Classical Crossover Music

August 13, 2014 at 08:09 PM · Hello everyone! I am writing a paper on classical crossover music with a focus on string quartets. Just wanted to know if anyone has any suggested readings on the topic and any groups I should listen to. It's a fascinating topic, and especially with the changes in classical music and the massive influences of popular music I feel that it's time that classical crossover music be more addressed in academia. Within the last twenty years popular music studies has reached some universities in Canada and the US and very few papers have addressed classical crossover music--in both the classical and popular music departments.

So far, I've looked up the following quartets:

- bond

- Kronos Quartet

- Escala

- Turtle Island Quartet

Readings:

- Jackaway, Gwenyth. “Selling Mozart to the Masses: Crossover Marketing as Cultural Diplomacy.” Journal of Popular Music Studies, Vol. 11-12/1 (March 1999): 125-150.

- Millington, Aliese. “Subject to Change: Nine Constructions of the Crossover Between Western Art and Popular Musics (1995-2005).” PhD diss., University of Adeliade, 2007.

Replies (4)

Arnie Cohen

August 14, 2014 at 06:51 PM · I don't have any reading suggestions, however you might try listening to:

Emerson Lake and Palmer. They stole from Janacek, Mussorgsky, from what I can recognize. Specifically the song Knife Edge (ELP album), and their Pictures at en exhibition album. They probably have more examples which I have not picked out. The group Yes has a song "cans and brahms", which steals from Brahms 4. Actually turtle island sounds more like bluegrass influence to me, but perhaps that is just my perception.

Dorian Fu

August 14, 2014 at 07:21 PM · I don't see Kronos as a crossover, more like a traditional string quartet with a heavy focus on new and contemporary music...

Ebene Quartet does some awesome Beatles covers. And then there's that quartet that recorded covers for Radiohead and other bands. (Vitamin?)

I guess if you open up your parameter to string instruments playing outside of traditional rep, you can also look at Yo-Yo Ma doing stuff with Silk Road, and blue grass stuff with Chris Thile, Edger Meyer, etc. Same with Joshua Bell with Sam Bush, Edgar Meyer, etc. Time for Three is awesome too.