Howard Goodall on BBC Two

[jean]

Xenakis is "accessible" but certainly isn't what one might think of as "popular"...

Assuming accessibility and popularity really are two different things, how can we measure the accessibility of something that not that many people bother to accede to?

[Julien Sorel]

they were representative of classical composers whose music represented the fears and aspirations of a wide cross section of society - in other words, whose music caught the public’s imagination - a status that ‘classical’ music lost during the 20th Century. Is he that wrong?

Perhaps they are the only 'classical' composers to have done that? If it makes any sense to talk about medieval composers as 'classical' or renaissance composers as 'classical' baroque etc. - they all wrote for either specialist institutions (the Church, then the churches) or aristocratic patrons (or were employed directly in aristocratic households). In the C18 a new audience for public concerts and opera develops (or did a public operatic audience develop earlier?) but it's hardly popular: it's the new well-off bourgeoisie, the merchant classes etc. Stories about delivery boys whistling tunes from Figaro aside, I wonder how representative of any general public the audiences for Mozart's subscription concerts were? I doubt they represented a wide spread of class. Were C19 composers other than Verdi widely popular in the way that Verdi's funeral suggests his music was? (or he was? Clearly he was identified in people's minds with Italian reunification and possibly with anti-clericalism).

So maybe Verdi and Puccini (is that true of Puccini? Obviously there were the three tenors and 'Nessun Dorma' years later, but I don't know if many people started listening to Turandot as a result) were the only 'classical' composers ever to catch anything like a (perhaps a not the?) general public's imagination? Specific to circumstance and history and context. Do they capture a public's imagination now? Other than opera enthusiasts specifically and 'classical music' enthusiasts more generally? So maybe 'classical music' has never been popular. I honestly don't know - is that a problem with classical music? A failure on classical music's part? It's not just serial music or a certain sort of contemporary music - it's 'classical music' that isn't popular (rather than being actively unpopular, perhaps).

It’s only individuals that can judge quality and individuals come up with different assessments - so where does that get us?

I'm not surprised you say that, but I am also surprised that you say that. Setting aside my observations about marketing and creation, demarcating of markets (people are certainly powerfully directed towards certain assessments, IMV) I'd have thought you'd feel that a music establishment has assessed quality and imposed that assessment in the recent past. Specifically assessed that certain kinds of contemporary music are of value, others aren't. I'd guess part of Goodall's argument and perhaps yours (?) is the control of that assessing group has been broken? That being A Good Thing.

For what it's worth there's quite a lot of popular music (or 'popular music') I rate very highly. Given the ubiquity of popular music in contemporary culture I'm not sure it's a great thing it becomes ubiquitous everywhere. But I'm temperamentally on the side of minorities .

[Mahler's3rd]

I think the programme has been fairly interesting on the whole, though as I've mentioned in a previous thread, it seemd very much "A History Of Western Music", there was no mention that I'm aware of, of the wealth of muscial culture that I'm sure has prevailed in China and the far east generally. I think as I've also said elsewhere that he over did the whole "Anti Wagner" thing. Im not saying that Wagner was a nice bloke by any means, but by the same token he wasnt on his own with his extreme view's either. The total Omission of Britten in any context was a big mistake In my view, In fact "The Brits" generally were almost completely overlooked, bar one or two exceptions. As to weather classical music is popular or not who know's?

There is a perception I think generally in life that if someone like's Classical Music, Opera, Ballet, they are considered to be a "toff". It's something I'm often accused of in work and within my friends and family would you believe. "Off to the mix with the toffs again" they would say or "Blimey I never knew you were into that, you dont look the type" etc etc etc

Little do these people know of course that I've seen "live" just about as diverse a cross section of music live there is to see from Classic/Modern Ballet, Classic/Contemporary Opera, West Side Story-Mary Poppins-Slayer-Metallica-Emerson Lake & Palmer, Jazz & Country & Western etc etc, I'm sure you get the picture. Perhaps the perceived elitism that is aimed at someone like myself, or others about classical music is bourne out of the throw away society the western world has become with an average attention span of 7 minutes?
I've been to festivals all over the country of all types over a long time and I have never witnessed the camaraderie that I see every July-September in the queue outside the Royal Albert Hall

[Ian]

So maybe 'classical music' has never been popular.

One (defining?) feature of ‘classical’ music (in the broad sense) is that it’s products are commodities. What I mean by that is that classical music is created by an elite to be consumed by a definable public (small or large). To what extent 19th century classical music co-existed with some other type of very different mass-market music I’m not sure, but if it did then this ‘other’ type of music must have been much more something people DID rather than CONSUMED.

In any case, my understanding is that 19C ‘classical’ was not that devolved from 19C ‘popular‘ Certainly Schumann was not as popular as Mendelssohn or, perhaps more relevantly, hundreds of now forgotten (pop) composers of parlour piano music, but it’s not the case that 19C parlour music had a completely different DNA from the ‘highbrow‘ classical stuff - nor were ‘highbrow’ composers prevented from occasionally/often letting their hair down.

