Historically Speaking .. was Classical music ever 'mainstream'?

[paulb]

Exactly the point, paulb, there is even something for YOUR taste! I personally disagree about the elitism though. I am as far as you can get from being an elitist, and for that matter, so are you.

Don't worry a bit if you come up empty on Mahler. I did, and I don't care one way or the other. That's another nice aspect of the availability of so much music today, there is something to appeal to everyone. I like nothing that you like, and you like very little that I like. And we're both happy.



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Now playing:
The Complete Piano Sonatas of Haydn (4 of 14) - Christine Schornsheim - Hob 16 02 Sonata #11 in Bb for Keyboard 3rd mvmt - Menuet

Excellent Gurn, we have acheived what the mideast may never, peace among our 2 camps. BRAVO

eletism , meaning more like a superior sensibility vs the common man. Not in the sense of being better than the common. Just in sensibility as to high art.
Heck there may be a  copy of Schnittke's 4th vc/Kremer/Rozh laying on the ground and a  common man may walk right past it, or worse accidently stomp it and look down with a  "gee, wonder what that was, ...lloks to be of nothing of value, just some classical cd or whatever" ...my Schnittke cd 

We here are not any sort of superclass homosapiens, just have the edge on whats great art, which  common man is dead to.

Mahler didn't go well with you, heh? I must at least try, once again. 

[paulb]

Agree here, too.  As long as you have actually listened to a given composer--and I mean really given his or her work a fair chance--I firmly believe you can cross off any composer from your list, including Mahler, Beethoven, Wagner, or anyone else.  There are just too many different voices out there to worry about not liking one.

--Bruce

The other day while driving home, thought I'd turn on NPR local CM station.
A Beethoven sym was on, and was it jamming. Usually i change the station at that point, but the sym was rocking. Just thought I'd let you guys know that i did find some interest in beethoven. Later on the web site found out was the 8th , which I previously called a  dud (little did i realize), and the orch which was UNREAL, The Vienna, Abbado. Stunning and spectacular playing.
I'll be looking into Mahler's late syms this summer.

[paulb]

Well, Paul, I'm sure you've heard the first 30 seconds of each symphony by now. What's your verdict? 

Sarge

Hi Sarge
Actually i did 5-7 minutes of various Mahler syms at Tulane's ML late one night...maybe i did doze off at places I need to go further into the late syms , so i can say been there/done that Sort of complete my journey, a  step I missed along the way was Mahler.

I'm listening to  various clips of Mahler.
I will not explore Mahler , call me any name in the book SkuddleButt whatever, i will not explore Mahler further. End of that story.

[jochanaan]

...I'm listening to  various clips of Mahler.
I will not explore Mahler , call me any name in the book SkuddleButt whatever, i will not explore Mahler further. End of that story.

No names , just a question: Why not?

[Brian]

No names , just a question: Why not?

He's a 'Frere Jacques' purist. 

[Ephemerid]

Heck there may be a  copy of Schnittke's 4th vc/Kremer/Rozh laying on the ground and a  common man may walk right past it, or worse accidently stomp it and look down with a  "gee, wonder what that was, ...lloks to be of nothing of value, just some classical cd or whatever" ...my Schnittke cd 

I've always joked to myself about if someone broke into my car or my flat-- they wouldn't get much-- I laugh to myself to think what someone would think pilfering through all my CDs, they wouldn't know what to do with them.

Paul, there was a video store that also sells used CDs-- I forget the name of it-- not sure if its still there, but it was in Metairie near where the Causeway & Veteran's Blvd. cross.  I was selling off a few CDs for cash (this was around 1998 when I lived there the first time) & the girl at counter said, "I'm sorry, we don't buy classics."   

Mahler didn't go well with you, heh? I must at least try, once again. 

I struggle with Mahler too-- the whole aesthetic just doesn't appeal to me at all.   

[Ephemerid]

Major Video!  That was the place-- on Veterans-- they did at least have a semi-decent foreign film selection...

[paulb]

I've always joked to myself about if someone broke into my car or my flat-- they wouldn't get much-- I laugh to myself to think what someone would think pilfering through all my CDs, they wouldn't know what to do with them.

Paul, there was a video store that also sells used CDs-- I forget the name of it-- not sure if its still there, but it was in Metairie near where the Causeway & Veteran's Blvd. cross.  I was selling off a few CDs for cash (this was around 1998 when I lived there the first time) & the girl at counter said, "I'm sorry, we don't buy classics."   

I struggle with Mahler too-- the whole aesthetic just doesn't appeal to me at all.   

lakeview has had no less than 100 burgleries in the past year, as you all know 70% of the houses are gone. They caught both sets of evil doers..
Anyway i had fear of losing everything but my cds, my most valuable possession. My $8K+ stereo can be replaced, cds much more difficult.


Jochanaan
This  will serve as my respond to your why not?

