I’ve been to concerts in Golden Gate Park, in San Franciso, and I must say that it’s more enjoyable than the few I’ve heard in halls. The acoustics may suck, but the audience rocks. 
And I take issue with the claims that enjoyment of music is a matter of intelligence. The “masses” are intentionally excluded from concert halls. How snobbish!
Peace,
mangeorge (Jeans and Mozart)
Classical music hasn’t disappeared and there’s no danger that it ever will. But if by “in vogue,” you mean will there ever be thousands of teenyboppers at Carnegie Hall screaming for Yo Yo Ma the way they now do for N sync, the answer is NO! Of course not! And it would be silly of you to expect that!
Classical music is not aimed at mass audiences. You don’t expect James Joyce to sell like John Grisham, so why would you ever expect to see Stravinsky sell like Brittany Spears?
yosemitebabe wrote:
Actually, this is what happened to me. I listened to the soundtrack recording of Star Wars over and over and over. Then, later, when The Empire Strikes Back soundtrack came out and I heard Darth Vader’s theme, I thought, “Hey, wait a minute, my dad’s recording of ‘Mars’ from Holst’s The Planets sounds an awful lot like this!”
I later discovered that you could graft the opening bars of Dvorak’s New World symphony, movement 4, onto this one passage in Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, and boom, you’ve got the theme from Jaws. 
Actually, I basically meant what the direction of the question has taken us…Will it ever be popular with the kids, and why isn’t it right now? (Then extended into the general population, not just kids.)
Originally popular songs started running three and four minutes because this was the most that could effectively be recorded on one side of a 78 rpm record, and later on the 45 rpm record (which was considered the best format for marketing single songs). In the late sixties, the Baby Boomers discovered that, hey, man, you can record twenty whole minutes on one side of an LP, (jazz artists and fans had already discovered this, of course) and a lot of popular music began to run a lot longer. Jazz recordings for the consumer market before the LP era ran to three or four minutes because, as noted, that’s all you could fit on a record sold to the public. But in concert the tunes often ran a lot longer, and there are tape and wire recordings of radio jazz concerts where pieces last as much as a half an hour.
I think the problem is that the recording industry just got into the habit of thinking that pop music was supposed to be produced in three to four minute snippets and forgot that the time limit was originally imposed by relatively primitive sound recording technology.
There is no problem folks. People enjoy pop music. That’s a good thing. If they eventually come to also enjoy classical music, well then that’s another good thing. Music is music. No one style is any “better” than any other. Diversity is beautiful.
Peace,
mangeorge (Even enjoys Chris Isaak.)
Indeed I did mean John Williams.
(I will duck cream pies though when you find out I like Titanic…LOL)
I mean, seriously, the whole Star Wars saga soundtrack is like one huge symphony, and the music definitely tells a story.
Or you associate a certain piece of music with each character-almost like Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf.
There’s the Imperial March for Darth Vader, Princess Leia’s theme, Jabba’s theme, and who could resist that WONDERFUL cantina band music!
BTW, ever listen to The Phantom Menace soundtrack? Little Anakin’s Theme is almost a softer, cheerful version of the Imperial March…it has the first part, only in a sort of whimsical, wistful, soft sound…(does that sound pretentious or what?)
I started listening to classical almost exclusively only last year-when I noticed there was NOTHING decent on the radio. Although, I’ve always enjoyed it, since I was little.
My teacher was impressed-I was the only child in first grade who knew what Handel’s Messiah was…(my dad’s all time favorite)
Who said the people back then liked and paid rapt attention to what we call Classical today? When they were first performed, there was loud talking in the audience while the orchestra, chamber or soloist was playing, drinks were served and glasses were clinked. Hayden made the music piece “Kaffeklatsch” in response to the rude audience.
The main problem with today’s classical music as being performed is that ** there is very little audience participation**. You are even not allowed to snap your fingers to the music. Who wants to sit on his and listen to two hours of music, or anything else for that matter, only to respond at prescribed moments? It is too stuffy for most people.
I created a music piece in my mind, a string quartet. In the middle of it, the viola player is required to clap to the beat while the first violin does a little solo, and motions the audience to do the same. We need more of that in classical music today, or it will fall by the wayside.
Okay, not sing along “I am The Very Model of a Modern Major General”, but you get the idea.
I was watching a composer do Strauss waltzes on PBS, and the audience definitely participated…even waltzing in the aisles when they played the Blue Danube…or was it Roses from the South?
Well, about freaking time!! Now, if we are allowed to mosh to Beethoven, then it will be all right.
