mozart was a punk rocker

[rone]

I'd like to thank mmcirvin for directing me towards Alex Ross and his article about how elitism hurts classical music.  I found one passage positively Frippesque:

The mistake that apostles of the classical have always made is to have joined their love of the past to a dislike of the present. The music has other ideas: it hates the past and wants to escape.

I've said more than once recently that i want to become more familiar with "classical" (symphonic?  orchestral?) music, so i will take Ross's list under consideration and borrow what i can from Renée.  `Cause i gotta, you know, get culcha'ed.

Comments

[doctroid.livejournal.com]

It's a good article. I'm afraid, though, I can't get into the idea of throwing mats at concerts -- whatever the music. I'm one of these people who'd rather sit and listen to music than stand in the aisles clapping in rhythm and dancing, which I find distracting and irritating. Sorry. That's just who I am.

Ross's article doesn't talk about modern-day classical music radio, possibly because the subject is likely to induce a Tourette's attack in anyone. Listen to the typical station for the awful combination of inept production, cadaverous presentation, elitism, ass-kissing, and cultural necrophilia, and you'll realize what a testament to the true vitality of "the music" it is that it didn't become extinct from the airwaves forty years ago.

I largely gave up on classical music radio years ago, and while we do have a good orchestra in Syracuse, pecuniary considerations have kept me from it for some years in favor of more vital musical performances at, say, the Old Songs Festival (www.oldsongs.org/festival/). So, though like Ross (but less extremely) I was a teenage devotee of classical music, complete with portfolio of bad unfinished compositions, lately it comes up occasionally on my CD player -- sorry, no iPod -- and that's about it.

And of course, just try finding signs of life on CD for this music. Even if you subscribe to the BMG CD Club (http://www.bmgmusic.com/), close examination of the monthly mailing turns up mostly reissues of recordings made before 1980 along with anthologies of "The Most Relaxing Adagios Ever". (Where anyone ever got the idea that classical music is supposed to be relaxing, I can't imagine.) We seem to be expanding our love of dead composers to encompass dead conductors leading dead musicians.

Ross seems to try to find an explanation for how the 18th century's "music is music" devolved into the 20th's fratricidal "classical versus jazz versus rock", but I don't think he succeeds; and I know I can't explain it to my own satisfaction. As good, or as bad, an explanation as any is that it's All the Fault of Science: once you've succeeded in coming up with categories and organizing systems to pigeonhole species, elements, stars, geological strata, and so on and on, you start thinking you can do the same to music, painting, philosophy, et cetera. And as soon as you define two pigeonholes, they automatically go to war with one another.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

It depends on the music, to me. Some music makes me want to mosh; other music demands my stillness. I bounced like a pogo stick during the recent Pixies show — remaining still was impossible. There's been a couple of classical performances of my kids where i wanted to press the stage.

I think it also depends on the company. I'm less likely to bounce around if i'm with Kim... i guess i don't want to embarrass her.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, classical music radio! That stuff'll turn you off classical music forever. Hell, it'll turn you off MUSIC forever.

I remember that time on a.r.k that Jorn Barger posted that he'd tried classical music that day, found it all emotionally puerile compared to Destiny's Child, and figured its alleged admirers had ulterior motives stemming from class- and race-based bigotries. Granted, Jorn was Jorn, but I think at least half of it was that he sampled it via FUCKING CLASSICAL MUSIC RADIO. And now, thirty-six hours of the same four Mozart pieces!