If Mozart was not popular in his own time whose music was - and did it have a different DNA - would it not still sound like classical music to us?

I think the question of class access is not entirely relevant here. In the early part of the 20C not many could afford cars, but that wouldn’t have stopped those cars being desirable to most people.

[Julien Sorel]

One difference between popular music in the later C20 / early C21 century and earlier popular music is perhaps its global character; earlier popular music presumably was more local, less widely disseminated? Perhaps also distinctions between folk music and popular music, and rural and urban music were significant (in a sense pop music has become a new unlocalised folk music, perhaps it appropriates folk music as World Music). I'm trying to keep value judgements out of these comments.

I suppose the earliest form of ... deterritorialisation of music (sorry) was cheap printing and dissemination of things like ballads in the early modern period.

I take your point about doing rather than consuming. I'd imagine parlour music (little piano pieces, songs) were for a particular, class definable, audience: more middle than working class? I still remember quite a few music-hall songs from my Grandmother, who'd sing them while doing her housework.

Could it also be said that if classical music has moved away from popular music then popular music has done the same (or has moved away from what was a common ground). A positive way of putting that would be that popular music has formed new, contemporary, identities (and continues to do so). The sense of a split is clearly present in Bartók (the collection of folk materials, the way they occur and are transformed in his music. There's an attempt at re-engagement, perhaps, but it's an attempt predicated on loss and separation).

I don't get the car analogy. How is wanting a car the same as wanting music? A car does something. Music doesn't, or not in the same way.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

HG, does he know anything?

Well, yes. And that's why I found his attitude in this series (ho-ho-ho) so ruddy infuriating. His Channel 4 series Big Bands was actually very good, and I'm convinced that he could have done a decent equivalent of the Art programmes in the "Baroque Season". Get him to focus on a topic he enjoys (the Scale; the Piano; Film Music; carols - wo'evva) and he produces the goods. (I bet he'd be good discussing Brass Bands, for example.)

This series was far too broad for him: probably too broad for any individual - and this is another point; I don't think that any of the excellent presenters of the History or Art documentaries on BBC4 would be asked to cover such a broad range of history on their own. So he had to reduce it to a self-justifying panoply of inaccuracies, prejudices and omissions - together with the odd insight that suggested how much better this could have been.

[BBMmk2]

Well, yes. And that's why I found his attitude in this series (ho-ho-ho) so ruddy infuriating. His Channel 4 series Big Bands was actually very good, and I'm convinced that he could have done a decent equivalent of the Art programmes in the "Baroque Season". Get him to focus on a topic he enjoys (the Scale; the Piano; Film Music; carols - wo'evva) and he produces the goods. (I bet he'd be good discussing Brass Bands, for example.)

This series was far too broad for him, and he turned it into a self-justifying panoply of inaccuracies, prejudices and omissions - together with the odd insight that suggested how much better this could have been.

Hi Ferney

I think what you said in your last sentance the actual subject wasa too broad for him. Therre needed to be a sense of focus on a particular part in the music that he was discussing and perhaps maybe linking other comosers in the mix, so to speak. I wonder if he would do a good job for brass bands? I think you could be right there, Ferney, because then he could focused on not too broad a subject, so long as he doesnt present a stereotypical view?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Hi, Bbm

I've adjusted my final sentence of my #441 as I thought the original was far too brusque. HG is very keen on Popular (in the fullest sense of the word) Musics - his programme on Carols three Christmases ago was very good - which is why I think he'd be good with the histories and repertoires of the Brass Band traditions. For all I know, he might not like the genre - which would, of course, merely demonstrate what an absolute cad the man is. Or he might love it, which would suggest that the recent series merely stretched him too far!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

But calum, wouldn't you prefer a series of programmes on music, particularly C20 music, that did not endlessly rehearse the ideological debates about it, one that didn't effectively say "if you like this music, then you really ought not to like this other music"?

I would like a series - I suppose this is a comment more for the Sound and Fury thread but it applies to HG too - in which the different musical styles were described and analysed (including their origins), illustrating how Western classical music moved increasingly away from a common language into multiple co-existing languages (as well as being influenced by non-classical and non-Western music) without whole styles being summarily dismissed as irrelevant or unpopular (or anachronistic). It is up to the listeners/viewers to make up their own mind about the different styles with which they are presented, it is up to the presenter to illustrate and account for those styles as clearly and unpartisanly (?) as possible.

i did not hear either HG nor the Sound & Fury either telling me what to like or think .... what i thought i saw and heard were two lengthy essays of the development of music in historical context, one modern one more 'universal' .... how any author could do this in three to six hours when i have no doubt that entire degree syllabi fail to encompass some element that may be an essential key in some point of view or constituency beats me ....

i thought they were both polemical television at its best .... and as posted afore can we have lots more please ....

