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Naming & dispelling the cliches of classical music (Andrew Ford)

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#1 ·
In his book In Defence of Classical Music (ABC Books, 2005), Australian musicologist Andrew Ford lists and discusses some popular misconceptions or cliches related to classical music. I just thought I'd put these out there for members here to comment on. He discusses in detail why these cliches are misleading, but I don't want to infringe copyright by copying all of his chapter, so here is his "list" along with some key quotes detailing Ford's responses to the cliches. Some of them are contradictory, this is simply because many of the cliches out there are exactly like that...

1. You need a special education to understand classical music.

"...you don't need a special education, anyone at any time can appreciate classical music, just by listening to it."

2. With classical music, you should just lie back and let it wash over you.

"As with any worthwhile music, listening is active, not passive. Classical music will not do all the work for you."

3. People who like classical music are snobs.

"Well some of them are. There are also folk-music snobs and techno snobs and blues snobs, God knows, jazz snobs. It is human nature to believe that the things you like are the best."

4. Classical music, especially Mozart, will make you more intelligent.

Ford talks about experiments on lab rats - a certain Mozart piece helps them find their way around a maze. He questions the utility of such experiments & whether this can also be applied to people.

5. Listening to classical music will make you a better human being.

"This is a particularly insidious myth, but fortunately an easy one to dispel. Here is how you do it. Write a list of all those composers from history who were drunks, drug addicts, lechers, liars, debtors, grasping ingrates, appalling paranoid whingers or insufferably arrogant pricks. Now cross their names off the list of all the composers who have ever lived. You will find you are left with the Abbess Hildegard of Bingen and perhaps three or four others. If classical music is composed by reprobates of that order, why should it be morally improving to listen to it?...Art does not affect your morals. Art is art and life is life and if you cannot tell the difference, you are to some degree deluded. And I include in that category fundamentalist wowsers of every religious and political hue."

6. Composers are mysterious and unknowable

"Well, yes and no...I strongly believe that we all compose, all the time. A surprising amount of speech is music. It is how we communicate with each other...The meaning behind human speech is in the music as much as the words. More so, in a way. When we speak, the words can say one thing, the music something else...To that extent, composing is certainly a mystery, but it is a mystery we all share. And the mystery includes saying what music is about."

7. Symphony concerts are intimidating.

"It is often maintained that if only orchestral players were cool and wore jeans, people would flock to concerts. Today's orchestras are determined to seem modern and relevant at all costs. And I do mean all costs: the money spent on image, as opposed to music, would probably astonish most concertgoers...The ritual associated with orchestral concerts - when to clap, when not to talk - are part of the experience. Even the black and white clothes are there to aid the audience's concentration on the music. And if the listener is able to concentrate, and assuming there is money left after the orchestra's image makeover to pay for adequate rehearsal time, the music is frequently thrilling..."

8. Opera is highbrow.

"...Far from requiring a higher degree to appreciate it, much opera benefits from suspension of intellect as well as belief. The plots of comic operas tend towards farce (with a regular admixture of slapstick), while the tragedies are frequently melodramatic tear-jerkers. Of course if you poke around beneath the surface of even the most popular operas - say, those by Donizetti or Verdi - you may begin to discover some of the same complexities that are present in Wagner. But you don't have to do this to have a good time."

9. Chamber music is more intimidating than orchestral music and more highbrow than opera.

"Unless it is intimidating or highbrow to concentrate, this cliche provides yet more nonsense. Concentration is not as easy for people today as it was before television - in other words, when most chamber music was composed. But the concentration required for chamber music is not necessarily just a matter of time - some chamber pieces are quite short - it is an inward sort of concentration...With a few exceptions, chamber music is classical music at its most conversational, at its most intimate and intense. And the experience of chamber music can be equally intimate and intense."

10. Classical music is better than other music.

"Western art music is one of the great achievements of our civilisation in the last millenium, there can be no doubt about it. But there is very little point in comparing Rossini with the Rolling Stones, Elgar with Eminem or Stravinsky with the Scissor Sisters because they have so little in common. One type of music is not inherently superior to another...Classical music is not better than other sorts of music, but different..."
 
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#2 ·
Although No. 1 is certainly a cliche, I don't think it's as indefensible as all the others. The statement: "you need a special education to understand classical music" is obviously far too broad to have any real meaning anyway, but there is admittedly a lot of (20th/21st century) classical music that is almost purely academic, and is largely inaccessible to newcomers.

