LZ and Classical Music

[thisiswater]

My favorite music is LZ and classical, orchestral, string quartets, etc. I'm asking musicians here to educate me on why this might be. Is LZ's style like that of a symphony? Are compositions similar? Trying to figure out this connection my brain is making. While I have some musical training -- piano -- I don't know enough theory to solve this mystery.

[Matjaz1]

Well there is always a connection between good music! And even if it mostly comes from the blues, it's important what these guys write within it and it's great! Plus it gets complex and even directly classical at atimes, with many guitar overdubbs and keyboards and you get virtuosity all the time, just like in classical!

Lot's of classical stuff is also written for a four piece 'band' and when there is a full orchestra, many times many instruments play the same lines and many don't play all the time, so it's not such a problem, there are only four musicians in Zeppelin and a half an our Dazed, always seemed like a symphony to me, even with only a few onstage!

[JTM]

This maybe,

[ScarletMacaw]

I started out listening to classicial music, as a young child. When I first heard "Stairway to Heaven" when I was 11, I thought it sounded in many ways more like a symphony than like the pop/rock tunes I was hearing on the radio, because it had different sections, instead of just verses and a chorus.

I still listen to classical music and it's occurred to me that classical music has riffs just like rock music does. Classical compositions tend to build more on their riffs than most rock songs do, but I think Led Zeppelin is an exception. Dazed and Confused is probably the best example, but also, Over the Hills and Far Away, What is and What Should Never Be, No Quarter, and probably more that I can't think of right now because it's 8 a.m. on a Saturday.

[Pagefan55]

I think Led Zeppelin and Richard Wagner possess some surface similarities. Both produced emotion-laden and dramatic music which was mesmerizing, enthralling and almost hypnotic. Both were hugely popular and influential in their heyday and continue to be so today. Both possess large, loyal fanbases. Both were accused by their critics of producing music which was self-indulgent, bloated, authoritarian, and even "dangerous." Once, Plant even compared Page to Wagner. I don't mean to overstate the similarities between Zep and Wagner -- there were obviously many huge differences between the two -- but I thought these similarities were worth noting.

Edited September 1, 2014 by Pagefan55

[ScarletMacaw]

I think Led Zeppelin and Richard Wagner possess some surface similarities. Both produced emotion-laden and dramatic music which was mesmerizing, enthralling and almost hypnotic. Both were hugely popular and influential in their heyday and continue to be so today. Both possess large, loyal fanbases. Both were accused by their critics of producing music which was self-indulgent, bloated, authoritarian, and even "dangerous." Once, Plant even compared Page to Wagner. I don't mean to overstate the similarities between Zep and Wagner -- there were obviously many huge differences between the two -- but I thought these similarities were worth noting.

Tchaikovsky also. Hugely popular and accused of not being original enough. Meanwhile, his popularity just increases as time goes on.

[Mike S]

My favorite music is LZ and classical, orchestral, string quartets, etc. I'm asking musicians here to educate me on why this might be. Is LZ's style like that of a symphony? Are compositions similar? Trying to figure out this connection my brain is making. While I have some musical training -- piano -- I don't know enough theory to solve this mystery.

good music is good music! like some of the others have said, there are also a number of Zep tunes that are structured more like a classical piece than a typical rock song, like Dazed and confused, its got lots of sections, or movements, if you like.

the more i listen, the more i think the lads were listening to everything they could get their hands on, from Elvis, to Holst...

-m