Music: A Runaway Train on the Rails of Adolescence

book: The Closing of the American Mind | 1987 | Allan Bloom

[mlmr]

Yet if a student can--and this is most difficult and unusual--draw back, get a critical distance on what he clings to, come to doubt the ultimate value of what he loves, he has taken the first and most difficult step toward the philosophic conversion. Indignation is the soul's defense against the wound of doubt about its own; it reorders the cosmos to support the justice of its cause.


This is exactly what happens to Christian students in secular institutions....

[Mygirlsmom]

I grew up on classical music

So did I...it all started with Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry! Whether they knew it or not, any kid who grew up watching classic cartoons knew a bit of Rossini, Tchaikovsky, Mozart and even Wagner (Oh, Bwunhilda.....you are so wovely!)

That's really where it all started. As a small child, I used to beg my grandpa to play Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 on his player piano because I recognized the tune.

That initial exposure led me to take up the trumpet, which I continued playing until I had my girls. I met my hubby (the real musician of the family) in band in college. Even now my cel phone rings to the "New World Symphony".

Unfortunately, my daughters haven't caught much of the music bug yet. My oldest (the athlete-how did that happen?) - has an affinity for punk rock , though the stuff she's playing lately is not too bad and the little ones are learning the piano but haven't caught the music bug to any great extent. Guess it's time to start watching more old cartoons!

[mlmr]

more than garbage in garbage out...in the process you ruin the can and it can no long hold fine food.

[SamAdams76]

This is not the first time I heard raves about Mike Oldfield. I would like to buy one of his albums and check him out, do you have one in mind that one ought to start with? I'm familiar with Tubular Bells (from "The Exorcist") but that's about it.

This was a pretty interesting article. It's a shame that so many young people do not discover classical music. I didn't start listening to it until I was in my mid-30s but I'm making up for lost time. I now own over 300 classical recordings and I'm beginning to realize that I've only just begun to discover it! In fact, at the moment, I'm immersed in the music of Monteverdi. This is incredible music and it keeps growing on me the more I listen to it.

I still listen to rock music too so classical and rock are not mutually exclusive. In fact, my classical music listening has allowed me to appreciate some of the rock music I own even more. Some of it, that is. Much of it I like less because my musical tastes have definitely changed.

[mlmr]

I broke the copy-protection;

said with awe: How do you do something like that, sir?

[mlmr]

I broke the copy-protection;


More awe: Oh. Of course.

[King Nothing]

exactly!

[ChemistCat]

My grandchildren will discover classical music. They will play it too loudly and annoy my children.

I find that thought immensely satisfying.

[cornelis]

Your excerpt strikes me odd. In the passage, philosophic conversion and indignation are opposed.

[boris]

"said with awe: How do you do something like that, sir?"

Back in the days of DOS and Windows 3.1 my hobby was busting protection. In those wild and wooly days, we published "cracks" on the internet. You can still find some of mine; they always end with the motto: "Let there be software!".

I was a self-taught assembly-language guru, and my PC had a sign on it: "The Cracking Lab".

I actually was a member of the industry copy-protection committee, and I read their proceedings, dreaming up ways to defeat 'proposed standards' before they were adopted!

I could even break dongles (but there was one brand I could not break).

Anyhow, these days I am reduced to using more-or-less "commercial" bit-for-bit copiers of CDs and such. OED uses a "license manager" called "C-Dilla" (which is on Spybot's list of malware, BTW). It looks at the second CD for "verification". The trick is making a bitwise copy of the second CD.

Vitally necessary; some well-meaning products such as Novaback or disk defraggers somehow convince C-Dilla that it needs to see the second disk again; always wise to have a copy about...

--Boris

[boris]

"This is not the first time I heard raves about Mike Oldfield. I would like to buy one of his albums and check him out, do you have one in mind that one ought to start with? I'm familiar with Tubular Bells (from "The Exorcist") but that's about it."

He has just released Tubular Bells 2003, a completely re-done version with modern computers and instruments. IMHO it is superior to the original.

My favorite albums (in no particular order) other than Tubular Bells are:

Hergest Ridge
Ommadawn
Tubular Bells II
Five Miles Out
The Songs of Distant Earth
Incantations
Platinum (also released as "Airborn")

In the second tier are:

Islands
Crises
Tres Lunas

I have no use for "Guitars", "Voyager", "Amarok", "Tubular Bells III", "The Millennium Bell", any of the "orchestral" versions, or "Heaven's Open". There are brief flashes of brilliance in Amarok but the filler is too extensive.

My "desert island" three would be TB 2003, Incantations, and TB II.

There are some interesting collections, including "The Complete Mike Oldfield" (it isn't), "Mike Oldfield" (a 3-CD set), and "Elements", which was fairly complete when it was released.

There are also rarities, such as "Don Alfonso", "Mike's Reel", "Wreckorder Wrondo", "Portsmouth", etc, always singles and mostly on the file-sharing services. Take a look at the "Tubular Web Ring"...

--Boris

[Dumb_Ox]

I'd never thought about pornophony before. Thanks for posting this.

[Nebullis]

I heard a snippet on NPR today about music and the directions taken by some labels to carve out an individual niche. "...organic phrasing of the sonic landscape...molding of the eclectic environment...a dialog between musical space and listener..." and more such nonsense.

Say, how are you?

Did you get a chance to watch "The Pianist"?