I'd add to 7, 8, and 9 that audiences ought to feel much more welcomed to such performances as ticket prices (at least in my experience) tend to be so much cheaper than for mainstream 'celebrity' concerts!
 
#3 ·
Interesting set above. The two that seem to be the most common cliches/perceptions that I happen to experience are #8 and #10.

Opera, at least in this country, seem to suffer most when it comes to perceptions of highbrow/connotations of elitism in the sense that it appeals "only to folks who understand high culture". Much of that undoubtedly come from the limited opera productions we have for a small-ish population of twenty-plus million people in Australia; and in particular, the exercise of monopoly production by Opera Australia centred in Sydney and to a lesser extent, Melbourne. One only needs to read the sponsorship list of productions to see the big name corporations' involvement, the grand building that is the Sydney Opera House (and its premium location), the price of opera tickets and the entire marketing image of productions to realise that opera here can easily be misconstrued as a prestige oriented entertainment. Of course, none of that is at all true about the music itself.
 
#5 · (Edited)
The problem with classical music for most people is that you do need a bit of education. You at least need to know what is meant by "movement," "string quartet," "symphony," "sonata," "opus," "aria," "concerto," and a hundred other things. You also need a rough knowledge of the history of music, and some small knowledge of music theory.
 
#6 ·
HarpsichordConcerto said:
Opera, at least in this country, seem to suffer most when it comes to perceptions of highbrow/connotations of elitism in the sense that it appeals "only to folks who understand high culture".
I agree. Years ago when she was studying something at technical college, a teacher asked my mother what music she liked. When she answered "opera," she got wierd looks from the teacher. & note that my mother was talking merely of liking opera, not going to see it - she didn't have an opportunity to do that all her life, particularly then when she was raising two children. But of course, this kind of antipathy towards classical music, and opera in particular, has changed since then, with things like the three tenors making opera a bit more mainstream.

Nevertheless, many people think all opera is long, serious and bombastic like Wagner, and (as we know) this is simply not the case. Many people hate Wagner but love say Mozart, who is completely different. There is a misconception that all opera goers are lovers of the Wagner cult, when in truth there is much diversity. Some people like Baroque chamber opera, others like Italian opera or modern opera, or indeed Wagner (or everything).

@ Polednice, mmsbls, Webernite:

I think what Ford was trying to emphasise is that knowledge of music, or being educated about it in some way, is not something that is a prerequisite for enjoying or liking classical music in the first place. In the beginning, everyone is a novice and there is much to learn. I remember when I started getting into classical music as a teenager. I didn't start from scratch because my parents liked classical music, but they weren't experts in it in any way. Now more than 20 years later, I have overtaken my parents in my familiarity with classical music. But then again, compared to some people on forums like this, I am still a novice (aren't we all, to some degree, even musicologists like Andrew Ford would never claim to know everything). I think the most important thing is the passion, not necessarily your level of education or knowledge. The more you are passionate about something, the more you will inevitably learn about it, as your passion grows and develops...
 
#7 ·
@ Polednice, mmsbls, Webernite:

I think what Ford was trying to emphasise is that knowledge of music, or being educated about it in some way, is not something that is a prerequisite for enjoying or liking classical music in the first place. In the beginning, everyone is a novice and there is much to learn. I remember when I started getting into classical music as a teenager. I didn't start from scratch because my parents liked classical music, but they weren't experts in it in any way. Now more than 20 years later, I have overtaken my parents in my familiarity with classical music. But then again, compared to some people on forums like this, I am still a novice (aren't we all, to some degree, even musicologists like Andrew Ford would never claim to know everything). I think the most important thing is the passion, not necessarily your level of education or knowledge. The more you are passionate about something, the more you will inevitably learn about it, as your passion grows and develops...
I think we're pretty much in agreement. :)
 
#8 ·
I may slightly disagree with #4. I think either classical music tends to make people more intelligent generally or more intelligent people tend to enjoy classical music. Its the chicken and the egg thing I guess but I find people that I have met that are classical music lovers generally seem to me more intelligent than lovers of say rock, pop, country, blues or techno. (most jazz fans I know also seem quite intelligent).

