"Look who's been dumped" - on the future of classical music recordings
Jeffrey S. Long
http://www.scena.org/columns/lebrecht/031231-NL-recording.html
This paragraph in particular does not sit well with me:
"Those rhythms [profits] were disrupted, distorted and ultimately
destroyed by digital recording, which delivered sonic utopia and
exposed the flaws in the process. Attentive listeners were able to
hear underground trains rumbling beneath Decca's Kingsway Hall, and
botched edits in supposedly authentic performances. Digital clarity
revealed the artificiality of recording, the fundamental fakery of
producing an inhumanly accurate replica of all-too human music. As the
digital sheen wore off, so did the sales."
--Jeffrey Long
College-Conservatory of Music, Cincinnati
Jay Kadis
It seems that the major labels are losing their taste for what they perceive as
small-market material. Since classical recordings tend to sell consistently
over many years, as opposed to the huge immediate sales generated by pop music,
they are losing interest in these productions.
What will hopefully take its place is an independent market, eliminating a host
of middle-men, where small retailers and independent producers of music get
together with their customers via the internet or private mail lists and carry
on business on a smaller scale. It won't have to repay the inflated costs of
the major label infrastructure and great recordings of "limited interest" will
become more available.
At least that's the hope.
But there are inherent problems with much of the so-called classical market.
How many recordings of Beethoven's 9th are necessary? If that's how you define
classical, you will eventually run out of customers. And recording symphony
orchestras is a very expensive proposition in any scheme. But there's also
plenty of Baroque and Renaissance music being performed by small ensembles with
access to decent halls and good recordists. And new compositions for
orchestras, some involving modern music technology as well, may pique the
interest of a whole new audience. Let's not give up so easily.
I agree with you about the above paragraph: it isn't the technology that's at
fault.
-Jay
--
x------- Jay Kadis ------- x---- Jay's Attic Studio ------x
x Lecturer, Audio Engineer x Dexter Records x
x CCRMA, Stanford University x http://www.offbeats.com/ x
x-------- http://ccrma-www.stanford.edu/~jay/ ----------x
normanstrong
"Jeffrey S. Long" <gott...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:69cd9a1c.04010...@posting.google.com...
I read the entire article. It consists of 2 parts: The first part is
a long-winded description of the decline of the classical music
recording industry, which supposedly will lead to its final demise in
the year 2004. The second part is the one paragraph copied above, in
which the problem is blamed on digital recording and its consequent
perfection.
It doesn't sit well with me either. In fact, I'd have to say that
digital recording has nothing to do with lost classical sales. I
don't know what the truth is, but certainly the "inhuman accuracy" of
digital recording is not it.
Norm Strong
Mike Rivers
> "Those rhythms [profits] were disrupted, distorted and ultimately
> destroyed by digital recording, which delivered sonic utopia and
> exposed the flaws in the process. Attentive listeners were able to
> hear underground trains rumbling beneath Decca's Kingsway Hall,
Hey, it's just like being there.
--
I'm really Mike Rivers (mri...@d-and-d.com)
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo
Jeffrey S. Long
> How many recordings of Beethoven's 9th are necessary? If that's how you define
> classical, you will eventually run out of customers. And recording symphony
> orchestras is a very expensive proposition in any scheme. But there's also
> plenty of Baroque and Renaissance music being performed by small ensembles with
> access to decent halls and good recordists. And new compositions for
> orchestras, some involving modern music technology as well, may pique the
> interest of a whole new audience. Let's not give up so easily.
You have hit a good point there. There are certain "definitive
recordings" of the "greatest hits" of classical music: Beethoven's 9th
Symphony, Tchaikovsky's 5th, Glenn Gould's recordings of Bach keyboard
works, etc. Sadly, not many people care about newer recordings of
these masterpieces. I know I would rather listen to my Leonard
Bernstein recording of Dvorāk's New World Symphony than one by the
Radio-TV Orchestra of Luxembourg, for example.
Another problem I recognize and imagine will continue and worsen in
the world of classical music, particularly with regards to recordings,
is, as you hint at, the issue of the "non-pops" classical music.
Unfortunately, it seems that the market for recordings of early music
(pre-Classical) or music of relatively obscure composers (e.g.,
Dittersdorf, Boccherini, or, say, Clara Schumann) is limited mainly to
music students and teachers. Then consider modern music that, even to
many classical-trained ears, is cryptic and difficult to listen to.
The gap seems to be widening between the pops classics and the
accessibility of modern art music, and this means fewer sales.
All that said, it is not clear to me how the recording medium has
anything to do with the state of affairs and society's attitudes
towards art music in the Western European tradition. Many of my
favorite recordings are on vinyl, but a good bit of them are indeed
DDD recordings. I'm not really sure what the future holds for the
classical music recording industry. As a music historian, I am
concerned with the future of classical music as a valued and cherished
art in modern society. Articles like these only increase my concern
that we are losing a great art to commercialism.
DW Griffi
> In article <69cd9a1c.04010...@posting.google.com>
> gott...@hotmail.com writes:
>
> > "Those rhythms [profits] were disrupted, distorted and ultimately
> > destroyed by digital recording, which delivered sonic utopia and
> > exposed the flaws in the process. Attentive listeners were able to
> > hear underground trains rumbling beneath Decca's Kingsway Hall,
Can't believe they were duped for so long. So that's why my
neighborhood record store doesn't stock any classical music.
--
remove 555 from address to reply
Scott Dorsey
>
>I read the entire article. It consists of 2 parts: The first part is
>a long-winded description of the decline of the classical music
>recording industry, which supposedly will lead to its final demise in
>the year 2004. The second part is the one paragraph copied above, in
>which the problem is blamed on digital recording and its consequent
>perfection.
The demise in classical music isn't just in recordings. Concert attendance
is down too.
Part of what happened, though, is that with the CD 'revolution' a lot of
people went and bought back catalogue on CD... and now these folks have
fairly complete collections and they aren't buying much material because
they already have most of the standard repetoire.
And they aren't going to buy any more... after you have six recordings of
Beethoven's Sixth, there comes a time when you don't need any more. And
classical labels, orchestras, and listeners all seem to be resisting any
new repetoire in favor of old warhorses, so there isn't any new market
to open there.
Crossover sales is up, but crossover is a nightmare to my mind.
And there is no drive to get younger listeners, really. Kids don't
listen to classical music, in part because they aren't exposed to it.
And a lot of that has to do with the lack of music programs in schools
if you ask me.
>It doesn't sit well with me either. In fact, I'd have to say that
>digital recording has nothing to do with lost classical sales. I
>don't know what the truth is, but certainly the "inhuman accuracy" of
>digital recording is not it.
No, if anything the accuracy of digital recording kept the downturn from
happening a decade or two earlier.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
William Sommerwerck
The end of WWII brought about the rise of rock and roll and the youth culture.
These have both lead to a gradual decline -- now bordering on destruction -- of
"high" Western culture.
There are other examples. For example, Time-Life no longer publishes books! And
Britannica no longer publishes the Great Books "annual" (The Great Ideas Today).
People are no longer interested in reading, thinking, or exposing themselves to
anything the represents any sort of intellectual challenge.
Paul Tumolo
Jay Kadis wrote:
> What will hopefully take its place is an independent market, eliminating a host
> of middle-men, where small retailers and independent producers of music get
> together with their customers via the internet or private mail lists and carry
> on business on a smaller scale. It won't have to repay the inflated costs of
> the major label infrastructure and great recordings of "limited interest" will
> become more available.
>
> At least that's the hope.
>
That's the hope in my little corner of the world also (folk, which share many
similarities with the classical market). I wish I could believe it, but I can't.
Lebrecht's answer is, I think, right on:
"Instead, record companies use 'buyout' bands like the BBC Philharmonic which lease
their work free of charge. The playing may not be exquisite but it is economically
attractive. Naxos pays artists a no-royalties small fee, take it or leave it. These
tight measures will sustain a certain level of recording activity after the
industry is defunct, much as fountain-pens flicker on in an age of biros."
A dumbing down of the music, if you will. This I fear is the true future of the
classical market. Exquisite recordings no longer being produced, leaving only
economically attractive recordings. I've made a couple of recordings with a
regional folk act. The act has repeatedly said that my recordings have been the
best sounding in the acts 10 years history. The act has also said they've been the
most expensive too. Recently, the act bought on of those small all-in-one recording
devices. The act will record its next record with this device and without me. The
act agrees that the recording will not sound as good as the ones made with me, but
it will be good enough for their audience and you just can't argue the economics. I
fear the "economically attractive" will become the touchstone of future recordings
in all but the high dollar games.
R Krizman
economically attractive recordings. >>
Is there either a commercial or a cultural demand for new classical recordings?
Certainly the old masters have been well covered. Is there a lot of
listenable, new "serious" music that is dying on the vine because it isn't
getting recorded?
-R
Mike
I have a question regarding the constant inference to digital exposing
flaws not heard in the analog domain. If these tracks were originally
recorded on analog where was the masking of these flaws taking place?
In the two track mastering? In the transfer to disk? Was there
further loss in the making of the mothers or whatever they call the
negative disc reproducing thingies?
I mean, if the original was recorded to analog, there would be some
masking of flaws even in the original recording that couldn't be
changed. I am sure noise reduction can help but my experience is it
doesn't work miracles.
Tommi
"William Sommerwerck" <will...@nwlink.com> wrote in message
news:vvpap1k...@corp.supernews.com...
What the devil are you talking about?!
Seems to me that you're just an old man who thinks he knows "youth" even
though I strongly suspect that you just have your prejudices.
Classical music for example; I get the impression that you value classical
music over any other, pop, rock etc. and believe that it is a more
"intellectual" type of music than any other. Wrong!
Just like progressive rock, classical can sound "difficult" when you first
hear it, mainly because there can be many rhythm/key signature changes in a
single song.
It's not the kids' fault that it sounds off-putting at first!
I believe you do know Markov's chain and it's relative simplicity.
I believe you also know Mozart's dice game etc.
Classical is just music, it's as easy to do classical as it is to do
anything else, classical if anything is based on strict, simple rules.
Classical is not "more intellectual" music than anything else, it's just a
bit difficult to access at first.
Also, think about the "stupid" kids who value their keyboard more than their
pen.
Without them, we wouldn't be typing these binaries and communicating here.
The whole digital era is mostly made by those stupid kids who have the balls
to think differently than they've been taught.
steve2
wrote:
The answer to your question is Yes...... and NO.
The Original Master Tape will contain sounds not heard from the
vinyl at home. Better yet is the original tape(s) containing the
individual tracks. If you re-Master digitally from those you can
have a cd containing many of the original warts. As I remember
the old vinyl path it went from tracks to master to production
master copy, cut to vinyl, pressing plates made, then the
pressing sent to the store and your needle banged around in the
groove creating tiny electrical signals that your 1950's 60's
70's equipment sent to your ears.
Compare that to creating a digital master from the first tape and
delivering it nearly unchanged to your CD Player. If digital
affected recording by the things in that paragraph, the main
result would probably closer attention to the studio environment
and more careful cuts.
As far as the decline in classical, it is all in the kids. Kids
have not been taught to appreciate that kind of music, for
whatever reason. If kids aren't attracted to something, no
matter how good it may be, it will die. Take Rock and Roll.
Yes, there have been changes and new forms over the years, but
many songs are popping up again. Songs I first threw onto the
turntable at my college radio station 40 years ago. Filling up
our collections wouldn't be a problem if the new generation like
the music.
Peace
Steve
P Stamler
1) Young audience not exposed to classical music; old ones dying out or have
virtually everything they want already.
2) Record companies record warhorses over and over, to the exclusion of
interesting off-the-beaten-path material.
3) Or record companies don't record squat, because it's too expensive, at least
in the USA.
4) While as all this happens, Naxos, the new Nonesuch, cranks out delighful
recordings of obscure but cool music. It's cheap, kids buy it, and the whole
thing starts fresh.
5) While American classical musicians go bankrupt as the orchestras do
likewise.
6) Oh, and many of the current generation of conductors are so focused on
making every damn note distinctly audible that listening to the music they
conduct is comparable to reading the score one note at a time, rather than
letting the music wash over you like Ludwig or Gustav or Igor intended.
The American classical music world is still, unfortunately, trying to coast on
the momentum built up when Toscanini conducted weekly concerts on the NBC radio
network in...the 1940s. And Bernstein's TV concerts in...the 1950s and 1960s.
No serious attempt at reaching new audiences since then, other than occasional
symphonies playing in grade school gymnasia a couple of times a year.
So people figure classical music is highbrow stuff that's not as much fun as
rock or hiphop or folk.
It's a pity, because this is thoroughly cool music that can be a blast to
listen to if it's played well.
Peace,
Paul
Mike Rivers
> And they aren't going to buy any more... after you have six recordings of
> Beethoven's Sixth, there comes a time when you don't need any more. And
> classical labels, orchestras, and listeners all seem to be resisting any
> new repetoire in favor of old warhorses, so there isn't any new market
> to open there.
I've been noticing the promos for concerts on our local classical
stations are all emphasizing the conductor rather than the orchestra.
Maybe they're the classical superstars today.
