Ignorance of classical music - does it matter?

[Paul Sherratt]

Teamsaint, it would be something if the two Nelsons met and brought their respective recorded output along. They would need months together !

heliocentric, there were a couple of really annoying youths messing around our garden wall recently. I had an Albert Aylet cd to hand and they were well within earshot so thought they would soon move on. I was wrong!

[Hornspieler]

I've only just picked up on this thread and it does seem to be going round in circles.

That is interesting because, to me, music also is going round in circles (or cycles, perhaps)

The first playing of Jazz, or "Jass" as it was first called emerged from the folk music of the Southern states of America.

European folk music was the secular beginning of what we now call "classical" music How many compositions were derived from Nursery rhymes or local community sing-songs? (Dohnanyi, Vaughan Williams, Kodaly, Bartok are obvious examples.)

Jazz developed through Dixieland to swing and big band, back to small groups and on to "progressive" jazz , as epitomised by Dizzy Gillespie and the Miles Davis.

Classical music has developed over the past centuries from Bach to Boulez, through various composers and onwards through serial music to what we hear from many of our modern composers.

Over the years, the different cultures of Asia and the Far East have adopted "western" music and we have absorbed the cultures of India, China and the African States.

We have now reached a state of musical evolution where "progressive jazz" and "modern classical music" are almost indistinguishable from each other in many respects.

They both owe their origins to the same basic folklore - and why did that develop and evolve?

Because people liked the sounds that they heard - and the same is true to this very day. You cannot educate people to like something. You can only make it available to them to make their own choice.

" .. if every cloth is made of gold, up goes the price of shoddy." (Quite irrelevent to this discussion except to remind ourselves that Gilbert and Sullivan may be for the "uneducated", but it is very addictive.)

What a load of rubbish! Time I went to my bed.

HS

[teamsaint]

Teamsaint, it would be something if the two Nelsons met and brought their respective recorded output along. They would need months together !

heliocentric, there were a couple of really annoying youths messing around our garden wall recently. I had an Albert Aylet cd to hand and they were well within earshot so thought they would soon move on. I was wrong!

I gather the Yorkshire fellow still puts out an album every fortnight or so !
Don't really know that much of his American namesakes work....but an Double Nelson electro country project sounds promising !!

[french frank]

Anecdotes aside, is there actually any evidence that "ignorance of classical music" is any greater than it was say 50 years ago?

I don't know what you would accept as evidence, but you might agree that classical music is being crowded out in everyone's daily lives by popular music (like it or not). As a teenager, I didn't have the size of record collection that many young people do now if they're interested in music, it's rock and pop, it's on radio, at festivals. It is 'music' to most people. They have no reason to look any further.

I don't think I did know much about it, but I can recall whereabouts I had a chance to hear it, even though I didn't come from a musical family: school prayers every morning, house music competitions (in which I did not take part ). That was the musical ethos of the school, and the middle class expectation. Popular music has become the universal mainstream, including, crucially, in schools, state schools and public schools.

"Classical" music is one of many musics I'm interested in. I have the impression that ignorance of free improvisation, for example, is far more widespread in our society than ignorance of (Western) classical music. Yet that music goes on, and goes on evolving.

A musician's music? Classical music has a record industry to support...

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I happen to think that ignorance of Classical music, (if couched in quiz question terms)is probably little different today to 50 years ago !

I don't think that's true. At my primary school (52 years ago) a fair sprinkling of my contemporaries had been to Halle concerts before I had. When the class music teacher allowed us to bring in our own records, a fair few brought classical ones in, though more brought Elvis and Cliff singles. (Hey, he's still going!)

[Flosshilde]

Does this matter?

Yes, it does.

[Flosshilde]

I don't think that's true. At my primary school (52 years ago) a fair sprinkling of my contemporaries had been to Halle concerts before I had. When the class music teacher allowed us to bring in our own records, a fair few brought classical ones in, though more brought Elvis and Cliff singles. (Hey, he's still going!)

That doesn't really tell us anything if we don't know the context of your primary school. I don't recall having a class music teacher at my primary school.

[french frank]

I don't recall having a class music teacher at my primary school.

Oooh, we did! Very versatile, she was

[MrGongGong]

What, by the way, is 'the soundworld of classical music' (with or without its double quotes)? Something that 'sounds like Mahler' but isn't by him?

Soundworld = a world suggested by sounds

Sometimes people in classical music will make statements about how people are unaware of (for example) Orchestral music, when the sounds of the orchestra are everywhere.

[Hornspieler]

I don't know what you would accept as evidence, but you might agree that classical music is being crowded out in everyone's daily lives by popular music (like it or not). As a teenager, I didn't have the size of record collection that many young people do now if they're interested in music, it's rock and pop, it's on radio, at festivals. It is 'music' to most people. They have no reason to look any further.

I don't think I did know much about it, but I can recall whereabouts I had a chance to hear it, even though I didn't come from a musical family: school prayers every morning, house music competitions (in which I did not take part ). That was the musical ethos of the school, and the middle class expectation. Popular music has become the universal mainstream, including, crucially, in schools, state schools and public schools.