I also kind of disagree with #5. If a person can genuinely allow themselves to delve into classical music in a real way, in a profound way, I do believe it will improve them as a person, and as a human being. Will it make them perfect? No. But I feel it will expand an individual and in some ways improve them.
 
#11 ·
I may slightly disagree with #4. I think either classical music tends to make people more intelligent generally or more intelligent people tend to enjoy classical music. Its the chicken and the egg thing I guess but I find people that I have met that are classical music lovers generally seem to me more intelligent than lovers of say rock, pop, country, blues or techno. (most jazz fans I know also seem quite intelligent).
That's a big call, because we still don't have an accurate measure of intelligence. Even if we did subject listeners of various types of music to IQ tests I doubt that the results would show classical listeners to be more intelligent than those that listen to other types of music.

I also kind of disagree with #5. If a person can genuinely allow themselves to delve into classical music in a real way, in a profound way, I do believe it will improve them as a person, and as a human being. Will it make them perfect? No. But I feel it will expand an individual and in some ways improve them.
I think that's a very Romantic notion - that art can transform one's life for the better. Ford argues that there's a distinction between art and life. This is a controversial area - John Cage probably thought that art=life. I basically think that the kind of language that is often used to describe classical music - like being "divine" & "good for the soul" is pretty off putting for many people. They become daunted by what they think is always weighty and serious, something to do with the "big things" in life. & yet classical music encompasses everything - from the mammoth symphonies of Mahler to the armchair music of Satie. The more we tell people that classical music will improve their lives, the more they make take this for some kind of almost religious proseletysing, and they may be turned off. As Ford suggests, the more we think of composers as being just like us - often flawed & ordinary human beings - the more we get rid of the unneccessary mystique of classical music and make it something that can engage people "in a real way" as you say...
 
G
#19 ·
Polednice,

You will have to explain, then, how I, at the very least, can listen to all sorts of new music with both ease and pleasure. You will have to explain how I was immediately hooked when I first heard a twentieth century piece, and why I was so enthusiastic about the musics of that century generally, even when--from time to time--I came up against a piece or two I didn't like.

I grew up, just by the way, only exposed to very easy Hollywood music--movies and TV and Lawrence Welk. I loved classical music from my first exposure to that, when I was nine or so--Haydn, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky. So my listening background was certainly not with the extreme avant garde. But after a dozen years of immersion in the baroque, classical, romantic world, I fell in love with music of the twentieth century, including all those things you describe as being so intrinsically different and difficult.

Fact is, if you accept actual personal testimony from real live listeners, you will have to acknowledge that studies that find that "a kind of inner-tonality [whatever that could be] is still essential" are perhaps a bit flawed. Most of the music I listen to nowadays has nothing to do with tonality in any regard. It's not difficult. And it's not displeasing. Not to me, anyway. Nor to any of the other people who buy the CDs and download the files and attend the concerts.

You will also, just by the way, have to account for pre-tonal musics. What we call "common practice" has not been around all that long a time. Coupla three hundred years. A lot of good music has been written in tonal systems. But it's not the only way, nor is there anything fundamental about it.

And if a little, lower middle-class kid with non-musical parents whose early exposure to music was solely through Hollywood, but who managed somehow to acquire an abiding love for classical music and then for contemporary art music without any of the problems people selected for studies seem to report, then perhaps there's more to the situation than the standard canards about modern music report as being so.
 
#20 ·
You will have to explain, then, how I, at the very least, can listen to all sorts of new music with both ease and pleasure. You will have to explain how I was immediately hooked when I first heard a twentieth century piece, and why I was so enthusiastic about the musics of that century generally, even when--from time to time--I came up against a piece or two I didn't like.
I'll admit that I cannot explain that. However I think it would be unfair for you to label as 'musically prejudiced' the larger number of us who have genuinely tried to listen to such music and failed to find personal value in it. Perhaps you have a much more malleable brain than the average person!

You will also, just by the way, have to account for pre-tonal musics. What we call "common practice" has not been around all that long a time. Coupla three hundred years. A lot of good music has been written in tonal systems. But it's not the only way, nor is there anything fundamental about it.
Pre-common practice music isn't atonal in the usual sense because it still has a fundamental structure (the way I described it before is probably too narrow a definition - I'll have to see if I can find a decent source that better explains what I mean).
 
