Passionate but somewhat lonely and insular experience

[schweitzeralan]

Fellow Buckeye here: I have formerly lived in Toledo and am now in the overgrown cow-town known as Columbus, where the symphony orchestra went bankrupt last year.

I have taken students to concerts in Cleveland throughout the years, and have pushed great music tangentially in my foreign language and History classes.

But ultimately, yes, you are dealing with probably less than 10% of the population, when you get involved with classical music.

We have debated this before under other topics in different ways: it has probably never been too different in previous centuries.

The Internet I would think is a help, with forums like this to bounce ideas off other people, or to discover new composers and styles.

On familiarity with a compser's works: Stay away from a composer for a few months, or even years, and things will be rediscovered, and latent things will come to the fore.

Indeed.  I have been doing this; I have also learned about works with which I was unfamiliar until I heard them, thanks to many of the Forum recommendations. And, yes, Clevlanders do love their sports.  There's a good 90% interest in the variety of professional as well as non professional sports activities, while ( I'm guessing) there's perhaps 1 5 to 105 interest in classical music, if that.  No big deal; I've lived with it for decades.  Again, I'm always thankful for the composers and conductors world wide who do perform works I revel in.

[millionrainbows]

Live concerts remind us that music is participatory, and is not created in the vacuum of solitude. A good conductor like Bernstein who is not afraid to appear ridiculous can draw us in to the emotion of the music, even in a video. It reminds us that music is made by living, breathing human beings. The same with a good solo performer, like Itzhak Perlman or Van Cliburn.

The "greatness" of Mozart's music might be an impediment to someone who approaches it. Often times the rhetoric of genius gets in the way of an honest, unaffected response to music.

I don't want anyone to simply "appreciate" Mozart; I'd rather see them actually moved by it.

Glenn Gould did this for me with Bach; Giuliano Carmignola did this for me with Vivaldi.

Let us remember that "great" music is not produced by solitary "geniuses," but comes out of the context surrounding it as well, and to "live" it needs living, breathing performers to infuse it with "greatness."

Otherwise, I have no use for the idea of "great" music. It is just an idea.

[Karl Henning]

15 Dec 2009

15 May 2017

Not really a conversation, is it?

[Mahlerian]

15 Dec 2009

15 May 2017

Not really a conversation, is it?

Well, that's how lonely and insular it can be, that you need over seven years to get the response you really needed.

[Karl Henning]

Poor, poor Alan!

[millionrainbows]

"The soul is Man's invisibility to Man." -R.D. Laing

[millionrainbows]

Listening to music used to be something you could share in your living room on a stereo, but now computers have changed the way people listen. In a car, you can, but it's not the same. As a result, people don't think music is anything special anymore. It's a distraction, like a video game.

As to the talk about discussions, I bring old threads back into play if they are ideas that interest me. I think too many threads are started and abandoned in too short time.

[NikF]

Listening to music used to be something you could share in your living room on a stereo, but now computers have changed the way people listen. In a car, you can, but it's not the same. As a result, people don't think music is anything special anymore. It's a distraction, like a video game.

As to the talk about discussions, I bring old threads back into play if they are ideas that interest me. I think too many threads are started and abandoned in too short time.

[millionrainbows]

Yeah, all these people on their computers with ear-buds listening to MP3s...You know who you are!

[Florestan]

Listening to music used to be something you could share in your living room on a stereo by doing it yourself with your friends and family

FTFTY.

You know, those days when there was no stereo, radio or recordings and the only way to hear music was by playing it yourself or have a friend / relative playing it for you (and others), and when composers were not ashamed of writing for amateurs. Now, that was really a shared and direct experience, and that really made music something special.

, but now computers have changed the way people listen.

And how is listening through a computer conceptually any different from listening through a stereo, pray tell?

In a car, you can, but it's not the same.

It's not the same as what?

As a result, people don't think music is anything special anymore. It's a distraction, like a video game.

Which people are you refering to? I assume you automatically exclude yourself, with your sophisticated stereo equipment and dedicated listening room, from the great unwashed who lack both and must content themselves to mp3 listened through some lousy low-end loudspeakers or, horribile dictu, ear buds, and for which Beethoven is some sort of Grand Theft Auto, only with better soundtrack.

Your stock of inanities seems inexhaustible, really.