Posted on 07/19/2008 6:07:08 AM PDT by Borges
After 40 years and 1,500 concerts, Joe Queenan is finally ready to say the unsayable: new classical music is absolute torture - and its fans have no reason to be so smug.
During a radio interview between acts at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, a famous singer recently said she could not understand why audiences were so reluctant to listen to new music, given that they were more than ready to attend sporting events whose outcome was uncertain. It was a daft analogy. Having spent most of the last century writing music few people were expected to understand, much less enjoy, the high priests of music were now portrayed as innocent victims of the public's lack of imagination. If they don't know in advance whether Nadal or Federer is going to win, but still love Wimbledon, why don't they enjoy it when an enraged percussionist plays a series of brutal, fragmented chords on his electric marimba? What's wrong with them?
The reason the sports analogy fails is because when Spain plays Germany, everyone knows that the game will be played with one ball, not eight; and that the final score will be 1-0 or 3-2 or even 8-1 - but definitely not 1,600,758 to Arf-Arf the Chalet Ate My Banana. The public may not know in advance what the score will be, but it at least understands the rules of the game. There is no denying that the people filling the great concert halls of the world are conservative, and in many cases reactionary: reluctant to take a flyer on music that wasn't recorded at least once by Toscanini. They know what they like and what they like is Mozart.
(Excerpt) Read more at music.guardian.co.uk ...
Leni
(....using million-man march numbers this morning, hah.)
Leni
Atonal music isn’t that new anymore. Schoenberg wrote his first atonal piece in 1908. And Chopin was one of the pioneers of proto-atonal music!
[... Alas, it seems to be the special olympics of
life in general. We have the most pathetic candidates
imaginable running for president, movies so awful that
I hardly ever want to watch one anymore, even young
people seem to listen to the pop music from forty or
fifty years ago rather than what is current. So-called
journalists appear to be at best only vaguely acquainted
with the English language. Television programs represented
as “Science” reporting spread disinformation about
climate change. The medical profession moves the goalposts
on cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar in an
apparent move to ensure that every American is prescribed
chronic medication at the earliest possible age and kept
on medication for life...]
You have just written America’s epitaph.
Hans Zimmer is good too.
Agreed, but he had the talent to know how to do it and still sell records!
Leni
There’s a classical music ping list? Can you please add me to it?
There is no denying that the people filling the great concert halls of the world are conservative.... They know what they like and what they like is Mozart.
***In one sentence, that describes my preferences reasonably well.
Art creates its own audience. If it doesn’t, then it isn’t.
“Art creates its own audience. If it doesn’t, then it isn’t.”
Perfect.
This is one of the best critiques on modern music ever written. It agrees with my feelings completely.
The comments concerning the beauty of movie themes is absolutely dead on. Many of them are simply wonderful....because they are trying to attract people, not prove that they are hip and avant garde.
I haven't read such an entertaining, spot-on skewering in quite some time.
I think he was supposed to be a caricature of John Bonham.
Simply stated humans are hard-wired to appreciate tonal music. Atonal music as a rule is total gibberish...except of course for sound effects as in movies like “Jaws” as Queenan noted.
Simple: If you don’t get it, don’t listen to it.
Leave the listening to the ears who do get it, and smother your ears in saccharine Mozart crap.
***Simply stated humans are hard-wired to appreciate tonal music.***
Absolutely, and the discordancies of what was described to us as “experimental” music some years ago are now foisted off to us by PBS as “classical music.”
This guy is from Great Britain and Karl Jenkins is tremendously popular there. And as others have said, there is a lot of classical music which has been written for the movies that has become very popular.
Come on you can defend modern music without calling Mozart crap. He was the most radical composer of his time.
Thanks. Cheers.
You’ve been added to the list!
Thanks!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.