John Tavener on Hear and Now

[teamsaint]

every genre of music has become much more homogeneous since then. There's a tendency towards sameness and an avoidance of strong feelings about things that I think is a mirror of the rightward shift in society since Reagan/Thatcher -- not only in political views, but in attitudes: "if I don't care about anything, nothing can hurt me."

I wouldn't say that was true of British folk music, for example.

there has been considerable cross fertilisation of styles and techniques, and plenty of political engagement amongst performers in recent times.

[Honoured Guest]

"Nothing dates people more than the [standards] against which they have chosen to react."

Nicholas Jenkins, narrator - "A Dance to the Music of Time" (Anthony Powell)

I've quoted from memory - "standards" may be a misquote.

[ahinton]

Neoconservative

I've been called many things to my face and doubtless many more out of earshot but I sincerely hope that no one ever has or will describe me as one of those, either as a musician or as anything else; it strikes me as a term whose value suggests that its rightful place might be in a new edition of Slonimsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective...

[Serial_Apologist]

As opposed to the epic, heroic, triumphal 19th century and the beautiful classical balance of the 18th?



Neoconservative.

edit: at least the "mainstream". People like to talk about a mainstream of pluralism, but that's actually much less true than it was, say, 40 years ago; every genre of music has become much more homogeneous since then. There's a tendency towards sameness and an avoidance of strong feelings about things that I think is a mirror of the rightward shift in society since Reagan/Thatcher -- not only in political views, but in attitudes: "if I don't care about anything, nothing can hurt me."

I tend to agree, though this line deserves elaboration. Aesthetic pluralism, which in the 1960s stood for the breaking down of high/low artistic ghettoes, was one instance among many of an avant-gardist drive to be part of Western societies in the 1960s moving in more sociopolitically egalitarian, libertarian mores-driven directions that ran into the sand with it marginalisation by those who could make money out of presenting it as merely lifestyle choice. In any instances it depends upon towards what pluralism or homogeneity are being directed, and by and on behalf of whom.

[Richard Barrett]

Neoconservative.

There is a lot of neoconservatism around to be sure. But I would say that it reflects the safe-option-oriented selectivity of cultural institutions rather than what is actually happening. Characteristic of the 21st century is the (further) rise of the curator in musical culture, and the concomitant relegation of creative musicians to being content providers for some glorified arts bureaucrat's vicarious "vision" of what the public should hear. That's what has become homogeneous, not the music people are still making.