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That doesn't surprise me. Keep up the good work!

wr:

Unfortunately I don't have the patience to give you links to these researches, but I am going to recommend you a book on the subject. In this book, the author cites these researches, he has data to back everything he writes, except for his opinions of course. As I said, Alex Ross is a very good music critic and a fine writer. He writes about the belief of the so called "inherent poshness" ( I'm not 100% sure you implied that, care to elucidate?), the belief that the attention span of the "average person" (argh) is smaller... well, he deconstructs the term fine art, breaks the barrier between classical and other kinds of music.
I strongly recommend you this read! I always admired your posts here on PW as being very sensible ( don't know if that's the right word). I think you will like this very much. I know I did.

Sounds very interesting, but what book??

Oops, sorry! I forgot to mention the name
The name is a bit kitsch for my tastes, and quite frankly it stayed on my shelf for quite some time before I gave it a chance. "Listen to this" is the name of the book. Each chapter is a sort of article about a certain subject. One of the most passionate ones is about the Marlboro Festival. It features a very nice interview with Uchida.

Yes, here's my contribution to the november 2013 ABF recital

Bruce Hornsby - the way it is

There are a few other pop tunes worth a try on piano, but most is just boring and needs the singer, drums, bass and more to keep it marginally interesting



Try that Bruce Hornsby, The notes are not hard but you'll be amazed at the complexity of the rythms and solos.


is Boogie Woogie pop music? In that case I can add this

ammons swanee river boogie



As wr says, not at all. It just does not fit with the current style and consumer mentality. Humanity will get over that.

Heh.....that you thought otherwise emphasizes the following point:

one might say, "classical music is just pop music that people listen to even though it was written a long time ago."

Ok, I have played stuff that has made the top 40, having played in several bands over the years, but I've never transcribed them into solo piano pieces and have played less than a quarter of them on piano at all.

OK. Some of the Beethoven Sonatas are not over complex. They revolve around simple chords and fairly repetitive right hand movements. By contrast, a lot of popular have complex chords and a vocal line that`s all over the place, courtesy of the (usually) female singer. . . the days of the three chord special are over, I can`t understand why people here think it`s so simple. It has it`s own sophistication, being built upon previous generations of stuff. Including classics which provided the foundation to most of what we hwar today. Bear also in mind that many popular musicians/songwriters have been classically trained.

And your reply, with the quote edited to falsify the meaning of what I said, doesn't surprise me, either.

First and foremost, the vibrato and the timbre of the vocal was just incredibly annoying. And I don't know...the juxtaposition of styles didn't do a lot for me - it seemed a bit simple-minded and done simply for the sake of doing it. There was a about .75 of a second that I liked at the transition from the central interlude back into the rock sound.

Classical music does not have to conform to modern man's habits. (No music has to, in fact, but word here is about classical.) It is what it is and it should hold its values to the end. The fact that your *average* modern-day person doesn't generally relate to classical music means nothing more than this: the aforementioned person doesn't have the values and world view that this music represents.
Calling a piano concerto a "song" is not acceptable, as is calling a Metallica song a "symphony" (provided neither is used in some metaphorical sense). Explaining and informing about a musical style is fine, modifying and shifting its standards is nothing short of perversion.

I think I've probably already read much of that book, since it appears that it is in part a collection of previous writing that Ross did, and I've been reading his stuff for quite a while (although I have yet to get to his earlier book "The Rest Is Noise"). I don't remember anything citing studies about snobbery in classical music, though - maybe I'll check it out.

I didn't mean to imply there was an "inherent poshness" about classical music. As I said there's always been a non-posh group of people attending classical music concerts. And performers and composers have come from all sorts of backgrounds, so that tells us that there's no particular class limitation for the music, as music - it's available to everyone.

But the issues of snobbery and elitism that seem to be all the rage these days when discussing classical music seem to me to have at least as much to do with knowledge and experience as they do with social class. Of course, there is a theory that historically it was mostly the upper classes who had the leisure and the money to support the arts, including classical music, so there's that. And indeed, at least in the US, opening night galas for the symphony and ballet are still opportunities for the wealthy to strut about in expensive clothes and jewelry, and it attracts a particular kind of media coverage for that very reason, and not for the actual performance.

