I would guess that most people on this forum, just like me, hate all the easy listening branch of commercial music, which includes Clayderman or Yanni for keyboards, Bocceli for voice, Rieu for violin and so forth.
You guessed wrong
I love a lot of new age music and I don't consider it easy listening
You may be interested to know that this "holier than thou" approach of classical/accademic music is a product of the 20 century
In fact, during baroque, classicism, romanticism, impressionism popular music was taken in high esteem and all accademic music was influenced by folk dances and songs
Accedemic music disn't consider itself better or artistic while the rest was not
Unfortunately the manierism, snobbery and presumption of the 20 century and the avant-garde movement resulted in a lot of misnomers and alienation from the music of the world outside of the ivory tower of "serious" music
Classical/contemporary/accademic music is commercial as well and in fact much of the choices of School of Vienna were based on money despite what they said
I'm against the capitalistic economics of the Western world but I don't think music that is recorded on CD, sold on music stores and aired on radio has anything to do with capitalism and commercialism
Yanni do the music he loves to do for the peoplewho love to listen it, and despite loving Debussy, Sinding, Beethoven, Hummel, Scarlatti and other I also love Wakeman, Yanni, Ciani and many other music
What they do is more honest than what many contemporary music does
They just have something in their mind tha they want to share with their audience something that has a meaning for them and for the people who listen and therefore completely respctable
The term easy listening is also a byproduct of the presumptuos pomposity of accademies and avant-garde quarters, in fact back to the era of romanticism, classicism and even impressionism it wasn't required that music was "difficoult" or "complex" it wasn't required that people was trained to hear dissonances or that they had a diploma in counterpoint
Like art was made to make something complex accesible to anyone, classical music was also created from complex theories to be easy listening for the audience
There a lot of Stravinksy quotes on the dishonesty of contemporary music and the fallacy of teh "we're art and you don't" "we're complex and you're easy" mentality
Mozart, Liszt, Beethoven, Chopin, Schubert, Scarlatti they were easy listeing and proud to be so as their goal was to use complicated musical harmonies and counterpoint that make music that anyone, even those without musical adecation, could appreciate
And yes, when we say that other music is easy listening, non-music, bad, non serious we're just being eliticist, snob, manieristic, narrow-minded
But the sad thing is that this mentality never existed in Mozart, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Bartok but is a product of the snobbery of the avant-garde era and it's a well known fact that accademy eliticist was born in the 1900 and is now fortunately fading
If the great composers of the past had this same mentality they would have never composed the masterpieces we know as they were not composed as "more serious" "more artistic" "less inferior" to contrast with the bad pop music out there, it was created without presumption and higly influenced by the pop music of that era
You can't explain logically why you despise anything that is outside of the accademic elicitism because you've been brainwashed by teh avant-garde mentality of this era
if you were born in the 1800 you would have said that pop music is bad or that classical/accademic music is more artistic than other music (the term artistic music was just invented in the 1910/1920, before there were not all these intellectual manieristic intention to sound more serious than other style of music)
You not be aware also that by 1960 a lot of classical/accedemic/contemporary composers left the manieristic and narrow-minded world of 12-tone-row to let their music be influenced by rock, ryhtm,'blues, country, techno, ambient, new age, broadway and soundtracks
So I think that those with this old mentality that accedemic music is more serious, more noble, less easy listening are still entrapped in the 1940 mentality that it's now part of a sad past
It's time to move on, time to forget about what may be sensed during the World Wars and realize we're in teh 21 century, a century where the world need to be united instead of separated, where we shuld all respect other tastes in stead of create our private elites, and a world that need the justice of comprehension and not the unjustice of snobbery
There's shouldn't be an "inside classical world" and an "outside classical world" and this strict separation originated again on the dead avant-garde era where the audience was alienated by experimentalism for the sake of it and where composers said that their pieces were a success only if at least more than half the audience walked out in droves to express their displeasure and disgust
Among the reasons why contemporary music is almost dead (but there are hope for a post-romantic less manieristic future in the contemporary music) and why people dislike it, this mentality that classical is intelligent and pop is stupid is surely one of the most important, the way contemporary music alienated itself from the social context using the escuse that people is stupid while they're all geniuses with their screams, piano in fire (literally), random notes, mathematical series and their hideous presumption and lack of honesty
The paradoss is that the more contemporary music tried to free themselved from strict rules the more they became entrapped in strict rules
The more they tried to be innovative by breaking with the past and with the pop music, the more they became unoriginal by not being free in what they could composer
The more they tried to be against bougious society, fascism mentality and presumption of the nobles, the more they become bogious, fascist, narrow-minded and presumptous themselves
I also understand majority of people would not agree with you
Most of people here like rap, pop, videogames music, sountracks and like me new age
There's no such a thing as easy listening and a lot of famous composers of the past would not agree with you
Music is beauty and interesting when you're interested in listening to it and you get emotions and are moved from it and who composed it, how rich or poor he/she is, how commercial and famous is music it, how good the composer is in using the harmony and counterpoint rule has nothing to do with the quality of the music
Among the "easy listening" (your words) authors are there are a lot
pianists with diploma, strumentists with diploma, composers with diploma and a lot of people that could never be really considered "outside of the classical world" and maybe more knowledge than you in classical music story and development
In fact a lot of soundtrack composer are "serious" musician/composer that was dissafistied with the avant-garde regime
Daniel
Topic: So what's the deal with easy listening ?