Whatever Happened to Classical Music?

[general disarray]

Thank you.  That's what I'm trying to communicate.

EDIT:  well, on reflection, not quite, but what the hell.

[danny elfboy]

Well. I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree on quite a few points, danny.

As for your "unavailability of repetition" notion before the advent of recording technology, you are wrong here.  The piano was the "stereo" of its day.  Most middle-class households had one.  Or two. And other members of the household routinely played other instruments.

During the 19th century, with the rise of the middle class, piano transcriptions of new works by composers were routinely prepared and published.  Liszt, Brahms, as you know, were great transcribers and the great orchestral and chamber works of the time were made available to music lovers in piano transcriptions.

Yes, but it's just not the same. When I'm really touched by an orchestral work I just don't feel the same emotion and interests when it is transcribed for piano. Many things just disappear for necessaty, the sound is not the same and the piece ends up communicating completely different ideas and emotions.

Through these transcriptions, people could and did experience repeated listenings to gain a greater love of complex works, such as the Brahms' Piano Quintet, the Beethoven symphonies, etc., etc.

But complexity resides in the means by which music is created not in the end result.
No composer has or ever had the goal to be "complex".
A composition begins with the intention of the author of communicating something, whether this will be abtained through simple or complex means is just a matter of circumstance and just something which happens "behind the scenes"

I don't pieces created through complex techniques and means are less direct and immediately appealing than pieces created with simple means. In the end what matters is the end result, the content and there's little relation between the content, it's meaning, it's fruibility and immediacy and the complexity of the means and techniques by which it is conveyed.

And it was a universal given in the mid to late 19th century that music education was indispensable to perform on instruments.  So repetition indeed was available before recording technology.

While it's true that piano was available to the middle class and many amateurs played it, the level of proficiency of the amateur pianists didn't always allowed them to play many pieces that required an higher technique and I still think that for orchestral pieces piano transcription were at most a surrogate.

Besides we're talking about music and the sensitivity and emotional depth required to really get the most out of it. And yet we're saying that in the past this music and the chance to listen repeatedly to it was a prerogative of the nobles and the spoiled middle class, which paradoxically are the people less likely to posses that kind of depth and sensitivity/empathy because of their emotionally repressive social background and general lack of scarring experiences.

I think it is idealistic to assume that art should be instantly accessible and attractive if it is truly art. That no education is necessary and, if it should be, then the work in question is overly complex and cerebral and, therefore, not worthy of study.

I agree that immediately appealing music IS a virtue and should be a goal of a composer. 

And, as you say, everything is relative, therefore music's accessibility is relative to the listener.

What, to me, evens out that relativity of accessibility is education.  To be able to be moved by Beethoven Opus. 110 requires a little more insight than that required to get into club music.

Not necessarily, both music can be felt in a instinctive and emotive way.
I still believe that the best listeners ever are young children.
When you look in the eyes of a young child who is listening almost in trance to a beautiful piece of music (be it classical or popular) you know you're witnessing the highest essence of music ever.

No, I'm not denying that there are other levels too. So for example someone studying music might eventually analyze the score while listening the music and appreciate it on a technical and harmonical level, but that's just a parallel path which is not required to appreciate the Beethoven or feel what Beethoven was feeling.

We must eventually not forget that not licking a piece of music we consider a masterpiece is not a symptom of having a dull mind or being dulled by other kind of music, but just the universal fact that what the music is expressing to you is not something you like.
One can acknowledge the beautiful writing technique of a book, the prose and fluidity of the narration, the refined language which never gets pendantic and the genius use of analogies ... yet this person may still dislike the content of the book, the morals of the book, the meaning of the book and what it is trying to transmit. In other words it's absolutely normal that the composer and the listener have different chords striken by different things (and are also very likely to have different personalities and ideologies) but this doesn't in any way is the fault of the listener or of it's lack of interest and insight.

