It is now an archive for my newspaper and magazine pieces. My blog can now be read at: www.spectator.co.uk/stephenpollard
Politics, economics and culture from the master. Unmissable.
Melanie Phillips home page
Melanie Phillips' peerless blog. Read, and learn.
Daniel Finkelstein's Times Comment Central
A daily must-read.
Tim Worstall
Lots of interesting nibbles - and a ruthless swatter of economic gibberish.
Harry's Place
Must-read left of centre blog from writers who understand the threat to the West.
Clive Davis
Always interesting selection of culture and politics, from an Anglo-American bent.
Samizdata
Libertarian blog, packed every day.
Norm's blog
The thoroughly sensible thoughts of renowned left-wing academic Norman Geras, Professor of Government at Manchester. And cricket, too.
Public Interest
Peter Briffa's inimitable take on The Yazzmonster and other assorted demons.
Reform
The public sector reform group; their website is an invaluable source of data and ideas.
Centre for the New Europe
The leading European public policy think tank.
Developed by:
| February | 02 |
| 2005 |
Martin Kettle had an interesting analysis in yesterday's Guardian of the decline of classical music:
Whatever happened to the composers? ...For around three centuries, operas poured from the pens of Italian composers and found lasting places in the repertoire. After Turandot, there has not been one in 80 years of which that could be said.Maybe that is an extreme example. But answer this question: what is the most recently composed piece of classical music to have achieved a genuinely established place in the repertoire? I mean a piece that you can count on hearing in most major cities most years, and a performance of which is likely to bring in a large general audience. Shostakovich's first cello concerto, written in 1959, perhaps? Even that is stretching a point. A more truthful answer might be Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs, composed 56 years ago in 1948.
...At some point in the past half-century, classical music lost touch with its public.
At the start of the 21st century, we can see what went wrong more clearly. What went wrong was western European modernism. Modernism is a huge, varied and complex phenomenon, and it took on different qualities in different national cultures. But an essential feature, especially as Van der Merwe argues it, was to turn music decisively towards theory - often political theory - and away from its popular roots.
...The upshot was a deliberate renunciation of popularity. The audience that mattered to modernists (even the many who saw themselves as socialists) ceased to be the general public and increasingly became other composers and the intellectual, often university-based, establishment that claimed to validate the new music, not least through its influence over state patronage. Any failure of the music to become popular was ascribed not to the composer's lack of communication but the public's lack of understanding.
Not surprisingly, the public looked elsewhere, to what we are right to call, and right to admire for being, popular music.
MessageSpace
It would be interesting to do a comparison of the decline of audiences for classical music with the increase in arts subsidies. My suspicion would be that in the post-war period composers could increasing rely on public subsidies for their living. This would have had a twofold effect. Firstly they could ignore issues of popularity and the need to sell tickets. Secondly they would be encouraged to write music which would appeal to the people who would be judging their worthiness for public subsidy. Which is to say people who shared their interest in modernism and a disdain for the general public.
It would be ironic, wouldn't it, if the abolition of the Arts Councils were to lead to a flowering of the arts in the UK?
Oh come now. What about Taveners' The Protecting Veil, much of Britten, Gorecki's Third Symphony, Philip Glass, Copland, Gershwin, and many many others.
If the criterion is durability, then the argument is flawed anyway since only time will tell, thus eliminating everyone post whatever period he sees as the end of classicism.
It's true the audience has dwindled, but composers are still very numerous and active.
Howard Goodall recently presented a series on Channel 4 in which he argued that the great popular composers of the past century (Lennon & McCartney, Gerhswin, etc) had seized the initiative after twelve-tone and serialism bewitched the establishment, post WW2. The music lover moyen sensuel still wanted structure, melody and harmony; not dissonance, rhythm and arbitrariness.
Gershwin bridged the gap but no later tunesmith has done so-- despite Macca's Liverpool Oratorio and whatnot.
In concert programmes put together by the likes of Raymond Gubbay, the most recent works you are likely to hear are from Orff or Copland-- c. 1950. The bulk fodder which draws the crowds is from Bach to Brahms, with the occasional lurch back to Monteverdi or forward to orchestrations of Lloyd Webber, our own plastic Puccini.
I blame the academisation of music: begun by Schoenberg, extended by clowns such as Stockhausen and Cage, and perpetuated today by a host of State-subsidised composers. They teach in uni music departments instead of writing commissioned pieces for individual patrons with informed tastes and preferences. It is possible these days for such a one as Harrison Birtwistle to have a complete career, culminating in a knighthood, without once receiving the slightest popular attention-- far less enthusiasm-- except when his "Panic" was played to general derision at the Proms some years back. One realised then what a gulf has opened up between the middle-of-the-road, non-expert "Music for Pleasure" man and the professors.