[BBell]

What follows is the full text of the “Ode of Joy” the European Hymn in its original German Text:

“Ode An die Freude”
O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!
Sondern laßt uns angenehmere
anstimmen, und freudenvollere!
Freude!
Freude, schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder,
Was die Mode streng geteilt;
Alle Menschen werden Brüder,
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.
Wem der große Wurf gelungen,
Eines Freundes Freund zu sein,
Wer ein holdes Weib errungen,
Mische seinen Jubel ein!
Ja - wer auch nur eine Seele
Sein nennt auf dem Erdenrund!
Und wer’s nie gekonnt, der stehle
Weinend sich aus diesem Bund.
Freude trinken alle Wesen
An den Brüsten der Natur;
Alle Guten, alle Bösen
Folgen ihrer Rosenspur.
Küsse gab sie uns und Reben,
Einen Freund, geprüft im Tod;
Wollust ward dem Wurm gegeben,
Und der Cherub steht vor Gott.
Und der Cherub steht vor Gott.
Froh, wie seine Sonnen fliegen
Durch des Himmels prächt’gen Plan,
Laufet Brüder, eure Bahn,
Freudig, wie ein Held zum Siegen.
Freude, schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder,
Was die Mode streng geteilt;
Alle Menschen werden Brüder,
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.
Seid umschlungen, Millionen!
Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt!
Brüder - überm Sternenzelt
Muß ein lieber Vater wohnen.
Ihr stürzt nieder, Millionen?
Ahnest Du den Schöpfer, Welt?
Such’ ihn überrn Sternenzelt!
Über Sternen muß er wohnen.

Freude, schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!
Seid umschlungen, Millionen!
Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt!
Freude!
Ihr stürzt nieder, Millionen?
Ahnest du den Schöpfer, Welt?
Such’ ihn überm Sternenzelt!
Brüder! - überm Sternenzelt
Muß ein lieber Vater wohnen.
Freude, Tochter aus Elysium!
Deine Zauber binden wieder,
Was die Mode streng geteilt.
Alle Menschen werden Brüder,
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.
Deine Zauber binden wieder,
Was die Mode streng geteilt
Alle Menschen werden Brüder,
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.
Seid umschlungen, Millionen!
Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt!
Brüder überm Sternenzelt
Muß ein lieber Vater wohnen.
Seid umschlungen!
Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt!
Freude, schöner Götterfunken!
Tochter aus Elysium!
Freude, schöner Götterfunken!

[Romulus]

Young people know that rock has the beat of sexual intercourse.

It's not hard to find the analogue of sexual climax in "Twist & Shout", but if anything it's even more obvious in baroque opera. One difference is that rock's sexual energy, in keeping with its eternal adolescence, is self-absorbed and ends in exhaustion, while that of classical music is polyphonic and always resolves in harmony.

It may be that only a Christian culture (grounded in a cosmic Christ who as Logos not only is the means of creation but contines to sustain it in meaning) can develop and nurture a tradition of classical music because even as the idiom explores dissonance, all disorder ends in resolution. Even Beethoven, who argues so passionately for the possibility of nobility even in the alienated individual continues to affirm nobility and does not define himself by rebellion.

The difference may be that unlike rock musicians, composers in the classical tradition addressed themselves directly to discerning audiences and critics, without recourse to mass marketing for a spurious buzz or packaging as a lifestyle accessory. While I'd cheerfully concede the attractiveness of much popular music, the fact remains that it's largely inorganic -- a commercial phenomenon designed with return on investment in mind, which would vanish in the absence of corporate sponsorship.

Contrariwise, classical music, including that of the Enlightenment and the Romantics, derives from believers or at least a culture of belief, and this endows it with transcendant concerns that should ensure its relevance well after the beloved pop tunes of our youth fall into, well, desuetude.

[Blind Eye Jones]

"If someone can find me a better analysis of the contemporary scene, I'd like to read it. This is from a chapter in Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind. In the excerpt above you can easily replace Reagan with Bush and Michael Jackson with Bono. The times have not changed that much, increase in profits has. Meanwhile there is still that same ubiquitous naivete that sweet adolescence reserves for its highest good. In the end, love is what contracts in the self and is fully endorsed in the new age of rights: the virtue of courage is reduced to non-surrender "there will be no white flag . . I'm in love." But with what?

Others may provide various positive views of the goodness of music, its therapeutic comfort in our weakest moments, its solace in solitude. Such positive views, as Bloom recognizes, are often given as evidence in apologies of indignation. I really wish someone could come forward and best this critique with an understanding that lifts this unturned rock."

There are a number of complaints that I have with Bloom. I think that Bloom has done an injustice to rock music with his sweeping generalizations, eg., it’s all about sex. He really didn’t make an effort to examine rock music with any depth or impartiality. It seems that he purposely distorted or used just the parts that would further his argument concerning the possibility of a liberal education. I see it as his attempt to shock us by a half truth -- the truth that there is a negative side to rock music. There is a negative side to most things in life -- including art -- but that shouldn’t mean condemning all the poets/rock musicians. Condemning all rock music would be similar to banishing the poets in Plato’s Republic. And that’s throwing the baby out with the bath water. If you really made a tally of what the poets/rock musicians are talking about... it’s still about love. They write love songs, not sex songs, i.e., the beat is also found in the heart and not just in the hips. And I find it ironic that Bloom, in the last part of his life, was devoted to the study of love and not some issue of political philosophy, i.e., the best regime, etc. It reminds me that Socrates in the last part of his life was devoted to studying poetry. Why the turn?

If rock is really decadent wouldn't classical music be all the more so with opera, i.e., love is still the theme with the irrational passions tearing man hither and dither. The "there will be no white flag . . I'm in love" or the "erotic" had led Bloom to heights of reason (his love of great ideas) but, perhaps, also to tragic indiscretions that allowed him to die of AIDS. His preference for opera over rock certainly didn't do him any favors in living a more rational life.

Sorry for this response two years too late, but I just stumbled on to this thread.