--
I'm really Mike Rivers - (mri...@d-and-d.com)
William Sommerwerck
> which lease their work free of charge. The playing may not be exquisite
> but it is economically attractive. Naxos pays artists a no-royalties small
> fee, take it or leave it. These tight measures will sustain a certain level
> of recording activity after the industry is defunct, much as fountain-pens
> A dumbing down of the music, if you will. This I fear is the true future of
the
> classical market. Exquisite recordings no longer being produced, leaving
> only economically attractive recordings.
Not if you believe the reviewers. Naxos recordings often get excellent reviews.
Note, however, that the wonderful new Mahler recordings from MT-T are being
released by the San Francisco orchestra's recording society, not a major label.
Perhaps this is the future of classical recording.
William Sommerwerck
> classical recordings? Certainly the old masters have been
> that is dying on the vine because it isn't getting recorded?
Perhaps. When Nonesuch was a major force, it issued scores (pun intended) of
interesting modern works which, at $2 per LP, sold very well.
William Sommerwerck
> coast on the momentum built up when Toscanini conducted weekly
> concerts on the NBC radio network in...the 1940s. And Bernstein's
> TV concerts in...the 1950s and 1960s. No serious attempt at reaching
> new audiences since then, other than occasional symphonies playing
Lenny might have projected a slightly elitist air, but nobody has ever talked
about music the way he did. If you don't have the DVDs of his Harvard lectures,
get them.
Watching them, I realized that someone should have paid Lenny a million bucks or
so to produce a series of 100 (!!!) or so lectures "explaining" Western art
music. It would have been incredible. Nobody did, so we've lost his insights --
and more importantly, his ability to convey his excitement about good music.
> So people figure classical music is highbrow stuff that's not as much
> fun as rock or hiphop or folk. It's a pity, because this is thoroughly cool
> music that can be a blast to listen to if it's played well.
The problem is that you have to sit down and listen to it. It's not "danceable."
Mike Rivers
> Is there either a commercial or a cultural demand for new classical recordings?
> Certainly the old masters have been well covered. Is there a lot of
> listenable, new "serious" music that is dying on the vine because it isn't
> getting recorded?
Yes and no. There's a field called "contemporary classical" with
people composing new music for classical instruments and ensembles. In
DC, we have The Contemporary Music Forum which puts on a monthly
concert for about 200 series subscribers. All the musicians have other
jobs. It's mostly a core group of players, singers, and a conductor,
but occasionally they have guests come in, most often the composer
playing or conducting his own work. They don't go on tour or sell
T-shirts, but occasionally they have a bake sale to raise money.
There are recordings of this stuff, but they aren't exactly platinum
sellers.
Mike Rivers
> The American classical music world is still, unfortunately, trying to coast on
> the momentum built up when Toscanini conducted weekly concerts on the NBC radio
> network in...the 1940s. And Bernstein's TV concerts in...the 1950s and 1960s.
> No serious attempt at reaching new audiences since then, other than occasional
> symphonies playing in grade school gymnasia a couple of times a year.
Ah, the golden age of radio. But then there are probably more people
exposed to the work of an obscure singer-songwriter who puts a song up
on a web site somewhere than there were to the NBC Symphony Orchestra.
Mike Rivers
> I have a question regarding the constant inference to digital exposing
> flaws not heard in the analog domain. If these tracks were originally
> recorded on analog where was the masking of these flaws taking place?
You can start with the pressing and work backwards.
> I mean, if the original was recorded to analog, there would be some
> masking of flaws even in the original recording that couldn't be
> changed.
Sure - tape hiss hides hum and air handling noise. But we have good
tools today that can make hiss less audible, so then you expose the
hum in the original recording, so we get out the de-hummer. Then we
take a sample of the air handler noise, apply that to a convolver, and
reduce that noise. But each "cleanup" leaves something behind - less
if done very carefully, but often we're so enthralled with the "listen
- no more tape hiss" that we don't hear the swishing that we've
created. Then, when we get rid of all the "masking" we start to hear
splices. There isn't a lot you can do with digital editing to make a
splice sound better if you no longer have the original pieces.
Lotsa stuff.
William Sommerwerck
>> culture. These have both lead to a gradual decline -- now bordering on
>> destruction -- of "high" Western culture.
>> People are no longer interested in reading, thinking, or exposing
>> themselves to anything the represents any sort of intellectual challenge.
> What the devil are you talking about?!
> Seems to me that you're just an old man who thinks he knows "youth"
> even though I strongly suspect that you just have your prejudices.
> Classical music for example; I get the impression that you value
> classical music over any other, pop, rock etc. and believe that it
> is a more "intellectual" type of music than any other. Wrong!
"Intellectual" has nothing to do with it. "Art" music IS superior, but not
because it's inherently superior. Rather, it "tries harder," and often succeeds.
There's nothing in popular (I use the term in its broadest sense) music to even
remotely compare with, say, "The Rite of Spring" or "Das Lied von der Erde."
Popular music is, with a few jazz exceptions, still locked in the 4-minute song
format.
The only thing I hear of value in popular music are the sometimes insightful and
occasionally even "poetic" lyrics.
The rise of "youth culture," whatever good you might say about it, has resulted
in large numbers of people who aren't the least interested in the heritage of
Western culture.
There's nothing wrong with reacting against what you've been taught. The problem
is that people simply aren't being taught much about what went before.
Buster Mudd
>
> Just like progressive rock, classical can sound "difficult" when you first
> hear it, mainly because there can be many rhythm/key signature changes in a
> single song.
You're ignoring the fact that a good deal of Classical music does
*not* contain an inordinate amount of "rhythm [sic]/key signature
changes". (Plus the difference being that a good deal of classical
music offers significant depth of content without resorting to (and
certainly irrespective of the quantity of) multiple key/meter changes.
Whereas far too much progressive rock reveals little beyond its
multiple key/meter changes.)
> Classical is just music, it's as easy to do classical as it is to do
> anything else
I would contend that it is more difficult to play Classical music than
it is to play, oh, say, Sex Pistols covers. There are simply far more
parameters that the musician needs to be aware of.
> classical if anything is based on strict, simple rules.
...except for those Classical pieces that are based on loose rules. Or
those that are based on complex rules.
> Classical is not "more intellectual" music than anything else, it's just a
> bit difficult to access at first.
"Access"? Do you mean Classical music is more difficult to comprehend,
or just that it's more difficult to get access to? Because if you mean
the former, that contention negates your whole insistance that it's no
less "intellectual" than any other music. And if you mean the latter,
you're pretty much agreeing with the previous poster: yes, people are
less attracted to things they are unfamiliar with, & kids (as well as
adults) have far less opportunity to be exposed to Classical music
these days than they do to many other styles. Irrespective of whether
those more readily-available musical styles are "more intellectual",
the general population is inarguably more familiar with them.
Scott Dorsey
>themselves to
>> anything the represents any sort of intellectual challenge.
>
>What the devil are you talking about?!
Well, he's right in one sense, but wrong in another. Because people as
a whole have never been interested in reading, thinking, or exposing
themselves to anything that represents any sort of intellectual challenge.
Which is okay, because we're not talking about something intended to appeal
to the mass market here, any more than punk rock is intended to appeal to
the mass market.
Scott Dorsey
>
>Note, however, that the wonderful new Mahler recordings from MT-T are being
>released by the San Francisco orchestra's recording society, not a major label.
>Perhaps this is the future of classical recording.
This is probably the future of recording in general. And it's not a very
bright one.
Ty Ford
Having not heard the material being referred to makes commenting difficult.
After reading the full article, however, it seems more like the classical
music industry is feeling the same problems everyone else is.
Faster, cheaper, faster, cheaper, etc.. I also wonder whether part of the
problem is that classical music is not attracting younger listeners in
sufficient quantities to replace those who are of an older and dieing
generation.
Perhaps classical music needs to reinvent itself to broaden its appeal.
Regards,
Ty Ford
**Until the worm goes away, I have put "not" in front of my email address.
Please remove it if you want to email me directly.
For Ty Ford V/O demos, audio services and equipment reviews,
click on http://www.jagunet.com/~tford
Scott Dorsey
>
>"Intellectual" has nothing to do with it. "Art" music IS superior, but not
>because it's inherently superior. Rather, it "tries harder," and often succeeds.
>There's nothing in popular (I use the term in its broadest sense) music to even
>remotely compare with, say, "The Rite of Spring" or "Das Lied von der Erde."
>Popular music is, with a few jazz exceptions, still locked in the 4-minute song
>format.
But by the same token, the Sex Pistols can claim to have many of the same
values that you advocate in terms of western art music.
Is jazz popular music? I don't think it is any more... there was a time
when popular song and jazz were very tightly intertwined, but jazz has turned
into something very different and diverged a lot. Jazz is another example of
music that tries harder.
>The only thing I hear of value in popular music are the sometimes insightful and
>occasionally even "poetic" lyrics.
>
>The rise of "youth culture," whatever good you might say about it, has resulted
>in large numbers of people who aren't the least interested in the heritage of
>Western culture.
Sadly, I tend to agree with this. And there is a lot of our heritage being
lost (including the heritage of our own popular music).
Richard Crowley
> Ah, the golden age of radio. But then there are probably
> more people exposed to the work of an obscure singer-
> songwriter who puts a song up on a web site somewhere
> than there were to the NBC Symphony Orchestra.
> William Sommerwerck wrote:
> >Note, however, that the wonderful new Mahler recordings
> >from MT-T are being released by the San Francisco orchestra's
> >recording society, not a major label.
> >Perhaps this is the future of classical recording.
"Scott Dorsey" wrote ...
> This is probably the future of recording in general. And it's not
> a very bright one.
But with the communication facilities of the internet, and the newer
(better, cheaper, faster) technology that we discuss here every day,
doesn't that free us of the "old economy" recording industry where
we had to create a reasonable quantity of demand to make recording
and distribution profitable?
Scott Dorsey
>"Scott Dorsey" wrote ...
>> This is probably the future of recording in general. And it's not
>> a very bright one.
>
>But with the communication facilities of the internet, and the newer
>(better, cheaper, faster) technology that we discuss here every day,
>doesn't that free us of the "old economy" recording industry where
>we had to create a reasonable quantity of demand to make recording
>and distribution profitable?
The thing about classical music (well, orchestral music anyway), is
that the recording is far, far more expensive than pop stuff,
because of the number of people involved, and because you can't get
away with as much cut and paste work so you really do need good musicians.
Also you need good halls.
Distribution costs are probably cheaper because there are fewer pressings
made and the publicity costs are lower because the marketing is more targeted.
So the actual numbers come out very differently than in the pop music work.
William Sommerwerck
>> (better, cheaper, faster) technology that we discuss here every day,
>> doesn't that free us of the "old economy" recording industry where
>> we had to create a reasonable quantity of demand to make recording
>> and distribution profitable?
> The thing about classical music (well, orchestral music anyway), is
> that the recording is far, far more expensive than pop stuff, because
> because of the number of people involved, and because you can't get
> away with as much cut and paste work so you really do need good
> musicians. Also you need good halls.
Pop is only "cheaper" because you're likely to sell far more albums. An album
for a major group can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, far more than even
recording an opera.
If the orchestra members are willing to forego their union wages and settle for
a small per-album residual, the recording can be produced for almost nothing.
Paul Tumolo
culture."
I fail to see the connection between the end of WWII and either the rise
of rock or the youth culture. Not even a temporal one. While there are
those that claim the birth of rock occurred as early as 1948, the "rise"
of rock did not occur until well into the 50s, some 5 to 10 years after
WWII. Might as well say the end of the Korean war brought about the rise
of rock. As for the youth culture, what were all those screaming teens
(my mother included) doing with Sinatra well before the end of WWII?
Youth culture, as both a cultural and economic force, was on the rise
from the 30s onward.
The real reason for the decline in interest in "high" culture is much
more complicated and has to do primarily with a societal internalization
of the ethics of capitalism.
transducr
sadly, i think punk rock *is* now intended to appeal to the mass
market. it's not the first time, but it's currently being bastardized
on Mtv all day long. used to add "edge" to very obviously and
sonically 'un-punk' acts such as Avril LaVigne...but then again, it
seems like punk as a musical form breathed it's final pained breaths
sometime in the 90s (probably a conservative estimate). the ethic
certainly lives on, but largely in the form of the many other
punk-derived/influenced "subgenres" that have been brewing into styles
unto themselves over the years.
however, all that is beside your well-made point about intended
audiences. i don't think the london philharmonic is filming their
latest music video for the afforementioned Mtv anytime soon.
classical music certainly has a sort of niche audience. probably more
so now than ever.
that being said, i think most of the comments in this thread have
tended to be a little overly cynical regarding young people and their
ability/desire to seek out new things and think for themselves.
myself and at least a *small* handful of my friends are active
classical listeners in our mid-twenties. we all went to public schools
(where we met). many of us, myself included didn't have any musicians
in our immediate families. we sought out classical in the same way
that we sought out punk, jazz, noise, experimental, hip-hop,
electronic music, etc. and all the fusions thereof...we sought it in
the interest of hearing something new and challenging.
i do think that many contemporary composers tend to reach younger
audiences easier than the "classic" heavyweights. Steve Reich and
Philip Glass spring to mind immediately, but even 'older' contemporary
composers such as Stockhausen and Cage still attract many adventurous
young listeners. i think in many cases these composers form a sort of
gateway into discovery of older composers/compositions.
if classical music goes the way of being released only by small
independent outfits it will merely join the ranks of most of the other
music that many of us find important and exciting. it seems like
distribution of such small companies isn't as tough as it used to be,
since just about anybody can e-commerce enable a website or sell via
amazon, etc...
plus classical is probably the one genre of music that most
consistently enjoys heavy funding from private endowments and
donations of all kinds...i don't have any doubts that this will play a
role in any commercial recording ventures that are taken on
"independently".
classical may be down, but it's far from being out.
