Your Top 10 Favorite Composers

[Brian]

If there's one thing I dislike about GMG, it's the air of disdain around pop music and the assumption that people would prefer classical music if only they were educated in it.

Just to pick up on the last part of that sentence - all art is a matter of taste, and everybody is born with different taste, like it or not. The idea that, if everybody listened to a bunch of classical music, they'd eventually fall in love with it - is charming and nice, but a fallacy. Some people just won't. And that's not their "fault". They're not "missing out". They're just pursuing contentment in a different way from how you or I might pursue it.

[Jo498]

Those people understand the real reason we listen to classical music only when they experience what we do. I tell people not into classical music that there's tons of all kind of stuff for everyone. If you don't like this, you may like that. Another thing is you don't need to choose between classical music and popular music; you can enjoy them both. The more we admit we enjoy popular music too, the less elitistic we appear to other people.
If you don't believe you can enjoy music X you won't, no matter what. I myself found classical music some 20 years ago when I started to believe I can enjoy it. The image of classical music is such that it appears obsolete for many. The trick is to make people realize classical music is timeless rather than obsolete. Not an easy task in a superficial world.

No, it's not easy. But I do not think that the perception of elitism is the main problem. Because this could work also in the opposite direction: There are obviously people attracted to all kinds of things because they are exclusive, expensive etc. (So I am certainly not going to pretend I like popular music more than I do to avoid appearing elitist at all costs...)

(by Orfeo) If there's one thing I dislike about GMG, it's the air of disdain around pop music and the assumption that people would prefer classical music if only they were educated in it.

I, maybe naively, hope that the assumption in the last clause is true with the insertion of "considerably more than now" before people. Regardless and independent of my disdain and dislike for most pop music. And I actually think that this is *less elitist* than it might appear. The more elitist (and somewhat depressing) stance would be the claim that many people really are too stupid/lazy/unmusical/unfocussed/... to appreciate classical music even if they were educated.

I think it is fairly obvious are that many people are "ignorant" (not in the sense of stupid but that they simply have encountered so little classical music and often in a distorted way that they are hardly aware of it) because popular music is so pervasive in our culture. It's playing everwhere in the background, on TV, in shopping centres etc.

I cannot prove it (there is some research but it is probably inconclusive) but I believe that it becomes harder for people to appreciate classical music after having listened to nothing but popular music since their early childhood (so often for several decades).

There is also the pseudo-pluralism of popular genres. Some people think they listen to a wide variety of music but of course it is all popular music from one tradition (the anglophone of the last 60 years), usually based on a common song structure with a small spectrum of harmonic patterns, often in the same language etc. That makes it even harder to see that there is a world of other music (not only classical but also Jazz and some ethnic music) that is very different.

But all this is basically off-topic here...

[Florestan]

The idea that, if everybody listened to a bunch of classical music, they'd eventually fall in love with it - is charming and nice, but a fallacy. Some people just won't. And that's not their "fault". They're not "missing out". They're just pursuing contentment in a different way from how you or I might pursue it.

That is true when we consider people past their secondary, or even primary, education. I think, though, that (very) early exposure to,  education about, and involvement in, classical music and musicmaking might yield quite different results.

[Florestan]

I think it is fairly obvious are that many people are "ignorant" (not in the sense of stupid but that they simply have encountered so little classical music and often in a distorted way that they are hardly aware of it) because popular music is so pervasive in our culture. It's playing everwhere in the background, on TV, in shopping centres etc.

I cannot prove it (there is some research but it is probably inconclusive) but I believe that it becomes harder for people to appreciate classical music after having listened to nothing but popular music since their early childhood (so often for several decades).

This.

[Jo498]

Just to pick up on the last part of that sentence - all art is a matter of taste, and everybody is born with different taste, like it or not. The idea that, if everybody listened to a bunch of classical music, they'd eventually fall in love with it - is charming and nice, but a fallacy. Some people just won't. And that's not their "fault". They're not "missing out". They're just pursuing contentment in a different way from how you or I might pursue it.

It is of course not necessary that everybody enjoys everything. But this is not the claim. Only that most people could enjoy a far broader range of art than they actually do if they were educated/educated themselves.

And they are clearly missing out. (So am I because I will very probably never do a bungee jump.) And taste is not something mainly inborn but something that is developed. And like almost everything tastes takes time and some effort to develop and if it is never developed the potential might "wither". (E.g. if one is a strong smoker one WILL lose some of the ability to perceive different flavors of food.)

[Florestan]

It is of course not necessary that everybody enjoys everything. But this is not the claim. Only that most people could enjoy a far broader range of art than they actually do if they were educated/educated themselves.

And taste is not something mainly inborn but something that is developed. And like almost everything tastes takes time and some effort to develop and if it is never developed the potential might "wither".