Anyway I'm glad we can agree to disagree peacefully.
Disagreeing is important, healthy and constructive and even in the "war of opinions" we should always respect our "rivals" and "fight" for our ideas in an honest way, using our arguments and disagreeing with other's arguments without ridiculing them.
After all we all have the same goals in mind, we all want the best for music, the best for arts, the best for people, the best for the world, the best for the society ... we just have different well-thought opinions on how to achieve these goals.
Too bad in this forum there are people who take advantage of disagreement to vent their frustration, troll interesting threads and just create bullying on-sided fights.

[webern78]

I still believe that the best listeners ever are young children.

I can attest in all fairness that when i was a young child i knew jack sh*t about music. 

[danny elfboy]

I can attest in all fairness that when i was a young child i knew jack sh*t about music. 

But not knowing jack sh*t about music doesn't mean you can't love it.
As I have said before I think many people are just to judgemental when they experience art.
Art requires instead letting go, removing all barriers and all fences and just accepting to be passively manipulated by it. As the teather appreciation requires the suspension of disbielief and the destruction of any spatial and temporal reference to almost enter in a new dimension for as long as we're the audience, in my opinion appreciation of music requires a similar trance state in which we're open to whatever is going to be absorbed by our body and spirit and not defensive and critical.

Ever seen a child watching an acquarium? How they can sit for hours looking almost in trance at every little detail, every little water motion, every little color and fish in such a relaxed and yet mindful state? And then comes the stressed, frustrated, distracted from the awe the awareness of the present moment should keep providing us, mother who say to the child it's time to go and drags violently the reluctant child out of the room.

The mother just think the child is an obnoxious infantile brat who doesn't understand what really is important in life, the child just can't understand how can't the mother feel the same subjection at such a wonderful sight. The child is right and the mother is dead wrong. When children are captivated by a piece of music they're like the child who stares at the acquarium, absorbing every little information and emotion and suspending any sort of socially-constructed judgement and critique.

And I still believe this is the summit of music appreciation whereas the work of the music critic is the bottom.

[webern78]

But not knowing jack sh*t about music doesn't mean you can't love it.

Loving music means jack sh*t. It's not about the individual, it's about the artistic standard which is absolute. This type of ideas are more proof of the egocentrism of contemporary culture, and it's totally disgraceful. People should be taught to strive for an higher ideal, not indulge in personal whims or whatever 'feels good'. That's what animals do.

Children being more receptive to adults to anything that comes their way is all the more reason why standards should be taught as early as possible. When you are a child, everything is great. This is how unscrupulous corporate assholes are able to shove their junk down their throats because all they have to do is hype it to high heaven, and kids don't know anybetter anyway.

The problem then begins when you eventually grow up and realize everything you've been exposed to was crap. What then?

[counterpoint]

Loving music means jack sh*t. It's not about the individual, it's about the artistic standard which is absolute.

Sounds like a new form of dictatorship...

[webern78]

Sounds like a new form of dictatorship...

Yes because anything other then sheer artistic anarchy is 'oppressive', and it probably is if you are one of those egotistic morons who think they come first before anything else.

Do you also consider teaching children proper manners to be a form of 'authoritarianism'?

[danny elfboy]

Loving music means jack sh*t. It's not about the individual, it's about the artistic standard which is absolute. This type of ideas are more proof of the egocentrism of contemporary culture, and it's totally disgraceful. People should be taught to strive for an higher ideal, not indulge in personal whims or whatever 'feels good'. That's what animals do.

Children being more receptive to adults to anything that comes their way is all the more reason why standards should be taught as early as possible. When you are a child, everything is great. This is how unscrupulous corporate assholes are able to shove their junk down their throats because all they have to do is hype it to high heaven, and kids don't know anybetter anyway.

The problem then begins when you eventually grow up and realize everything you've been exposed to was crap. What then?

Well there are two problems

1) You're saying there's an higher ideal, hence you're judging what's is higher and what is lower claiming that they're universal and objective. Nevertheless you're a human being with bias and flaws (like each of us) and your opinion by its very nature is absolutely subjective. So when you state that something is objective, who can back up your statement when the analysis itself of such statement defies objectivity? In other words where's the proof that the ideal you're talking about is higher than "feels good" and that "feels good" is not higher than the ideal you're talking about?

