Posted on 05/23/2019 1:25:35 PM PDT by Mariner
here seems to be an air of pretension among aficionados of jazz and classical music, psychological research is giving them good reason.
A new study published in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences suggests that those who prefer instrumental music tend to be more intelligent.
Study author Elena Racevska, a PhD student at Oxford Brookes University, became interested in how musical preference is tied to personality traits as she learned about the Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis, which presumes that more intelligent individuals seek more novel experiences compared to less intelligent people.
“After reading Kanazawa’s papers, one of which was on the relationship between intelligence and musical preferences, we decided to further test his hypothesis using a different set of predictors — namely, a different type of intelligence test (i.e. a nonverbal measure), and the uses of music questionnaire,” says Racevska. “We also measured a number of variables likely to have an effect in this relationship, such as taking part in extra-curricular music education, its type and duration.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
I go occasionally, and now have found out that it will stream on my 70 inch tv.
Yeah, we all get that it’s sort of cats and dogs between the classical and jazz camps. Pretty silly to say that either isn’t “actual” music, though.
I just wish I’d had some appreciation at the time for what I was seeing.
Rhino Records released an instrumental surf album back in the 1980’s that was one of my most treasured albums. In addition to the bands that I listed there was also The Lively Ones and The Bel-Airs.
A few other surf bands that I have in my collection are The Astronauts and The Clee-Shays. The Clee-Shays are more like spy themes though...and that’s a whole nother genre that’s worth exploring.
“Der Fliegende Hollander” is Wagner, and it features some of the best Wagnerians around today, including Sir Bryn Terfel, who was Wotan in their Ring cycle a couple of years ago.
“Der Fliegende Hollander” is known in English as “The Flying Dutchman.”
(Interestingly, that was the nickname of turn-of-the-(last century baseball star and Hall of Famer Honus Wagner.)
WOW...that’s a HUGE T.V. screen!
It was a gift to myself after the children left home.
I use it as a movie theatre. I love it.
I just discovered that I can purchase Met online and stream some of the operas.
It would be great because I could stop it and come back later.
I grew up with the Met on Saturdays, mom was from Tuscany.
OTOH...I've managed to sit through the entire RING CYCLE in one sitting ( the Met did this marathon about 20 years or so ago ), and I do really love all the rest of his work!
Re Wagnerian opera singers...Lauritz Melchior, Hans Hotter, Birgit Nilsson, Kirsten Flagstaff and Astrid Varnay are my favorites. Yes, Yes, not a current one amongst this list, but these are the ones I grew up hearing .
Yes, that was Honus Wagner’s nickname and as a BIG, life long baseball fan I know all about him. ;^)
PBS has a streaming thingy for most of their programs, but I don't do the streaming things, so have no use for it.
I too grew up with LIVE FROM THE MET and have VERY fond memories of listening to it with my grandparents and mother, and the also my father, when WW II ended and he came home.
For fun and giggles ( as a hobby ), my grandfather was a "SUPER" at the Met and also a few other opera houses, so along with a lot of other kinds of music that was played, sung, and listened to, in my home, I had quite the extensive music education before I ever went to school.
Our music was broad in our family growing up and we went to NYC occasionally, more often to the BushneLL. I homeschooled the children and tried to give them a similar broad scope in Music. I provided American Songbook, medievil classical of all kinds, musicals, crooners, serious singers, and fifities and sixties music, while their father helped them become familiar with seventies and up to current music.
My son is the only black country western music fan I know.
I like instrumental music.
I am like, really smart.
Therefore, really smart people like instrumental music.
Proves my philosophy professor to be correct!
There was a cat. It was brown. Therefore, all cats are brown!
*****************
I should get into this racket. No real work and good pay via tax money derived grants!
kinda like a more prestigious version of welfare.
Music knows no color/race and it shouldn't!
When I was growing up, Tennesse Ernie Ford was VERY popular, as was Patsy Cline, so even though I grew up in NYC, I and other kids I went to school with, were ( I still am ) fans of country western music.
“I like instrumental music.
I am like, really smart.
Therefore, really smart people like instrumental music.
Proves my philosophy professor to be correct!
There was a cat. It was brown. Therefore, all cats are brown!”
*****************
I think the key to success as an instrumental musician is to do the opposite.
Say, for example, this recording of Coffee Cold:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCwGQXJqu5s
Now, see, I would have thought to name this track “Hot Tea.” But the artist, Galt MacDermot, decided to do the opposite, and name it Cold Coffee. But not just Cold Coffee. He then switched the order of the words completely, and the final title was Coffee Cold. The total opposite. The song took off and the rest is history.
If I’d released it as Hot Tea, I doubt that Jimmy McGill would have ever pasted shredded paper back together to it in Better Call Saul.
Same as with me, growing up in 1950's. One can grasp that by looking at AM radio popular music charts which show the broad range of music that was broadcast before rock and roll sprung up. From religious themes, movie musicals, torch singers, country and western, to the ridiculously humerous ones like "All I want for Christmas is a hippopotamus", and of course, Lawrence Welk and Mitch Miller
Once again "PC diversity" strikes with modern music in practice virtually segregated, millions missing out on the marvelous spectrum that music offers.
You could be of any race, ethnic background, sex, and religion and it didn't matter at all! We all love Nat King Cole, Eartha Kitt, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Perry Como, Kate Smith, and on and on and on.
We heard classical music when watching cartoons, every kind of music on The Ed Sullivan Show, many different kinds of music in movies, radio and T.V. shows, and radio had, as you mentioned, just about every kind of music on AM pop music stations.
PC crap just pigeonholes and divides people now and it's stupid! Our nation has been Balkanized.
My grandparents were from north Germany (she) and Bavaria (he). She told me that, in the old country, no matter how poor or small the burg was, there was music of the masters for all, whether it be amateur presentations by local townsfolk, the churches or travelling troupes. Music was a part of their lives. Children were imbued with great music, no matter how young they were or how unsophisticated the performance.
Grandma and Grandpa immigrated from Germany at the turn of the last century, settling in the Chicago area, some in Milwaukee. Two of my relatives decided to stay permanently in London (you went to the New World from Germany via the port of Southampton, England, a more direct and economical passage)...and one of their offspring, my late third cousin, was a basso profundo with the famous Covent Garden Opera House in London. He performed with Pavarotti and all the greats.
Growing up, I have fond memories of countless family gatherings clustered around Aunt Helen at the piano, singing the great old songs of the twenties, thirties and forties from sheet music (and, yes, there was an old tapestry cloth with fringe on it over the piano).
On my Irish family side, my grandpa played the mandolin and was a member of the Chicago Mandolin Orchestra which gave regular concerts. You haven't lived musically till you've heard 100-or-so mandolins of all sizes and pitch play in concert, especially when they play vibrant Russian folk dance songs and plaintive gypsy music from the heart of old Europe. Too bad the orchestra is long defunct.
Grandpa also played violin, cello, bass and guitar. My two uncles played piano, sax, trumpet and clarinet.
So, on this other side of my family, we essentially had our own band in concert when Uncle John sat at the eighty-eight in the living room and pounded out the old songs and the current hit parade songs and we all sang, of course.
So, I love classical music of all persuasions. My opinion of today's music and songs rather meshes with that of a popular wag who opined a few years back, "Today's scene demonstrates that most Americans prefer noise to music".
However, I do confess a liking for country music (I like the words, also....they tell little stories and I like the beat).....and I really do miss the Grand Ole Opry-type TV shows.
Well, that was my upbringing and I'm thankful for it to this day....and as Lawrence would say....."Uh one and uh two....strike up the band !!!
Leni
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