#23 ·
As usual, SomeGuy will have you believe that if one individual can find immediate pleasure in music that the vast majority find difficult to listen to... and appreciate... let alone like, then it wholly negates the possibility that said music is difficult. It is not that SomeGuy and a small number of others are the exception... no, it is everybody else who is close-minded and brainwashed by generations of Romanticism and Post-Romanticism.

Even if we accept that tonality or "common practice" as we know it in classical music is a learned thing... in no way more "natural" to music than atonality, microtonality, etc... and barely a couple hundred years old, this in no way undermines the fact that any individual who breaks too far from this common shared language does so at potential cost of accessibility. The novel as we know it is but a couple hundred years old, yet there is no denying that the break from this tradition made by James Joyce resulted in a degree of difficulty and inaccessibility that remains to this day. The same is true of abstraction in painting. Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko remain inaccessible to a vast majority of the audience for the simple reason that they have broke away too far from the common language of painting.

If we think of music, literature or the novel, and painting from over the last 400 or 500 years (perhaps a bit longer in the case of painting) as employing a common language, the changes and innovations wrought during most of that period amount to a tweaking of the vocabulary... the language, however, remains. With the twentieth century we get a shift that is so drastic it virtually amounts to an entire rejection of the inherited language. Certainly I have no problem with this. The traumas of the twentieth may just have demanded the development of an entire new language to deal with them expressively. It would seem to demand a degree of insincerity or dis-ingenuousness to pretend that such a shift would not result in a great degree of difficulty and inaccessibility.

This is not to say that such prejudices cannot be overcome. I quite like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko (although Franz Kline leaves me cold... and I must admit that I'll likely never like either artist as much as I like Bonnard, Degas, Ingres, or Rembrandt). I also like much of what I have heard of Webern, Berg, George Crumb, Krzysztof Penderecki, George Rochberg, György Ligeti, and Giacinto Scelsi... although I would be lying if I did not admit that I found many of them quite difficult initially. I would also be lying if I were to play at be at puzzled as to just why someone raised on Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner and Richard Strauss might find these composers difficult any more than if I were feign surprise that the teen raised on heavy metal and hip hop could not immediately appreciate opera. Indeed, SomeGuy has contradicted himself in the past by admitting to his own inability to appreciate certain non-classical music (jazz? blues? bluegrass? I forget which:confused:)
 
#25 ·
There you go - the "A" word again - accessibility.

As far as I am concerned, and those in my circle of friends and acquaintances who are classical music lovers and regular concert goers, this word means nothing.

Does it? And yet here on a forum devoted to classical music how many members admit to difficulty with Schoenberg or Crumb or Philip Glass? Because you have developed a taste for something does not mean that others will immediately share your taste.

It is simply not used in describing certain works or comparing them to others. I went to a concert with a friend last year & we bumped into another friend of mine. It was a chamber concert that featured music of Australian composers Glanville-Hicks (a Neo-Classicist from the 1930's), Nigel Butterley (a contemporary atonal composer of the older generation) as well as works by Schumann & Mozart. We all liked the last two, which were traditional pieces, but funnily enough the consensus amongst our group was that we liked the Butterley more than the Glanville-Hicks. How do you explain that?

There is no accounting for taste?:lol:

Seriously this is not far from the mark. What you and your friends like or dislike has no bearing upon the larger reality that Modernism and Post-Modernism in music (and all the arts) strike a good many in the audience as difficult and forbidding. I would also note that in no way would I suggest that accessibility is a measure of merit. I can imagine that to some Bach's fugues present difficulties... as do Beethoven's late quartets. By the same token, there are composers and works of music that are in no way challenging... but neither are they truly engaging. Perhaps they are too "easy"... or cliche.

So I doubt that today's classical consumers really care what things are "accessible" or not.

And yet you know as well as any that the music sales would not support you in this. Schoenberg by a great many accounts is one of the 4 or 5 most important composers of the 20th century. Do you imagine that in any way his sales match those of Richard Strauss, Rachmaninoff, or Puccini? Indeed, I suspect that Aaron Copland and even Arvo Part are more popular. And what of the members here? How many threads begin expressing a difficulty with Puccini or Strauss as opposed to Schoenberg or John Cage? How many John Cage discs do you have? Again, I'm not suggesting that accessibility is in any way a measure of merit... but I am saying that it is disingenuous to suggest that you cannot understand why a more difficult work of music... one that greatly breaks with the tradition... be it Beethoven's late quartets, Schoenberg, or Steve Reich... should prove difficult and less popular with the audience.