And this.

[James]

And they are clearly missing out.

Absolutely.

Anyone who can explore it all knows this.

Most conditioned pop consumers have little idea (or patience) of truly knowing what music is & can be.

[Madiel]

I cannot prove it (there is some research but it is probably inconclusive) but I believe that it becomes harder for people to appreciate classical music after having listened to nothing but popular music since their early childhood (so often for several decades).

This is true of any kind of music. People who grew up in the 1960s listening to 1960s pop music don't have nearly the same enthusiasm for 2010s pop music. The history of "classical" music is littered with people reacting against the music of a new generation coming through.

This isn't a quality of a genre of music, it's a quality of habits generally, of the way that brains work.

[Jo498]

Now I wanted to edit, but Florestan quoted already, so I'll add it here:
And like almost everything the development of taste takes time and some effort to develop and if it is never developed the potential might "wither".
The problem is that especially with music we mostly let popular media develop our tastes, even of the little children.
Imagine that the only books around were stuff like Dan Brown or so. Even in school children would usually encounter only such literature. It would be rather difficult to develop a taste for Shakespeare or even John Irving in such a world. And such a taste would doubtlessly be seen as exotic, esoteric and elitist by many.
The musical situation is still more difficult because Dan Brown's stumbling phrases are not blasted from speakers in shopping centres 24/7.

Nothing is so bad to be completely useless, it can still as a repulsive example:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000844.html

[Madiel]

Absolutely.

Anyone who can explore it all knows this.

Most conditioned pop consumers have little idea (or patience) of truly knowing what music is & can be.

Oh James. You are one of the worst offenders.

I can handle the notion of "missing out", in the sense of people simply not hearing a particular kind of music. But to take that into some statement of not "truly knowing what music is" is the worst kind of elitist crap that denigrates the incredible amount of skill and effort that the best pop musicians have put into their craft.

And frankly, if your beloved Stockhausen is what music is truly is, then I'm perfectly happy not being a fan of true music, thanks all the same. I have better ways to spend my life than to use up any more of it trying to grasp what anyone finds appealing in endless operas about new age gibberish. It's pretentious shite.

[Jo498]

This isn't a quality of a genre of music, it's a quality of habits generally, of the way that brains work.

Exactly. Do you think a cognitive system trained on 5 decades of popular music from *one* tradition ("western and anglophone") would be as flexible with regard to different music than a system trained on 5 centuries of a respective variety of styles and genres?
Do you think we should teach English literature with superhero comic books (because there are so many different ones and they span the last 80 years) instead of using material from Shakespeare through Irving or other contemporary authors? Or say, to be fairer to pop music, use only post war science fiction stories?

[Madiel]

The problem is that especially with music we mostly let popular media develop our tastes, even of the little children.

And the problem is the assumption that if other people like it, it mustn't be any good. This is exactly what elitism is. It's not true that if it's popular it's good, but neither is it true that if it's popular it's not good. It's actually more likely that it is good in at least some respect, that it has some quality that made it more successful than other things that were being broadcast.

No matter how much record company executives would like to be able to completely dictate what sells, things become popular because a lot of people enjoy them, not because people are completely brainwashed idiots.

[James]

I cannot prove it (there is some research but it is probably inconclusive) but I believe that it becomes harder for people to appreciate classical music after having listened to nothing but popular music since their early childhood (so often for several decades).

True, no doubt at all. Simple sound bite format to something generally much more elaborate & involved musically. Not to forget the presentation/performance aspects too. But yea, it is quite an a adjustment to go from being raised on 3-4 minute simple song form, to what you find in Art/Classical music with all of it's musical information, 4 hour opera, 3 hour mass, 1 hour symphony etc., etc. People raised on pop music are more or less to conditioned to think that this is what music is. Again, most of them haven't go a clue about what music is and can be - just try talking to them about it, they know nothing about it, it can be an impossible task to navigate without having them perceiving you as being arrogant. Meanwhile it is them who are plain ignorant.

[Florestan]

The problem is that especially with music we mostly let popular media develop our tastes, even of the little children.

That´s the biggest problem, methinks --- and paradoxically, the easiest to solve. Anyone familiar with little children knows that toy instruments are among their favorite kind of toys. Nothing could be easier than to build upon this and start their musical education as early as feasible --- but for this one needs more than the oftenly absent parental willingness and consent, one needs a whole educational and social philosophy strikingly at odds with what currently passes as such.

Imagine that the only books around were stuff like Dan Brown or so. Even in school children would usually encounter only such literature. It would be rather difficult to develop a taste for Shakespeare or even John Irving in such a world. And such a taste would doubtlessly be seen as exotic, esoteric and elitist by many.

Precisely.

The musical situation is still more difficult because Dan Brown's stumbling phrases are not blasted from speakers in shopping centres 24/7.