I think I misused the word "posh" here. But first let me stress that I don't believe classical music should change to relate more to the "average listener". That's exactly my point, the music doesn't have to change. The problem lies in the preconception people have when they hear the word classical. And that is not the music's fault.

wr, it's wonderful that you already read Ross! I only read this book of his... besides "The rest is noise", could you recommend me some other readings?
The chapter I'm referring to is the first one of the book.
One thing he talks about, for example, that the elitism that pervades classical music today is not economical. Just compare the ticket price of an average classical concert and to a Miley Cyrus concert. It's cheap to listen to classical music.
Well, I'm not an expert on the subject. What I could do is quote the book, but it's out there for a reason. My opinion is that classical music is not inherently anything, and that it COULD get more appeal today if it wasn't for the social clichés that dominate it. The reason, for me, is social-historical, and not musical.

Or I misunderstood how you used "posh" - it's kind of Brit slang, and I probably over-simplified it into something like "upper-class".



I think he only has the two books published. But the way I read him is through his writing for The New Yorker magazine and through his blog.


I'm sure that classical music could, in theory, have more appeal today, but the reasons it doesn't are pretty complex, I think. IMO, much has to do with the decline of music as something that people actually made themselves, instead of playing recordings. A hundred years ago, in the industrialized countries, practically every household that could afford one had a piano, and at least one person who could play it. And the people who played it often played at least some classical music, which provided a sort of entry point for interest in the art, not just for themselves, but for everyone who heard them play.

And that's just one aspect of the reasons why there isn't more interest. But I'm not completely convinced there should be more interest in it. Maybe the world has changed so much that it is just not as viable as it once was, or viable in a somewhat reduced way. Or maybe it is morphing into something else.

Not only that, but people were in fact obligated to make music on stage, as in actually really play/sing. Today's [popular] music is largely dependant on... electricity, to put it mildly. Isn't it just so much easier to go on stage in provocative clothing, run and jump around the whole show while supposedly "singing", and just be *shocking* or something... than making live music? And well, we humans love making stuff easier and easier for ourselves all the time, so is that really a surprise?

Today's pop singers don't even have to be able to sing, with all that electronic help - auto tune, pre-recorded tracks that you mime to, etc, etc. And with an audience which doesn't even care whether or not the 'artistes' can actually sing or play, just as long as they can prance around and wear revealing gaudy garb, and whip everyone into a frenzy of........whatever .

Whereas in the days of Verdi and his operas (which was the 'pop music' of his day), people cared whether that soprano could hit the top notes (and booed her off-stage if she cracked). In fact, they still do that in La Scala today .

This strikes me as the primary contributor to the morphing that's occurring (as something becomes less and less viable, generally it morphs rather than decays; what is seen as the decayed subject is more often than not simply the remnants a subject has left behind). As you rightly said, there're many factors though (in what are there few?) that need to be considered. Um...social misinterpretation of the "poshness" and rigidity comes next, in my mind, followed by the genuine rigidity. See...stringency and prudence are fine (up-tight people make friends with easy-going people in many scenarios ), but when it gets tied up with other things...um...anyone who says there isn't a problem with the music, or the accessibility, or the format or presentation, or milieu, or economy or the human condition is entirely right; it's the combination that leads to the situation within which we currently exist. If none of the factors change, the situation won't either and, as with everything, it will fall to public opinion with regards to *what* will give way first; is it easier to give up the instrumentation or the seating arrangements? The formality or the notes? Um...patronage, as once it was, is practically dead; without that support...some factors make the burden too heavy (arguably, of course, patronage *is* the factor that's changed due to public opinion re: worth of music, but that makes the conclusion less tidy ). Um...personally, I love the music, the formality, the poshness and everything else...I shan't sacrifice the music and, really, I shan't sacrifice the fashion of the music, the poshness; where people often get mislead is that poshness doesn't mean meanness. Posh can be good-hearted and that's where a lot of the social misinterpretation comes from: posh isn't bad. Posh isn't nasty. Elitism is dodgy, though not necessarily bad, but cruelty, nastiness, sneering...um...needless to say, they don't help. Most people in the Classical world don't habitually engage in such exploits, but, um, the already existent prejudices about Classical music mean that people (you know, the great unwashed) are sometimes...well, on the lookout for it; people are insecure and look for reasons to support their feelings...um...or something... So, in short, I think getting people to willingly play Classical music (turning them into Classical musicians by proxy, generally diluting the misconception that Classical musicians are snooty, snobby and snarky), through whatever means, is the surest way to preserve and make flourish the aspects of Classical music that we hope not to lose...or something...in my opinion...
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