Music works on many different levels, in many unexplainable ways. I think the issue is what speaks to us today, whether it was composed last week or hundreds of years ago. The dichotomy between "accessible" and "inacessible" is gone, it went out in the 1960's when serialism was seen to be the only type of contemporary music that was of some value - according to theoreticians like Adorno & Boulez, whose opinions are like relics of the stone age.

I don't think accessibility or inaccessibility is gone at all. Perhaps things that were once quite inaccessible have slowly garnered a larger following... but how many today appreciate Giacinto Scelsi, Steve Reich, or Pierre Schaeffer? How accessible is Carlo Gesualdo, Perotin, or Byzantine chant?

We live in an age of plurality in many different ways, and I think that many people are embracing this. Things also change. In the 1960's guys like Glass were driving cabs for a living and doing music on the side. Now they're the highest paid classical composers, and their styles are mainstream. People in the serialist camp at the time like Boulez might have said that minimalism was too "accessible" to be of any value, but now they have clearly been proved wrong. Everything is in a state of flux...

I agree that we live in a pluralistic society. Our view of classical music is no longer dominated by Romanticism. Even the way in which we approach music of the classical and baroque eras has shaken off the "perfume" of Romanticism. We can now appreciate a broad array of music... but even now... if we were to speak of a "common (musical) language" the music of the middle ages and a great deal of Modernism would be seen as pushing the boundaries of this language. I am also suggesting that this is no less true of any of us... no matter how open we pride ourselves upon being. I still don't like Schoenberg. Xenakis has yet to grab hold of me. I have no use for heavy metal or hip-hop, I don't really get into polka music, etc...
 
#30 ·
I completely agree with Toccata's post. I think that it is fully understandable as to why anyone would wish to share with others what he or she loves, but I doubt that one is likely to have much success at this by feigning an inability to understand why certain music is less popular than other music, denying the some music presents a degree of difficulty that a majority of listeners are not willing to struggle with, or ever so subtly insulting the tastes or intelligence of those who fail to share their enthusiasms.

Personally, I find the method employed by Andre to be of the greatest value. I speak of his regular, in-depth reviews of CDs and concerts... quite often including musical selections I am not familiar with. This, as an approach, would seem to me to be far more likely to succeed in at least intriguing other listeners than to be continually preached at. This combined with a link to a performance of such work might be the best means of engaging others. I can say for a fact that I have been introduced to several composers/compositions that I now greatly esteem through just such means. Off the top of my head I can say that my admiration of Tristan Murail and Giacinto Scelsi owes much to the initial introductions to these composers that I first came upon online.

There is a world of difference between being presented with a brief essay in which the individual essentially communicates: "This is a composer that I greatly admire, and here are some of the reasons I admire his or her music and here are a few snippets of said music, perhaps you might give him/her a listen," and on the other side being berated for being close-minded, being told that as weak-minded as I must be, my prejudices/preferences in music owe all to the mass media/recording industry, etc...
 
#39 ·
A lot of interesting points being made here, so I'll be brief. This thread is now more about "accessiblity" than the list of cliches I posted but that's fine. I think the issue of "accessibility" is related to this debate, and in a way Andrew Ford's list (& the whole book which I am currently reading) speaks to this issue, albeit not as directly as some people have here. It's more of a broad based disscussion about classical music in general (not ony the conemporary variety) & it's relevance/status in Western societies like Australia today.

@ mmsbls:

I agree that classical radio stations & the big symphony orchestras tend to only play what we'd call contemporary classical music in a tokenistic way. But as I was arguing, there is much more plurality out there now than there was maybe 50 years ago (or even much less than that).

I can only speak of my city, Sydney in Australia. I have not gone to a Sydney Symphony Concert since the early '90's because I am more interested in what other more "specialist" groups play. This is across the board from artsong, choral music, chamber, electronica and period instrumental ensembles. These play a variety of music from many different eras. I'm more interested in this than the Sydney Symphony, which tends to play the more mainstream kinds of things.