2) You claim that there's egocentrism in the contemporary culture but the "higher ideal" you're talking about was born and developed in the white western culture. What about all the other thousands of cultures on this earth that have completely different ideals, including completely different opinions as to what consistutes "higher"? Isn't this ignoring the ideals of other cultures a form of ego-centrism?

[danny elfboy]

The problem then begins when you eventually grow up and realize everything you've been exposed to was crap. What then?

Children are more able to tell quality for lack of quality than you give them credits for and I didn't accept any crappy consumistic junk as a child and had already my personal standards for quality. But I also realize that my standards are my standards and there's no such a thing as universal standards and the history of cultural differences chronologically and geographically shows this fact and contradicts the theory that standards and ideals are objective and binary divided between "universally higher" and "universally lower".

Since no real universal criteria exist to judge what standards are highers and what are lower, eventually those in control and with power choose what standards are higher.
In a nazi world the racial discriminative standard would be the highest standard possible and many would grow up believing there's no other possible standard since they've been brainwashed since infancy. Saying "my standard is higher and hence I have the right to shove it down people throats" is not a good criteria to determine that your standard is indeed higher. And to my knowledge there's no other criteria.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions and every single person in this world who has brough destruction, sufference and death was damn sure that his standards and ideals were the better and that he was doing the right thing and that therefore he was justified in forcing certain limiting concepts into people minds. We know that just because those people were so damn sure of the height of their ideals it doesn't mean they weren't damn wrong.

[webern78]

Well there are two problems

1) You're saying there's an higher ideal, hence you're judging what's is higher and what is lower claiming that they're universal and objective. Nevertheless you're a human being with bias and flaws (like each of us) and your opinion by its very nature is absolutely subjective.
So when you state that something is objective, who can back up your statement when the analysis itself of such statement defies objectivity? In other words where's the proof that the ideal you're talking about is higher than "feels good" and that "feels good" is not higher than the ideal you're talking about?

If art is the imitation of nature, then it can only mean that the object of artistic expression is fixed, immutable and universal and it exists outside human perception, which means it must be discovered through experience and wisdom. How am i to prove an idea like that? It's impossible. Yet, my instincts tell me that it exist. Schopenhauer once commented that truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. Now, compare that to how each of the great composers of the past were received within their life time, and how after their demise their greatness became entirely self-evident indeed. That alone shows me that the process is real.

Of course, you will argue now that the reason the greatness of Bach or Beethoven is now universally recognized is because of cultural brainwashing.

2) You claim that there's egocentrism in the contemporary culture but the "higher ideal" you're talking about was born and developed in the white western culture. What about all the other thousands of cultures on this earth that have completely different ideals, including completely different opinions as to what consistutes "higher"?

If those ideals are universal, then other cultures have their own version of the same values, albeit probably in a more primitive form. Ever wondered why so many rock musicians begin to seek inspiration from eastern traditions? Because of the current rejection of western traditional values in our own civilization the only option they have is to look to other cultures that can teach them the higher values they instinctively crave for.

[webern78]

Children are more able to tell quality for lack of quality than you give them credits for and I didn't accept any crappy consumistic junk as a child and had already my personal standards for quality. But I also realize that my standards are my standards and there's no such a thing as universal standards and the history of cultural differences chronologically and geographically shows this fact and contradicts the theory that standards and ideals are objective and binary divided between "universally higher" and "universally lower".

Since no real universal criteria exist to judge what standards are highers and what are lower, eventually those in control and with power choose what standards are higher.
In a nazi world the racial discriminative standard would be the highest standard possible and many would grow up believing there's no other possible standard since they've been brainwashed since infancy. Saying "my standard is higher and hence I have the right to shove it down people throats" is not a good criteria to determine that your standard is indeed higher. And to my knowledge there's no other criteria.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions and every single person in this world who has brough destruction, sufference and death was damn sure that his standards and ideals were the better and that he was doing the right thing and that therefore he was justified in forcing certain limiting concepts into people minds. We know that just because those people were so damn sure of the height of their ideals it doesn't mean they weren't damn wrong.

Wow, spoken like a true Marxist. 

