Arguably, Classical music surpasses everything after it in quality. Why does music get worse as time passes? Nothing since the classical greats can inspire the same feelings.
Actually the same seems to apply to computer games (at least as far as playability/enjoyment is concerned)
Maybe it applies to all forms of creativity.
Selective, if unconsciously so, experience.
We get to hear pretty much the best of the best of the composers from the earlier periods. The chaff has simply disappeared. When reviewing more recent works, we are inundated by all the drek that had a passing popularity, but no “legs.” If you’re listening to a radio station specializing in symphonic pieces, you will hear Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, etc. When you listen to an “oldies” Rock and Roll station, along with sublime compositions by Lennon and McCartney, you will still hear offerings by Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs (Wooly Bully) or the Ohio Express (Yummy, yummy, yummy, I’ve got love in my tummy). Your perceptions of overall quality are clouded by the number of poor selections included in the totality of your experience.
Go listen to Lacrimosa’s Elodia, Therion’s Vovin, or Opeth’s Blackwater Park and sincerely tell me that music is getting worse.
Also, we remember nostalgicly our youth, and try to shock our parents, so you get the common “This is crap. In MY day music was…”
And I’m not sure why, but somehow you feel you’re ‘supposed’ to like classics. Look at literature - it’s been fasionable for ages to like shakespeare. (With some backlash, and double backlash). And to lesser extent, Dickens, etc.
Since this centers on music it fits better into Cafe Society. I’ll move it over.
TVeblen,
IMHO mod
One must also remember that the composers of the classical and romantic periods didn’t make a lot of CDs. You can’t hear anything from that period unless someone much more recently deemed it worthy of recording, or at least performing in public.
In centuries past there also wasn’t so much of a “music industry”, and the average person didn’t have much disposable income to spend on music. The lower class dance and bubblegum teen niches would have been filled by amateur family/local performers, few of whom would ever be heard or heard of by anyone outside their own village. I do not think that the likes of Britney Spears would, in any time period, have become a grand opera star, but in the modern world there is a role open to her between that and just singing folk ditties at parties or while doing her chores.
Therion is good stuff. I enjoy plenty of classical music as well as metal, but that’s neither here nor there.
Music evolves, people only evolve as a species. Sure classical music is great, but they had less to work with then didn’t they? I imagine that you’ll never hear a 90 year old person saying that they love every song on the top 40 anytime soon.
In case nobody ever told you, change is good (usually).
Mozart is great but I listen to the blues. I started doing this after I realized it was the component of rock music that I liked. Working backwards I guess.
Not sure how to measure John Lee Hooker or Albert Collins against Amadeus but I can hear the genius in all of their work. Certainly Mozart requires astronomically greater skill to compose than any blues song, but it is ultimately the individual rifts within the song that I listen to. Creativity is hard to rate.
Is a painting better or worse than a carved stone statue that takes more time to create?
Another thing to consider is that there’s a great abundance of product today when it comes to “art” - film, literature, music, art… But most of the product is - as tomndebb called it - chaff. You have to wade through all the garbage to find the good stuff, but it’s there. (Ironically, the band Garbage is very good stuff, IMO.) And it doesn’t help that the entertainment industries aren’t very creative when it comes to promoting new and different things. Something becomes popular, and the industries looks for more of the same.
IMO, time is also a big factor in determining what is and isn’t “great”. I love movies for example. I might really like a new movie, and see it up to three times in the theatre. But I won’t call it one of my all-time favorites until I see it a few more times in the future. If it holds up, it’s got a good chance of getting on my list.
Some movies that I really enjoyed the first time I saw them, I might totally forget after a couple of weeks. A movie has to be “memorable” in order to qualify for “greatness” in my book. There are movies that I enjoy the first time, but totally hate after a few viewings. And there are movies which, on first viewing, don’t do it for me; but after seeing them a couple more times, I realize are very good.
Anyhoo…
I don’t agree. There are plenty of musicians who are just looking to make a buck, sure, and plenty who are just looking to make fun, enjoyable, music. But there are still plenty who are making real art – experimenting, re-inventing, and creating new stuff that can move me more than any classical piece ever has.
Yoko Kanno: she’s done music for lots of Japanese animation and videogames, and she’s an absolute genius. The music for Cowboy Bebop in particular – any track on its own is catchy and interesting in the types of sounds she chooses to combine. When you listen to the soundtrack on the whole, though, you’re suddenly struck with the whole thing as a complete vision.
Soul Coughing: there’s so much going on in their music that it’s almost impossible to keep track of it all. I listen to it and I just hear a catchy song with layers and layers of sound underneath; a friend of mine who’s more knowledgeable about music says that he listens to some of their songs and thinks, “I can’t believe they just did that!”