As for radio, yes the classical music stations have relegated contemporary music to the fringes, but they still have weekly programs devoted to it. I used to listen to these, but don't any more because I'd rather listen to non-classical radio. Don't forget that there's also music sharing sites like youtube which have made music of all kinds more "accessible" to anyone with access to the internet. There are also a lot of non-mainstream radio stations you can hear online, I just learned about BBC radio 3 on TC last week. Had a listen & they played all kinds of music - and not a warhorse in sight!!!

Obviously, there's more sources of music now than just the mainstream groups and standard repertoire playlists of classical radio stations. In terms of the concerts, I know I am lucky to live in this city, which has so much going on. I have a limited budget, and have to choose from the many events that are on around town every week. But even in the regional areas of our state (New South Wales) there are a lot of music festivals - from classical, to rock, to techno, folk, blues, you name it - so our country cousins are not missing out by any stretch of the imagination.

@ stlukesguildohio:

Well I was obviously speaking of my own anecdotal experience with my friends and colleagues, not on things like sales statistics. You are probably right, in terms of sales the music of SOME composers from the middle of the c20th cannot compare to those of earlier times. But OTHER composers have very healthy sales, like Piazzolla, Glass & the recently departed Gorecki, whose Symphony of Sorrowful Songs went gold or platinum in the early '90's. But sales are only one part of the equation. A lot of the film music we hear today ranges from tonal to atonal, from traditional to experimental, and everything in between. People are being exposed to contemporary music whether they like it or not, whether it's on television, at the movies, at the theatre or even during New Year's Eve light shows and fireworks. The boundaries between so called "low" and "high" art are becoming less and less defined. Sometimes it's better if people "access" classical music from outside the confines of a concert hall or a recording. I hazard a guess that not many people listened to the Gorecki symphony more than once or twice 20 years ago, when it became a sensation. Some would just have used it as a kind of "new age" ambient background music. I'd rather people experience new music say as part of a movie soundtrack than as in a one off concert or on a recording. Often, the new multimedia types of genres can engage people on more levels than just a concert or recording. I think this is quite exciting, everything (including how & in what context we consume music) is changing, and this can lead to new developments outside the traditional paradigms.

@ Toccata:

It's not only (SOME) contemporary classical fans that are prone to preaching on these classical music forum websites like this. There are just as many rabid anti-modernists & conservatives if we want to bandy about labels that are cliches in themselves. I've been "preached at" about (say) J.S. Bach and why I am basically a moron if I don't love his music 110% and worship him like a god. This was on another website, and I am obviously exaggerating a fair bit, but there are some people with attitudes like this out there. As Ford in my opening post says, YES there are classical music snobs, but there are also techno, jazz, rock, folk snobs and whatever. I personally try not to pay much attention to the rabid ideologue xenophobes who elevate one type of art and degrade many others. You don't have to do that to appreciate music. I have argued (online) with people like that in the past, but now I think why bother. I have better things to do. If they want to just regurgitate condescending drivel let them. Their opinions would definitely hold zero weight in "real life" conversations I've had with friends about music, which are more focused on discussing opinions than spewing out spurious garbage dogmas...
 
#40 ·
I've been "preached at" about (say) J.S. Bach and why I am basically a moron if I don't love his music 110% and worship him like a god.

But Andre... liking Schoenberg is one thing. Take him or leave him... it's no big deal. Recognizing, on the other hand, that J.S. Bach is God, is most certainly one of the universal requirements to avoid moron status.:D
 
#41 ·
I might add that, which also applies to all Baroque / early music in particular, HIP recordings do a world of a difference. Listening to Bach or Handel etc. on modern orchestras and heavy vibrato simply don't work as well. Don't under estimate it.
 
#42 ·
"5. Listening to classical music will make you a better human being."
A couple of people have picked up on this. I find it a tricky one, because the issue isn't restricted to merely classical music, but concerns all art.

The first I want to do is remove that word 'will', and instead consider the statement: "Listening to classical music can make you a better human being." Obviously it's possible to listen to Beethoven and then go and murder people afterwords, so that 'will' is absurd.

But then we have all these issues about art and life, and how they fit together, or whether they're separate, or whether they're aspects of the same thing, and I've no chance of resolving all that in the space of a 5 minute post. But I think - and of course I speak purely for myself - that insofar as art is a vehicle for communication, it has the potential to be a vehicle for 'good'. By that I mean that art can widen perception and improve understanding of how other people respond to the world, in a way that nothing else can. It's CS Lewis's point about 'when I read great literature I see with the eyes of a thousand men, yet it is still I who see'. So with all art, including music. Seems to me that on the whole, it's better for us to see more clearly and understand each other, than not. And if art can nudge us towards better understanding, it has the potential (I say no more than that) to make us better people.