BTW, i guess according to you Bach is just as great as John Cage, or 50 Cents. The postmodernists would surely agree.

[danny elfboy]

Wow, spoken like a true Marxist. 

BTW, i guess according to you Bach is just as great as John Cage, or 50 Cents. The postmodernists would surely agree.

No, but recognizing that Bach is at an higher level of form, technique, inventive and mastery doesn't mean that it must be necessarily and always be more appreciated than anything else.
I think there's a difference between acknowledging that a piece if a masterpiece and appreciating it. There are books I acknowledge as masterpieces as far as technical means are concerned, but I literally hate the content.

[webern78]

No, but recognizing that Bach is at an higher level of form, technique, inventive and mastery doesn't mean that it must be necessarily and always be more appreciated than anything else.

Yes it does.

[danny elfboy]

Yes it does.

Craftmanship appreciation and emotional appreciation are two different things that sometimes coexist and sometimes don't. I might appreciate the craftmanship of a piece of art and still completely hate the content and what it conveys. Or I might appreciate the craftmanship of a piece and still be in the mood for something completely different. Or I might appreciate the craftmanship of a piece and still intinctively prefer something else which is more in my chords.

[danny elfboy]

If art is the imitation of nature, then it can only mean that the object of artistic expression is fixed, immutable and universal and it exists outside human perception, which means it must be discovered through experience and wisdom.

The very exact moment we try to imitate nature we filter nature through our perception.
In other words even our perception of nature is mediated by our own biased view and senses. We don't imitate nature, we imitate the subjective idealized perception of nature.
As Marjorie Grene says trying to gain a critical perspective of what is outside our perception by means of perception is like trying to cut butter with a knife of butter.

If those ideals are universal, then other cultures have their own version of the same values, albeit probably in a more primitive form. Ever wondered why so many rock musicians begin to seek inspiration from eastern traditions? Because of the current rejection of western traditional values

Only that western traditional values included the discrimination of women, the freedom of the husband to rape and beat his wife, the burning of controversial books, the killing of people rebelling against discrimination, the inferiority of the poors, the rightfulness of dictatorship, the slavery of individuals, the annihilation of other populations, the abandoning of physically invalid people, the killing of children, the selling of women ...

I'm just unable to see things so black and white.

[general disarray]

Danny,

Something has struck me about your argument.  When you mention children and their ability to experience -- purely -- what is presented to them.  Well.  That's quite an insight.

And one that resonates with my Zen training.

Zen asks that we examine our thinking, through meditation, non-critically.  Like scientists observing phenomenon.  And what we see in meditation is the interference and distortion of "conditioned intelligence," i.e. the received information that we accumulate as belief systems.  In short, that stuff that we never examine for validity. 

Such as homophobia, religious systems or anti-semitism.  And other examples of bigotry.  All illogical, but passed on to us by cultures.

Before this onslaught of conditioned intelligence, we come into this world pure and a blank slate. 

So, as children we hear and see directly.  We see and hear only What Is There.  No preconceptions, no prejudices.  We see and hear, in short, for the first time.  What we experience is pure.

Critical capacities are the result of education and the accumulation of knowledge.  They can, or cannot, be true, depending on the sources.  If untrue, they distort the artistic experience.  If true, they may enrich it.

But before all of this, as children, there is only pure experience.  Yes?  Do you agree?

Listening to Richard Arnell's Second Symphony reminded me of this.

Not to mention, being in the middle of the Caribbean Sea . . . 

[danny elfboy]

Danny,

Something has struck me about your argument.  When you mention children and their ability to experience -- purely -- what is presented to them.  Well.  That's quite an insight.

And one that resonates with my Zen training.

Zen asks that we examine our thinking, through meditation, non-critically.  Like scientists observing phenomenon.  And what we see in meditation is the interference and distortion of "conditioned intelligence," i.e. the received information that we accumulate as belief systems.  In short, that stuff that we never examine for validity. 

Such as homophobia, religious systems or anti-semitism.  And other examples of bigotry.  All illogical, but passed on to us by cultures.

Before this onslaught of conditioned intelligence, we come into this world pure and a blank slate. 