Scott Dorsey
>
>sadly, i think punk rock *is* now intended to appeal to the mass
>market. it's not the first time, but it's currently being bastardized
>on Mtv all day long. used to add "edge" to very obviously and
>sonically 'un-punk' acts such as Avril LaVigne...but then again, it
>seems like punk as a musical form breathed it's final pained breaths
>sometime in the 90s (probably a conservative estimate). the ethic
>certainly lives on, but largely in the form of the many other
>punk-derived/influenced "subgenres" that have been brewing into styles
>unto themselves over the years.
That's not punk music any more than the stuff the Boston Pops plays is
classical music.
>however, all that is beside your well-made point about intended
>audiences. i don't think the london philharmonic is filming their
>latest music video for the afforementioned Mtv anytime soon.
>
>classical music certainly has a sort of niche audience. probably more
>so now than ever.
My worry is that it's an aging audience, and an increasingly small audience,
and that's bad because I have to pay my mortgage.
>myself and at least a *small* handful of my friends are active
>classical listeners in our mid-twenties. we all went to public schools
>(where we met). many of us, myself included didn't have any musicians
>in our immediate families. we sought out classical in the same way
>that we sought out punk, jazz, noise, experimental, hip-hop,
>electronic music, etc. and all the fusions thereof...we sought it in
>the interest of hearing something new and challenging.
This is a good thing, but what is interesting is that most of the younger
folks who are interested in classical music are interested in it as only
one of many forms of music, rather than exclusively (the way most older
classical listeners are). And they are a lot less apt to go to concerts
than the older listeners too. I don't know if that's a good thing or a
bad thing (most classical concerts -are- sort of pretentious, with people
afraid to look like they are having too good a time).
>i do think that many contemporary composers tend to reach younger
>audiences easier than the "classic" heavyweights. Steve Reich and
>Philip Glass spring to mind immediately, but even 'older' contemporary
>composers such as Stockhausen and Cage still attract many adventurous
>young listeners. i think in many cases these composers form a sort of
>gateway into discovery of older composers/compositions.
I don't know if we can even group 20th century classical stuff (Stockhausen,
Schoenberg, etc.) in with the rest of classical music. In some ways, that
is an even smaller sort of niche market that is seperate from the rest of
the classical world, much as conductors and concertmasters try to integrate
it.
>if classical music goes the way of being released only by small
>independent outfits it will merely join the ranks of most of the other
>music that many of us find important and exciting. it seems like
>distribution of such small companies isn't as tough as it used to be,
>since just about anybody can e-commerce enable a website or sell via
>amazon, etc...
Classical music pretty much is only released by independant outfits that
specialize in it, or by individual marks owned by larger labels. Admittedly
some of those outfits are huge ones like DG, and it will be a shame to see
those die.
>plus classical is probably the one genre of music that most
>consistently enjoys heavy funding from private endowments and
>donations of all kinds...i don't have any doubts that this will play a
>role in any commercial recording ventures that are taken on
>"independently".
I think this hurts it in the long run, because people just take that
funding for granted. The best way, though, that we can support any musical
organization is to buy their records and go to their concerts. More people
need to go to live concerts. How do we convince them about this?
>classical may be down, but it's far from being out.
If I have to listen to the Messiah one more time this season I'm going to
kill someone. I swear.
Tommi
"Scott Dorsey" <klu...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:btjs1k$m97$1...@panix2.panix.com...
> William Sommerwerck <will...@nwlink.com> wrote:
> >
> >"Intellectual" has nothing to do with it. "Art" music IS superior, but
not
> >because it's inherently superior. Rather, it "tries harder," and often
succeeds.
> >There's nothing in popular (I use the term in its broadest sense) music
to even
> >remotely compare with, say, "The Rite of Spring" or "Das Lied von der
Erde."
> >Popular music is, with a few jazz exceptions, still locked in the
4-minute song
> >format.
To me, this is like saying that all the novels in the world are inferior to
science documents, one of the reasons being that all the novels are still
locked in the same 350-page lenght format. But, we all have our own opinion.
> Is jazz popular music? I don't think it is any more... there was a time
> when popular song and jazz were very tightly intertwined, but jazz has
turned
> into something very different and diverged a lot. Jazz is another example
of
> music that tries harder.
It sounds more complex to the average human ear, because average people
usually hear only major or minor -based tonal solutions their whole life.
If you play a "jazz" chord ,which has 5 or more tones in it to a kid who's
been singing christmas songs his whole life, he'd probably say that the
chord sounds "ugly", "not right", "dissonant".
In jazz(and in everything else), there can be the smallest difference
between a crap and a great song. Much of jazz is based on very simple
rules(2nd-5th for example), as all music is. "Rules" and genres are always
created afterwards so that we can in some ways describe and study the
collection of frequencies over time which have been discovered to please the
human ear.
Sometimes, theory has been forcefully "invented" afterwards to cover the
creativity of an individual who has done something really extraordinary
without any knowledge of any theory, just with pure creativity.
Genres, rules, they really don't mean that much.
Theory, though, has some basic points relating to sound as a physical
phenomena;
the octave, fifth, fourth etc., but even basic sound theory really doesn't
hold that much inside it. How would it be wise to divide the octave? Which
way really IS the best way to divide it? 12 semitone? 17? 25? etc.
> >The only thing I hear of value in popular music are the sometimes
insightful and
> >occasionally even "poetic" lyrics.
> >
> >The rise of "youth culture," whatever good you might say about it, has
resulted
> >in large numbers of people who aren't the least interested in the
heritage of
> >Western culture.
>
> Sadly, I tend to agree with this. And there is a lot of our heritage
being
> lost (including the heritage of our own popular music).
And also a lot of things that are to be made, a lot of art that is to be
created.
Youth culture isn't just sexy music videos and overcompression in audio, it
isn't just banal movies and drugs. The world is never perfect, it never was,
and it never will. Still, every era has its own pros and cons.
Tommi
"Buster Mudd" <mr_fu...@mail.com> wrote in message
news:936ad1fd.0401...@posting.google.com...
> "Tommi" <tomm...@suomi24.fi> wrote in message
news:<4n4Lb.2865$%O6....@reader1.news.jippii.net>...
> >
> > Just like progressive rock, classical can sound "difficult" when you
first
> > hear it, mainly because there can be many rhythm/key signature changes
in a
> > single song.
>
> You're ignoring the fact that a good deal of Classical music does
> *not* contain an inordinate amount of "rhythm [sic]/key signature
> changes". (Plus the difference being that a good deal of classical
> music offers significant depth of content without resorting to (and
> certainly irrespective of the quantity of) multiple key/meter changes.
> Whereas far too much progressive rock reveals little beyond its
> multiple key/meter changes.)
This is a good point. Progressive rock tends to get away with its
pseudo-innovations far too often.
However, a simple pop song can be every bit as good as a simple classical
song.
The fact is that pop music is generally limited by some sort of vocals,
which is its biggest merit, and also biggest flaw.
A good vocal melody can be the best thing ever, but when you incorporate
vocals, you also lose important space where you could do some astounding
dim-scale 1/32 note legatos and so on.
> > Classical is just music, it's as easy to do classical as it is to do
> > anything else
>
> I would contend that it is more difficult to play Classical music than
> it is to play, oh, say, Sex Pistols covers. There are simply far more
> parameters that the musician needs to be aware of.
Yes, it's more difficult to *play* it. Drop the tempo to 50bpm, and you're
playing even the hardest songs.
It isn't any more difficult to *create* than any other type of music.
> > classical if anything is based on strict, simple rules.
>
> ...except for those Classical pieces that are based on loose rules. Or
> those that are based on complex rules.
How would you define classical music?
It's played by a _classical_ orchestra, which limits the sounds to those
sounds which you've heard a million times before. If beethoven could've used
a ring modulator, he'd probably done it.
Mozart wrote songs every day. He wasn't a real _genius_ in the true sense of
the word, but he knew his math, and composed by strict mathematical rules,
on the fly, without even thinking sometimes, just writing.
Classical music(let's not talk about the relatively new cluster-based
classical since it's mostly being composed by those "stupid kids" anyway)is
not based on any more complex rules than any other type of music.
> > Classical is not "more intellectual" music than anything else, it's just
a
> > bit difficult to access at first.
>
> "Access"? Do you mean Classical music is more difficult to comprehend,
> or just that it's more difficult to get access to?
I mean that it is more difficult to access because most people's ear aren't
accustomed to it that much. However, some of those people who favor
classical music sometimes think of other music listeners as "more stupid"
than themselves, as if listening to classical would be some sort of a
"proof" that you really are an intellectual person.
William Sommerwerck
> is much more complicated and has to do primarily with a
> societal internalization of the ethics of capitalism.
Well, if you're suggesting that people are more interested in money than art, I
won't argue with you.
William Sommerwerck
> I'm going to kill someone. I swear.
Try the John Eliot Gargler performance. Smashing.
William Sommerwerck
> sense of the word, but he knew his math, and composed by strict
> mathematical rules, on the fly, without even thinking sometimes, just writing.
What utter crap. If Mozart and Bach weren't "geniuses" (in any sense of the
word) I don't know what a genius is.
The word genius has the same root as generate -- in the implication of creating
something new. It's the composers who work according to rules that generally
produce the least-interesting music. qv "Amadeus"
Roger W. Norman
news:nottford.1...@news.jagunet.com...
> Having not heard the material being referred to makes commenting
difficult.
> After reading the full article, however, it seems more like the classical
> music industry is feeling the same problems everyone else is.
>
> Faster, cheaper, faster, cheaper, etc.. I also wonder whether part of the
> problem is that classical music is not attracting younger listeners in
> sufficient quantities to replace those who are of an older and dieing
> generation.
>
> Perhaps classical music needs to reinvent itself to broaden its appeal.
On the upside, full orchestral recordings for film are more the norm than in
the mid 80s through most of the 90s. I was flipping through the channels
last night and The Terminator was on. A synth for a score, probably based
on the sparseness of John Carpenter's one line synth parts from The Thing
and Escape from New York, but look at how much more orchestras are being
used for scoring film today, so there's work. Whether there's recordings or
not I don't believe makes that much difference, but there has to be work
available or THEN we really lose something. And as young people continue to
watch film on DVD with reasonable (not excellent, just decent) home theater
systems, perhaps they'll start taking notice of the exquisite sound of a
well performed piece by a group of players that really know what they are
doing.
Oh well, one can hope! <g>
--
Roger W. Norman
SirMusic Studio
RAP FAQ and Purchase your copy of the Fifth of RAP CD set at
www.recaudiopro.net.
See how far $20 really goes.
Tommi
This is the only sentence you care to comment? fine.
I think it is quite subjective what one thinks as a "work of a genius".
Someone can think Bill Gates is a genius. I don't. He's smart, intelligent.
One can also think Madonna is a genius. I don't, she may be hard-working
though.
Mozart was a great composer, but my idea was that even Mozart himself knew
he was a routine-based composer. He even made a game where you threw dice,
and that determined where the song, which consisted of little 8-bar bits,
would go next.
In essence, it was a machine making Mozart-esque music. Sadly, there was no
end or a beginning to the dice-made composition(the textures, the drama was
left to humans). I think it was released a year or so after he died.
Mozart is generally thought of as "pop" classical, his work is perhaps a bit
easier to access than some other composers' work.
Nonetheless, I respect his work very much.
The point is that a lot of classical composers actually weren't so
impulsive, they relied heavily on science; math and musical rules.
William Sommerwerck
> impulsive, they relied heavily on science; math and musical rules.
True art -- true genius -- requires transcending the rules.
Neil Henderson
>pseudo-innovations far too often.
Does it? If it actually "got away with it" I think Prog would be far more
pervasive than it is today. I think a lot of progressive bands
psuedo-innnovated themselves (and nearly the entire genre) into oblivion...
they lost sight of the big picture, which is, of course, to make compelling
music within the context that you work in. Hardly anyone (including most
musicians in the same genre) is interested in hearing a technically amazing
piece of music that from a gut-level standpoint is complete drivel. Progressive
Rock at it's best has, at least, somewhat balanced proportions of technicality
and viscera.
.
>A good vocal melody can be the best thing ever, but when you incorporate
>vocals, you also lose important space where you could do some astounding
>dim-scale 1/32 note legatos and so on.
So, in that event, you just need to turn it into a 10-minute opus so you can
have room to wail. :)
NeilH
ryanm
>
> True art -- true genius -- requires transcending the rules.
>
ryanm
Neil Henderson
>>
> Isn't that an oxymoron? The rule is it has to break the rules?
Yes, but if you REALLY want to break the rules, then you will adhere to the
rules; therefore breaking the rule that states that you have to break the
rules.
Man, this music stuff is so complicated!
NeilH
LeBaron & Alrich
No wonder people need to dance!
--
ha
Brian Link
I was watching the Dick Van Dyke show on one of the rerun cable
stations the other night. At one point, something spooky happens, and
Morey Amsterdam sings "dadadadadada DUM DUM DUM" - my wife and I
turned to each other in amazement. He'd just sung the signature
keyboard lick of Schubert's "Erlkonig".
