Howard Goodall on BBC Two

[Thropplenoggin]

Crumbs! That's a terrible press from the commenters, isn't it? Somebody will pop and dismiss them as just that 'fanatical cult of ...'

It seems that most of the commenters make the mistake of thinking Goodall wrote the article, where as in true Grauniad fashion, it's an interview cherry-picked to give whatever slant they feel like giving: here, Dvorak as proto-[insert latest à la mode rap star/DJ/MC], sampling and remixing avant le mot.

[Nick Armstrong]

Deluded nutcases seem drawn in like moths
that would NEVER happen here , would it ?

[Old Grumpy]

Crumbs! That's a terrible press from the commenters, isn't it? Somebody will pop and dismiss them as just that 'fanatical cult of ...'

See what you mean, FF! I read the article in the print version (so no comments) - just set up the link without realising there were any comments, oh well...

[french frank]

It seems that most of the commenters make the mistake of thinking Goodall wrote the article, where as in true Grauniad fashion, it's an interview cherry-picked to give whatever slant they feel like giving: here, Dvorak as proto-[insert latest à la mode rap star/DJ/MC], sampling and remixing avant le mot.

Yes, it quite clearly doen't have his byline but that of IT, the music blog editor.

I just tremble when I see such comments, because they are instantly transformed into the "spluttering colonels" of a certain identifiable group of Friends ... I hate such attitudes as are expressed as much as anyone.

[Old Grumpy]

Howard Goodall (or someone purporting to be him) has responded to the comments here: http://discussion.guardian.co.uk/com...alink/20855144 (scroll down the first page of comments and it's highlighted in blue).

OG

[french frank]

Howard Goodall (or someone purporting to be him) has responded to the comments here: http://discussion.guardian.co.uk/com...alink/20855144 (scroll down the first page of comments and it's highlighted in blue).

OG

Well, that seems fair/clear enough, doesn't it? Good for him.

[Thropplenoggin]

Howard Goodall (or someone purporting to be him) has responded to the comments here: http://discussion.guardian.co.uk/com...alink/20855144 (scroll down the first page of comments and it's highlighted in blue).

OG

I thought this comment by one 'jackstowaway"was funny:

"My, my, such vitriol! It reminds me of why I stopped browsing classical music forums--where posters seem less concerned with music appreciation than trumping each other in terms of declared sensibility and taste. ("Oh, dear God, not the 1954 recording!!")"

[Serial_Apologist]

Didn't he acknowledge the contribution of Islamic Spain?

From the little that admittedly I have read about Islamic/near Eastern influences on western music, the main influences came via the Crusades.

[Serial_Apologist]

But to omit even mention of the entire swathe of English immediate pre-Elizabethan, Elizabethan and immediate post-Elizabethan composers - including Tallis and Byrd, two of England's finest from any era - does seem very strange indeed.

No mention of Gesualdo either, ah... presumably he'll get slotted in with Wagner ... chronology was often hard to pin down in the programme...

[MrGongGong]

No mention of Gesualdo either, ah... presumably he'll get slotted in with Wagner ... chronology was often hard to pin down in the programme...

Save us from worthy chronology .......... please

[jean]

From the little that admittedly I have read about Islamic/near Eastern influences on western music, the main influences came via the Crusades.

It was specifically notation we were talking about there.

[Serial_Apologist]

Save us from worthy chronology .......... please

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wteiuxyqtoM

[Serial_Apologist]

It was specifically notation we were talking about there.

Sure, jean

[John Wright]

A similar TV series was broadcast by the BBC in or around 1979, the narrator was Yehudi Menuhin. The Music Of Man. Some or all of it is on youtube with dreadful visual quality, starting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwKnJ__HXtE

It will be an interesting comparison, which I haven't time just now to do.

A young, just graduated, at the time, TV in the bedsit, I have just vague memories of the TV series but was rivetted to it. Some years later I bought the book The Music Of Man in a charity shop. The book clearly separates text that are the words of Yehudi Menuhin and those of co-author Curtis W Davis.

[Lateralthinking1]

Surely the responses are in two categories, not one? -

1. Classical music people who do not like Goodall linking classical music to pop music and could be perceived by some as elitist

but also

2. Pop music fans - whatever pop music is - who resent the idea of such links and consider him to be elitist and misinformed.

If his main argument is that the classics are the roots of most pop music, he will need to address the black roots of much of it and also the white folk music roots to convince.

But if he is saying that there are similar patterns in each, and arguably some elements of influence in the former on the latter because the former in some ways came first, that is different.

Such patterns - for example patterns of historical development or colour and tone or complexity and minimalism - would have commonality. The same is true of any kind of music and virtually anything else.