Presenting classical or jazz performers with musical genres they do not normally perform can be confronting. Composers have to employ certain compositional techniques in order to overcome difficulties in practice. Further reference is made to the influence of American composers Pat Metheny, Lyle Mays, Maria Schneider, and Australian composers Paul Grabowsky and Carl Vine upon the accompanying composition portfolio.
Enquiries are being conducted into a composer’s body of work, whether or not there is a specialization in a fusion of genres or whether only certain compositions feature this phenomenon. The aim is to identify the existence of fusion in the art music composed by the above mentioned composers and to determine the kind of fusion. The exploration and systematization of a wide range of crossover phenomena reveals that different types of background motivations, such as marketing concerns of record companies or the experimenting attitudes of musicians, can result in highly dissimilar pieces being labelled generally as Crossover.Īn analysis of the author’s composition portfolio is presented with reference to selected compositions by relevant contemporary composers interviewed in this study: Australian composers Judy Bailey, Stuart Greenbaum, Mark Isaacs, Andrea Keller, and South African composer Stefans Grové. Qualitative interviews with current international genre-mixing composers expand the scope of the study. Analyses of chosen works from Gentle Giant, Liquid Tension Experiment, Kutiman, and of popular adaptations of Vivaldi´s “Four Seasons” help illuminate characteristics of different sub-categories of “crossing over”.
The examination of crossing over within popular music focuses on jazz fusion, progressive rock, classical-crossover and mashup. How do social meanings and general associations attached to certain musical genres come into play when classical music meets disco, hip-hop meets the symphony or heavy metal meets the opera? How do artistic or commercial concepts and communication strategies affect composers' techniques of mixing genres? This study observes musical exchange between western art music and various forms of popular music with regard to intra- and extra-musical aspects.
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