Aren’t there open air symphony concerts in Central Park, capacitor? I’ve seen people conducting, keeping time, and even kinda dancing in GG Park. Not quite moshing, but pretty cool nevertheless. They also put on opera and Shakespeare.
You’re welcome to hop a flight and come on out and see the next one.
Peace,
mangeorge
No need for me to fly to Central Park, mangeorge, unless the A train flies off the tracks…uh oh.
Once upon a time when you went to a bar you would hear popular music. Perhaps it’s a drinking song set to the tune of what would eventually become the “Star Spangled Banner”. Or “Buffalo Girls Won’t You Come Out Tonight”. Years later you’d hear any number of songs by Stephen Foster or any number of popular artists that have long since gone by the wayside. Every bar or pub or whatever you want to call it had something resembling popular music. If you wanted to hear classical music in its entirety you went to the home of someone wealthy enough to own a piano, a musical recital, or to a concert hall or an opera house.
Today if you go to a bar or pub or club or whatever you want to call it you will hear popular music. Perhaps it’s “Friends in Low Places”. Or any song you’d hear on the radio today. If you want to hear classical music in its entirety you slip the disc in the CD player, go to a musical recital, or to a concert hall or an opera house. Or listen to “Groovy Kind of Love” (its melody line is a blatant rip-off of a Clementi piano sonatina, one of many pop songs that’s stolen it’s tune from classical music but the only one I can think of off the top of my head).
So what has changed?
I know that in some large markets one can hear music from the 40s, and that every now and again an independant or public radio station will do a one-hour special on music by Stephen Foster or popular music from the 1880s. Even in Podunk, Minnesota, however, I can hear Beethoven and Grieg and Mozart. Anyone can hear it in the US, at least. Everyone knows the theme to “2001”. Everyone knows the themes for the Olympics - “Fanfare for the Common Man” and the 4th movement from Beethoven’s 9th symphony. Or the creepy Bach organ fugue used in scary movies.
Therefore, I hold that classical music is more popular than it ever has been, even if the average person doesn’t KNOW it’s classical music.
If platform shoes can come back EVERYTHING has a chance.
Have no fear. If you’ve ever watched Star Trek: The Next Generation you will realize that human beings stopped creating music and simply listen to classical recordings.
Marc
Right now, I am listening to Joshua Bell play in “The Red Violin” soundtrack, and I love it. I treasure the CD as much as I do any other artist’s CD. I played the violin for seven years (nearly a third of my life!) and while I wasn’t Juilliard-bound, I loved every performance, every practice, every class, every sectional. While I hope interest in classical music never ever dies, I shudder at the thought of mainstream classical music. If any punk-ass composer ever tries to “modernize” Beethoven or Tchaikovsky or Bach, it will be a dark day indeed, because I will shoot him myself. I cringe at the though of boy-band quartets duking it out on the charts. And the thought of “Casey Kasem’s Top 40 Fugues” is just WRONG.
That’s because it has been banalized beyond all belief.
MR
Ugh! Can you just imagine someone sampling the Marche Slav?
Or Eminem (damn asshole) rapping while the Montagues and the Capulets plays in the background?
Didn’t someone do a disco version of Beethoven’s Fifth?
And wasn’t Bach’s Minuet a song in the sixties, that someone would sing “I’ll take away the rain… blah blah blah”?
Main Entry: snob
Pronunciation: 'snäb
Function: noun
Etymology: origin unknown
Date: 1781
1 British : COBBLER
2 : one who blatantly imitates, fawningly admires, or vulgarly seeks association with those regarded as social superiors
3 a : one who tends to rebuff, avoid, or ignore those regarded as inferior b : one who has an offensive air of superiority in matters of knowledge or taste
Bolding mine.
Is the beauty of a rose in any way diminished by the fact that a daisy may be growing just down the block?
Is the beauty of a daisy in any way diminished by the fact that a rose may be growing just up the block?
Sampling of the classics by Eminem (or anyone else) takes nothing away from the original.
Peace,
mangeorge
I get pissed when I hear that “Graduation (Friends Forever)” song by Vitamin C. It’s basically just Pachelbel’s Canon with Vitamin C (the C stands for “crap”, I think) singing over it…and the vocal melody isn’t even original, it just follows the bass line. The worst part, though, is that some of the people I’ve talked to don’t even know that’s a classical piece in the background. They think she wrote it! And I thought even the most ardent anti-classicalists knew Pachelbel’s Canon in D.