The whole aesthetic just doesn't appeal to me at all
Ephemerid nailed it better than i ever could.
We should all realize by now that certain composers music repels us, others attrack us. All  music in itself is perfectly neutral, when it comes in contact with a  human being then a  chemical/emotional reaction takes place.
That experiment cannot be controled  by the free will. Its spontaneous how this connection between composer and individual works itself out. Now sure in the beginning our aesthetic capacities are hardly developed, holds for the majority of us here. Chris Forbes and a  few other well gifted musical personalities are awake early on, and have that quickness of musical perception. My development can relatively late, starting around age 45. That late development was more my decision to hold on exploring CM until things were more equilberated in my stormy life. Only Mahler's 1st sym on a  tape was part of my early development, his others  never made it to my LP collection. For some instinct within me, I knew Mahler was not for me. But that instinct applied to most the romantic era. I made few experiements in buying LP's of romantic works.
Right now i am just discovering the realms of Wagner's 6 operas i love, and thats quite enough from the romantic era to keep me a  very happy man fora   very long time.

[paulb]

Major Video!  That was the place-- on Veterans-- they did at least have a semi-decent foreign film selection...

CM is new orleans is probably on a  lower level of valuation than most cities.
I'll look into MV's foreign film section, thats one area I want to explore in the comming yrs. the french film forum was informative and have at least 10 films on wish list.

[(poco) Sforzando]

The other day while driving home, thought I'd turn on NPR local CM station.
A Beethoven sym was on, and was it jamming. Usually i change the station at that point, but the sym was rocking. Just thought I'd let you guys know that i did find some interest in beethoven. Later on the web site found out was the 8th , which I previously called a  dud (little did i realize), and the orch which was UNREAL, The Vienna, Abbado. Stunning and spectacular playing.

Brainwashing, to be sure.

[paulb]

Brainwashing, to be sure.

My point was more to the effect that no other och can play Beethoven to the degree the Vienna can.  And less that i actually like the music.
It was just a  2 cent comment, nothing more

[drogulus]

      There was less of a cultural divide between the classical and the popular when there was a piano in the parlor and people made their own music. Taste was not regimented to the degree that has prevailed since the rise of radio, the phonograph, and all that followed. This has increased during my lifetime, in part as a result of commercial decisions. Classical music was not entirely an elite preoccupation in the '50s and early '60s when you could see the great orchestras on TV (not just public TV).

      It was still possible for ordinary people to be in touch with high culture as long as the networks thought they shouldn't be deprived of it. Now the attitude seems to be that it's an imposition to expose people to art they aren't demanding. Or maybe it's just that it's easier to serve a narrow predefined audience. It reminds me of how political activists like to reduce voter turnout so they can more effectively manage the docile remainder. People who make highly individuated choices are a pain in the butt.

      When you combine that with an anti-elitism emanating from portions of the elite academy (where else?) you have what appears to be a deliberate strategy to infantilize the population. But I seriously doubt any of it really is deliberate, except those decisions about the marketing of pop music genres.

[paulb]

      There was less of a cultural divide between the classical and the popular when there was a piano in the parlor and people made their own music. Taste was not regimented to the degree that has prevailed since the rise of radio, the phonograph, and all that followed. This has increased during my lifetime, in part as a result of commercial decisions. Classical music was not entirely an elite preoccupation in the '50s and early '60s when you could see the great orchestras on TV (not just public TV).

      It was still possible for ordinary people to be in touch with high culture as long as the networks thought they shouldn't be deprived of it. Now the attitude seems to be that it's an imposition to expose people to art they aren't demanding. Or maybe it's just that it's easier to serve a narrow predefined audience. It reminds me of how political activists like to reduce voter turnout so they can more effectively manage the docile remainder. People who make highly individuated choices are a pain in the butt.

      When you combine that with an anti-elitism emanating from portions of the elite academy (where else?) you have what appears to be a deliberate strategy to infantilize the population. But I seriously doubt any of it really is deliberate, except those decisions about the marketing of pop music genres.

Yes my highly indivuated idocyncracies do grate on peoples nerves.
How else can real change come about? Through peace? Compromise?
There is so much i hate and despise about the Classical Music Industry, makes me  turn
Changes will take decades to correct. I plan to plant seeds, after I'm dead, its up to others to continue the struggles to see change happen.

The herds are what they are, lack the capacity for entering high art.
There;'s no conspiracy to keep the masses isolated. They will it upon themselves.
Either you have that inner sense to perceive high art, or one does not.
99% of american adults most likely do not even own one classical cd.
Europe does not have this % of dis-interest, still old europe is stuck in old patterns and ideals.
In europe more people know the name of Bax than they do Schnittke or Pettersson.  I see europe as a  culturally stagnant place, though better off than in america.