Says a lot about the change in American culture that the writers of
that show had the full expectation that most of their audience (TV
Watchers, mind you) would recognize the quote, including the song and
its subject.
Another fascinating thing to watch is something one of our local
public access stations runs at night - "Arts Showcase". It's an
incredible hodgepodge of modern classical "music videos", clips from
movies, live recordings and TV shows featuring celebrity classical
musicians. The latter are what are so interesting, again, popular
entertainment fully comfortable with classical musicians and their
work.
As far as the decline of classical recordings, seems I've heard that
early music is still going relatively strong. Another Vivaldi Seasons
would be just as susceptible to burn-out as the Beethoven 9th quoted
above.. but then Vivaldi wrote gazillions of concerti, as well as some
very fascinating vocal music.
Telemann, Charpentier, Lassus - there are many very worthy composers
who, IMHO, have yet to be represented in "definitive" recordings. Very
little of their work has even been recorded. I myself am busily
involved with manuscripts coming out of Latin America - most of which
have not even been catalogued, let alone recorded.
Finally, my anecdotal experience has been that the appetite for early
music is not just focused on the intelligentsia. There are fascinating
mixtures of attendees (albeit fewer of them) in local concerts - and
this is in the isolated Midwest.
BLink
Brian Link in St. Paul
----------------------
"Just because we have chiseled abs and stunning features,
doesn't mean that we too can't not die in a freak gasoline fight
accident."
Geoff Wood
> William Sommerwerck <will...@nwlink.com> wrote:
> >
> >Note, however, that the wonderful new Mahler recordings from MT-T are
being
> >released by the San Francisco orchestra's recording society, not a major
label.
> >Perhaps this is the future of classical recording.
>
> This is probably the future of recording in general. And it's not a very
> bright one.
Not being a snob or anything, but look at what gets labelled "Classical"
these days ....
geoff
Geoff Wood
"Scott Dorsey" <klu...@panix.com> wrote in message news:btjs1k$m97
The old labels really are munged these days. Maybe new labels could be
"Disposable" versus "Significant". "Significant" being of either
difficulty, technique, performance, or songwriting-based.
But is that concept new ? I guess not ...
geoff
Geoff Wood
> My worry is that it's an aging audience, and an increasingly small
audience,
> and that's bad because I have to pay my mortgage.>
> This is a good thing, but what is interesting is that most of the younger
> folks who are interested in classical music are interested in it as only
It's all going to be OK. Remember "A Clockwork Orange" ?
geoff
Geoff Wood
"Ty Ford" <nott...@jagunet.com> wrote in message
>
> Perhaps classical music needs to reinvent itself to broaden its appeal.
Trouble is whenever is does, it comes out cheesy.
geoff
William Sommerwerck
Why? There's nothing unappealing about classical music. The problem is with the
listener, not the music.
> Trouble is whenever is does, it comes out cheesy.
Every heard Michael Kamen's saxophone concerto? Horrible, horrible, horrible.
Mike Rivers
> > I would contend that it is more difficult to play Classical music than
> > it is to play, oh, say, Sex Pistols covers. There are simply far more
> > parameters that the musician needs to be aware of.
>
> Yes, it's more difficult to *play* it. Drop the tempo to 50bpm, and you're
> playing even the hardest songs.
> It isn't any more difficult to *create* than any other type of music.
I don't know about that. It's certainly different. Pop music is often
as not created in the studio, built up from riffs that spurs the
writer's creativity, or with a melody built around words (which is
usually the opposite of classical vocal music). Although there are
classical-style orchestral composers (usually composing music for
picture) who work with sequencers and synthesizers, traditionally a
classical composer only hears in his head how the parts he's writing
fit together until he actually passes out copies of the music to an
orchestra. It's not like a nashville session where they're trying out
an arrangement for the first time. The conductor doesn't say "second
violins, let's have a b flat suspended 4th in bar in bar 73 instead of
what you're playing."
> How would you define classical music?
> It's played by a _classical_ orchestra, which limits the sounds to those
> sounds which you've heard a million times before.
That's part of the definition, true. But pop music (other than such
outlyers as "Switched On Bach" or Alvin and the Chipmunks) doesn't
make hits because of a new instrument or vocal sound, hits get made by
songs or how what goes into the music fits together. I was tempted to
say "how the musicians play together" but I realize that this isn't
always important in making a commercial hit because often they don't.
The goals of production are different, too. Contemporary classical
music sometimes uses some non-traditional instruments, or traditional
instruments played in non-tradional ways. They use prepared piano
(though rarely synthesizer) and pitch shifters on violins and voices.
But the goal isn't to make the sound "huge" but rather to show off
each element.
> If beethoven could've used
> a ring modulator, he'd probably done it.
Maybe, maybe not. I've always thought that if the pedal steel had been
invented in Turlach Ocarolan's time (an itinerant Irish harper who
didn't just play old folk tunes, but composed music that was in the
same style as his contemporary classical composers) he would have
played it instead of the harp.
> Mozart wrote songs every day. He wasn't a real _genius_ in the true sense of
> the word, but he knew his math, and composed by strict mathematical rules,
> on the fly, without even thinking sometimes, just writing.
> I mean that it is more difficult to access because most people's ear aren't
> accustomed to it that much. However, some of those people who favor
> classical music sometimes think of other music listeners as "more stupid"
> than themselves, as if listening to classical would be some sort of a
> "proof" that you really are an intellectual person.
Unfortunately, there are some like that. But there's plenty of
classical music on the radio, and there are plenty of concerts.
Although there is a trend to "dumbing down" of the classical music
that's presented to the soft-core audience. It's easy to listen to.
It's not distracting, but it eventually grows on you and you realize
that you've heard that song before. Of course you have to make an
effort to take it to the next step and actually purchase the music and
listen to it as a real listener rather than as background music. This
is something that few listeners and buyers of pop music do without
thinking.
--
I'm really Mike Rivers - (mri...@d-and-d.com)
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo
Mike Rivers
> Mozart was a great composer, but my idea was that even Mozart himself knew
> he was a routine-based composer. He even made a game where you threw dice,
> and that determined where the song, which consisted of little 8-bar bits,
> would go next.
> In essence, it was a machine making Mozart-esque music.
Every composer needs a kick in the muse every now and then. That's why
we have loops today. Bach wrote a piece based on the notes represented
by the letters of his name (back when H was B and B was B-flat, or
maybe it was the other way around). But to say that Mozart made music
by rolling dice is simplifying the process. I don't know what music
you're talking about, or whether I've ever heard it or not, but while
he may have used that as a theme, surely he filled it out using his
native creativity. Othewise it's just a job.
> Mozart is generally thought of as "pop" classical, his work is perhaps a bit
> easier to access than some other composers' work.
Hey, he even got a pop movie made about him. So what? He left a large
legacy.
Harvey Gerst
>I was watching the Dick Van Dyke show on one of the rerun cable
>stations the other night. At one point, something spooky happens, and
>Morey Amsterdam sings "dadadadadada DUM DUM DUM" - my wife and I
>turned to each other in amazement. He'd just sung the signature
>keyboard lick of Schubert's "Erlkonig".
>
>Says a lot about the change in American culture that the writers of
>that show had the full expectation that most of their audience (TV
>Watchers, mind you) would recognize the quote, including the song and
>its subject.
I doubt it was the writers, but rather one of Morey Amsterdam's ad libs.
Remember that Morey was a classically train cellist.
Harvey Gerst
Indian Trail Recording Studio
http://www.ITRstudio.com/
Chris Hornbeck
<will...@nwlink.com> wrote:
>Every heard Michael Kamen's saxophone concerto? Horrible, horrible, horrible.
OTOH, just to prove that it takes all kinds to fill the
freeways, I really like it.
A few years ago, I'd have crossed the street to avoid *any*
modern "classical" music. But a knowledgable friend has
been educating me from his CD collection.
There's some great music being written today, but it's
very hard to get to hear it out here in the boons.
Chris Hornbeck
"Sorry, pal, there is no such thing as too many guitars.
I wish that rumour would die."
Scott Fraser
MusiPete
> This is a good thing, but what is interesting is that most of the younger
> folks who are interested in classical music are interested in it as only
> one of many forms of music, rather than exclusively (the way most older
> classical listeners are). And they are a lot less apt to go to concerts
> than the older listeners too. I don't know if that's a good thing or a
> bad thing (most classical concerts -are- sort of pretentious, with people
> afraid to look like they are having too good a time).
And here I think you've hit it on the head (though understating the
problem). This is the main reason that this discussion is even taking
place at all. Younger people WILL NOT go to concerts because of the
pretentiousness. And this pretentious attitude comes not only from
the patrons, but also from the musicians themselves. I once was a
professional classical musician, and I can say that the
pretentiousness is easy to get caught up in - it's the main reason I
drifted away from classical performance and more towards other
'genres'.
> >i do think that many contemporary composers tend to reach younger
> >audiences easier than the "classic" heavyweights. Steve Reich and
> >Philip Glass spring to mind immediately, but even 'older' contemporary
> >composers such as Stockhausen and Cage still attract many adventurous
> >young listeners. i think in many cases these composers form a sort of
> >gateway into discovery of older composers/compositions.
>
> I don't know if we can even group 20th century classical stuff (Stockhausen,
> Schoenberg, etc.) in with the rest of classical music. In some ways, that
> is an even smaller sort of niche market that is seperate from the rest of
> the classical world, much as conductors and concertmasters try to integrate
> it.
>
Why? Just because the blue-hairs don't get it? Maybe if these
composers were more integrated into programs younger people WOULD
come. One of the problems I see with concerts is the same problem
discussed in a previous post about recordings: How many times do we
need to hear Beethoven 5? Yes, this is a tremendous piece, and should
be listened to and studied by everyone interested in music. But have
some adventure! It seems like the same 50 pieces are recycled over
and over. There are thousands of pieces out there that almost never
get played because the music director's sense of adventure ends with
Stravinsky.
> >plus classical is probably the one genre of music that most
> >consistently enjoys heavy funding from private endowments and
> >donations of all kinds...i don't have any doubts that this will play a
> >role in any commercial recording ventures that are taken on
> >"independently".
>
> I think this hurts it in the long run, because people just take that
> funding for granted. The best way, though, that we can support any musical
> organization is to buy their records and go to their concerts. More people
> need to go to live concerts. How do we convince them about this?
>
Well, I think 'heavy funding' may be an overstatement, but I agree
that we take this funding for granted. Amen on the 'buy their records
and go to their concerts'! See above on getting people to the
concerts...
> If I have to listen to the Messiah one more time this season I'm going to
> kill someone. I swear.
If I have to PLAY the Messiah one more time I'm going to kill someone.
That is, if I can ever recover from my aching back...
PS
MusiPete
>
> Faster, cheaper, faster, cheaper, etc.. I also wonder whether part of the
> problem is that classical music is not attracting younger listeners in
> sufficient quantities to replace those who are of an older and dieing
> generation.
>
>
Yeah! Maybe they could find some hot violinist babes & exploit their
sexuality instead of their musi... no... never mind... already been
tried.
PS
William Sommerwerck
>> that show had the full expectation that most of their audience (TV
>> Watchers, mind you) would recognize the quote, including the song
>> and its subject.
> I doubt it was the writers, but rather one of Morey Amsterdam's ad libs.
> Remember that Morey was a classically trained cellist.
There's a Disneyland episode titled "Three Men and a Tree" (or something like
that), showing how three Disney artists uniquely interpret a tree. It probably
was produced because it cost next to nothing, but...
What would be considered slow-paced and boringly "intellectual" today, was
assumed to be something the average viewer -- "educated" or not -- would watch
and enjoy. And that was 45 years ago.
William Sommerwerck
> sexuality instead of their musi... no... never mind... already been
> tried.
How about the Trio Eroica? Hot gowns.
Tommi
Stanley Kubrick's Eyes wide shut was boringly "intellectual" and very
slow-paced.
That was five years ago, and let's face it, it was plain crap.
Whatever the audience.
All I can say is that people subconciously always value those values(no pun
int.)
which were dominant at the time they were still children or had their most
memorable experiences. It has always been that "in the good old times"
thing, and it never goes away.
Things are always "getting worse" from an older person's point of view since
people can't accept that the world is constantly changing.
I find it absolutely outrageous that 13-year old girls nowadays want to look
like the sexy J-Lo's they see on the telly, but at the same time I know that
those kids, when they turn 40, they think that "everything was better back
when I was young, back then people still care about each other" or something
similar.
We want something that lasts and stays the same, but it's something that we
like to chase forever. The only constant really is change.
transducr
> >
> >sadly, i think punk rock *is* now intended to appeal to the mass
> >market. it's not the first time, but it's currently being bastardized
> >on Mtv all day long. used to add "edge" to very obviously and
> >sonically 'un-punk' acts such as Avril LaVigne...but then again, it
> >seems like punk as a musical form breathed it's final pained breaths
> >sometime in the 90s (probably a conservative estimate). the ethic
> >certainly lives on, but largely in the form of the many other
> >punk-derived/influenced "subgenres" that have been brewing into styles
> >unto themselves over the years.