So, as children we hear and see directly.  We see and hear only What Is There.  No preconceptions, no prejudices.  We see and hear, in short, for the first time.  What we experience is pure.

Critical capacities are the result of education and the accumulation of knowledge.  They can, or cannot, be true, depending on the sources.  If untrue, they distort the artistic experience.  If true, they may enrich it.

But before all of this, as children, there is only pure experience.  Yes?  Do you agree?

Yes I agree but I think that we can maintain a state of pure experience and of lack of prejudices by remaining detached from ideas. We should treat ideas like the tools in a box.
You just keep them with you, but they're not what you're made of. Besides you choose which one to use at any given moment or when just to keep your box in the basement.
The problem is when we use ideas as dogma, when we become emotionally attached to them and identify our essence with those few limited ideas we used as food to build our own tissues. In other words we should realize we're naked and our essence is naked, we use clothes according to the circumstance to cover ourselves and keep us warm, and choose what clothes to use according to the situation, but clothes are not part of our body and we can undress easily whenever we want.

By the way music is meditation. A person listening to a beautiful music is on a theta brainwaves state which is what happens during meditation too and this way such a person would lose any conception of where he is and what time it is. I doubt though this is what happens to music critics as they resist the abandonment required to experience music that way.

[indutrial]

But not knowing jack sh*t about music doesn't mean you can't love it.
As I have said before I think many people are just to judgemental when they experience art.
Art requires instead letting go, removing all barriers and all fences and just accepting to be passively manipulated by it.
And I still believe this is the summit of music appreciation whereas the work of the music critic is the bottom.

I'm going to take the high road for a change and make believe that your previous tirades against my evil, heartless, theory-nazified, barren soul didn't exist.

All of this talk of letting go makes sense, but the dissolution of all barriers and the yearning for child-like "genius" vis-a-vis Baudelaire's discussions on appreciation are fruitless, counterproductive, and idealistic. In fact, I would argue that yearning after a point of view that can't possibly exist in any absolute form is a waste of time. In order to come up with that ideal, you have to have a brain. AND THERE IS THE RUB!!! A human's cold, calculating brain is the only thing that can help them theorize something like an abstract ideal of pure experience and the reclamation of child-like innocence. Whether someone likes it or not, the Apollonian side of one's perceptive mind is always lurking behind the curtain. If you don't like it, maybe you can jam a pencil up your nose and render yourself a vegetable. Then the slightest little things will give you endless fascination, even though you'll be crapping your own pants for the rest of your life and unable to hold a job ever again. Now I'm not trying to equate that child-like fascination with a person being mentally handicapped, I'm merely saying that innocence lost IS NEVER regained until the brain loses its ability to think in the abstract.

That being said, I've always espoused the idea of reaching a middle ground with one's point of view. Danny's argument seems way too fanatical about trashing on anything that threatens an ideal of experiencial purity in one's encounter with musical phenomena. I certainly agree that it defeats the purpose of attending a musical recital when a person goes into it with a large set of critical guidelines, but I don't think that it's really that harmful to the experience to go into it with some kind of theoretical background. When I'm watching a pianist perform, I'm not going to feel like some kind of "formalist" if I notice a 7/8 pattern as such or feel that the harmonic choices are hackneyed.
The idea that ideas, knowledge, theory, and criticism creates some kind of mental and existential prison is a tired and timid attitude to espouse. I say it's timid not to sound like some kind of tough guy, but because the wording sounds like such a frigging excuse that I'm not convinced. It's a cop-out. It tells me that the person arguing against them is close-minded enough to think that everyone who uses criticism or theory is some kind of fanatic, a typecast that I've never seen in the real world. Truthfully, I've run into way more people who are hostile towards theory and they usually exhibit the bitterness and close-minded negativity that repels me. Without exaggerating too much, I've seen diatribe similar to Elfboy's in one place - texts written by proponents of socialist realism. The socialist realists who plagued countries like Russia and Poland constantly bashed on composers who they accused of "formalism" and composers were pretty much skating a fine line if they decided to use any ideas that weren't widely popular and accessible to the public's base interests. I'm not accusing him or anyone of being a communist, but the language and reasoning is quite similar. Idealism is idealism - the transmission of an abstract idea into a belief system, which is the only convincing kind of mental prison that might exist.

