The Influence of Classical Music on Modern Music

Art defines us, allowing us unleash our personalities and creative abilities through forms such as painting, sculpture, and, of course, music. For centuries, music artists in specific have exchanged ideas, embracing the culture of combining folk songs and tunes into their newer pieces of music. Today, some music artists wish to carry on with that tradition in what is now known as “rap sampling”. This method of sharing music has now interfered with the modern concept of copyright. With this relatively new legal action used to protect original works, ancient traditions of sharing music can no longer be practiced freely.

Music has evolved too many different forms that we recognize today. We trace this development throughout time. Beginning in the middle ages, we have seen advancement from the Gregorian chant all the way to the Jazz of the 20th century. The current events, politics, religion, technology and composers can shape musical eras during time. Here I will look at the middle ages, renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic and twentieth century periods. I hope that a better understanding can be reached to why, when, where and who are the reasons for musical evolution.

Classic the term, can refer to a number of different genes, that are related. The meaning of classical music itself in our lange is European classical music, (older western music). Also referred to a classic (or art) non-western kind of music, like the indian music, or chinese classic.

The most obvious similarities between modern art and modern music from their Victorian counterparts was the large shift in subject matter. In art, the movement away from Ancient Greek and Roman influences to a focus on nitty-gritty dirty, poor Americans was enormous. The old portrait and nature based art reflected in the work of Victorian idealists conflicted with the abstract, vivid, eccentric works of the Modernists. Similarly, in modern Ragtime music, the new focus on adultery, sex, and sins also reflected the new naughty America. Both music and art began to focus on what was happening in America and what the younger generation felt, versus the old European influenced way that society was “supposed” to be. Another key similarity between the evolvement of music and art can be viewed by the change of techniques. From the use of hard brush-strokes to the jumbling of different shapes and colors, to a focus on societal imperfections, art again began to go again the Idealist norm and paint that which was truly there, not what was idolized. Similarly, the percussion-heavy, syncopated beats, and “blackness” of Ragtime music illustrated a huge change of heart. This music showed the eagerness of youth to truly take what they could from the new technological world. The modernization of both music and art was largely

Historically, many music styles developed in America including classical, rock and roll, jazz, hip hop as well as many others. But, interestingly they all originated from different cultures.

This early film music had many influences from different genres, such as jazz and blues, ragtime, vaudeville, and the style of music from Broadway musicals was also becoming popular. 4 Film “composers” of this era had a wealth of popular music to draw on in order to create the music for the silent films they were working on. The varying genres also meant that they were able to create different styles and moods of music to suit the different genres of film, or the different

Nowadays classical music, including music from the canon, is used in a huge number of ways by people in modern culture; music is emotional underscoring, it is a field of force/perfume like an atmosphere, it is medicine, to alter your mood like a drug, it is also a key to mysteries of nature. (Robert Fink) Mostly William Tell Overture and ‘Largo al Factotum’ from Barber have primarily been used for chase/excitement sequences (Tell) or comedy (Barber). For example “The Rabbit of Seville” performed by Bugs Bunny in 1950 in the famous cartoon Looney Tunes. Other examples would be the opening sequence of Mrs. Doubtfire in 1993 and The Lone Ranger in 1948. Beethoven is ‘popular’ in pop culture and in the concert hall, for example, Fur Elise is a ‘popular’ piece. It is the soundtrack of modern life, providing a surfeit of musical wallpaper that delivers easy listening to nurseries, upscale supermarkets, doctors’ offices, cafes, and retirement homes. (Yang,

The case I chose to write about is Pharrell Williams hit 2014 "Happy". The song was released in 2013 and has accumulated over 46 million views on YouTube since then and has won various awards and nominations as well as appearing in the popular animated movie Despicable Me 2. Although the case as of now has not been taken to court, the track’s rhythm sounds oddly familiar to a song written by Marvin Gaye in 1965 titled “Ain’t That Peculiar”. The family of Gaye has had previous issues with Pharrell and other popular artist plagiarizing as well. In 2013 the family sued artist Robin Thicke and Williams for their song “Blurred Lines” on the grounds of copyright infringement for sounding almost exactly like Gaye’s song “Got To Give It Up”. Early

Throughout history, music has evolved and branched off into many different categories, each of which have distinct styles and orchestrations; there is classical music that is centuries old and today there is modern contemporary music that is often synthesized or played with electronic instruments. There are also many ways that the two styles can cross over each other; this is seen in popular music and a lot of video game music. Though many people cannot see any similarities between modern and classical music, modern music is really an evolution of classical music; the roots of modern music go back to classical era.

Scott Joplin’s piece The Entertainer was also a ragtime piece written in 1902. It was also part of the ragtime revival and was used as the theme music for The Sting. Its one of the pieces featured on Joshua Rifkin’s Scott Joplin: Piano Rags album. And because of its new popularity, it was also known to be played on ice cream trucks in the United

Music is a unique way of expressing one’s self, though ideas can become recycled and borrowed by other artists. These days, a particularly older person could hear a newly-released song and find the music to be familiar. An artist can simply borrow the music from an older song and then incorporate it into a new song of their own. Many artists and songwriters nowadays use this technique in their own music. Say an older person was to hear the smash hit “Shape of You” by songwriter and singer Ed Sheeran. They would hear a song that they once treasured from their days in the club. The song “No Scrubs” by a high-selling music trio of the 1990’s, called TLC, once wrote a song that contains that same music. This is a perfect representation of the idea of reused music.

The song starts with a six-second segment taken from the “Choir” by jazz flutist James Newton without permission. Also, Gladwell noticed that Beethoven’s da-da-da-daaaaa was used in several other musical pieces. Plagiarism is entirely a gray area because no person can label a certain segment of notes as their own. Theoretically it could be played with different tempos, different chords, and different volume. Yet, using someone’s lyrics is strictly plagiarism, specifically when the order is swapped.

Throughout history there have been many musical "influences". One extremely important influence to modern music is The Grateful Dead.

In the musical sense, sampling is when a segment of music is taken from an original recording and is inserted, sometimes repetitively, in a new recording. A sample can be any type of media that is pre-recorded, from classical pieces of music, to rock guitar riffs. The origins of music sampling predate the 1980 's, when hip-hop was first brought on the scene. Some say that sampling has been around much longer than some think, steering to the fact that jazz musicians have always imitated each other 's riffs. In 1961, after being influenced by many other musicians who had experimented with sound and recording, James Tenney took it a step further by talking an existing popular song and changing it completely. His “Collage #1” took Elvis Presley 's recording of “Blue Suede Shoes”, took out sections, swapping them with others and played them along with the tempo of the song. Many could argue that this was the beginning of music sampling. Although that was the beginning, music sampling has only gained mainstream popularity through the Hip-hop/rap and electronic genres. Even though sampling is a very popular thing to do now in the digital age, it doesn 't come without it 's complications. These include many claiming that sampling is unoriginal and doesn 't need any musical creativity. Nevertheless, there are many points to counter-act these arguments including, generating interest for unknown music and encouraging musical experimentation. In this essay I will

It wasn’t until the landmark 1991 Biz Markie copyright infringement case over his use of a Gilbert O’Sullivan sample on I Need a Haircut that the courts determined sampling constituted willful infringement. Record companies, realizing the cost of an infringement case, pushed artists to declare the use of samples in their works. However, with fear of incurring additional costs, companies and artists also embraced the possibility of being sampled as they often earned royalties for their contributions. Some publishing companies, namely Bridgeport Music, Inc. and TufAmerica Inc., took the profitability of copyright ownership even