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Classical music can also be much longer. Symphonies, masses, or operas are many hours long. Kind of like an album of dozens of the shorter 20 minute pieces.
Symphonies still have subdivisions that can stand on their own, so a symphony is more like an album and not a single song. The movements of Beethoven's 9th Symphony range from slightly more than 10 minutes to slightly more than 20, for example.
Yeah, but a symphony is meant to be listened to as a whole much more than an album. It of course depends album to album, some have a tight through line, some don't as much. But there wasn't as much of a way to listen to just a single movement before recordings, so you would listen to the whole long thing moreso than the movements individually.
There are plenty of progressive Rock and Metal albums that are also supposed to be listened to as a whole.
And people have been playing Ode To Joy on its own long before there were recordings - single instrument renditions of symphonic pieces exist for a reason.
I agree. It's just easier to split up nowadays.
I'm glad there is still long form music being made both inside and outside the classical world. I really appreciate when music builds a full world of it's own.