>
> That's not punk music any more than the stuff the Boston Pops plays is
> classical music.
very much agreed. i really believe that practically the only
worthwhile thing left of punk-rock is some of the DIY ethic that
enabled many young people to create touring networks and actually sell
their own music, etc. with some glaring successes and, of course, a
great number of failures, but all-in-all an empowering movement in
many ways.
> >however, all that is beside your well-made point about intended
> >audiences. i don't think the london philharmonic is filming their
> >latest music video for the afforementioned Mtv anytime soon.
> >
> >classical music certainly has a sort of niche audience. probably more
> >so now than ever.
>
> My worry is that it's an aging audience, and an increasingly small audience,
> and that's bad because I have to pay my mortgage.
understood.
> >myself and at least a *small* handful of my friends are active
> >classical listeners in our mid-twenties. we all went to public schools
> >(where we met). many of us, myself included didn't have any musicians
> >in our immediate families. we sought out classical in the same way
> >that we sought out punk, jazz, noise, experimental, hip-hop,
> >electronic music, etc. and all the fusions thereof...we sought it in
> >the interest of hearing something new and challenging.
>
> This is a good thing, but what is interesting is that most of the younger
> folks who are interested in classical music are interested in it as only
> one of many forms of music, rather than exclusively (the way most older
> classical listeners are). And they are a lot less apt to go to concerts
> than the older listeners too. I don't know if that's a good thing or a
> bad thing (most classical concerts -are- sort of pretentious, with people
> afraid to look like they are having too good a time).
i definitely don't think it's a good thing that people attend less
concerts. but i think there are reasons. i think that the observation
you made in the above paragraph, regarding older audiences being more
exclusive listeners has a great deal to do with it.
the stereotypes that seem to encompass the "older" classical audience
you're speaking of tends to keep others at a distance sometimes. your
description of the concert experience i think is an accurate
description of how many middle, lower-middle, and lower class people
feel about it. i think it's intimidating to many people. they don't
want to be looked down upon by old, rich white people at a concert
hall, they get enough of that at work! >rimshot!<
seriously though, i'm not suggesting that, by definition, people who
attend classical concerts are elitist, just that they can
stereotypically be perceived as such. sadly, stereotypes carry a lot
of power.
> >i do think that many contemporary composers tend to reach younger
> >audiences easier than the "classic" heavyweights. Steve Reich and
> >Philip Glass spring to mind immediately, but even 'older' contemporary
> >composers such as Stockhausen and Cage still attract many adventurous
> >young listeners. i think in many cases these composers form a sort of
> >gateway into discovery of older composers/compositions.
>
> I don't know if we can even group 20th century classical stuff (Stockhausen,
> Schoenberg, etc.) in with the rest of classical music. In some ways, that
> is an even smaller sort of niche market that is seperate from the rest of
> the classical world, much as conductors and concertmasters try to integrate
> it.
but don't you think that the resistance to group 20th century
composers in with the rest of classical music may have something to do
with why the audiences might be becoming an "aging audience, and an
increasingly small audience."
like i said before, i think that young audiences are more easily drawn
into more contemporary classical works and i think it would be a great
way to get younger audiences into concert halls and into discovering
older works.
i think the fact that many in the classical world are not willing to
take the risk of performing more contemporary works tends to make
potential audiences feel like classical music is some sort of stagnant
re-run (or at least perpetuate the sentiment)...like going to see a
concert is like going to see something very old in a museum...you must
respect it's beauty, even if it has no relevancy to you and you can't
exactly understand what that beauty is, someone of greater taste and
culture decided on it's importance already.
> >if classical music goes the way of being released only by small
> >independent outfits it will merely join the ranks of most of the other
> >music that many of us find important and exciting. it seems like
> >distribution of such small companies isn't as tough as it used to be,
> >since just about anybody can e-commerce enable a website or sell via
> >amazon, etc...
>
> Classical music pretty much is only released by independant outfits that
> specialize in it, or by individual marks owned by larger labels. Admittedly
> some of those outfits are huge ones like DG, and it will be a shame to see
> those die.
this is how i understood it to be. i thought that what was being
suggested in the thread was that things were going to shrink further,
to the point that recordings would be released primarily through the
organization(s) that sponsored specific orchestras/artists locally. or
by artists themselves...like small ensembles etc.
> >plus classical is probably the one genre of music that most
> >consistently enjoys heavy funding from private endowments and
> >donations of all kinds...i don't have any doubts that this will play a
> >role in any commercial recording ventures that are taken on
> >"independently".
>
> I think this hurts it in the long run, because people just take that
> funding for granted. The best way, though, that we can support any musical
> organization is to buy their records and go to their concerts. More people
> need to go to live concerts. How do we convince them about this?
i hadn't really thought about that aspect of the funding. i suppose it
is something that most take for granted (myself included).
locally, they've lauched a fairly significant billboard and radio
campaign. they've actually honed in on some of the issues we've been
discussing. i've noticed they've been keen to stress that you can
dress casually or to the teeth...whichever makes you feel comfortable.
they're trying hard to wrangle in audiences that may feel culturally
alienated from the experience and i think that's good. hopefully it
will pay off...
> >classical may be down, but it's far from being out.
>
> If I have to listen to the Messiah one more time this season I'm going to
> kill someone. I swear.
> --scott
HA! i think if you get a good lawyer that defense will stand in a
court of law.
take care,
jon
reddred
"Jeffrey S. Long" <gott...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:69cd9a1c.04010...@posting.google.com...
> Thought this might be of interest to some. Any thoughts?
>
> http://www.scena.org/columns/lebrecht/031231-NL-recording.html
>
> This paragraph in particular does not sit well with me:
>
> "Those rhythms [profits] were disrupted, distorted and ultimately
> destroyed by digital recording, which delivered sonic utopia and
> exposed the flaws in the process. Attentive listeners were able to
> hear underground trains rumbling beneath Decca's Kingsway Hall, and
> botched edits in supposedly authentic performances. Digital clarity
> revealed the artificiality of recording, the fundamental fakery of
> producing an inhumanly accurate replica of all-too human music. As the
> digital sheen wore off, so did the sales."
>
The most telling excerpt:
"Hypothermia set in to classical sales. The lone exception is budget label
Naxos, which plans 150 new releases in the coming year, plus 60 historical
remasters. 'We are no longer in the same industry as Decca and DG,' laughs
its founder, Klaus Heymann."
Note Naxos cd's sell at a -budget- price. That says a lot in terms of
ability to compete.
And there is no mention of specialized indie labels, how are they doing?
jb
P Stamler
seats at $23, most of the "cheap seats" for the St. Louis Symphony are $45 a
throw, plus tax. That includes the stratosphere deck. Which means that if you
want to take your date to the symphony, you'd better be prepared to shell out
$100 for the evening, including parking but not including dinner unless it's at
McDonald's. For young people (hell, for this middle-aged classical music fan)
that ain't hay.
Yes, yes, I know -- they need the money because otherwise they'll go under. But
they limit the number of younger customers that come through the door.
And they also limit the repertoire. You wonder why the music director
consistently programs warhorses? Consider: If you're spending $15 on a night
out, you're willing to take a chance; if it doesn't pan out (and remember
Sturgeon's law - 90% of everything is crap) you're not out that much. But if
you're planning to drop $100, unless you're pretty rich you damned well want a
sure thing for your money, not a "maybe-I'll-like-it-and-maybe-I'll-hate-it".
So you get Beethoven's Seventh AGAIN.
Peace,
Paul
Scott Dorsey
>Another problem: The prices have gone sky-high. With the exception of about 100
>seats at $23, most of the "cheap seats" for the St. Louis Symphony are $45 a
>throw, plus tax. That includes the stratosphere deck. Which means that if you
>want to take your date to the symphony, you'd better be prepared to shell out
>$100 for the evening, including parking but not including dinner unless it's at
>McDonald's. For young people (hell, for this middle-aged classical music fan)
>that ain't hay.
That's a lot less than taking your date to the Rolling Stones concert, though.
Ticket prices have gone sky high all the way across the board.
>Yes, yes, I know -- they need the money because otherwise they'll go under. But
>they limit the number of younger customers that come through the door.
Yes, this is bad, but it's not specific to the classical world. ALL ticket
prices are going insane, and that is bad for everyone.
>And they also limit the repertoire. You wonder why the music director
>consistently programs warhorses? Consider: If you're spending $15 on a night
>out, you're willing to take a chance; if it doesn't pan out (and remember
>Sturgeon's law - 90% of everything is crap) you're not out that much. But if
>you're planning to drop $100, unless you're pretty rich you damned well want a
>sure thing for your money, not a "maybe-I'll-like-it-and-maybe-I'll-hate-it".
>So you get Beethoven's Seventh AGAIN.
Ask Melissa about how we wound up listening to Schoenberg's Pierrot some time.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
William Sommerwerck
> consistently programs warhorses? Consider: If you're spending $15
> on a night out, you're willing to take a chance; if it doesn't pan out (and
> that much. But if you're planning to drop $100, unless you're pretty rich
> like-it-and-maybe-I'll-hate-it." So you get Beethoven's Seventh AGAIN.
Nothing wrong with the 7th (one of the greatest symphonies ever written). If
it's a great performance, it's _worth_ hearing it live. But all too often, it
isn't. Why go to a live performance that doesn't really move you?
There's plenty of interesting music from the past 50 years that audiences
_would_ like if the conductors had the guts to program it. But they don't. I
remember hearing the Orchestra Society of Philadelphia play a Ginastera piece
that was just plain wonderful.
As a side remark... Remember when Crumb's "Microcosmos III -- Music for a Summer
Night" premiered on Nonesuch? It was universally panned as too accessible. Now
it's considered a classic. But do you ever see it actually performed live?
Geoff Wood
"William Sommerwerck" <will...@nwlink.com> wrote in message .
>
> Nothing wrong with the 7th (one of the greatest symphonies ever written).
If
> it's a great performance, it's _worth_ hearing it live. But all too often,
it
> isn't. Why go to a live performance that doesn't really move you?
Because you don't know it didn't move you until post fact. And even then it
is of value, to remind you what music that moves you should be like.
geoff
knud
>because it's inherently superior. Rather, it "tries harder," and often
>succeeds.
>There's nothing in popular (I use the term in its broadest sense) music to
>even
>remotely compare with, say, "The Rite of Spring" or "Das Lied von der Erde."
>Popular music is, with a few jazz exceptions, still locked in the 4-minute
>song
>format.
It's a question of intent, NOT style. I would argue that most people are
much more interested in the style and social connotations of music than the
music itself, even if they don't realize it. There is no reason you can't write
a masterpiece scored for rock band, just as there are plenty of awful chunks of
gunk for acoustic instruments. When people start arguing that a brief ABA song
stands up to a symphony that contains more music than a thousand pop songs,
they are missing the point entirely. It's true that a single good tune is
better than a 1 hour piece of dreck, but it's just as true that a 1 hour piece
of brilliance blows anything in ABA form to nothingness if you have the balls
to absorb it.
Plenty of "art" music composers have made plenty of great short songs.
I've yet to hear a convincing large-scale work by a rock star. Even if someone
has the latent ability to pull of something more than a tune, the need to do so
may not be present. The compulsion to push the envelope regardless of
popularity or the possibility of anyone understanding it is a mysterious one.
The truth is, you can get all kinds of accolades for tossing off some tunes.
Mentally deficient music magazine editors might call you a genius, girls might
want your cock, people who don't care might still think you are a 'real
talented guy'. Busting out the most intensely inspired large-scale work,
putting year after year into it, will get you nothing. Truly nobody gives a
shit, not even the people who should know better (conductors, orchestra etc).
It's a lonely road to take. Where is the incentive? That some people still NEED
to push it to the edge says something powerful.
blahblah
ALL MUSIC IS ORIGINAL...
EVEN IF ONLY ONE NOTE IS CHANGED!
EVERYONE CREATES IN A VACUUM!
knud
>isn't just banal movies and drugs.
Maybe it wasn't in the past. In fact "youth" and "non-youth" cultures are
all now banal movies, but more importantly banal TV which is what most
Americans do with their recreation time. Going through life staring at a box.
Disturbing. Walk around at night look how every house has a TV on through the
window. People are ketting their minds and bodies go to shit. It's the easy
way. Nothing like shutting down and basking in the glow of endless commercials
and superficial sitcoms. Why bother striving for anything when you can just go
to work then come home and release yourself to the warm embrace or rotting
uselessness? I personally know only one or two persons besides myself who
acually sit down and concentrate on music. There is practically no audience for
music which requires thinking or effort. Funny, pop culture embraces
pre-packaged products as "rebellion" yet shuns truly outsiders (us art music
composer freaks) as conformists. It may be a well-beaten cliche but people
seriously need to think for themselves, sadly few people will ever experience
the freedom of removing the chains that bind their way.
knud
>stations the other night. At one point, something spooky happens, and
>Morey Amsterdam sings "dadadadadada DUM DUM DUM" - my wife and I
>turned to each other in amazement. He'd just sung the signature
>keyboard lick of Schubert's "Erlkonig".
>Says a lot about the change in American culture that the writers of
>that show had the full expectation that most of their audience (TV
>Watchers, mind you) would recognize the quote, including the song and
>its subject.
When people get into these stylistic debates, it's funny to remember that
Schubert wrote more great pop songs than most pop songwriters. True that he
didn't stick to strict ABA, but hundreds are compact and catchy enough to
qualify.
