CLASSIC VS CLASSICAL

Question

Why do we say CLASSIC LITERATURE and CLASSICAL MUSIC?

Rover_KE · Accepted Answer

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See if this earlier similar thread answers your question.

Rover

DMW · Answer

Zdravo, Denisa.
"Classical music" is a particular type of music. Music of this type can be good or bad.

"Classic literature" means literature that is good enough to have stood the test of time, and to be widely regarded as good. It is not limited to a particular genre or type of literature. It can be any type; what matters is the quality.

So "classical" and "classic" actually mean quite different things.

Denisa 0610 · Answer

Thank you for the answer (although classical music is always good for me but I'm not an expert). Modern literature is rather boring so it is not "classic".
Do you speak Croatian?

DMW · Answer

Well, to be considered "classic", something really needs to have been around for a while, so that a wide range of people can appreciate its quality. So very new literature is automatically disqualified, whether it is boring or not.

Pricam samo malo Vašeg jezika, zato što je moja žena iz Sarajeva.

Denisa 0610 · Answer

Pozdrav Vašoj ženi!
Can we say for J.Joplin that she is a classic? I don't like her very much but she is well known. Is she the same as Beatles?

Ahmed7 · Answer

..

From my experience, and from some searches I think that both 'Classical' and 'Classic' are right to use in the two words
How.!!

Classical tends to refer to something in the very long past (ancient Greeks and Romans)..

"Classical music" is that kind of music composed by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven
Classical period falls between the Baroque and the Romantic periods.
'Classic music' is anything that stays in the public consciousness and can be of any genre, including rock, country and western, jazz ..

"Classical literature" it's referred to Greek and Roman works Aristotle, Plato, etc.
or any literature that written before 18th and early 19th centuries, when authors looked to old Greek and Roman precedents for inspiration ...
"Classic literature" refers to English, French or Russian writings Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Jane Austen, etc..

Context is everything...

Denisa 0610 · Answer

I have found also a "modern classic literature". It is defined as:

"A modern classic, then, would have to be a book written after WWI, and probably after WWII. Why? Because those cataclysmic events shifted the way the world sees itself in irreversible ways....But readers who live in a post-WWII era are concerned with much that is new. Ideas about race, gender, class are shifting and literature is both a cause and effect. Readers have a broader understanding of an interconnected world where people, pictures and words travel in all directions at warp speed. The idea of “young people speaking their minds” is no longer new. A world that has witnessed totalitarianism, imperialism and corporate conglomeration cannot turn back that clock. And perhaps most importantly, readers today bring a hardened realism that stems from contemplating the enormity of genocide and perennially living on the edge of self-destruction.

These hallmarks of our modernism can be seen in a wide variety of works. A glance at recent winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature brings us Orham Pamuk, who explores conflicts in modern Turkish society; J.M. Coetzee, best known as a white writer in a post-apartheid South Africa; and Gunter Grass, whose novel The Tin Drum is perhaps the seminal exploration of post-WWII soul-searching.

Beyond content, modern classics also demonstrate a shift in style from earlier eras. This shift began in the early part of the century, with luminaries such as James Joyce expanding the reach of the novel as a form. In the post-war era, the hardened realism of the Hemingway school became less of a novelty and more a requirement. Cultural shifts have meant that obscenities once viewed as outrageous are commonplace. Sexual “liberation” may be more of a fantasy than a reality in the real world, but in literature the characters certainly sleep around a lot more casually than they used to. In tandem with television and movies, literature has also shown its willingness to spill blood on the pages, as violent horrors that once would not even have been alluded to now become the basis of best-selling novels."

http://classiclit.about.com/od/basicsliteratureintro/a/aa_modernclassic_2.htm

Ahmed7 · Answer

Thanks for the information, Ma'am ....

It's the first time I hear about this expression, I guess we can find also modern classical music (:
but after all we can't compare between the two types ..

Here's a list for the best "Modern Classic Literature" rated by good-reads members (I'm one of them BTW) (:

http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/modern-classic

DMW · Answer

No.  "Classical music" means a particular type of music that was written during a particular period of time (roughly the second half of the 18th century).  By definition there is no such thing as modern classical music, nor will there ever be such a thing.

CLASSIC VS CLASSICAL

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