A musician's music? Classical music has a record industry to support...

Quite the reverse, in fact.

Whether we like Pop Music or not, it is the income from sales of those "Albums" which subsidise the record company's losses on their classical music recordings.

So that which many of us decry is our greatest ally in providing us with the sort of choice of artists and performances that we discuss on these message boards.

HS

[MrGongGong]

Quite the reverse, in fact.

Whether we like Pop Music or not, it is the income from sales of those "Albums" which subsidise the record company's losses on their classical music recordings.

So that which many of us decry is our greatest ally in providing us with the sort of choice of artists and performances that we discuss on these message boards.

HS

Good point (though only really applies to mainstream "classical" music)
it does remind me a bit of the MU 1980's "Keep Music Live" campaign which (and this might be a bit of an urban myth ??) was dropped after the MU realised that many of their members earned more money from recordings than doing live gigs !

[Domeyhead]

Part of the difficulty of teaching children to appreciate serious music is that in life now they are not taught or encouraged to concentrate on anything! It matters little whether this is music, poetry, Shakespeare#s plays or observing nature. Emails are reduced to texts and texts to tweets. Populist TV offers little more than 60 seconds of any topic before moving on. Even Musical talent shows cannot bear to give an act 3 minutes to sing a pop song - it is abbreviated to two verses and the screaming payoff. ADHD is seen as a syndrome and not a conditioned habit and therefore something to be accepted rather than remediated. In this environment is it any wonder that no child is going to listen to more than 5 minutes of any piece of music without getting twitchy and bored? There is no understanding of development; the engagement is only ever superficial. A child subjected to a fast paced bee-and-flower lifestyle for 167 hours a week is not going to sit quietly to contemplate the meaning of a symphonic construction. Opera is a Nessan Dorma soundbite of 15 seconds - Classical Music is the opening 15 seconds of Carmina Burana -(or worse still some anodyne offering from Karl Jenkins. Whither Soft Machine now, eh Karl?)

[Hornspieler]

Good point (though only really applies to mainstream "classical" music)
it does remind me a bit of the MU 1980's "Keep Music Live" campaign which (and this might be a bit of an urban myth ??) was dropped after the MU realised that many of their members earned more money from recordings than doing live gigs !

I should think that less than 5% of MU members ever saw the inside of a recording studio during their lifetime.

And probably, part-time musicians (the "gig" boys with a safe day job) formed 90% of the Musicians Union membership.

That was our problem, as full-time professionals. Local branch commitees of the MU were almost totally dominated by part-time musicians; because they were the only ones with free time to attend meetings on Sunday mornings.

It was the actions of the Bournemouth Branch commitee in calling all local members out on strike which resulted in Bournemouth Corporation's decision (a convenient excuse) to sack their Municipal Orchestra, which was founded by Sir Dan Godfrey many years earlier.
Sir Alan Cobham and other local enthusiasts combined with their counterparts throughout the West of England to form "The Western Orchestral Society" and then the Arts Council stepped in with subsidy and local authorities gave guarantees of annual payments in return for a set number of visits by what was now re-formed as "The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra" under the astute management of Kenneth Matchett.

Keep Music Live, was not just a campagn or a slogan - it was all to do with the so-called "Needle Time Agreement" between the BBC and the MU; whereby the BBC were restricted to the transmission of gramophone records in an agreed direct ratio to those musicians actually employed (and paid, of course!) to broadcast music "live".

HS

[french frank]

Quite the reverse, in fact.

Whether we like Pop Music or not, it is the income from sales of those "Albums" which subsidise the record company's losses on their classical music recordings.

So that which many of us decry is our greatest ally in providing us with the sort of choice of artists and performances that we discuss on these message boards.

HS

I don't recognise any of that as relating to what I was saying. When I said 'Classical music has a record industry to support', in the first place I was responding to heliocentric's comment about, on the other hand, free improvisation; secondly, I meant that 1) there is a large classical record industry 2) it has to be supported (it was anyway intended as a tongue-in-cheek throwaway comment).

Bringing in pop music is a straw man. I'm not 'decrying' pop music for what it is. The logic of what you say is that if there wasn't a pop record industry there would be no classical record industry. An interesting point to discuss

[Hornspieler]

I don't recognise any of that as relating to what I was saying. When I said 'Classical music has a record industry to support', in the first place I was responding to heliocentric's comment about, on the other hand, free improvisation; secondly, I meant that 1) there is a large classical record industry 2) it has to be supported (it was anyway intended as a tongue-in-cheek throwaway comment).

Bringing in pop music is a straw man. I'm not 'decrying' pop music for what it is. The logic of what you say is that if there wasn't a pop record industry there would be no classical record industry. An interesting point to discuss

Thanks for your explanation, FF. No personal challenge was intended on my part and I hope that no offence was taken.

Regarding the second part of your message; we have all seen what has happened to HMV (EMI) only a few days ago. Are we approaching a period when "serious" music is only recorded by and available from the lesser known companies?

And how much choice and at what price then, I wonder?

HS