Bottom line is, the ideal of opening one's mind is baloney and it actually serves to close the mind by feigning a shutdown of one's rational capacities in the name of something that can't be achieved.

[indutrial]

By the way music is meditation. A person listening to a beautiful music is on a theta brainwaves state which is what happens during meditation too and this way such a person would lose any conception of where he is and what time it is. I doubt though this is what happens to music critics as they resist the abandonment required to experience music that way.

So it's okay to take scientific approaches to describe how the brain functions, but it's not okay to take use a scientific approach to appreciate music. I suppose that anybody who states any opinion whatsoever about a musical phenomena they've just experienced is not as spiritual as thou. The idea of achieving such abandonment is about as convincing to me as the idea that some people see ghosts while others don't and that some people can see the future while others cannot.

[danny elfboy]

So it's okay to take scientific approaches to describe how the brain functions, but it's not okay to take use a scientific approach to appreciate music.

Indeed. The scientific approach has just nothing to do with explanation.
This is like claiming that you'll feel more enjoyment and libido by making love after reading a book on the anatomy of women. I'm not denying that there's an interesting theoretical side about many things but to claim that this has any relevance in the pure moment of appreciation is to me just ridicolous. Whatever score analysis will be a bonus that happens later in your office or room not something enhacing appreciation during the listening.
In other words I'm not denying there's that analytical and theorical side you're talking about, but to me it is another kind of appreciation which doesn't occur while you're the audience in a teather and doesn't have any relevance to musical appreciation.

Besides you keep using the words "to me" in an almost subconscious way to infer "to everyone". When you write your subjective opinion you act as if you are stating universal truths that everyone should agree with. I don't agree with you, but this doesn't mean that I believe everyone should hold my view neither that those who don't are inferior, less educated, stupid and ignorant ... which is instead what can be inferred from your tone and words.

Anyway the fact that certain people can experience music with such an abandonment (and this doesn't mean that they can't later apply analytical and critical analysis, but I insist, this happens only later and it's a bonus absolutely irrelevant for the pure appreciation of what your senses have experienced) has nothing to do with "being born with a particular skill" but just with the way we have been influenced by our society, culture, parents, school.
I don't know if there are people who can see the future but I believe they don't exist, if nothing for the fact that time is neither predetermined nor a straight line, but if indeed those people existed, their skill and sensitivity wouldn't be a matter of physiological peculiarity but a potential that everyone could possess and which they nurtured with special care.

[term]

Loving music means jack sh*t. It's not about the individual, it's about the artistic standard which is absolute. This type of ideas are more proof of the egocentrism of contemporary culture, and it's totally disgraceful. People should be taught to strive for an higher ideal, not indulge in personal whims or whatever 'feels good'. That's what animals do.

rarely read such bullshit.
There is no absolute standard.-.-

[apple2]

the demise of IMSLP sure does not help.

[indutrial]

the demise of IMSLP sure does not help.

That has little to do with the perceived decline of classical music as much as it has to do with greedy businessmen and cock-knocking lawyers bullying passive-minded music librarian-types over scores written by people who died decades ago.

[valor]

I blame this on rap and rock. I'm sure if these two weren't around then a whole lot more people would listen to classical.

[indutrial]

I blame this on rap and rock. I'm sure if these two weren't around then a whole lot more people wouldn't listen to classical.

Rap and rock are both valid art forms, just like classical. It's unfortunate that virtually all of the rap and rock artists that we hear about are so wrapped up with the mass-entertainment business that the genuinely good ones are rather difficult to distinguish. At the end of the day, a good song or a good hook is definitely a good thing. I see nothing but positive things in the work that the Beatles were doing in the studio back in the 60s. Only the smuggest classical snob would try to say that songs like "Getting Better" and "Yesterday" don't utilize melody in great ways. I do, however, wish a plague on Paul McCartney when I see his sell-out ass in a stadium singing about "FREEDOM" to some asinine American audience after the 9/11 attacks.

