At 09:14 PM 5/25/2007 +0200, shirling & neueweise wrote:
>this kind of generalization about the state of
>new music really disappoints me, and i have to
>admit, i come across it more from americans than
>any other population
This seems to be my experience. The differences are sometimes striking, but
then my experience is limited to the eastern US and western Europe -- and
save for my own concerts, very little exchange with the general public.
Even my websites are specialized and of interest mostly to composers and
other musicians.
On the other hand, there is a different general public. For example, last
August, I posted the scene from my chamber opera on YouTube. Because of the
topic (Erzsebet the Blood Countess), it gets lots of views (about 5,000
plus another 5,000 of various 'bootleg' copies on YouTube) ... considerably
more than, say, "Spammung" (39 views and posted the same day last year).
The comments come from all over the world, public and private. Those
American visitors run negative (one printable comment: "wuts wit the
horrible music in the background?") but those outside the U.S. don't ("es
una música maravillosa, la adoro, es una ópera bellísima, me encanta, ¿has
echo más?, adoro esta música."). Private emails follow the same pattern.
I don't have any answers, but there is a cultural shift that isn't limited
to the US. The post below appeared on the Two New Hours list a few days ago
(Larry Lake is the host of Two New Hours, canceled in March after a quarter
century on the air).
Dennis
From: "Larry Lake" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 09:24:53 -0400
Subject: [Morenewhours] We're not alone
Here is Russell Smith's column in today's Globe and Mail:
-----------------------------------------
How pop has taken over the arts
RUSSELL SMITH
May 24, 2007
The word "culture" in media now means what was once called mass or popular
culture; the word "art" - when it is used at all - means what we once called
entertainment. Examples of this are everywhere: Almost no North American
newspaper has a section called "Arts" any more because it would be
dishonest. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently eliminated the job of
book editor, and the Los Angeles Times merged its book section with another
section and reduced its number of pages. A debate is under way on the
Internet as to whether professional book reviewers are necessary at all,
given the abundance of literary opinion available on blogs.
An interesting Canadian example of the change in the media's
conceptualization of art is the entertaining new CBC Radio show Q, a show
about "art and entertainment" that deals almost exclusively with popular
culture and whose musical soundtrack consists solely of pop music. Pop
culture is valuable, of course, and there's nothing wrong with publicly
funded programs to analyze it. But the fact that it's not billed as such
demonstrates that the word "art" itself has changed its meaning: It has got
a whole lot narrower.
The word "music" has suffered the same fate. Popular music no longer must be
specified as such; it's just music. It's the other forms of music that need
a qualifier. In other words, "music" tends not to include classical music,
which is an obscure niche not unlike the "fetish" section of your adult
video store.
It's not included in most discussions of the form. (Actually, that's
probably a bad example. Fetish porn is usually discussed or at least
acknowledged in discussions of pornography, whereas classical music simply
does not exist in most mediated discussions of "music." If you wanted to
extend the pornographic metaphor a little, you could say that classical
music is a bit like the old videos that the pornographers now label
"natural" and classify as a fetish. They put the videos of un-enhanced women
in the freaky section beside Latex Hotel and Plushy Party.)
Similarly, any "culture" section of a TV or radio news hour now means pop
culture: It means discussion of hip hop and new trends in home decor. Again,
I'm not denying that these things are culture, just pointing out that
they're a particular kind of culture and not, I would say, representative of
all culture.
This has to have an effect on the role of the arts in society. When language
changes, ideas become entrenched. So it's not insignificant the word "song"
is used in current English to refer to any piece of music, even those that
are not songs. The manufacturers of digital music players like to advertise
how many "songs" their devices can store, which doesn't tell me much because
very little of my music is songs. Creators of dance music have solved the
problem by referring to all units of music as "tracks." In the classical
tradition, this was solved centuries ago with the word "piece," which can
refer to a flute solo or a full-fledged symphony. Academics often use the
word "text" to refer to all works of art, precisely in order to avoid having
discussions on the definition of individual genres.
That whole interesting discussion is irrelevant now, because everything
referred to by the media is literally a song.
I refuse to think this mandatory usage is simply a necessary simplification
of language due to a massive change in music itself. There are still
millions of lovers and practitioners of orchestral, chamber and experimental
art music in the world - and, interestingly, Canadian composers and
musicians are at the global forefront of such practice. Nope, the insistence
on calling all music "songs" is not-so-subtle propaganda for commercial art
forms. It's a kind of bullying.
What do I mean by this? I mean that every time I hear this usage, I feel
excluded, and I feel I am meant to: I am meant to be reminded of my
archaism, my "elitism," whatever that means, my essential difference from
normal people. It's me who is out of place, me and all my unpleasant
educated colleagues who insist on remaining all snotty about uncool and
unlucrative things such as music without singing (and visual art and
architecture and Web art and installation art and art theory and art
criticism). Every time I hear an interview with an American sitcom actor
referred to as culture - and culture it certainly is, although culture of a
particular and narrow kind - I hear the low voice of normalcy murmuring in
my ear: "Give up. It's all over. Just give up."
But I won't, because I know I am not alone, and there are millions of people
in this country and around the world who listen to music that is not a
"song" and who look at silent pictures and read silent books. And these
things will continue to define us, and will last longer in history than
home-decorating tips, even if they do not exist in the media, even if they
exist in a sort of intellectual underground.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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