The Art of Noise: they got the most attention for being a pop band, and yes, the big “gimmick” is the technology. But I’ve been more moved by the album In No Sense? Nonsense than I have by any full-length classical piece. Once you get past the opening version of “Dragnet” they did to pay for the record, the rest of the record is a coherent theme album, and it’s all about speed and movement. You can play “The Four Seasons” for me, and I just have to nod and say, “Okay, I guess that’s ‘spring’ if you say so. But I don’t hear it.” But I listen to In No Sense? Nonsense! and my brain gets filled with images, and I can tell exactly what it’s about.
And the computer game thing is just nostalgia + big budgets; it has nothing to do with creativity. You only remember the best games that were made during the genre’s heyday. And now, developers are forced to make huge things packed with features so they can compete with all the other “product” out on the market. You’re just not allowed to focus on a simple, coherent game idea anymore. But there are still people doing it – The Sims, ICO, Diablo, even Gitaroo-Man. City of Heroes shows you can even make a MMORPG fun and simple instead of huge and bloated, as long as you concentrate on a core fun game. Even Black & White was a marvelous idea, just executed badly.
Could you have started from a more arguable premise?
I disagree, but I also don’t know why so many people make such a big deal of it. The music I enjoy is not popular (at least on a mass scale, everything has its niche these days). So what? I don’t need to hear it on the radio, I have hundreds upon hundreds of CDs and can listen to it any time I want. Most of my favorite artists are still active and touring. Even if popular music today is suckier than it has been at any point in history, it would have an imperceptible effect on me. Who gives a shit what other people like?
This comment probably should have the world’s biggest, fattest “IMHO” attached to it. There is precisely one classical piece I’ve heard to date that inspires feelings in me beyond “wow, that’s big,” and that’s the Clair de Lune, which gets me pretty close to tears most of the time. But I can name you dozens of songs by contemporary musicians which I’ve heard many more times that still get reactions of equal depth from me.
So…what was the other classical piece you’ve heard? 
And did I just see Yoko Kanno mentioned shortly after “experimenting?” And wait, did someone just suggest that Therion was a modern answer to Beethoven et al? The musical illiteracy demonstrated in this thread is a crime, I say! A crime! [/snob][/snarky]
well, uh…anyway
The original version of that sentence included a comment that I haven’t heard a ton of classical music. I see that I didn’t put it back in after editing. If it looks like I was saying I’ve listened to lots of it and rejected most, that wasn’t what I was going for. It’s one of those old circular things: I imagine I could find more classical music I like if I listened to more of it, but I don’t like most of it so I don’t seek it out. Anyway, thinking about it some more I’ve been wowed by Stardust when I’ve heard her sing (well, half of) the flower duet from Lakme and a piece by Honegger.
Nah, I was just joking around. I know that not everyone has the time or inclination to get into classical music. I’m still woefully ignorant of jazz, even though I’m sure there are a lot of gems to unearth in the genre. Oh well, hopefully someday…
I don’t know if music is getting worse, since time is a filter – it removes the bad music from circulation. Even going back to the 30s, you’ll still hear Gershwin or Porter or Warren or Kern, but the vast majority of songs from that time are forgotten. Thus, the average level of song quality appears much higher: you’re getting the cream, but not the sour milk.
Where are the Leonardos, the Titians, the Holbeins of today?
Who is building the Penn Stations, the Taj Mahals, the Hampton Courts?
“No-body,” to quote Bert Williams.
For those who think music today is getting progressively worse:
A band called Ayreon just released an album called The Human Equation. Over 100 minutes and 2 CDs, it tells a story of a man who was in a car accident and is reliving his life. Some of the parts played by different musicians include his mother and father, Fear, Pride, Love, and Rage. All these other characters comment on his life as he relives it. Truly inspired and amazing stuff.
Oh yeah, and the albums that ultrafilter listed as well.
I think we can extend tomndebb’s hypothesis – which is along the lines of the famous quote “90% of everything is crap” – to all art forms.
Probably most renaissance painters were hacks, banging out portraits to make a buck. And they’re justifiably forgotten. Nondescript buildings get torn down; the good ones get declared national landmarks (except Penn Station).
There’s a corollary that applies to music, though: pop music (good or bad) is getting simpler and simpler. Whenever I listen to anything from the Big Band era, I’m amazed that this was the Britney Spears of the 1930s. You’re not going to find a garage band that can play One O’Clock Jump.
Time or inclination? Well, I guess you could say that “not liking it much” does reflect something of a disinclination. Classical music is nice for those who like it, but I can’t understand the attitude that considers it “better” than any other form of music. To me, it’s just uninteresting. It’s far less “difficult” than most of the music I listen to (largely jazz) and while a symphony is long and complex, the music itself usually strikes me as fairly boring and simple.
It’s just a difference in taste. To me the rhythms and harmonies in classical music seem rather dull and played out by now - music has gotten past them. I guess for a lot of people they retain their evocative power.