By the same token, a good rap artist (and there certainly are such artists) creates a perfect cross between poetry and vocalizing, sometimes accompanied by great musical hooks by excellent producers. The problems I have with that scene are the various mass-entertainment power moves that occur when the artists start singing about their f**king brand-name shoes and their Hummers, not to mention when the "artists" themselves are really just hoods with a lot of street credit from dealing drugs and shooting people.

I will agree that the rock and rap scenes are both plagued by their existences as the forerunners in the music world's mass-entertainment marketing scheme, but I can't agree that it's a realm that lacks artistry or that it's in any way at fault for destroying classical music. It marginalized classical music's market-share - that much is obvious. I would argue that, by and large, the diminishing popularity of classical music has allowed it to become a more refined (and almost limitless) art form. In the classical world, it's generally okay to take risks and employ unconventional techniques. The right mentors out there actively encourage it. In the rock world, you can't venture far from 1-4-5 progressions without losing your audience.

[term]

I blame this on rap and rock. I'm sure if these two weren't around then a whole lot more people would listen to classical.

hypothetical. They exist because there are people who like the music and buy albums (like me).

[valor]

By the same token, a good rap artist (and there certainly are such artists) creates a perfect cross between poetry and vocalizing, sometimes accompanied by great musical hooks by excellent producers. The problems I have with that scene are the various mass-entertainment power moves that occur when the artists start singing about their f**king brand-name shoes and their Hummers, not to mention when the "artists" themselves are really just hoods with a lot of street credit from dealing drugs and shooting people.

For reals.

[webern78]

I blame this on rap and rock. I'm sure if these two weren't around then a whole lot more people would listen to classical.

I blame rap and rock on youth culture.

[webern78]

Critical capacities are the result of education and the accumulation of knowledge.

Understanding is also the result of education and the accumulation of knowledge. This is why we do not allow children to make important decisions, either for others or for themselves. They can only understand the world at the most basic level, without true insight or wisdom.

If your little theory held any truth, why is it that composers always write their greater works late in their lives as opposed to early on? Why is it that no child as ever produced a true work of genius?

Sorry, but what you are saying is nonsensical, and the proof is in the putting. Our culture was at it's height only when people thought in absolutes. The moment we begun to question the validity of our believes then everything degenerated to what we have today: ugliness, ignorance and mediocrity.

[indutrial]

I blame rap and rock on youth culture.

Youths wouldn't turn to things like that in negative ways if their lame-ass parents would stop slaving away 80 hours a week for the McMansion, the SUV, 6 Verizon phones, and the obligatory overpriced holiday vacation every year and actually parent their kids for a change. Our generation's (and worse, the next generations) ultra-materialist way of behaving is directly linked to the fraying of culture and the dulling of education these past decades.

Youth culture is a by-product of a society-wide malaise called rampant greed, combined with an increasing tendency towards granting youths too much information about the real world (nowadays kids can access sh*t like rotten.com, internet porn and play GTA-like games whereas 20 years ago relatively none of that crap was transmitted to children) and too much license to "do what they want" (if they decide they don't want to do homework anymore, all mommy has to do is cry "ADHD" or come up with some other excuse like Asperger's syndrome) - all of these tendencies lead to shallowness and a destruction of the innocence I feel was more common back in the 80s when I was born.

Another problem I see is how, culturally, music seems to exist in a box to most people. I teach tons of kids guitar, and the impression I get from the parents is that they want their kids to play the instrument if only because it will possibly keep them from hooding around or playing too many video games in their free time. So, essentially, music's become widely seen as another after-school hobby, like chess club or cheerleading. Almost all of my kid students are failures because 1.) their parents don't make them practice, 2.) they expect there to be shortcuts and cheats when that can't possibly happen, or 3.) they can't seem to function without heavy regimentation from some outside source.

What I see as the malaise of culture is how utterly passive so many people seem to act about their individual role in things, and strong musicianship is certainly something that is built on a foundation of a strong disciplined individual unit.

[pianogeek_cz]

*nods* I was working on a small rant on the topic, but the last paragraph pretty much sums the problem up. People are too lazy to think about themselves.