The history of art shows us that contemporary popular acclaim is not a reliable guide to quality and longevity. It takes time for artistic advances to gain mainstream acceptance.
Alternatively we may simply be witnessing a shift in public taste such that 'classical' music in all its forms is gradually becoming an irrelevance.
Don't disagree with much of what Effra says, but the terms of the contrast "structure, melody, harmony" against "dissonance, rythm and arbitrariness" doesn't seem quite right - it's more subtle than that. Both Mozart and strict 12-note music have structure, but Mozart's structure can be heard by a moderately educated ear, while Webern's can only be seen on the page, unless you're one of that tiny percentage of people suffuciently educated to identify any interval by ear, instantly. And you also need to be able to recognize and remember the tone row forwards, backwards, inverted and cancrizans, if you are really going to understand what the composer did. Not very likely for most of us! On the other hand, Strauss used lots of dissonance, and the listener moyen sensuel can cope because it is always finally related to some idea of tonality. Where the serialists lost the bulk of the listening public was not through perceived dissonance, but precisely because they abandoned the anchor of tonality. Rhythm, of course, has been a defining feature of most music of whatever culture and period, so I don't see that as one of the critical differences.
I loved "plastic Puccini!"
The best thing about Webern is that his collected works are over in under an hour;-)
Strobe: "It takes time for artistic advances to gain mainstream acceptance."
Not in music, not in the good old days. The latest arias of Mozart or Rossini were whistled by errand boys within days of being premiered, long before records disseminated new tunes quickly.
Anyhow, how much longer does "Pierrot Lunaire" require to "gain mainstream acceptance"? It's already had 100 years! As Philip Larkin said in "All What Jazz", this is the feeble defence of all "experimental" aesthetic dead ends: you've got to work at understanding it, you can't expect to appreciate it at once. Why the hell not? It's music, it's entertainment and I'm paying for it. I demand instant gratification: I get it from Cole Porter or Rodgers and Hammerstein, so I sure ain't hanging around for another decade or two torturing my ears until the Stockhausen pfennig drops.
Very, very few of today's canonical composers were totally unappreciated in their lifetimes. Forgotten afterwards for a time, maybe (e.g. Vivaldi) but not neglected during it.
br: When the Nazis tried to run twelve-tone and other degenerate features out of town, they explained that dissonance was a valuable weapon but should not become a governing principle. They had to say that because they were still trying to get Richard Strauss on side! Hitler made a point of congratulating Werner Egk for "Peer Gynt", which is full of modernistic effects within a fairly trad structure. They outlawed "Rite of Spring" but passed "Firebird". Go figure.
Ironically "Carmina Burana" is more popular today than any works by exiled Germans.
Effra: it is, of course your right to demand music that provides instant gratification and if you get that from Rodgers and Hart, then good luck and good listening to you.
But if that is your standard of judgement, then it must be hard for you to argue - from anything other than a purely subjective position - that, say, Beethoven and Mozart are any better than Girls Aloud or Will Young, who provide the same instant gratification for millions. Your 'music=entertainment' equation is simply cultural relativism by the market route.
Had Wagner chosen to write in the style of 80 years prior to HIS period, he would have been writing Mozart ... artistic avante gardes change ... still waiting here down under ... cheers.
zwiastun || galerysex || blaksex || anglina joli || erotyka fotki || online namietne || dziwka dupy ladne || orgia oral fotki || mlode pozowane free || panienki ruda lizanie || gejsza || avi cyce || sex japonki gif || pieprzenie azjatki filmy || sex wielkie zdjecia || oral za darmoche porno || ruchanko na obozie gallery || anal w sklepie zdjecia || bzykanie w piwnicy filmiki || szpareczka sex uczenice ||
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/propecia-cost.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/propecia-costs.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/propecia-online.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/propecia-online-prescription.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/propecia-pharmacy.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/propecia-prescription.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/propecia-prescriptions.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/propecia-side-effects.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/propecia-sperm.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/proscar-finasteride.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/proscar-for-hair.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/proscar-for-hair-loss.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/proscar-hair.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/proscar-hair-loss.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/proscar-no-prescription.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/proscar-online.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/proscar-side-effects.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/purchase-cialis.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/side-effects-from-paxil.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/side-effects-of-lamisil.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/soft-tab-viagra.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/soma.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/soma-drug.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/soma-for-sale.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/soma-medication.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/lamisil-tablets.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/loss-meridia-pill-weight.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/low-cost-cialis.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/low-cost-viagra.htm
http://www.zyworld.com/allmed/lowest-meridia-price.htm