The more you think about these things, the less meaningful all the
stylistic debates become. Unlike most songsters today however, Schubert felt
the compulsion to go much farther and right up to his death was making huge
strides towards great works in large forms. Unlike his songs which he would get
in a flash, he had to struggle with more ambitious music, but he had the innate
genius and was constantly improving. Nowadays people are not interested in
struggling or putting in the work it takes to achieve greater results. People
want the quick fix.
>There are fascinating
>mixtures of attendees (albeit fewer of them) in local concerts - and
>this is in the isolated Midwest.
Always nice to be able to have a meaningful conversation with an eccentric
total stranger. Unfortunately I am always younger than any such person I meet
by a huge margin. This doesn't lead me to have much hope for the future.
ryanm
news:ac00ffb8.04010...@posting.google.com...
>
> i think the fact that many in the classical world are not willing to
> take the risk of performing more contemporary works tends to make
> potential audiences feel like classical music is some sort of stagnant
> re-run (or at least perpetuate the sentiment)...like going to see a
> concert is like going to see something very old in a museum...you must
> respect it's beauty, even if it has no relevancy to you and you can't
> exactly understand what that beauty is, someone of greater taste and
> culture decided on it's importance already.
>
will still want to come to a concert if it's going to be filled with rowdy
kids dressed in shorts and a tank top? So then what? Lose your *rich,
paying* audience in exchange for a bunch of kids who won't pay nearly as
much to keep the orchestra going? And who will talk and heckle the players
during the concert?
The elitist attitude works in this instance, because by keeping the
price and the dress code high they attract a particular kind of audience.
The kind of audience that can afford to drop $100 on a concert without
blinking an eye, and maybe even donate a bit of money to the orchestra.
I think there's a place for both. Like way back when, there should be an
elitist attitude surrounding certain performances and venues, but there
should also be the "common" orchestra for the public.
ryanm
knud
>slow-paced.
>That was five years ago, and let's face it, it was plain crap.
>Whatever the audience.
I enjoyed it. I think I and my tiny party were the only ones. We thought
it was pretty funny in spots, although it had some seriously akward structural
and plot issues. The whole ending might have been cut for the better. It was a
ridiculous movie viewed objectively no question. Trying to take it seriously
would probably make it utterly dull.
>All I can say is that people subconciously always value those values(no pun
>int.)
>which were dominant at the time they were still children or had their most
>memorable experiences. It has always been that "in the good old times"
>thing, and it never goes away.
There seem to be two kinds of people in the world, those whos minds shut
down a little bit after puberty, and those who keep on absorbing and allowing
themselves to have memorable experiences. I will tell you that most "art music"
composers I know have retained a definite capacity for childlike wonder. In my
opinion, most people do not grow up at all, but shut down and become incredibly
boring drones. It's a simple fact that if you don't use your brain, you lose
it. It's even been proven in experiments. As people age they lose their minds
and get senile much more if they just sit around and watch TV while those with
stimulating hobbies are far more likely to stay sharp right to the end.
I've never met a serious listener of "art" music who wasn't an extremely
colorful and personable character. I'm not counting the stuffy phonies who
pretend to like it just so they can appear smart. Call these generalizations if
you like. Too bad these particular generalizations are generally true. There is
this world of people who are so god damn boring it makes you wonder what
compels them to keep going at all. I suppose its more immediate. Most people
are locked into a tunnel vision mode where all they can think of is whats on TV
tonight or what to eat next.
All I can say is, thank god for that 1 in a million eccentric freak. When
they are all gone, it's over. The difference between those who DO and those who
DONT are those who DO.
>"everything was better back
>when I was young, back then people still care about each other" or something
>similar.
It's a symptom of the fact that our culture doesn't urge socialization among
people over adolescence. It encourages solitude, moving from your home box to
your car box, to your work box, to the grocery store box, back to the home box
to enter the TV box. Making new friends is not on the radar. Sadly, among young
people, making friends is usually a facade anyway, nobody is really friends
unless it serves them socially, and if the shit hits the fan all those people
call "friends" will not be there for you. If you're lucky you can develop a
filter and begin to recognize who your true friends are. In my opinion, friends
who "grow apart" or "change" or whatever were never really friends to begin
with.
Loyalty is the greatest lost value of our culture. More so than anything
else. Loyalty is not valued. The only actions preached to us now are those
which are designed to net us percieved social or economic gain, regardless of
the effects on others. Everyone is raised to be a self-centered brainwashed
drone and precious few have the inner impule to resist from a young age. Most
people are lost quite early on. the ones who have the guts to think for
themselves are thrown out of school, jacked up on medication or some other
junk.
knud
>*not* contain an inordinate amount of "rhythm [sic]/key signature
>changes". (Plus the difference being that a good deal of classical
>music offers significant depth of content without resorting to (and
>certainly irrespective of the quantity of) multiple key/meter changes.
>Whereas far too much progressive rock reveals little beyond its
>multiple key/meter changes.)
The responsibility of intention ultimately rests with the composer.
To state your case another way, good "art" music uses technical means
solely to achieve the artistic end, while too much prog rock plays big, but
feels(thinks) small. You can say the same for so much film music that takes
non-existant content and plays it up big. I call this a serious waste of
resources. Some of these prog rock guys have phenomenal skill and it's a shame
that they don't have the high-order compositions to go with it. A rock ensemble
can handle some incredible "art" music but there is just the tiniest sliver of
material that achieves this.
>> classical if anything is based on strict, simple rules.
This is a plainly ignorant statement. "Art" music has no rules. Pop music
on the other hand is extremely limited in scope even from the most banal
technical perspective. Tossing off another three chord wonder and saying you
are rebelling against some kind of imagined "rules" is one of those embarrasing
things that people insist on repeating with each new generation.
Explain to me how the "Rite Of Spring" (by now not a new piece) is
following "rules" compared to any pop act in history. Even after all this time,
it makes the entire history of pop sound weak and conservative by comparison.
The whole idea of "Art" music is to create music without compromise,
otherwise we wouldn't even make the distinction.
Try exposing yourself to this stuff repeatedly until you understand it then
re-examine your analysis. When someone finally "gets it" its like an entire
unknown world opening up. Sad that so few will ever experience it and will
instead resort to weak substitutes like psychoactive drugs.
knud
>> it is to play, oh, say, Sex Pistols covers. There are simply far more
>> parameters that the musician needs to be aware of.
>
>Yes, it's more difficult to *play* it. Drop the tempo to 50bpm, and you're
>playing even the hardest songs.
>It isn't any more difficult to *create* than any other type of music.
Right, anyone who can toss off a tune can write a genius full-scale
symphony. Uh-huh. And there are just so many of examples of this, in fact
anyone old slob can toss off a Rite of Spring or a B's ninth. I mean it's just
all so EASY, everyone would do if it werent so uncool.
>Mozart wrote songs every day. He wasn't a real _genius_ in the true sense of
>the word, but he knew his math, and composed by strict mathematical rules,
>on the fly, without even thinking sometimes, just writing.
What the hell are you talking about? Why can't all these math experts
compose a "Jupiter" finale? By your logic they should be able to merely by
following strict mathematical rules. Gimme a break dude, Mozarts greatest works
are the product of inspiration. If he merely made nice math structures we
wouldn't be talking about him now or even know he existed.
>Classical music(let's not talk about the relatively new cluster-based
>classical since it's mostly being composed by those "stupid kids" anyway)is
>not based on any more complex rules than any other type of music.
You have a few things to learn about music theory and history. Theory, as
many a theory text points out in the introduction, is merely a compilation of
OBSERVED GENERAL PRACTICES of composers over X period of time. Not only did it
stop being applicable at least a hundred years ago, even composers that fall
into a brief tonal general practice period did not follow any rules, in fact
many passages cannot be analysed at all according to theory, and by the time of
the mid-to-late romantics, it becomes practically useless to attempt to codify
a set of general priciples since no general principles exist. The passages that
CAN be codifed are by far the exception rather than the rule in modern "art"
music and have been for some time.
I leave you with a famous quote from composer Gustav Mahler:
"What is best in music is not to be found in the notes"
knud
>word) I don't know what a genius is.
>
>The word genius has the same root as generate -- in the implication of
>creating
>something new. It's the composers who work according to rules that generally
>produce the least-interesting music. qv "Amadeus"
Moreover, Mozart was a rebellious person by nature, trash talking nobility
to their faces, trying to carve out an independent career when such a thing was
unheard of for musicians (who were merely 'servants" at that time socially.) He
took serious steps to win the independence of the artist. And if you know
anything about him and his volumnious letters, you will see he certainly
considered himself an artist in the truest sense, beholden to no one other than
his own artistic conciense. That he made lots of toss off dreck to survive
means nothing. He had to eat for christ sakes. Much of his music was radical,
indecepherable mush to the ears of his era and locality, and some of it
continues to be difficult to this day, appreciated by few even among "art
music" fans. He died very young. Right at the end he was already in Beethovian
territory, and was already on his way to discarding accepted norms of his day.
Either way, his music is not "stilted" or cheapened by adhering to proven
voice-leading practices. Building on your predecessors is hardly an
objectionable practice and in fact it's a virtually unavoidable practice for
any creative artist of any kind. Even if you aim to "differ" from a "norm" you
have to have a "norm" to differ from. Mozarts greatest music indeed often gives
the impression of freedom rather than restriction. And much of it is so deeply
felt and personal that it cuts to the bone for anyone so inclined to actually
pay attention to it.
knud
>Mozart is generally thought of as "pop" classical, his work is perhaps a bit
>easier to access than some other composers' work.
In fact, Mozart is one of the most constitently misunderstood and
misrepresented composers in history, even basic music apprecation texts often
include a statement to this effect, followed by an effort to get the listener
to throw out their (entirely false) preconceptions about his music. I can tell
you aren't trying to generate such heated responses, but you really have some
notions concerning his music that won't hold up if you really examine them
yourself and study his music and his history more.
>The point is that a lot of classical composers actually weren't so
>impulsive, they relied heavily on science; math and musical rules.
That's impossible to support in practice. Method is meaningless. The
power of genius can be brought forth via any variety of working methods. What
matters is the result. Perfectly dumb people have produced great music,
perfectly genius intellectuals have been unable to advance beyond mary had a
little lamb. The musical faculty is not understood and science has not been
able to make sense of it, nor have two composers composed the same way in all
respects. In fact, most composers do NOT have one of working, although some
like to TALK as if they do, but it's just for show, and they often contradict
themselves when talking about their creative process. Beethoven said it best
"where do my ideas come from? Even I can not say for certain"
Some people need to fiddle with technicalities to trigger inspiration, some
people need to jam, some people need nothing but to tell their mind to come up
with something. In all cases great music has been made. And plenty of crap too!
ryanm
news:20040109180118...@mb-m13.aol.com...
>
> I enjoyed it.
>
I like Kubrick's work, but I did find EWS to be a bit slow and plodding
compared to his earleir stuff.
> it. It's even been proven in experiments. As people age they lose their
minds
> and get senile much more if they just sit around and watch TV while those
with
> stimulating hobbies are far more likely to stay sharp right to the end.
>
It's a symptom of life being too easy, that's all. A long time ago,
people were out plowing fields or building stuff or whatever until they
physically couldn't do it anymore. Using a skill keeps the mind sharp as
well.
> It's a symptom of the fact that our culture doesn't urge socialization
among
> people over adolescence.
>
That's true, and it also doesn't encourage socilization between
generations. Teenagers these days are unlikely to have social contact with
people from older generations aside from their immediate families. When I
was a teenager, I hung out with a lot of "old" people, mostly because they
had more interesting things to talk about than whatever was on TV that
night. Oh, and also because there were no real musicians in my age group
that I knew, just other kids trying to learn, so I had to look elsewhere to
learn anything of value.
> In my opinion, friends who "grow apart" or "change" or whatever were
> never really friends to begin with.
>
That's not always true. My best friend for as long as I can remember was
the guy who sat next to me in kindergarden (both of our last names started
with M), and we were best friends for 20 years. We've "grown apart" now,
like you said, but that's because we each have our own families and careers
and lives now, so we only see each other occasionally. But we're still
firends, so I don't know if that qualifies as what you were talking about.
> Loyalty is the greatest lost value of our culture. More so than
anything
> else. Loyalty is not valued. The only actions preached to us now are those
> which are designed to net us percieved social or economic gain, regardless
of
> the effects on others. Everyone is raised to be a self-centered
brainwashed
> drone and precious few have the inner impule to resist from a young age.
Most
> people are lost quite early on. the ones who have the guts to think for
> themselves are thrown out of school, jacked up on medication or some other
> junk.
>
I don't know that this is any different than it has ever been. People
have always feared and resisted change, shunned and rejected those that are
different, etc. I guess that instant communications just speed up the
process and give it a much further reach than ever before.
ryanm
ryanm
>
> Plenty of "art" music composers have made plenty of great short
songs.
> I've yet to hear a convincing large-scale work by a rock star.
>
Which also happen to be 2 of my top 5 albums of all time. Coincidence?
ryanm
Tommi
"knud" <symp...@aol.comblahblah> wrote in message
news:20040109171725...@mb-m13.aol.com...
