Who are some composers who bridge the Classical and Popular music world?

I know the stabby glares of music snobbery will pierce my sacrilegious soul for saying this, but Aaron Copland is pretty cool, and Prokofiev might work for your question, puckrock2000, with his Lieutenant Kije music.

Hey, you get a star for your question. And you get big points for recognizing that music, like other forms of life, can evolve.

"Sir" Andrew Lloyd Weber, whose father was a known composer of serviceable conservative modern classical music, has tried.

Story goes he was in quite a snit that the classical community did not take a 'serious' work he composed, well, seriously.

More than one critic responded, after their initial review, that the classical community would take him seriously when he composed something serious.

John Williams of 'Star Wars' fame, or notoriety, evidently wrote a bassoon concerto, but again, only polite critical response was to be heard.

It is also generally acknowledged that Bernstein's strongest impulse and his best composing was for the lighter venues of the popular stage. His best 'classical' work 'Chichester Psalms', sounds like a broadway show lacking a stage and a book.

I'd call his 'masterpiece' the original (non-revised) Candide. You can hear West Side Story just around the corner in the finale of Candide. (would that he had stopped there....)

Kurt Weill wrote a nice, snappy violin concerto typical of the period, but this was before he turned to musical theater.

Nobody on the west end of the Atlantic has ever considered Ferde Grofe anything but a 'pops' composer. Closest he got was orchestrating Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.

Some acknowleged classical composers have written move scores, but many a movie score composer who have tried for the classical venue haven't made lasting impressions.

Ravel's early Pavane pour une Infante defunte (sp?) was turned into a popular ballade, "the lamp is low." I'm certain the event was an accident, and hope he made a few sous from it

From pop to classical? Too many years cranking out simple tunes, simple chords, and maybe an innate proclivity for that genre, have usually been exactly the 'shortcomings' that appear in these musicians attempts at serious music - a lifetime of writing in short and repetitive simple forms has to be a major handicap as well.

p.b.

To Emily: Debussy didn't move to the pop genre...pop artists have just zampled his music in their own trash.

I can't believe no one has mentioned this yet, and it may be a stretch, but whatever. I'm going to lump film music in with popular music, since so many people on this site can also lump film in with classical *cough cough*. We all know to what I refer. With that being said, Aaron Copland wrote gorgeous symphonic and piano music...and also composed for film scores: the 1939 version of "Of Mice and Men," "The North Star" (1943), "The Heiress" (1949), "Something Wild" (1961), "The City" (1939), and "The Cummington Story" (1945). I'm pretty sure he also did Steinbeck's "The Red Pony," but I don't remember what year that was. In 1998 there was a Spike Lee movie that used a lot of Copland's music...but I don't remember what it's called. Maybe "He Got Game?" Oh well. That's my trivia for the day!

This is shaky ground. MOST of the people who are pop performers, who have made forays into classical music, are pretentious, not adequately trained, and end up embarrassing themselves. And - Paul McCartney did NOT write most of the Liverpool Oratorio - ti was ghost-written, by whom I cannot recall. Sting *carries around* that lute, but plays it very little - it is so obvious when he stops, and the dubbed music underneath continues. His singing of Dowland - OK, I guess - most people THEN did not have what we called trained voices. Bernstein - I completely agree. Gershwin - he had to hire Ferde Grofe to notate and orchestrate most of his more ambitious works. Zappa was Zappa - no comment. Joe Jackson - I have no experience here.

I have heard Michael Bolton try to sing Nessun Dorma ( I am *so sorry* if I just caused you to launch your breakfast!) and other pop singers who think that is they can slobber their way thru an aria, BELTING, that makes them opera singers. And we have discussed the OPPOSITE direction, too - classical singers who try pop ( was it Denyce Graves that released that pop album that made us all cringe? And I have a James Galway CD of him playing a Mike Mower Latino/jazz work - *does not swing* is the kindest comment I can make).

I know your original question was about composers - but I I flinch whenever this topic comes up.

At least:

John Adams

Karl Jenkins (an ex-prog rock star!)

Paul McCartney has gone classical too, as well as Mike Oldfield, and Sting has recorded some of the finest songs by John Dowland.

Go back a bit before even George Gershwin. We have Lehar - immensely popular operettas, but he also wrote 'serious' classical music - even piano sonatas. Then we have those the Strauss family. Now thought of as 'light classical' but they were effectively providing the popular dance band music of their day. Did you know Gounod wrote popular ballads in the Victorian drawing room style? ('the Worker' 'The night lay o'er the city, The rain and winds made moan, The worker in his garret With nought on earth to praise him, No earthly love to bless....' etc etc) We mustn't forget Sir Arthur Sullivan who always thought he was demeaning himself writing music to accompany Gilbert's librettos. Even Mozart and Beethoven went 'slumming', writing music for Court Balls.

Note to Petr B. Kurt Weill wrote a lot more than a 'snappy violin concerto' before he 'turned to Broadway musicals' (forced on him by circumstances due to his exile in the USA). There are at least two symphonies. (from 1920 and 1933). Also no need to put apostrophes around 'Sir' in describing Andrew Lloyd Webber - he is in fact 'Lord Webber' (though, heaven knows why he is entitled to that honour which I cannot recollect ever being given to one of our 'serious' composers. Lord Berners doesn't count as his was an inherited title). I think you are a little harsh on Lloyd Webber senior. His problem was that he was writing in the a time when post Schoebergian serialism was in the ascendant in a style which did not find favour with the musical establishment, and the savaging he received at the hands of the crtics led him to stop composing for a time. Ravel wasn't the only composer to have a melody turned into a pop song. The 'big tune' from the finale of Brahms 1 was used by the Kingston Trio (I remember writing to EMI who issued the EP featuring it, asking [tongue in cheek] if they had paid royalties but, surprise, surprise, I received no reply). Then, of course, there is 'Story of a Starry Night' using the last movement of Tchaikovsky 6. There's also another using Chopin, but for the life of me I cannot remember what was used or what the pop song was.

Some would argue Bond does this.

If you just mean artists who have released both classical AND "pop" works, then you'd also need to include Billy Joel (forget the name of it at the moment) and Paul McCartney (for his "Liverpool Oratorio").

The Residents

sorry, I don't much experience with this topic. I just wanted to comment on this:

Bolton doing Nessun Dorma? That had to be a joke.... I wouldn't listen to that for fear it would ruin it for me. :o

"Paul McCartney has gone classical too"[Liverpool oratorio]

McCartney can't read or write music...Carl Davis wrote this rubbish, for which he should be deeply ashamed.