New Dark Age

Jerusalem Post ^ | Dec. 28, 2002 | PAUL EIDELBERG

[Nat Turner]

well you wont see this in the New York Slimes....

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on or off this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

[SamAdams76]

Regarding pop culture, whatever happened to the great composers? We had such great composers such as Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Handel, and Beethoven along with several dozen other great composers. Now nothing.

In fact, it can be argued that we haven't had a truly great composer since Beethoven died in 1827. Granted, there have been some very good composers since, such as Schubert, Wagner and Mahler. But all of them never reached the greatness of Beethoven and died out in the early part of the 20th Century. The 20th Century hasn't produced any great composers whatsoever. Why is that?

And please don't tell me that there were some great composers in the 20th Century such as Aaron Copland and John Cage. These composers aren't even close to being in the same league as Beethoven, Bach or Mozart.

Why is it that since Beethoven, we have had zero great composers?

[muawiyah]

Although it's easy enough to dig up quite pointed material about Jews in the Koran, history has demonstrated that throughout the Middle East right up to the time of the Greek Revolution Jews suffered no more indignities than other non-Moslem people. In some places they suffered no indignities at all as a consequence of their living under a Moslem government (SEE: Medieval pre-Christian Spain).

The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is of modern manufacture and will be resolved just as soon as someone figures out how to bring sufficient water to Arabia and the Sahara.

[sinclair]

You might try here. I like his music.

Basil Poledouris

[buffyt]

I had lunch with a Canadian who said we are not a 'melting pot', we are a 'cultural mosaic' now. He asked me if I learned about THAT in US schools. I said NO I finished school many decades ago and we learned the three "R's"!!!! Thank Goodness!!! I graduated from college about the time he was born!

Re:
"Multiculturalism (along with cultural relativism) has gained ascendancy in academe, in consequence of which America is no longer a "melting pot" but rather an aggregation of self-assertive and self-justifying racial and ethnic groups such as African Americans, Latino Americans, and Asian Americans. America has entered a post-modern, relativistic world."

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Jews suffered no more indignities than other non-Moslem people.

That is not really something to brag about if you think about it. In other words as long as they remained nice meek little tax paying second class citizen they weren't treated too badly. An occasional massacre, a few beatings, much higher tax, and their sons taken to fight for their Moslem overlords.

The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is of modern manufacture

But then they had the absolute gall to stand up for themselves and that was when the whole problem started.

[Stentor]

The Enlightenment has thus produced a black hole from which no light can emerge.

Does someone want to argue for this statement since the author did nothing more than make an unsupported assertion.

[SamAdams76]

Bookmarked to check out later.

Anyway, here is my theory as to why there have been no great composers in the 20th Century (on the level of Beethoven, Bach & Mozart).

I think that the easy access to music (recorded and live) has hindered the creation of great new music. See, back in the days of the great composers, there were no CDs to listen to, no radio stations to listen to and very few opportunities to hear music live. So in order to hear great music, you usually had to play it yourself at home. Composers of earlier centuries would spend thousands upon thousands of hours at the piano (or other instrument) trying to recreate the work of the masters. Along the way, they would do variations on that music themselves and begin coming up with their own music.

Nowadays, if you want to hear Bach's keyboard works, you don't have to spend years of your life learning and perfecting them at the piano (or harpsichord). All you have to do is pop in a CD. Or turn on the radio. Or go to one of the dozens of performances that are given yearly in just about every major city.

I think this has made people "lazy." Imagine if Beethoven had the entire works of Bach and Mozart and Haydn on CD. Would he be driven to create music of his own or would he instead simply be content to "discover" the music of the past through CD? Beethoven did go deaf so maybe he would have been driven to compose anyway. But had he not had all that practice while he still had his hearing, he probably wouldn't have been able to compose as he did.

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

In fact, it can be argued that we haven't had a truly great composer since Beethoven died in 1827.

