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From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Newsgroups: net.music,net.music.classical
Subject: Re: Why classical music is not popular
Message-ID: <995@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 18-Jul-84 18:13:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: dciem.995
Posted: Wed Jul 18 18:13:12 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 18-Jul-84 20:17:49 EDT
References: <659@flairvax.UUCP>
Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada
Lines: 50

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Another reason why classical music is not popular is that it is, for all
practical purposes, `dead'.

By which I mean there is relatively little experimentation with new ideas,
few or no new schools of thought, no exciting breakthroughs, and nothing
to attract the most brilliant new musical minds of our time.

Look at the explosive development of classical in the first forty years of
this century (or in practically any other period since ~1600, except for the
equally dead `classical' period). Major new styles used to revitalize
classical music with each new generation, and the new music was eagerly
consumed by the listening public within 20 years after its invention.
*****************
The period since the First World War is also the first period in which
the music of past ages has been readily available for hearing on demand.
Bach walked many miles to hear Telemann; Berlioz may have heard
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony ten or twenty times in his life. Listeners
HAD to hear mainly new music, and not a lot of that, because that
was what there was to hear.  Conversely, the new music had to be
what brought in the cash (or the patrons), because you sure weren't
going to make much off the record royalties from playing other
people's music.

There is lots of good music being composed now ... probably more now
than ever before.  But the best of the old music can be heard on a whim.
Pick your style, play the record.  Choose your performers, too.
We know pretty intuitively what everything written since music was
notated sounds like -- except what is being written now.  But we don't
know the great mass of junk from the old days, just the best.
It's hard for the best contemporary music to compete and to let its style
become sufficiently familiar that it can compete on equal terms.
Only after a style becomes familiar can listeners really appreciate
what is in the composition itself.

Why is pop music pop? Perhaps because it uses only the simplest elements
of the styles of long ago.  It doesn't have to compete for stylistic
appreciation, because the styles have been drummed into people's heads
by more repetition than anyone could have heard in a hundred years
before the gramophone.  And the compositions themselves are very
much simpler examples than those that are loosely called "classical".
I'm sorry to put myself in Rich Rosen's class of "snobs", because I
usually appreciate what he writes; but I do think that listening
to pop music is often used as a substitute for thinking. When one
is trying to escape thought, one does not want music that provokes it.

-- 

Martin Taylor
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