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[calimac]

Eight sentences about classical music I'd be happy never to read again from Matthew Guerrieri (via patioboe)

Gems. I will admit to having committed anniversary honors on dead composers (I did it just this week), but only as an excuse to call public attention to composers I was listening to yesterday and will be listening to again tomorrow. Otherwise, though, I've heard and loathe 'em all. Yes, I really have been told that I don't like what I like, and all the rest.

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

2) Fine, jazz originated in the US. And it is, or can be, art music, as classical is. But that doesn't make it "America's classical music" or "America's art music." That's a calculated insult both to US classical music and non-US jazz.

4) Art rock, at least the stuff I know, isn't art music in the sense I mean. (Which doesn't mean it isn't complex or sophisticated, or that it can't be listened to as art music.) The idea of sitting quietly and listening at a concert shouldn't be that strange. Some arts call for immediate audience response; some don't. Some plays call for cheering the hero and booing the villain (and clapping if you believe in fairies), some don't. I've never heard a peep from the audience during Hamlet. Some movies call for talking back and throwing spitballs at the screen, some don't.

7) Guerrieri isn't talking about that, he's talking about the Mozart hype. Anyway, some probably think we do get too much Shostakovich. Did I tell you about the poll in the UK to determine the most under-rated and the most over-rated author? Mervyn Peake came high in both categories.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

OK, I'll drop here, because we're at cross-purposes. My point isn't that the original sentences are "true," but that they misrepresent something that is. You're still kind of arguing with the original sentences.

Oh, and ... as near as I can tell by "art music" you must simply mean "music you don't have an immediate response to." OK, if that's how you want to define it, go ahead. To me it's "music that calls for a complex or sophisticated aesthetic response." That doesn't preclude it being danceable.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

What on earth makes you think that I don't have "an immediate response" to classical music? Beethoven's Fifth utterly dazzled me the very first time. By the time I got to the end of the first movement I was hooked on this kind of music for life. That's a pretty strong immediate response.

Or do you think it's not "an immediate response" if you don't get up and dance?

Yrs,
Tree "I am not very, hm, bendable" Beard

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

Bad writing. I meant "an immediate physical response."

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I don't have an immediate physical response even to the most far removed from art music of music I like. (Except to tap my fingers, which I do to any music I like, though I try not to do it when other people are around, because I know it's annoying.)

This is why I signed my previous comment "Treebeard".

The one kind of music that really makes me want to get up and dance is English country-dance music, but that's a learned response, because I know the dance steps. (My finger-tapping is also extremely precise, and I always do it to a given piece of music exactly the same way.) I have never understood free-form dancing, and find the impulse to "get down and boogie" totally alien, even if I like the music that's being played (which I usually don't).

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

Go back to the original comment; I didn't suggest that you would get up and dance in response to Arnold's "Dances"; I know you that well, anyway. But the reason I picked Arnold's "Dances" was because the do make me want to get up and dance. They're, well, dance music, quite aside from any question of whether or not they're "art" music (which of course they are). And I, at least, would feel a bit stifled by being unable in the context of a concert hall to at least sway and bob a bit in response to them.

And you never answered the question. What would be wrong with audiences responding to dance music by dancing? Why is the atmosphere at symphonic concerts such as to stifle, even forbid, this response?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Because I'm not unique. There's your answer.

I also answered the question in another way. Would you boo King Claudius as audiences boo Captain Hook?

I'm assuming the answer is no. As I already said, classical music isn't the only performing art that discourages the kind of audience response you seem to believe natural. (Which it isn't, not necessarily: my other point.)

Why does it do so? Because it gets in the way of experiencing the art itself. It's distracting. Why don't people run around yelling in art galleries? It wouldn't prevent you from seeing the art. It's because it's distracting. So is finger-tapping, which is why I try not to do it at concerts. Third answer.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

Would you boo King Claudius as audiences boo Captain Hook?

Context. At the Globe (original or reconstructed), I certainly would. Well, maybe not "as audiences boo Hook," because Claudius isn't a 2-dimensional villain the way Hook is. But certainly Shakespeare wrote with an active and responsive audience in mind.

The whole idea that art demands the audient's full and rapt attention is a modernist fallacy, birthed in the egoes of artists like Wagner and Hayden (his "Surprise" symphony was designed to deprive audients of a postprandial nap to which they certainly felt entitled).