FNiMN

[oddoneout]

The foot is improving, thank you. The point almost relevant to this thread is that I listen to music when I am not doing anything else, whereas others seem to listen most of the time when they are doing other things. So I listened to the Emersons, Mendelssohn SQ No 1 in the bath last night. I wait until I'm not doing anything and then I listen to some music. Weird!

Not weird FF. I was brought up to listen to music very much that way, although certain quiet activities - knitting and mending in my mother's case - were permitted, and reading sometimes. That was partly my mother's requirement and inclination, and also to do with certain aspects of my father's approach to parenting.
It stuck with me for decades, but circumstances and changing listening habits loosened those restrictions a bit and now I can have music on and not necessarily be devoting my whole attention to it - and of course Breakfast does lend itself to that, which is where the rot sets in one might argue... However if it is a concert broadcast, or a CD I have chosen to put on, then that will get my undivided attention.Occasional lapses for ironing or evening meal consumption.

[Serial_Apologist]

Not weird FF. I was brought up to listen to music very much that way, although certain quiet activities - knitting and mending in my mother's case - were permitted, and reading sometimes. That was partly my mother's requirement and inclination, and also to do with certain aspects of my father's approach to parenting.
It stuck with me for decades, but circumstances and changing listening habits loosened those restrictions a bit and now I can have music on and not necessarily be devoting my whole attention to it - and of course Breakfast does lend itself to that, which is where the rot sets in one might argue... However if it is a concert broadcast, or a CD I have chosen to put on, then that will get my undivided attention.Occasional lapses for ironing or evening meal consumption.

For me the question as to what degree of attention music is supposed to elicit comes down to the amount of attention drawing capacity contained in the music. Musak was an offshoot of light "music for pleasure", designed in the same way some patterned wallpaper is so designed as not to draw excessive attention to itself at the expense of whatever it is acting as a backdrop to: "the tune is more important than what is done to it", etc. So if one were to design a programme network intended as an aural comfort blanket it would be scheduled full of either music for this purpose or bits of music isolated from more complex contexts, whether the composer intended them to be or not. In certain circles one would speak of cultural appropriation and it would be frowned on, but not in this instance because the excerpts are from music imbued with cultural assumptions that are now questioned for specific and usually misleading political ends. It's "simples" once one appreciates how all this connects to wider political agendas which use and falsely imbue past narratives to secure the established status quo. Many on here oversimplistically ascribe Radio 3 dumbing down as an issue between alleged elitism and anti-elitism - weak attribution which lets the Powers That Be get away with it.

[vinteuil]

Not weird FF. I was brought up to listen to music very much that way, although certain quiet activities - knitting and mending in my mother's case - were permitted, and reading sometimes. That was partly my mother's requirement and inclination, and also to do with certain aspects of my father's approach to parenting.
It stuck with me for decades, but circumstances and changing listening habits loosened those restrictions a bit and now I can have music on and not necessarily be devoting my whole attention to it ...

I wonder if it is (in part) a generational thing. I was born in 1952, my parents were of a serious mind-set, and it was a time of pelican books and all the other earnest good things that came after the war. My father (the son of a Methodist minister) was in today's terms severe : the Third Programme took priority over other things, and silence was enjoined when he was listening. My older brothers escaped outside to slaughter pigeons and other country pursuits; I stayed inside and benefited willy-nilly from what was on the wireless : I wouldn't be what I am today without that background. I don't think I could enforce such discipline nowadays...

.

[eighthobstruction]

.....anything goes....


Just think of those shocks you've got
And those knocks you've got
And those blues you've got
From those news you've got
And those pains you've got
If any brains you've got
From those little radios

[french frank]

I don't think I could enforce such discipline nowadays...

Of course that's correct. Were there benefits to such discipline? Who's to say? If there were any benefits, they are now absent.

