I picked up Alex Ross' latest book, Listen To This, this afternoon. I've only read the title essay, but it's wonderful, and I think I need to let it sink in before I continue reading.
In the last few weeks, I've been wrangled into several conversations about how [insert musical genre here] is just terrible and worthless and really should just disappear from the face of the earth. Country music. 20th century classical music. Rap music. I find this to be incredibly frustrating, because no one ever wins. We just argue in circles about this music vs. that music.
I like the fact that music speaks so strongly to people. If I didn't, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. I find it interesting that people feel so strongly not only about music that they like, but music that they very much dislike. Classical musicians, I think, are the worst about this. Because classical music is BETTER, right? It is higher up in the hierarchy of musical excellence. Any other musical genre is sub par. If you do listen to country music, you consider it a guilty pleasure, not music of the same value as, say, Beethoven.
I think that there's a deep problem in viewing music this way. Music is an art form. It is subjective. I believe that on its deepest level, the duty of music is to speak to people. In the words of my dear Shostakovich, it "lifts and heartens people for work and effort." Life is hard, and music makes life less hard. If you think about music through this (I will admit) rose-colored-glasses-view, then trying to talk about classical music as better than rap music or country music or any other kind of music just doesn't make sense.
What is unfortunate is that so few people relate to classical music. As Alex Ross so eloquently put it,
"The music does not lend itself to the same kind of generational identification as, say, Sgt. Pepper. There may be kids out there who lost their virginity during Brahm's D-Minor Piano Concerto, but they don't want to tell the story and you don't want to hear it. The music attracts the reticent fraction of the population. It is an art of grand gestures and vast dimensions that plays to mobs of the quiet and the shy."I am one in the "mobs of the quiet and the shy". I grew up in a happy, sunshine-y world of flower-picking and finger-painting. In my brief foray into teen angst, I read nothing but Dostoevsky and pretended to understand him. Because of this, I love happy, sunshine-y Mozart and Haydn and irrevocably Russian Shostakovich and Kabalevsky, among others. I did not lose my virginity to the Brahm's D-Minor Piano Concerto, but that sounds perfectly lovely to me. My taste for classical music is certainly in the minority.
What I am trying to say is that classical music is wonderful, and it's music that speaks to me. Do I want to say that it's the best music? Of course I do! But if someone else is more moved by Nirvana than Mozart, who am I to tell him that his taste in music is bad or underdeveloped or simply just wrong? I can tell him that he might like Mahler (which is, in fact, exactly what I would do), but I cannot so boldly assert that he has no idea what he's talking about and that his opinions are grossly off-the-mark.
I understand that I sound sickeningly idealist right now, but I'm 21 years old. If ever there were a time in life to be idealist, I think this would be it. Also, if you have read this far, I applaud your patience.
It's a losing game to tell someone that the strong emotions they feel listening to music of genre X are invalid. Music's power to excite the emotions was considered so dangerous that Plato wrote in The Republic that it should be regulated. But, the richness of the emotional and intellectual experience in art music is rarely matched in more popular genres. Lots of folks eat and enjoy Big Macs, but that doesn't make it haute cuisine.
ReplyDeleteGood for you for reading about and thinking about music - you're thinking good thoughts. In a lot of ways I agree with much of what you say.
ReplyDeleteA few thoughts for you to cogitate upon.
"Classical musicians are the worst about this." Actually, not in my experience. Not that I haven't encountered enough classical snobs.....But most classical musicians that I know listen to something else as well (even if they consider it a guilty pleasure - I have to admit that I have a playlist on my ipod titled "guilty pleasures"). Whereas I have heard constantly from jazz people, rock types, country types, "me and my guitar" types, about how unoriginal it is to play classical music. "Beethoven wrote it, right? Does it sound different when different people play it? Don't you just play the notes someone else wrote?" It makes me crazy.
- Betraying my influence from Hanslick, I have to mention that for a lot of people musical taste has nothing to do with the music itself. For many people a particular genre of music is a social identifier ("all the cool people listen to x...", generational identification) or cultural signifier (to borrow an example from South Park, country music means pro war and rock means against). Or a particular album or track brings up strong memories and evokes powerful emotions.
And there is nothing wrong with this - that's just the way our emotions work, and we as humans would be much poorer if we were without the ability to form such associations. But these are individuals' external associations with the music rather than intrinsic attributes of the music itself.
Never in my life has anyone told me that playing classical music is unoriginal. Maybe I'm just sheltered. Usually, when I tell someone that I play classical music, they express a really bizarre sense of awe or go on and on about how they took lessons for six months when they were little and they wish they could play now, etc. I wouldn't even know how to respond to someone who told me that playing classical music is unoriginal. I would be completely blindsided.
ReplyDeleteAs for musical taste based on social or cultural identification, I've never really thought about it because I've never done it myself. But that does make sense.
Thanks for being so thought-provoking. I like discussing things like this, but it's not something I'm used to. It's good for me to have someone legitimately respond to my thoughts.