i do not find the posts here that reflect on HG's competence at all convincing since he clearly disagrees with posters here as to the nature and importance of eg serialism etc as posters disagree with his pov ... indeed the negative reaction to the programme series rather makes the point that it was polemical and a jolly good thing too.... Fry was waxing Wagner to a high gloss no? ... anathema to some of us but it made me think and open my ears .... [then the fat lady warbled at volume and i fled] ...

both of these programmes [HG and Sound and Fury] are fine examples of what we should die to defend ... polemic with sincerity and integrity ... and imv we need loads more of them not less

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

both of these programmes [HG and Sound and Fury] are fine examples of what we should die to defend ... polemic with sincerity and integrity ... and imv we need loads more of them not less

I agree. Given the breadth of the topic, HG has achieved the impossible, but inevitably with a few flaws. But let he who is perfect cast the first stone.

[Ian]

One difference between popular music in the later C20 / early C21 century and earlier popular music is perhaps its global character...

Globalization (in the sense of the world becoming a smaller place) has come about though developing technologies - not any particular type of music, of course. Nevertheless globalization offers the potential for unprecedented musical cross-fertilization. It can be argued that ‘classical’ ‘modernist’ music has tended to distance itself from sharing and contributing to this enlarged gene pool in favor of ‘closing ranks’ and concerning itself way too obsessively with its own processes and instinctively developing its own hermetically sealed environment. (This obviously has to be seen as a generalisation and simplification)

I’m not sure a ‘global character‘ has emerged in popular music - in fact ‘pop‘ these days only means a highly specific genre/branch of popular music. Anyone uploading a track to myspace, soundcloud etc. will be invited to label their track from a growing menu of about 200 genres.

If anything, I would say modern(ist) classical is more global (i.e. unified) in character- perhaps reflecting the extent to which the classical institutions have an instinct to control and filter (when they can)

The car analogy: It is true that music does something different to a car, but so does shoe polish, they are all, nevertheless commodities. (i.e. something you can chose to buy - no philosophy here!) It might be true (although I don’t think it is) that Mozart’s audience was exclusively a relatively affluent middle class, but it doesn’t follow that his music was above, or incomprehensible, to any one else.

[ardcarp]

But I didn’t get the sense he was ‘judging‘ any sort of music. What purpose does ‘judging‘ music serve? I

Ian. It is all what one perceives, of course, but I found HG to be extremely judgemental...and offhandedly dismissive of what he (personally and somewhat irrationally) didn't like. Schoenberg and serialism (they're not the same!) were more or less trashed, while Wagner's, Orff's and R.Strauss's total output was tarred with the tired old 'anti-semitic' brush. (I'm not of course condoning anti-semitism or any other undesirable -ism, but haven't we got past confusing the notes with the morality of their creators?) Soviet totalitarianism OTOH seemed just fine to HG. He didn't mention that blasting Shostakovitch's 7th out on speakers during the siege of Leningrad was one of Stalin's methods to repel the German army!

[BBMmk2]

Hi, Bbm

I've adjusted my final sentence of my #441 as I thought the original was far too brusque. HG is very keen on Popular (in the fullest sense of the word) Musics - his programme on Carols three Christmases ago was very good - which is why I think he'd be good with the histories and repertoires of the Brass Band traditions. For all I know, he might not like the genre - which would, of course, merely demonstrate what an absolute cad the man is. Or he might love it, which would suggest that the recent series merely stretched him too far!

Hiya Ferney, yes I totally agree with you there!

The limited timespan that this presenter had, for this subject was rather limiting. As I cannot comment on the other programmes you have mentioned, but I know that you were quite enthusiastic about them ,suggests that he could well be the man for the job?

[jean]

...But let he who is perfect...

That's what I always say.


.

[hedgehog]

It can be argued that ‘classical’ ‘modernist’ music has tended to distance itself from sharing and contributing to this enlarged gene pool in favor of ‘closing ranks’ and concerning itself way too obsessively with its own processes and instinctively developing its own hermetically sealed environment. (This obviously has to be seen as a generalisation and simplification)

If you would care to define what ‘classical’ ‘modernist’ music is and if you were to define it to an exceedingly small aspect of music that is being composed today, you may well be able to argue this point. It would however be meaningless.** I can only say that in the area of contemporary composed music today I come across a vast array of music influenced by a vast array of musics, philosophies, literature from all over the world - you name it it's there that makes what you say total rubbish (even if taking into account a moderate amount of "generalisation and simplification").

As I say define - with a list of composers and their works ( wiki URL will do) to substantiate your argument. I can, without even seeing it, guarantee a list substantially larger to disprove your contentious statement.

Come on, give me some names that belong to your " ‘classical’ ‘modernist’ music " list! (I'm ready to repeat this question until you do )

Edit ** Meaningless because I think the list would be so small as to be insignificant. I'd like some names though, these generalisations are tedious.