I hope it's obvious that I'm not at all talking about likes and dislikes here. Whether I like Wagner or Bach is irrelevant to the point I'm making. But there is something in Bach, and something in Wagner, that can open windows and help us to see more, or further, or more clearly. I think that's a kind of 'better' worth having.
 
#43 · (Edited)
But Andre... liking Schoenberg is one thing. Take him or leave him... it's no big deal. Recognizing, on the other hand, that J.S. Bach is God, is most certainly one of the universal requirements to avoid moron status.
I know you are joking but the J. S. Bach issue was just one example of condescension by some classical music listeners on these internet forums. Another well-loved activity (not so much on this forum, but another I am a less active member on) is arguing and bickering for pages and pages about which is the "best" or "definitive" recording of a particular work. Rather than agree on say that you like Mahler or someone like that, or just discussing his music or the actual piece, these people spend inordinate amounts of time arguing over which cycle of the dozens available on the market is the "finest" etc. etc. This I find very boring. To make matters worse, these people like to endlessly compare recordings of the dozens of cycles they own and listen to & the message I get is that they assume that they are superior to the mere hoi polloi who say only own one cycle or maybe even own none, having heard the works on radio or on youtube or whatever.

I am of the firm belief that you don't have to own 100's or 1000's of recordings to have a fairly good appreciation of classical music. I have now overtaken my parents in knowledge of much obscure repertoire, that is outside of the classic warhorses. Does that make them ignorant compared to me? I don't think so, they had just as much a passion for classical music, and passed that on to me at an early age. It doesn't matter if you love Bach or Schoenberg or whoever, what matters is the engagement and passion. I'm probably a total ignoramus in many areas of the repertoire compared to you or others on this site (eg. say choral or art-song in your case). What matters to me is that I am engaged by those genres, even if my knowledge of them is not that great. I've gone to see a number of choral and art-song concerts, and I have enjoyed them immensely. I am not worried in comparing recordings or performances endlessly and needlessly. It might be important for some people, but it's not for me. & judging from those who like classical in my circle of friends, they're the same or even less sophisticated (if you can call it that) than me. I have a close friend who heard Monteverdi's Vespers last year for the first time at a concert here in Sydney. Despite her inexperience, she absolutely loved it. Last week she heard the Sydney Symphony play Mahler's 1st again for the first time, and it knocked her out. In real life, I enjoy talking to such "inexpert" people about what matters to me (& them) how the music appealed to them (or maybe didn't). It simply doesn't get to the stage of one of us elevating ourselves above the other with our supposed superior knowledge. That to me is just pure garbage.

I just think that if a person's sole activity outside work, family duties, etc. is amassing thousands of recordings and comparing them to eachother, then maybe that person should think of getting a life. I know this is quite a judgemental and negative generalisation of said people, but when you've been on the other end of their put downs online, it's not a good space to be in. Of course, not all people who like comparing recordings are like this, maybe it's just a small minority. I think that the appreciation of music is based on experience, whatever that may be, not on the quantity of recordings you own.

I might add that, which also applies to all Baroque / early music in particular, HIP recordings do a world of a difference. Listening to Bach or Handel etc. on modern orchestras and heavy vibrato simply don't work as well. Don't under estimate it.
I'm actually coming to appreciate J.S. Bach, Handel, Monteverdi, Boccherini, Haydn, Mozart, etc. by listening to both HIP and modern performances. I'm not firmly in one camp or the other. I just borrowed Anne Sophie Mutter's coupling of the Bach concertos with the Gubaidulina, and ended up enjoying the Bach immensely, and have mixed feelings about the Gubaidulina. But it's difficult to compare them since one is Baroque, the other is contemporary. I have attended a HIP concert last year here in Sydney, the Conservatorium Early Music Ensemble lead by Dr. Neal Peres Da Costa, an expert in this field. They played Purcell, Geminiani and Handel. I enjoyed that equally. I am now getting rid of my former preconceptions about Baroque music and beginning to enjoy it a lot. I probably never will become an "expert listener" of it like yourself, but my appreciation of it is growing all of the time.