This, and the inverted snobbery which paints every classical music fan or novice as a snob. 

Nothing is so bad to be completely useless, it can still as a repulsive example:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000844.html

Dan Brown´s Da Vinci Code is the only book I have ever regretted buying.

[Jo498]

You misrepresent the argument. [Many people like Beethoven as well, compared to e.g. the fanciers of Marenzio or Hartmann. But I would never argue that therefore Beethoven is bad.]

Food from McDonalds is not (at best) mediocre because many people like it. It is just mediocre, full stop.
The argument is that many people like Fast Food because they grew up with it and too rarely encountered anything else. And also that fast food tastes "good" in a certain way so it is seductive to stick with it but that one will not develop a taste for fresh, strange and different food eating only fast food.

The point is not to denigrate ALL popular music as the equivalent of fast food (although it is hard to deny that a lot of it is - most fans of popular music would even agree with that). The point is that the prevalence of popular music everywhere shapes what people think music is and mainly/only can be. It biases their musical cognition to some extent against different (and especially classical) music.

[Karl Henning]

Dan Brown´s Da Vinci Code is the only book I have ever regretted buying.

Have you bought 50 Shades of Gray? 

[Florestan]

Have you bought 50 Shades of Gray? 

No but I might have stepped in one. 

[Madiel]

Exactly. Do you think a cognitive system trained on 5 decades of popular music from *one* tradition ("western and anglophone") would be as flexible with regard to different music than a system trained on 5 centuries of a respective variety of styles and genres?
Do you think we should teach English literature with superhero comic books (because there are so many different ones and they span the last 80 years) instead of using material from Shakespeare through Irving or other contemporary authors? Or say, to be fairer to pop music, use only post war science fiction stories?

I don't think you're being much fairer to pop music, frankly. And this is one of the things that irritates me so much about GMG. My nephew, who is into what I merely call "heavy metal", can rattle off a heck of a lot of subgenres of heavy metal, in much the same way that people here can have discussions about whether it's best to have someone of Austrian background playing Mozart (as is currently happening in the Mozart thread).

It's an inherent cultural bias to subdivide what you know and care about in great detail, and to treat something that you only know sketchily as less diverse. It's exactly the phenomenon that allows people to talk about individual states of the USA but treat "Africa" as if it's a single undifferentiated culture. It's exactly why people distinguish people of their own 'race' far better than people of a different 'race'. It's exactly why I'm as interested in whether or not someone from my own city is a northsider or a southsider, but couldn't tell you much about the characteristics of different districts of Paris and absolutely nothing about the different districts of Lagos.

What you use to teach English literature is going to depend a great deal on the depth with which you're teaching it. You're unlikely to introduce kids to authors from previous centuries in primary school. When they're a bit holder you might throw them a few of history's greatest hits like Shakespeare, but you're still not going to introduce them to a range of authors from across the centuries, only the really huge names. Once someone gets to university and decides they're going to study literature as a dedicated subject they might end up in a course about Scottish authors during the Enlightenment.

But not everyone's going to spend their life studying literature. Frankly not everyone has time for it. Everybody specialises. Everybody who bothers to post on this message board is inherently a specialist, because you care enough about music to want to talk to other people about it. Should anyone who wants to specialise in music as an interest be aware of a wide range of traditions? Absolutely.

But does this mean the general masses ought to be instructed past being vaguely aware of a few really big names like Bach, Mozart and Beethoven? No. Because in the same way that some of my friends deeply into literature discover that I haven't read many of the great pieces of literature (hey, I've seen a movie version of some of them), anyone who is deeply into music is going to discover that a lot of their friends haven't heard many of the great pieces of music. It's simply not realistic to expect that everyone has the same knowledge and experience base. It's never going to happen because people are off exploring a hundred other things that I, personally, don't find as riveting as I find music.

[James]

The point is not to denigrate ALL popular music ..

True. Only to highlight that their is so much more to music than it. So much more.

Speaking for myself, I have put my ears/mind through barriers and put in a lot of time exploring/learning, time most people wouldn't ..I simply didn't stop at the simple pop tunes I grew up on during youth & adolescence. If I did, I can say with absolute certainty that my musical experience & understanding would have been tremendously limited and impoverished. It was beneficial to explore everything that I could before 20th century pop music. And that stuff that came before is a lot of major, major human creativity.

[Florestan]

But does this mean the general masses ought to be instructed past being vaguely aware of a few really big names like Bach, Mozart and Beethoven?

Yes. People should be instructed to know and appreciate what is best in music as in all other arts.

And can one get more elitist than suggesting that "the general masses" (whatever this might mean) ought not to be instructed past a superficial and vague awareness that there is more to classical music than that Fuer Elise "song" composed by that funny named Baitoven guy?