> much more interested in the style and social connotations of music than
the
> music itself, even if they don't realize it. There is no reason you can't
write
> a masterpiece scored for rock band, just as there are plenty of awful
chunks of
> gunk for acoustic instruments. When people start arguing that a brief ABA
song
> stands up to a symphony that contains more music than a thousand pop
songs,
> they are missing the point entirely. It's true that a single good tune is
> better than a 1 hour piece of dreck, but it's just as true that a 1 hour
piece
> of brilliance blows anything in ABA form to nothingness if you have the
balls
> to absorb it.
If you have a pop song with ABCD, carefully constructed, and it's five
minutes long, it can sound truly wonderful. It can sound just as good as a
five minute piece taken from a longer classical song.
Put an album full of great 5-minute songs together with a true intact story,
carefully crafted, and it can sound like a good orchestral piece, but with
diverse soundscapes etc.
Sadly, few bands do good pop/rock albums with a real "feeling curve".
Rather, it's just one catchy single and rest is just..bolster.
> The truth is, you can get all kinds of accolades for tossing off some
tunes.
> Mentally deficient music magazine editors might call you a genius, girls
might
> want your cock, people who don't care might still think you are a 'real
> talented guy'.
The Strokes and their lead singer spring to mind. They have everything
mentioned above. I really really think they're wayy too overrated.
ryanm
>
> You have a few things to learn about music theory and history.
Theory, as
> many a theory text points out in the introduction, is merely a compilation
of
> OBSERVED GENERAL PRACTICES of composers over X period of time.
>
in their creation. Theory is merely a language by which musicians can
describe complex constructs without having to go into detail.
ryanm
ryanm
>
> Try exposing yourself to this stuff repeatedly until you understand it
then
> re-examine your analysis. When someone finally "gets it" its like an
entire
> unknown world opening up. Sad that so few will ever experience it and will
> instead resort to weak substitutes like psychoactive drugs.
>
the above argument would make it apply to you, based on your statements.
When you finally "get it" it will be like *another* whole new world opening
up. The combination can be orgasmic.
ryanm
Tommi
"knud" <symp...@aol.comblahblah> wrote in message
> >> I would contend that it is more difficult to play Classical music than
> >> it is to play, oh, say, Sex Pistols covers. There are simply far more
> >> parameters that the musician needs to be aware of.
> >
> >Yes, it's more difficult to *play* it. Drop the tempo to 50bpm, and
you're
> >playing even the hardest songs.
> >It isn't any more difficult to *create* than any other type of music.
>
> Right, anyone who can toss off a tune can write a genius full-scale
> symphony. Uh-huh. And there are just so many of examples of this, in fact
> anyone old slob can toss off a Rite of Spring or a B's ninth. I mean it's
just
> all so EASY, everyone would do if it werent so uncool.
THAN ANY OTHER TYPE OF MUSIC, I said. The "genre" thinking leads to
generalisations like "pop is banal" and "classical is real music".
knud, I'm not talking about the strokes here who strum three chords and try
to look cool. I'm talking about producers and songwriters behind the artists
(who are performers but not necessarily songwriters or producers).
> >Mozart wrote songs every day. He wasn't a real _genius_ in the true sense
of
> >the word, but he knew his math, and composed by strict mathematical
rules,
> >on the fly, without even thinking sometimes, just writing.
>
> What the hell are you talking about? Why can't all these math experts
> compose a "Jupiter" finale? By your logic they should be able to merely by
> following strict mathematical rules. Gimme a break dude, Mozarts greatest
works
> are the product of inspiration. If he merely made nice math structures we
> wouldn't be talking about him now or even know he existed.
No. they can't, but that's a fact that classical composers in the history
were much more theoretical than they're usually now thought(struggling with
different physical/mathematical problems like the pythagorean comma),
nowadays they're sort of mystified as some "other-worldly" geniuses who made
something no currently living man could do. Wrong! It *can* be done, it's
been done before, by us humans!
I mean that Mozart was very, very gifted but so are also the
physicists,mathematicians,philosophers,chemists etc., but we're usually not
referring to Marie Curie or Heidegger as "geniuses".
> >Classical music(let's not talk about the relatively new cluster-based
> >classical since it's mostly being composed by those "stupid kids"
anyway)is
> >not based on any more complex rules than any other type of music.
> You have a few things to learn about music theory and history. Theory, as
> many a theory text points out in the introduction, is merely a compilation
of
> OBSERVED GENERAL PRACTICES of composers over X period of time. > Not only
did it
> stop being applicable at least a hundred years ago, even composers that
fall
> into a brief tonal general practice period did not follow any rules, in
fact
> many passages cannot be analysed at all according to theory, and by the
time of
> the mid-to-late romantics, it becomes practically useless to attempt to
codify
> a set of general priciples since no general principles exist. The passages
that
> CAN be codifed are by far the exception rather than the rule in modern
"art"
> music and have been for some time.
I know all this.
And how doesn't this apply to other styles of music?
My point has been all along that classical music shouldn't be put to a
special leader position just because there are so many bad and
one-dimensional songs over in the pop domain.
Also:
-classical music was "invented" before audio amplification. Hence, there are
so many violins, to sound equal to a timpani when necessary. This point is
too complex to describe here, and the above may sound stupid.
-It has always the same sounds. If those great composers had access to
today's effect repertoire, they'd have made very different songs.
-Today, when we have access to electronically created sounds, we can
practically create whatever we imagine. Classical can't do that.
-Hence today, a fantastic song doesn't need to rely on melody or harmony,
because its merits can also be found in an unexplored territory: sounds. 12
notes and a fistful of overtone-differing instruments and their different
combinations end a lot faster than all the audible frequencies which can now
be manipulated any way we want, to create millions of new aural sensations.
> I leave you with a famous quote from composer Gustav Mahler:
> "What is best in music is not to be found in the notes"
Following this rule, best music can be found in songs which put an
unbelievable landscape ahead of you, by different textures, sounds,
sensations only by using 10 chords and 11 notes. And it's getting better
with the 5.1 etc.
Be it classical or pop or anything, it doesn't really matter.
Great songs can be done today and it's only up to the people what they
decide to create. Your point about numb people watching TV was spot on, I
totally agree.
ryanm
news:CEILb.482$NU7...@reader1.news.jippii.net...
>
> -classical music was "invented" before audio amplification.
>
> -It has always the same sounds. If those great composers had access to
> today's effect repertoire, they'd have made very different songs.
>
Hardly. I've heard sounds from cannons firing to thunderstorms, etc with
orchestral pieces. They just did it the old fashioned way instead of
recording cannons or storms and playing back a sample.
> -Today, when we have access to electronically created sounds, we can
> practically create whatever we imagine. Classical can't do that.
>
Sure you can. In both cases what was lacking most often was the
imagination, not the ability to recreate what was imagined.
> -Hence today, a fantastic song doesn't need to rely on melody or harmony,
> because its merits can also be found in an unexplored territory: sounds.
>
That is not, by defenition, music. Any more than a sound effects cd is a
"great album". Use of sounds (other than standard instruments) in music is
not new, it has been done consistantly through the generations. Examples
would include the fairly common practice in blues to mention someone
knocking at the door, and having the drummer make the sound to match, etc,
all the way back to the aforementioned cannons, thunderstorms, etc in the
past.
ryanm
Tommi
"ryanm" <ry...@fatchicksinpartyhats.com> wrote in message
news:vvuqosq...@corp.supernews.com...
> "Tommi" <tomm...@suomi24.fi> wrote in message
> news:CEILb.482$NU7...@reader1.news.jippii.net...
> > -classical music was "invented" before audio amplification.
> You mean *electrical* amplification?
Yes.
> > -It has always the same sounds. If those great composers had access to
> > today's effect repertoire, they'd have made very different songs.
> >
> Hardly. I've heard sounds from cannons firing to thunderstorms, etc
with
> orchestral pieces. They just did it the old fashioned way instead of
> recording cannons or storms and playing back a sample.
Most classical music is always (depending on the era but mainly) done with
-classical guitars
-strings, violins, violins, violins
-piano, etc.
-wind instruments
not:
-with electrically assembled timbres, which is how we can create any sound
we imagine
-delays, which can make you feel like you're playing in Grand Canyon
-ethereal or metal-like reverbs(today we can determine the frequencies so
precisely digitally that every shape and form of space you can imagine can
be created sonically)
-with any real control over amplitude or frequency-domains generally
> > -Today, when we have access to electronically created sounds, we can
> > practically create whatever we imagine. Classical can't do that.
> >
> Sure you can. In both cases what was lacking most often was the
> imagination, not the ability to recreate what was imagined.
This isn't true.
We couldn't make all the things we imagined back in 1800, but today we're
getting pretty darn close to that situation.
A couple of hours ago I was experimenting with Native Instrument's Spektral
Delay, you can get wonderful results from it, and that couldn't be done 200
years ago. OTOH, we still have those violins, and we could create everything
that was made 200 years ago.
> > -Hence today, a fantastic song doesn't need to rely on melody or
harmony,
> > because its merits can also be found in an unexplored territory: sounds.
> >
> That is not, by defenition, music. Any more than a sound effects cd is
a
> "great album". Use of sounds (other than standard instruments) in music is
> not new, it has been done consistantly through the generations. Examples
> would include the fairly common practice in blues to mention someone
> knocking at the door, and having the drummer make the sound to match, etc,
> all the way back to the aforementioned cannons, thunderstorms, etc in the
> past.
The definition of music as melody and harmony has not been an absolute one
for quite some time. Most music has at least one element of the above, but
what you're essentially saying is that rap music can't be music if there is
no melody or harmony to it. It, however, is music, even if it's only with
random variables in the frequency domain, with no harmony or melody. You can
change every frequency in it, and it's still considered as the same song.
Today there can be a song which contains no melody or harmony, and it's
music. Hell, some of the new rap/r'n'b songs can be just a synthetic beat
which exists practically only because of today's digital effects, and a
"vocal" track where a person just speaks without any definitive "tone"(in a
sense that the fundamental can be anything and also changed). And yet it can
sound good if the beat is colorful and there's something exciting done to
the vocal, or rather to the speech track!
Classical or not, sounds are the uncharted territory.
Hence, even engineering is becoming art again, but in a new way. It could be
_production_.
Greg Andrews
>
>People are no longer interested in reading, thinking, or exposing
>themselves to anything the represents any sort of intellectual
>challenge.
>
"We turn off our minds for the same reason that we
turn off our lights: we want to sleep in darkness."
-- J. Mitchell Morse[1]
-Greg
[1] as quoted in The Underground Grammarian, Vol.1 No.9
--
::::::::::::: Greg Andrews ::::: ge...@panix.com :::::::::::::
Doomp Doomp Doomp . Da-Doomp Doomp Doomp Da-Doomp
Scott Dorsey
>
>Most classical music is always (depending on the era but mainly) done with
>-classical guitars
>-strings, violins, violins, violins
>-piano, etc.
>-wind instruments
William Sommerwerck
>> but mainly) done with
>> -classical guitars
>> -strings, violins, violins, violins
>> -piano, etc.
>> -wind instruments
> -aircraft engines
You're forgetting sirens (qv, Varese's Ionization).
Mike
> In article <934b3e2c.04010...@posting.google.com> mme...@mmeproductions.com writes:
>
> > I have a question regarding the constant inference to digital exposing
> > flaws not heard in the analog domain. If these tracks were originally
> > recorded on analog where was the masking of these flaws taking place?
>
> You can start with the pressing and work backwards.
>
> > I mean, if the original was recorded to analog, there would be some
> > masking of flaws even in the original recording that couldn't be
> > changed.
>
> Sure - tape hiss hides hum and air handling noise. But we have good
> tools today that can make hiss less audible, so then you expose the
> hum in the original recording, so we get out the de-hummer. Then we
> take a sample of the air handler noise, apply that to a convolver,
I knew that damned convolver was for something.
LeBaron & Alrich
> >Youth culture isn't just sexy music videos and overcompression in audio, it
> >isn't just banal movies and drugs.
> Maybe it wasn't in the past. In fact "youth" and "non-youth" cultures are
> all now banal movies, but more importantly banal TV which is what most
> Americans do with their recreation time. Going through life staring at a box.
> Disturbing.
Time to revisit _Commodify Your Dissent_...
"Youth" "culture" is largely manufactured by addultz.
--
ha
P Stamler
And vacuum cleaners (Hoffnung). And wind machines (Vaughan Williams). And
children's toys (Leopold Mozart).
Peace,
Paul
Les Cargill
>
> > Digital recording has nothing to do with lost classical sales.
>
> The end of WWII brought about the rise of rock and roll and the youth culture.
> These have both lead to a gradual decline -- now bordering on destruction -- of
> "high" Western culture.
>
I'd a' said it's an evolution. "High Western Culture" has to evolve, because
everything else is.
> There are other examples. For example, Time-Life no longer publishes books! And
> Britannica no longer publishes the Great Books "annual" (The Great Ideas Today).
>
They are still available as out-of-print in Amazon. The Great Books concept
cycles in and out. They are available in most lending libraries. All media
end up competing for shelf space of various types.
> People are no longer interested in reading, thinking, or exposing themselves to
> anything the represents any sort of intellectual challenge.
People have been saying this since the Greeks. And it's sometimes
true.
--
Les Cargill
Les Cargill
>
> Tommi <tomm...@suomi24.fi> wrote:
> >
> >Most classical music is always (depending on the era but mainly) done with
> >-classical guitars
> >-strings, violins, violins, violins
> >-piano, etc.
