Posted on 07/28/2010 5:24:08 AM PDT by sitetest
Thanks to period-music evangelists, breathtaking virtuosity, and millions of listeners, the art form remains vibrant.
Anyone inclined to lament the state of classical music today should read Hector Berlioz’s Memoires. As the maverick French composer tours mid-nineteenth-century Europe conducting his revolutionary works, he encounters orchestras unable to play in tune and conductors who can’t read scores. A Paris premiere of a Berlioz cantata fizzles when a missed cue sets off a chain reaction of paralyzed silence throughout the entire sorry band. Most infuriating to this champion of artistic integrity, publishers and conductors routinely bastardize the scores of Mozart, Beethoven, and other titans, conforming them to their own allegedly superior musical understanding or to the narrow taste of the public.
Berlioz’s exuberant tales of musical triumph and defeat constitute the most captivating chronicle of artistic passion ever written. They also lead to the conclusion that, in many respects, we live in a golden age of classical music. Such an observation defies received wisdom, which seizes on every symphony budget deficit to herald classical music’s imminent demise. But this declinist perspective ignores the more significant reality of our time: never before has so much great music been available to so many people, performed at levels of artistry that would have astounded Berlioz and his peers. Students flock to conservatories and graduate with skills once possessed only by a few virtuosi. More people listen to classical music today, and more money gets spent on producing and disseminating it, than ever before. Respect for a composer’s intentions, for which Berlioz fought so heroically, is now an article of faith among musicians and publishers alike.
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
“Opera isn’t for everyone though.”
Correct! I love the music, but loathe the singing. But then I like Classical Electronic Music, which is certainly not everyone’s cup of tea. I’ve actually had girlfriends that became frightened listening to the Columbia Princeton LP.
Bugs Bunny introduced me to Wagner.
Tristan is so historically significant and momentous that it isn't even epic; another word should be invented to describe it.
I love Track And Field, but loathe the running.
But before Edison, if you didn't play it yourself and couldn't afford to listen to the pros, you didn't have it. Frederick the Great is widely mocked for his criticism of Mozart - "too many notes!" - but I know perfectly well where he was coming from. You're an amateur flautist - he was a good one, by all reports - and you sit down and there before you is a page that is mostly black. Dang it, there are too many notes!
And so if you're Freddy the Great you call in the court musicians, but if you're his bootmaker you're lucky to hear the strains drifting through the open windows of the concert hall. These days the latter cues it up on his iPod. And that's the difference.
Now, that's probably hurt the sheet music market a little, I'd guess, although I really don't know it for a fact. If you depend on that sort of thing for a living you're going to end up as broke as Mozart did. If you're as popular as he was these days, though, it's limos, groupies, and dying in a drug- and alcohol-induced haze. Good times.
So how does Mozart's Requiem stack up against, say, Led Zeppelin's third album? 100 years from now it might be a serious question. ;-)
As I said, “ I love the music, but loathe the singing.” If the vocal lines were replaced by instruments, I would be enthralled. Bu,, then it wouldn’t be opera, would it? I have a vast collection of recordings of all sorts of varied genres of music. Classical guitar, Country Blues, Boogie Woogie piano, Jazz, electronic music, Very little rock, except for Zappa, Django to Hooker to Gatton and Vai.,, lots of Asian music. But after all that, I still don’t like operatic voices! Cauliflower and Sea Cucumber are also on my list of things to avoid!
Bu??? But,,,
Quite well, but expect an unfavorable comparison to their second on the basis of "The Lemon Song" alone.
Nice post!
I agree with the author.
Which of course tells the world nothing about operatic voices. :-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnb3m90nl-E
You're living in the wrong part of the country. Here, in the flatlands of central Indiana, I can get 3 part-time Classical stations. A few years ago I could get a fourth and a full-time AM station.
Chunga,
I got in trouble on another thread for not giving an attribution for “Brain Police.” So Chunga, this is revenge!
No! No! A thousand times, NO! I don’t like the vocal style. It was created to overcome an orchestra, and I find it loud,,, and very annoying! Isn’t there anything you don’t like that no amount of persuasion will overcome? To my ears and brain, the music is wonderful, and is ruined by all the shouting. I earned over half my living as a musician, often playing music I didn’t really care for, but abdo-lutely loving the satisfaction I got from playing my instrument!
BTW, eating Sea Cucumber is akin to trying to swallow warm Vaseline! And there’s no amount of persuasion, that’s legal, that will get me to try it again! That’s the way things are! Some people like things that others don’t.
Sea cucumber is good for you. Eat your sea cucumber or no dessert.
But it’s so much fun to sing!! I totally understand, though. I am not a fan of most violin music, or piano music for that matter.
I asked Frank how did he ever get “Jelly Roll Gum Drop” onto American Bandstand. He claimed to know nothing about that. I didn’t believe him!
Or someone suffering from TB!
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