[(poco) Sforzando]

My point was more to the effect that no other och can play Beethoven to the degree the Vienna can.  And less that i actually like the music.
It was just a  2 cent comment, nothing more

Right. "A Beethoven sym was on, and was it jamming. Usually i change the station at that point, but the sym was rocking." And Beethoven had nothing to do with it, just the "och." You're so transparent it's not even worth the trouble to answer you any more.

[Josquin des Prez]

The herds are what they are, lack the capacity for entering high art.

I was 22 when i was exposed to my first classical recording. It's not the herds who are being shortchanged by the way things are going. Ask anybody why they don't listen to classical music and you'd be surprised how many would if only they knew something about it. Drogulus is absolutely correct, btw.

[paulb]

Right. "A Beethoven sym was on, and was it jamming. Usually i change the station at that point, but the sym was rocking." And Beethoven had nothing to do with it, just the "och." You're so transparent it's not even worth the trouble to answer you any more.

We don't consciously choose what composers we are drawn to. the music draws us, and conversely we are repeled by certain composers.
beethoven was a  greater composer than was rachmaninov. I am not repeled at all by Rachmaninov, but i am repeled by Beethoven.
These things have to do with our inner unconscious makeup, our essense. Who we are in our depths.
mahler would never work out for me, its an impossibility. Just as for many Mahlerians, the music of Schnittke would...might never work out.
Music chooses us, not we the music.


the iconoclast

[Chaszz]

Most 'music of the people' or the masses wasn't written down in the prerecording era (the man who hired Beethoven to set Scottish folk songs was trying to preserve music which might have died out otherwise). Therefore, there wasn't the opportunity for pop music to
evolve, feed off itself and extend its development which it has today, when it is still mostly not written down when composed, but nonetheless is preserved by recordings. This IMO is what has really driven classial music more or less to the periphery of the overall culture. Intelligent people, including several presidential candidates I've heard talking about this subject, consider music basically rock and pop, and have never listened much to anything else. Classical muuic to them is an unfamiliar world apart from their interests. They may know a lot of classic rock and later alternative rock artists, but that's about it. So it's really among intelligent, college-educated people that this most surprising cultural change has come about, and as I say it's largely due to recording.   

Also this dovetails neatly with the lack of classical education in the schools - all kinds, not just music. Marketable career skills have become the sine qua non of education. Shakespeare is still taught, but he's a lonely eminence. The average college graduate has virtually zero familiarity with culture in general - Greek tragedy, poetry, the great 19th century novels, classical music, Rembrandt, Gothic cathedrals - you name it, they don't know about it. A sea change from what the the educated person of 1930 would have been familiar with. Most educated people today watch movies, TV and listen to rock and pop, and that's culture for them. The isolation of classical music is just one aspect of this overall development.     

[knight66]

Something not so far mentioned is the popularity in Italy of Opera. Just about every city had an opera house...though no concert halls. Verdi was so popular that his greatest hits were played on barrel organs in the streets. So in that place at that time, clearly 'ordinary' people did enjoy what we call classical music.

From the 1930s onwards, in some countries there were radio broadcasts that turned a lot of people onto serious music. In the UK we had The Third Programme and in the US there were the NBC Toscanini and Met broadcasts.

People did get to grips much more with instruments in the 19th cent. especially the piano. Many pieces would be transcribed in different versions to suit the skill level of the player. I have seen a simplified version of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata from around 1900, aimed at roughly grade six players.

Mike

[Cato]

No, classical mainstream was never mainstream, but in the past it was more mainstream than it is today, as mentioned above with things like Bernstein on CBS and Toscanini with the NBC Orchestra on radio and TV.

I have a National Geographic magazine from 1947 with a full page ad from RCA Victor, offering a series of records of classical music and a phonograph, so that the man in the picture, who is exclaiming in joy at a concert that he recognizes Dvorak's Ninth Symphony, could introduce himself to classical music.

There was a market, therefore, in 1947, for such people, or at least for those who subscribed to National Geographic.

At the same time the "class warfare" aspect of classical music, i.e. somehow it only appeals to rich people, has been around for decades: there is a Deanna Durbin movie from the early 1940's, where she is singing a classical piece to a crowd of soldiers (with Stokowski on the podium!), and of course a soldier shouts out at the end: "Hey!  Sing us some real music now!"  After a slight hesitation, she of course starts singing "real" music!

The dance band ditties enjoyed by the common man are the "real music" while classical somehow cannot really appeal to the average person.  Somehow, late in the 19th century with the rise of mass advertising and marketing, the idea that the average person might want to aspire to things more culturally difficult was thrown out in favor of selling the public easier and cheaper things.

Recall the rise of VCR's: film critics were talking about how the average person could now rent or buy the greatest movies of all time.  Everyone would become a film student/critic and become more discriminating, and therefore movies would become better, because the educated public would demand higher quality.

And of course, the largest genre for decades turned out to be pornography.

[karlhenning]

. . . but i am repeled by Beethoven.

But, Paul, did I misunderstand you to say that you like the Eighth Symphony?