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Folk music also has skill and tradition behind it that everyone through history has enjoyed, not just upper class citizens enjoying classical music in opera houses in Bach's era.

Of course classical music has a certain refinement and sophistication but at the end of the day almost all genres are built on the same musical elements and principles of melody, harmony, rhythm, tempo, beat/meter, dynamics, pitch, texture, timbre, etc... classical music excels because of the dynamic range of the instruments available to the composer I reckon, which allows a greater palette of emotions to be expressed through sophisticated arrangements....

Words represent the closest instrument we have to the soul, the human voice and we all have a voice!

Great Post!
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Thanks for this comment, it is well thought out. Many composers actually composed using themes from forgotten folk music in regions around them. For example, Béla Bartók's Mikrokosmos uses themes from folk music. Bartók uses scales, and forgotten themes from folk music in this. Another classic example is Percy Grainger's Lincolnshire Posy. We played Lincolnshire Posy this year in wind ensemble. It was a lot of fun to view how Grainger incorporates themes that had never been written down, and in most cases only sung for centuries (passed down orally). It has a lot of weird time signatures as a result, but it is quite beautiful (especially the second movement).

You are right that almost every genre uses the same foundations, I feel that classical music has a much more strict definition of how each of the principles is to be used, while other genres, Jazz for instance, have looser rules that allow composers to almost always go out of the box. I guess it's a question of musical taste.
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Thanks for the follow! It's nice to see/hear classical music represented in the music section on steemit. I'm following someone on here who plays piano and is a composer inspired by Strauss, Wagner, Schubert, Brahms, etc.. You may like to check out some of his work/posts. His username is @senzenfrenz and he's great! The composition in his first post is amazing.

Hello,

I wanted to let you know that we shared this article on our Steemit's Best Classical Music facebook page and included it in this week's roundup post: Steemit's Best Classical Music Roundup [Issue #4].

Thank you for your contribution of high quality content relating to classical music!

This post can't live without Chopin's Waltz Op.64 n.2

A very nice piece!

Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2 also worth listening. There's also an interesting story behind this masterpiece. He was so depressed because of failed 1st concert(1887) that he have lost selfconfidence and felt into creative block. It could have never seen the world. And it would be so if some of his friends didn't suggest him to go to a genius physician Nikolai Dahl. He used a brand new approach a hypnosis and after three months Rachmaninov was cured. In 1901 he dedicated his 2nd Concert to Dahl.

Yes, I have heard this piece and the story behind it. I became aware of that story when researching for this article. Thank you for sharing though! I never had heard of the hypnosis approach. Rachmaninoff is one of the greats!

He was very lucky because Dahl was among the first physicians to use hypnosis and the only in Russian Empire. Hypnosis is a very interesting field i know that it can open some doors to unconscious.

Interesting

Geniality and providence steps side by side)

Outstanding post and narrative! Thank you for sharing.

Now this is a beautiful piece, more impressionist than traditional classical music but wow! Talk about atmosphere, moods and emotions. It kind of loses it's sense of meter and paints a wonderful picture... The flute motif intro, along with the Harp, makes me feel like I'm in ancient Greece or something...
Folk Music inspired?

Debussy Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune - Leonard Bernstein

The composition was inspired by the poem L'après-midi d'un faune by Stéphane Mallarme

It would appear it was inspired by a poem.

Bernstein went to the Curtis institute of music. My piano instructor also went there.