So with all art, including music. Seems to me that on the whole, it's better for us to see more clearly and understand each other, than not. And if art can nudge us towards better understanding, it has the potential (I say no more than that) to make us better people.
Yes, classical music does have the potential as you say to positively impact on one's life and ways of thinking. But by the same token, mass murderers like Hitler and Stalin were avid classical music fans, they probably had large record collections and went to many concerts. In comparison, someone like Khrushchev, who admitted that he was a total ignoramus regarding art, was much less of a harmful leader as Stalin (though Khruschev was by no means perfect himself, of course).

I don't think that classical music can enhance one's life more or less than other types of music. Different types of music have different purposes. "Low art" is now very much intermingled with "High Art." I think that Andrew Ford was trying to kind of question the supposed superior and mystical status of "High Art" as a thing that can be seen as something to improve one's life. For some people, it does improve their lives, others just continue to do what they were doing before, whether good or bad.

Yes, "potential" is they key word here, there are no absolutes...
 
#44 ·
I don't think that classical music can enhance one's life more or less than other types of music. Different types of music have different purposes. "Low art" is now very much intermingled with "High Art." I think that Andrew Ford was trying to kind of question the supposed superior and mystical status of "High Art" as a thing that can be seen as something to improve one's life. For some people, it does improve their lives, others just continue to do what they were doing before, whether good or bad.
Yes I'm sure you're right that that's what he was getting at. For me the key issue is whether significant personal change occurs as a consequence of the exposure to the music. That's why I'm excluding the notion of personal taste from my comments (i.e. issues of liking and disliking). If exposure to this music (or this book or this painting) enables me to perceive (I use the word in its broadest sense) something that I couldn't perceive before, then this potential for change is there, with all its ethical implications. If on the other hand I'm merely in search of 'more of the same because that's what I like', then the potential for change is virtually zero (because all I'm exposed to is my own pre-existing personal taste), and there's little potential for ethical change in that.

The boundaries between 'low' and 'high' art are so blurred these days that it would be impossible to discuss this sensibly in those terms. I might be tempted to turn the tables right over and get these concepts of 'high' and 'low' right away from the notion of being an attribute of the art itself. It might be more helpful to think of the 'high art experience' - which involves significant perception change - and the 'low art experience' which offers merely 'more of what I like'. In that sense, a lot of my recent listening to Haydn symphonies would be really only a 'low' art experience. This is no assessment of Haydn's music, but merely an observation about my response to them: I gobble 'em up like lollipops, and ethics, or perception-widening, doesn't come into it at all. At least, I think so. Sometimes it might.

I'm just floating thoughts, you understand. I don't claim to have the answers.
 
#47 ·
If exposure to this music (or this book or this painting) enables me to perceive (I use the word in its broadest sense) something that I couldn't perceive before, then this potential for change is there, with all its ethical implications. If on the other hand I'm merely in search of 'more of the same because that's what I like', then the potential for change is virtually zero (because all I'm exposed to is my own pre-existing personal taste), and there's little potential for ethical change in that.
Well that was a very perceptive comment! :) I agree, developing perception is the key to fully absorbing any work of art. I had a drawing teacher in university where I did a drawing subject and she said "Anyone can see, but not all people can perceive." I've remembered that for more than 10 years, and it applies not only to visual art (as in that case) but to all of the arts. This is why I like to read books about visual art and music (I've never been that interested in literature). They have taught me how to appreciate these things, and also more importantly demystify things a bit (hence me reading the Ford book, and I was also able to attend a free lecture of his last year). I think anyone can do this, you don't have to have a degree or be "intellectual." I think that the passion is the most important thing.

& I agree with you it's a good idea to try to immerse oneself in a wide range of musics, either if you're a beginner or intermediate or advanced. There's a lot of potential for discovery in the wide world of classical music. Some people think it's just the three B's but - although they were undoubtedly great in terms of innovation and contribution to their art - there's a lot more out there to discover. I really like to make connections between things I already know and things that are new to me. Classical music is largely about tradition, and the more I get into it, there's connections all over the place between composers you never might have thought were influenced or inspired by one another. & this can go back for centuries...
 
#50 ·
I think it's also important to listen to some big orchestral performances of Bach just so that one can understand who Bach was for previous generations. After listening to Klemperer or Karajan, it's much easier to understand how Mahler and Brahms, for example, were influenced by the cantatas.
 
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