> >-wind instruments
> -aircraft engines
>
> --scott
> --
> "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
--
Les Cargill
Richard Crowley
> > People are no longer interested in reading, thinking,
> > or exposing themselves to anything the represents
> > any sort of intellectual challenge.
"Les Cargill" wrote ...
> People have been saying this since the Greeks.
> And it's sometimes true.
I would have agreed with that characterization before TV.
But since then most of the public in the western world has
been turned into non-reading, non-creative, passive audience.
And living, "societal labroatory" evidence that it is happening
also in the "3rd world" :-((
Les Cargill
>
> > William Sommerwerck wrote:
> > > People are no longer interested in reading, thinking,
> > > or exposing themselves to anything the represents
> > > any sort of intellectual challenge.
>
> "Les Cargill" wrote ...
> > People have been saying this since the Greeks.
> > And it's sometimes true.
>
> I would have agreed with that characterization before TV.
"TV" per se isn't the villain here. I've seen amazing stuff on
TV. I even saw an amazing rendition of "Rite" in the new
Disney Hall. Man! VUMP-vump-vump-VUMP-vump-vump-vump...
They thought '30s pulp science fiction was gonna rot people's
minds. Instead, it became a template for technology, and
the source of a lot of leadership.
The "third world" has deeper roots than does the "first world".
They will change TV, and I suspect for the better.
I would
be extremely happy if Indian classical literature was presented
in film form, with high production values, and shown on U.S.
TV. I don't think Bollywood norms would work, but all those
stories of the Indian god pantheon would make *great* movies.
Likewise certain Chinese texts. I can only imagine what
sort of stories you could get out of old Holy Roman Empire
regions - I know a guy who's literally from Carpathia, and
they have legendary stuff to exploit beyond Dracul.
Much less old Babylonian texts and Egyptian mythos. Some of
that stuff is starting to seriously inform game development,
and where games go, will go movies.
There's a blurred line between movies and TV. Tolkein is now
an Official Big Movie Hit, and Master and Commander is
hitting really big - you have The Last Samauri....
As a hack historian, there's just now starting to be all
this really, really good nonfiction material coming available.
It's *better* than books, and there's usually a book behind it
to read, so you get interlocking support for the material.
That's where it's at. For every <x> dozen Gilligan's Island-es,
there's a Monty Python. For every <n> Python's, there's a
Shelby Foote, or a Simon Schama.
> But since then most of the public in the western world has
> been turned into non-reading, non-creative, passive audience.
> And living, "societal labroatory" evidence that it is happening
> also in the "3rd world" :-((
I dunno how much this really contributes to passivity. I think
passive people will self select to watch (too much) TV. It's
like any other powerful thing - abuse causes more damage than
less powerful things. Heck, kids used to watch "Kung Fu", then
go play Kung Fu for an hour or so. Or Combat. Or Wagon
Train. Or ...
I wish people would work harder filtering stuff for their kids,
but ...
--
Les Cargill
Chris Hornbeck
<chrishornbe...@att.net> wrote:
>On Fri, 9 Jan 2004 05:07:22 -0800, "William Sommerwerck"
><will...@nwlink.com> wrote:
>
>>Every heard Michael Kamen's saxophone concerto? Horrible, horrible, horrible.
>
>OTOH, just to prove that it takes all kinds to fill the
>freeways, I really like it.
No I don't! Checked today; must've been thinking of something
else. Best to just ignore me. I'm an idiot.
Chris Hornbeck
ryanm
>
> Most classical music is always (depending on the era but mainly) done with
> -classical guitars
> -strings, violins, violins, violins
> -piano, etc.
> -wind instruments
>
> not:
> -with electrically assembled timbres, which is how we can create any sound
> we imagine
> -delays, which can make you feel like you're playing in Grand Canyon
> -ethereal or metal-like reverbs(today we can determine the frequencies so
> precisely digitally that every shape and form of space you can imagine can
> be created sonically)
> -with any real control over amplitude or frequency-domains generally
>
because it's *easier* to do so now?
> This isn't true.
> We couldn't make all the things we imagined back in 1800, but today we're
> getting pretty darn close to that situation.
> A couple of hours ago I was experimenting with Native Instrument's
Spektral
> Delay, you can get wonderful results from it, and that couldn't be done
200
> years ago. OTOH, we still have those violins, and we could create
everything
> that was made 200 years ago.
>
But we *can't* create anything on par with what was created 200 years
ago, largely due to a lack of imagination.
> The definition of music as melody and harmony has not been an absolute one
> for quite some time. Most music has at least one element of the above, but
> what you're essentially saying is that rap music can't be music if there
is
> no melody or harmony to it. It, however, is music, even if it's only with
> random variables in the frequency domain, with no harmony or melody. You
can
> change every frequency in it, and it's still considered as the same song.
> Today there can be a song which contains no melody or harmony, and it's
> music. Hell, some of the new rap/r'n'b songs can be just a synthetic beat
> which exists practically only because of today's digital effects, and a
> "vocal" track where a person just speaks without any definitive "tone"(in
a
> sense that the fundamental can be anything and also changed). And yet it
can
> sound good if the beat is colorful and there's something exciting done to
> the vocal, or rather to the speech track!
>
Rappers aren't musicians any more than the beat poets in the 50's were.
It may be art, it may be entertainment, but it is not music without the
aforementioned attributes (melody, harmony, etc). I can record 2 minutes of
pink noise and call it music but I would be full of shit, it's just noise.
It may be art, people may even like it, but that doesn't make it music.
ryanm
Richard Crowley
> Heck, kids used to watch "Kung Fu", then go play
> Kung Fu for an hour or so. Or Combat. Or Wagon
> Train. Or ...
Now, they just stay in and do it via videogames like Grand
Theft Auto (and other wholesome entertainments.)
Tommi
> > -with electrically assembled timbres, which is how we can create any
sound
> > we imagine
> > -delays, which can make you feel like you're playing in Grand Canyon
> > -ethereal or metal-like reverbs(today we can determine the frequencies
so
> > precisely digitally that every shape and form of space you can imagine
can
> > be created sonically)
> > -with any real control over amplitude or frequency-domains generally
> >
> So? Does that mean that they *couldn't* make any sound they wanted,
just
> because it's *easier* to do so now?
Yes.
> > This isn't true.
> > We couldn't make all the things we imagined back in 1800, but today
we're
> > getting pretty darn close to that situation.
> > A couple of hours ago I was experimenting with Native Instrument's
> Spektral
> > Delay, you can get wonderful results from it, and that couldn't be done
> 200
> > years ago. OTOH, we still have those violins, and we could create
> everything
> > that was made 200 years ago.
> >
> But we *can't* create anything on par with what was created 200 years
> ago, largely due to a lack of imagination.
I knew someone would say this. This is just up to the people behind the
tools.
> Rappers aren't musicians any more than the beat poets in the 50's
were.
> It may be art, it may be entertainment, but it is not music without the
> aforementioned attributes (melody, harmony, etc). I can record 2 minutes
of
> pink noise and call it music but I would be full of shit, it's just noise.
> It may be art, people may even like it, but that doesn't make it music.
This is the most common opinion amongst "music" people, and I'm glad I
disagree.
When you say that rappers can't be musicians because they don't incorporate
melody or harmony, you're plain wrong.
They incorporate rhythm, like turntablists do. Probably many people don't
regard turntablists as musicians.
Also, a drummer isn't a musician, right?
Or the whole world of players who have studied their own percussive
instrument for 25 years, they aren't musicians, huh?
If a rapper's instrument is his voice, exactly how can't he/she be
considered as a musician if he's good at using his voice to lay down
rhythmically clever tracks?
The fact that rap isn't generally considered as music is mainly due to the
fact that there are so many crap rappers out there.
Zakir Hussain isn't a musician! He doesn't incorporate any harmony or melody
to his playing! Please..
Tommi
"Les Cargill" <lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:4000765B...@worldnet.att.net...
> Scott Dorsey wrote:
> >
> > Tommi <tomm...@suomi24.fi> wrote:
> > >
> > >Most classical music is always (depending on the era but mainly) done
with
> > >-classical guitars
> > >-strings, violins, violins, violins
> > >-piano, etc.
> > >-wind instruments
> > -aircraft engines
> - plastic ray guns.
Classical music is limited by it's own sounds. The people who've created
music in the past were collectively more creative than now perhaps, but they
had limits on what could be done. This fact was the main reason why music as
it is has been considered very differently in the past, from 3000 B.C to the
day electricity could be manipulated to anything imaginable sonically. Back
then, people generally thought that music "existed" even when it was only on
paper. This is quite a philosophical question. Spiritually, yes. But if you
think of the notes on the staff as an analogy to a script of a movie, would
you really define that the "movie exists" even though most of the camera
angles, dialogue, most of the script is there, on paper, but not shot?
Probably not if you really had to say yes or no. Why? Because there's so
much more to a great movie than a great script. Some guys need to open their
minds a bit. Melody and harmony can be considered as the "screenplay" of the
music, but that doesn't end there.
0jun...@bellsouth.net
On 2004-01-11 tomm...@suomi24.fi said:
>When you say that rappers can't be musicians because they don't
>incorporate melody or harmony, you're plain wrong.
>They incorporate rhythm, like turntablists do. Probably many people
>don't regard turntablists as musicians.
>Also, a drummer isn't a musician, right?
>Or the whole world of players who have studied their own percussive
>instrument for 25 years, they aren't musicians, huh?
>If a rapper's instrument is his voice, exactly how can't he/she be
>considered as a musician if he's good at using his voice to lay down
>rhythmically clever tracks?
>The fact that rap isn't generally considered as music is mainly due
>to the fact that there are so many crap rappers out there.
>Zakir Hussain isn't a musician! He doesn't incorporate any harmony
>or melody to his playing! Please..
I look at it like this. Music has to have either rhythmic or melodic
elements to be considered music. Hence rap, though I may dislike much
of it is music. FOr my definition music has to have elements of one
or the other however. THe best music imho has both, ymmv and all that
other good stuff.
REgards,
Richard Webb
Electric Spider Productions
REplace anything before the @ symbol with elspider for real email
--
transducr
> "transducr" <tran...@autonomous-robot.com> wrote in message
> news:ac00ffb8.04010...@posting.google.com...
> >
> > i think the fact that many in the classical world are not willing to
> > take the risk of performing more contemporary works tends to make
> > potential audiences feel like classical music is some sort of stagnant
> > re-run (or at least perpetuate the sentiment)...like going to see a
> > concert is like going to see something very old in a museum...you must
> > respect it's beauty, even if it has no relevancy to you and you can't
> > exactly understand what that beauty is, someone of greater taste and
> > culture decided on it's importance already.
> >
> Well, that's the bottom line, isn't it? Do you think that the gray hairs
> will still want to come to a concert if it's going to be filled with rowdy
> kids dressed in shorts and a tank top? So then what? Lose your *rich,
> paying* audience in exchange for a bunch of kids who won't pay nearly as
> much to keep the orchestra going? And who will talk and heckle the players
> during the concert?
>
> The elitist attitude works in this instance, because by keeping the
> price and the dress code high they attract a particular kind of audience.
> The kind of audience that can afford to drop $100 on a concert without
> blinking an eye, and maybe even donate a bit of money to the orchestra.
>
> I think there's a place for both. Like way back when, there should be an
> elitist attitude surrounding certain performances and venues, but there
> should also be the "common" orchestra for the public.
i hear what you're saying, but the chance that lowering prices and
introducing more contemporary works would hardly, in my opinion,
attract any sort of "rowdy kids dressed in shorts and a tank top". i
mean, the idea here is to be a little more daring to attract *younger*
audiences...i still don't think that that younger audience is to be
found amongst the mainstream....certainly not the culturally ignorant
or "rowdy".
i think Stockhausen, Cage, Reich, etc. is no more likely to attract or
even ring a bell to the kind of audience you describe than what's
currently being performed...perhaps even less. at least most publicly
educated kids have heard of beethoven, mozart, bach, etc...
i think the idea that rowdy youngsters would overtake the culture of
the local orchestra experience is a bit of an exaggeration. i mean, do
you think there are enough young people in the general populace who
would care to get rowdy at any price while listening to classical
performances? i think the idea is to appeal to the musically and
culturally adventurous among the population...who might not have big
money to support the orchestra *yet*. but that's the great thing about
getting young people involved in a tradition you'd like to see carried
on. eventually they will be the "grey-hairs" and possibly with hefty
pocketbooks, ready to support something that has given them alot of
great experiences over the years.
the young people who could be enticed into the experience would
doubtfully be a raucous, disrespectful crowd.
i don't think there's a market for a "common" orchestra playing
classical music. i don't think it relates to "common" people the same
way now as it did back then. it seems the "common" orchestras now are
bar bands and free pop concerts at the local summerfest...
perhaps a better solution would be more daytime performances on dates
when an evening performance is scheduled at reduced prices...or
something of the like designed for the less economically 'elite'. i
know this happens some places. for example at Lincoln Center, the
public is invited to attend final rehearsals at greatly reduced
prices...$6-10 or something like that.
i don't know. i guess i feel like the age/economic gaps can co-exist
in the concert hall, but maybe i'm overly-optimistic. it seems that
most organizations are finding they have little choice but to try to
attract a "casual dress" audience just to survive. i'm not sure how
that's going...