Defining Prog ... could it be that simple?

Atavachron wrote: MaxerJ wrote: "Progressive rock was what happened in the early 70's when certain brilliant instrumentalists got fed up with playing three-and-a-half minute long songs about teenage love. Unfortunately, this led them to start playing ten-and-a-half minute long songs about nothing in particular." -- Geoff Nicholson, `Big Noises: Rock Guitar in the 1990s', Quadrant Books, 1991. good

I just noticed that the book is called Rock guitar in the 1990's. He's writing in 1991...
?
It must have been a good year.

^^^
I agree, prog is a sum of many things but nothing fits alone, you need two or three words at least to define prog, and "breaks the rules" is a good start

MaxerJ wrote: "Progressive rock was what happened in the early 70's when certain brilliant instrumentalists got fed up with playing three-and-a-half minute long songs about teenage love. Unfortunately, this led them to start playing ten-and-a-half minute long songs about nothing in particular." -- Geoff Nicholson, `Big Noises: Rock Guitar in the 1990s', Quadrant Books, 1991.

good

progrules wrote: Mr ProgFreak wrote:   complexity   = the key word any definition of "prog" should have. Besides that a definition is hard  !

art+rock music= prog


complexity is one of the possible results of that....   pop can be, and sometimes  is complex and virtuosic.  What then is the difference....  the artistic intent...  that is what prog is about.


Edited by micky - August 08 2009 at 08:22

"Progressive rock was what happened in the early 70's when certain
brilliant instrumentalists got fed up with playing three-and-a-half
minute long songs about teenage love. Unfortunately, this led them
to start playing ten-and-a-half minute long songs about nothing in
particular."

-- Geoff Nicholson, `Big Noises: Rock Guitar in the 1990s', Quadrant
Books, 1991.

There is a difference between "classic" meaning 'a golden era' (such as a classic movie or a classic car) and the term "classical" meaning 'in the style of the classic era', whether that resultant style is an accurate represrentation of the classic era or merely a pastiche. The Classical Period of orchestral music was an attempt to ape the music from the classic era of history (without knowing what it actually sounded like), so was a simplification of what went before (Baroque) and without the incresesd complexity of structure that came after and was therefore more accessible and popular (and still is). This draws parallels with Symphonic Prog (which I guees should more accurately should be called Symphonical since it is aping the style without actually being Symphonic in structure or form) in that it is the most accessible and popular of the prog subgenres.

Well I for instance think that, the label "classic" is employed in terms of being something which is perceived as an era, not really a genre. The era, in my opinion, has much more relevance in terms of categorising this genre than the music itself. The era of those instruments, singing styles, and composition techniques. And since it has survived as the somewhat "academic" pillar of music, it is designated as "erudite" or "classical" or, in other words, "the starting point". What do you think of this? 

It might not help anything to have this pointed out, but the term "classical" is not held up by the music that represents it, perhaps not any more than "progressive" is.  I don't mean to conjure once again the simple observation that the term classical is used for music not in that style; that's true but it's something we all know, a different argument. 

I mean the term was invented, later, to refer to a music that sought to achieve the pleasing balances, but by new means, that the people of that time were discovering (and assuming) the Greeks and Romans (ie. the Classical people) to have employed and to have invested in their works of art, chiefly in the ancient architecture, sculpture and drama. 

So if I'm not wrong here, and Classical music was a label for musics preoccupied with balance, with everything having a reason and place, well then you immediately find problems.  I won't even bring up Beethoven, who existed on the brink of change (progress?, anyway I'm sticking to classical here).  Scarlatti might hold up, but the oft-cited father of the style "Papa" Haydn violated his own principles when he pleased, for instance writing sonatas that had a middle movement in a quite unrelated key (even ugly by a thorough-going analysis).  In fact Mozart used Haydn's models and was more "classical" than him!  The real classical in music, if you accept the term, lies mostly with all the composers whose names have not been passed down to us. 

Anyway, if you accept all this then you see with Classical another term invented to describe something that had already got quite underway without a name; and as time went on it lost parts of its rigor (as a definition) and accepted fresh somewhat-related musics that kept it alive, because, you might say, it had to.  Thoughts?

Perhaps that's the reason why Fripp showed some disagreement regarding this style.
However, there's still something that bothers me... may it be completely or not realized, art itself is, subjectively, not able to progress, is it? The only thing I'm 100% sure about is that we're talking about art.
Sorry if I'm getting a bit philosophical here, but it seems there is no other way but to recur to this discipline to try to figure out this. Speaking as an artist. if you try to draw in as many elements as you want, but you end up in a creative loop, that means you're set on something really big and you want to boldly make your statements "someone important in this world", using what you have, but you may be regarded as pretentious and breaming with self-indulgence. If we take it from this point of view, we might draw the conclusion that the "progressiveness" comes from the subject's creative aspirations. That is one of many theories. Another one could be the theory of the ones who try to understand the art. In other words that "progress" can be achieved by the global outcome of an album of piece or "something of some sort", and its overall originality, although this is not a word I like to use. There maybe a lot more theories, but they're just theories...

I know that this might sound a bit uncharacteristically simple to the majority of people posting in this thread, but I have to say, in my humble opinion, that progressive music should be defined by what its name. Progress. Just take a genre, ANY genre, and then try and make things that you should not usually do in it, that's the reason why I think that the line that separates Avant-garde and progressive music is thinner than it looks. What do you think of this?