Proms classical?

[Ein Heldenleben]

But today's Dragonflies are much smaller than most of their ancestral groups with many small physical differences, with different colorations of bewilderingly many kinds. Yes, they are very similar in many ways, but I wouldn't say they have "barely evolved"......

Sadly, this is the first summer I haven't seen a single one in the garden here.... something changed somewhere in their local habitat or food supply......

That is sad - Terrible year for butterflies as well. The local scarcity might be because water sources ( particularly shallow ponds ) have dried up. I think it’s been quite hot up north . 200 million years ago they would have been bigger because of higher oxygen levels in the atmosphere. Remember reading they had up to two foot wing span - being bitten by one then would have been a memorable experience (possibly also terminal) . Yes they have evolved a bit ( developed pterostigma) but the fundamental structure remains the same :

https://www.britannica.com/animal/Odonata/Evolution-paleontology-and-classification

I think the biological signs of life are respiration, movement , reproduction and can’t remember the fourth. A corpse “changes” through decay but it is not alive !

[Serial_Apologist]

Interesting, the implications raised in the last three posts, in broadening the context of discussion from jayne's comment about having to adapt. Tell the trees, flora, fauna and inhabitants of the Amazon forests. Life is a continuum from natural evolutionary processes to artificial forcing processes humanity seems to become evermore dependent on, at the expense of itself and the totality.

[Serial_Apologist]

That is sad - Terrible year for butterflies as well. The local scarcity might be because water sources ( particularly shallow ponds ) have dried up. I think it’s been quite hot up north . 200 million years ago they would have been bigger because of higher oxygen levels in the atmosphere. Remember reading they had up to two foot wing span - being bitten by one then would have been a memorable experience (possibly also terminal) . Yes they have evolved a bit ( developed pterostigma) but the fundamental structure remains the same :

https://www.britannica.com/animal/Odonata/Evolution-paleontology-and-classification

I think the biological signs of life are respiration, movement , reproduction and can’t remember the fourth. A corpse “changes” through decay but it is not alive !

Wouldn't one say (some of) the biological processes vital to life are respiration, movement, reproduction and decay? I must admit I'm not scientifically educated.

[Serial_Apologist]

True enough, but from the second stage (bloat) that decay is advanced by living organisms.... I'd rather not go into any more detail
...I've got soup warming up....

What was this thread about again...? Music or something...?:

Mushrooms?

[french frank]

What was this thread about again...? Music or something...?:

Yes, I had a few more ideas, but don't think I'll bother for the minute

[gurnemanz]

I'm thinking of starting a parallel thread called: Pope Catholic?

[Bryn]

Mushrooms?

Oh, very Cagean.

[jayne lee wilson]

That is sad - Terrible year for butterflies as well. The local scarcity might be because water sources ( particularly shallow ponds ) have dried up. I think it’s been quite hot up north . 200 million years ago they would have been bigger because of higher oxygen levels in the atmosphere. Remember reading they had up to two foot wing span - being bitten by one then would have been a memorable experience (possibly also terminal) . Yes they have evolved a bit ( developed pterostigma) but the fundamental structure remains the same :

https://www.britannica.com/animal/Odonata/Evolution-paleontology-and-classification

I think the biological signs of life are respiration, movement , reproduction and can’t remember the fourth. A corpse “changes” through decay but it is not alive !

True enough, but from the second stage (bloat) that decay is advanced by living organisms.... I'd rather not go into any more detail
...I've got soup warming up....

What was this thread about again...? Music or something...?:

"SINGING THE CHANGES: CLASSICAL MUSIC AS AN EVOLUTIONARY PARADIGM"...

[Ein Heldenleben]

True enough, but from the second stage (bloat) that decay is advanced by living organisms.... I'd rather not go into any more detail
...I've got soup warming up....

What was this thread about again...? Music or something...?:

"SINGING THE CHANGES: CLASSICAL MUSIC AS AN EVOLUTIONARY PARADIGM"...