[Serial_Apologist]

I wonder if it is (in part) a generational thing. I was born in 1952, my parents were of a serious mind-set, and it was a time of pelican books and all the other earnest good things that came after the war. My father (the son of a Methodist minister) was in today's terms severe : the Third Programme took priority over other things, and silence was enjoined when he was listening. My older brothers escaped outside to slaughter pigeons and other country pursuits; I stayed inside and benefited willy-nilly from what was on the wireless : I wouldn't be what I am today without that background. I don't think I could enforce such discipline nowadays...

.

And neither should one want to inflict such enforcement, which really didn't help! That is not the point - the point is what is it that stands in the way of openness to music of other than the simplest kinds, thereby thwarting a natural curiosity that can so easily be bashed out of a child. When my mum tried unsuccessfully to instill "discipline" in my piano lessons, because that was what had been done to her, all it did was put me off. For all Mum's pianistic brilliance at the end of her days she admitted she had never enjoyed playing, which is so sad! Enforcement in this as in other areas of upbringing is a form of child abuse.

[LMcD]

.....anything goes....


Just think of those shocks you've got
And those knocks you've got
And those blues you've got
From those news you've got
And those pains you've got
If any brains you've got
From those little radios

I certainly wouldn't like to be without mein kleiner Apparat.

[Serial_Apologist]

.....anything goes....


Just think of those shocks you've got
And those knocks you've got
And those blues you've got
From those news you've got
And those pains you've got
If any brains you've got
From those little radios

[vinteuil]

And neither should one want to inflict such enforcement, which really didn't help!

You have no way of knowing that. I responded positively to that discipline, and my life is culturally richer as a result. It doesn't work with all - my brothers ran a mile. But it worked for me
.

Enforcement in this as in other areas of upbringing is a form of child abuse.

You may wish to buy my tee-shirt ™ "I think you will find it's a bit more complicated than that"

I suspect you are a devotee of Rousseau : I am very much not...

.

[gradus]

I'm a child of the forties(19) but I can't say that enforced discipline played any part in developing my radio and music listening, if anything quite the reverse, I heard whatever was on the radio and made up my own mind about it. Having started on live complete Wagner at 16, my early listening habits plainly didn't limit my attention span nor confine me to the top10 unable to get beyond the 3 minute duration of the pop records I loved. Day to day I don't at all mind hearing bits and pieces of music as I find it difficult to set aside the time needed for complete works perhaps that's why going to live music where I can hear complete performances is important to me.

[french frank]

I responded positively to that discipline, and my life is culturally richer as a result. It doesn't work with all - my brothers ran a mile.

So presumably you could also have run a mile if you'd been so inclined? There's discipline and there's guidance. I would have welcomed guidance (with hindsight).

[vinteuil]

So presumably you could also have run a mile if you'd been so inclined? There's discipline and there's guidance.

... and there's (physical) laziness. Far preferred sitting indoors rather than running about outside - always Mycroft rather than Sherlock

There's discipline and there's guidance. I would have welcomed guidance (with hindsight).

o yes. « O si la jeunesse scavoit...»

Les Prémices
Henri Estienne [1531-1598]

( I see that in a 1578 dialogue he is a fierce critic of « langage farragineux ». Perhaps he foresaw a 2024 election... )

[eighthobstruction]

“Recently I retired to my estates, determined to devote myself as far as I could to spending what little life I have left quietly and privately; it seemed to me then that the greatest favour I could do for my mind was to leave it in total idleness, caring for itself, concerned only with itself, calmly thinking of itself. I hoped it could do that more easily from then on, since with the passage of time it had grown mature and put on weight. But I find that on the contrary it bolted off like a runaway horse, taking for more trouble over itself than it ever did over anyone else; it gives birth to so many chimeras and fantastic monstrosities, one after another, without order or fitness, that, so as to contemplate at my ease their oddness and their strangeness, I began to keep a record of them, hoping in time to make my mind ashamed of itself.” ....michel de montaigne on idleness

[vinteuil]

Many thanks for that, eighth-o

[eighthobstruction]

.....who ain't got a list and little black book of some sort....eh? ....or a ad hoc number of envelope backs....