisler in one of his interviews talked about the correlation between the rise of capitalism and the prominence of lyricless music. As in,he believes that with the rise of new capitalistic hegemony the Idea that music without any lyrics (something that is often associated with classical music) us somehow superior and sublime than actual lyrical music.
Well, no women there, because at the time they had no equal eights, duh. As for being “too white” I just feel like there was no necessity to differentiate between European and non European music, until the world became more globalized. So I guess maybe the extra distinction could be needed, so we call it “European Classical Music”? Oh, and fyi, Renaissance Europe was mostly white. It’s not something we can change, and it doesn’t make the music bad. I’m sure music of the same period from other parts of the world is called something else. And I’m sure nobody will call it out for being “not white enough”
That is a Europe centric view, I just laid out, but that’s because I am in Europe and we’re all speaking a European language here, discussing western aka European culture
Saying that Classical European music is too “White-Centric” is like saying that Traditional African Folk music doesn’t have enough White Composers or Reggae is exclusionary to Eskimos/Inuit people. Apples and Softballs, my friend...
Not being able to create art, they could not understand art. And so they chose to burn everything that reminded them of their inability to transcend human tribalism and mediocrity
@@sockholderz has it got more to do with representation, or participation? Whether you like it or not, most poc arent that interested in classical music.
Piss Warm Take- I really believe that Mindless Self Indulgence should be considered as Proto-Hyper Pop. Though I agree that sonically their sound is not exactly in the same vein of the likes of 100 Gecs Etc.. But they truly share the concept, and the general spirit, of making super melodic hook-heavy pop songs and then take it apart and bring it all to a wild and quirky extreme while blending as many genres as possible, which are generally the same genres Hyper Pop is blending today- Hip Hop, Metal and Heavy Electronic music. With all the recent talk and rising popularity of the genera I don't think I ever heard them being mentioned.