Threads evolve or they die?,

[PhilipT]

When I started Promming you could still, just, say that the Proms offered the canon of classical music (defined broadly enough to include Indian ragas, Chinese pipa players and Korean dancing drummers). If that was something you wanted to try, you could do so, at remarkably little cost. Nowadays, the affordability is still there but the offer of the classical music canon is long gone. It's a crying shame - without the Proms I would never have discovered Mahler or Bruckner or Messiaen, and my life would have been much the poorer. Err, that was Henry Wood's intention wasn't it? I fail to see what the Proms offers now to someone like I was 30 years ago.

[oddoneout]

When I started Promming you could still, just, say that the Proms offered the canon of classical music (defined broadly enough to include Indian ragas, Chinese pipa players and Korean dancing drummers). If that was something you wanted to try, you could do so, at remarkably little cost. Nowadays, the affordability is still there but the offer of the classical music canon is long gone. It's a crying shame - without the Proms I would never have discovered Mahler or Bruckner or Messiaen, and my life would have been much the poorer. Err, that was Henry Wood's intention wasn't it? I fail to see what the Proms offers now to someone like I was 30 years ago.

Those composers still feature in the Proms, and I think that this

Wood and Newman wanted to introduce a broad range of classical music to a much wider audience, always working to truly democratise the genre. The atmosphere of the concerts was informal; people were permitted to eat and drink during performances (providing they kept the noise down during the quiet pieces) and the music had to be popular

and this

Wood continually presented an enterprising mixture of the familiar and the adventurous, programming new works each season. By 1920 Wood had introduced many of the leading composers of the day to the Proms audiences, including Richard Strauss, Debussy, Rachmaninov, Ravel and Vaughan Williams

. is still largely being achieved (minus the eating and drinking...). There will always be discussions along the lines of the complaint of the OP, not least because we all have our own preferences and ideas about what is "suitable" material.

[jayne lee wilson]

When I started Promming you could still, just, say that the Proms offered the canon of classical music (defined broadly enough to include Indian ragas, Chinese pipa players and Korean dancing drummers). If that was something you wanted to try, you could do so, at remarkably little cost. Nowadays, the affordability is still there but the offer of the classical music canon is long gone. It's a crying shame - without the Proms I would never have discovered Mahler or Bruckner or Messiaen, and my life would have been much the poorer. Err, that was Henry Wood's intention wasn't it? I fail to see what the Proms offers now to someone like I was 30 years ago.

The first two weeks this season was a classic Proms sequence of symphonies and concertos across three centuries, interspersed with premieres.....this last week, much more varied genres and innovations....Stravinsky tomorrow.... they seem to be doing what they've always done, and pretty well just now...

As I said elsewhere, Schoenberg's Op.16 was premiered in 1912, Max Davies' Worldes Blis infamously and legendarily walked out on in 1969....change and controversy, the Shock of the New, was always at the heart of it...

[ucanseetheend]

Well said Phillip. A new generation polluted with the "world music" fashion..and we really don't need lectures from those about the definition of 'western classical" music

[jayne lee wilson]

Well said Phillip. A new generation polluted with the "world music" fashion..and we really don't need lectures from those about the definition of 'western classical" music

You don't seem too keen to offer such a definition yourself....

"World Music" at the Proms goes back to at least 2002, but has become a somewhat discredited term...

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jul/24/guardian-world-music-outdated-global

But as I've implied above, PhilpT's list of composers and musical genres - Mahler, Bruckner, Messiaen (all of whom have featured regularly in recent seasons - just browse through the reviews and comments on earlier Proms seasons on this very forum) and Indian Ragas and so on, are closely mirrored by the range of Classical (howsoever you define it) and other genres this very year....

Remember that this is a shorter season than usual, and there are no orchestras visiting from abroad. So choices could have been a bit restricted...

But take a look at the final two weeks - Arnold's 5th with Walton, an all-Bartok night (with a Hungarian folk band), Knussen and Benjamin, a complete Tristan, JEG with Handel and Bach, Berg and Korngold, J Strauss II and Richard Strauss, Hindemith, Messiaen , Rautavaara, Saint-Saens' organ blockbuster, a complete Matthew Passion.....and more premieres...
And Rattle in town tomorrow with a symphonic Stravinsky trilogy....

Not so bad, is it?

[cloughie]

There are so many genres in music now - seems to be a new one every week - I have two - Classical and non-Classical - I know what these mean and I think all on the forum, unless they are of a particularly pedantic frame of mind, also know.