Brahms, 3rd member of the trimverate. Died in 1900... (Bach, Beethoven, Brahms...) or Tschovsky (Sp?). Copland is working on his patena... we need a bit more time to develop a sense s of "sehnsucht" for the "simpler time" in which he wrote. (And to free ourselves from a totally Eurocentric evaluation of symphonic music. )

[Valin]

Bump

[muawiyah]

Islamic Spain was considered substantially different from any other Moslem area, both by people who lived there at the time, in other contempraneous Moslem kingdoms elsewhere, and in modern times by both Moslem and non-Moslem historians.

Due to the constant conflict between the various small city-states (Moslem and Christian alike) after the breakdown of the unified state circa 950+/-?) rules concerning "forced" conversions grew up that tended to mitigate the worst aspects of such events. Those rules also served to put Islam in a position of equality vis a vis Christianity and Judaism - at that time only!

Once the last conquest was completed in 1492, the rules were disavowed by the victorious Christians and the Moslems and Jews were given their marching orders - or a last shot at what amounted to voluntary conversion, itself not terribly traditional.

For the most part, Islamic Spain was considered a very nice place to live and should not have ascribed to it the customs and attitudes of Arabian herdsmen or French knights!

[Hank Kerchief]

The Enlightenment has thus produced a black hole from which no light can emerge.

Does someone want to argue for this statement since the author did nothing more than make an unsupported assertion.

I believe, as it stands, and separated from its context, it is misleading and incorrect. The offending word is "produced." Obviously the "enlightenmnet" didn't produce darkness. If the sentence had read, "The Enlightenment has thus collapsed into a black hole from which no light can emerge," meaning the objectivity and creativity of the enlightenment has degerated into subjectivity and nihilism, I could agree with it. I suspect this may have been the authors intended meaning. Wish I could ask him.

Hank

[muawiyah]

"Nothing less than her hand on a platter!"

(You make a good case for a mixed metaphor.)

[Hank Kerchief]

"Nothing less than her hand on a platter!"

(You make a good case for a mixed metaphor.)

I don't know about that, but I'm good at coining new words, like, "degerated," which should have been degenerated. I must be quite dense today, because I don't quite get the allusion, "Nothing less than her hand on a platter!" and I'm afraid to guess.

Would you enlighten me?

Hank

[Republic If You Can Keep It]

Feminists see in the Christian West (as well as in Judaism) male dominance and an emphasis on family values that restricts a woman's freedom

Unlike, say,......China, India, Japan, most of Africa & the Arab world, all of whom give women MUCH more freedom.

Sure.

[eddie willers]

Gershwin?

[Scott from the Left Coast]

There have been many "near greats" that traveled, at least partially, into the early 20th century. Ravel, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Debussey. The 19th century produced many who could at least rival for the term "great", you mention some -- here are others (not chronological): Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Schubert, Richard Strauss, Dvorak, Smetana.

Music was changing modes -- becoming more popularly oriented (as you mention, or at least brush on mentioning). The rise of Jazz and other similar "popular" forms of more free-flowing, less rigid (or mathematical) than the very rule-heavy classical or romantic formats. I think that this is all a part of the changes (perhaps degradation) in western society over time -- as the highest and most "pure" gave way to egalitarianism, and much later -- in our times -- to the exalting of the lowest, most base, social aspects).

I suspect it's all wrapped in the west's social rejection of it's own civilization -- everything is "in" or "cool" except western traditions and modes of thought. And that rejection is due to turning from the highest examples of that civilization to exalting the lowest: In other words, there are no longer great composers in the western musical tradition for the same reason that tatoos and piercings (which at one time were considered a very low class form of expression in western cultures) have now become "mandatory" for all young people -- regardless of their income or upbringing. When you exalt the basest forms of human civilization, it affects all forms of art and expression.

[Scott from the Left Coast]

I wrote that ridiculously long treatise-post and forgot to list Rachmaninov as one of the near-greats.