Letters to the Editor
rupert_c
Published Letters: 1221 Editor's Choice: 12
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Top 40 classical versus art and avant-garde
[Read the article: Their terrifying sounds]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Top forty classical is what you have imprinted on and if you cannot get past your first imprint you think it is noise, ugly and horrible. Many of your greats had the same bad reaction when they broke the earlier generations imprints with there own new forms. Until you learn about an art form it is very often not understandable and not something that you will be comfortable with.
I imprinted on classical, baroque, renaissance, medieval, avant garde and electronic musics. I didn't like opera, jazz, country or bluegrass. My mind was open and plastic enough to be able to not only appreciate those foms later, but to also compose and perform in those forms as well.
You people who hate this stuff are just very shallow and narrow minded.
Try listening to tibetan, balinese, chinese or japanese forms - you probably think that is butt ugly too. It isn't. These are just waveforms and patterns. Music is a game of pattern recognition and pattern variation and having the mind process the differences and it it doesn't interest or delght you then the fault lies not with the music, but with your wetware that is processing it.
In short, people are stupid. They like what they first try and then they don't like things that are unfamiliar.
The same people who love Bach and hate 12 tone don't get it - the Art of the Fugue is a manual for serial composition. Transposition, augmentation, diminution, time reversal, inversion and variation are all tools in the box for a musician to use.
When I listen to the only classical station left in town, it's like eating at Mcdonald's and having nothing but burgers over and over and over again.
Stupid people do not get bored. Just give them the same crap over and over again.
The great classical works are not inherently crap, but when that is all they play, they become crap. At least to minds that crave a little something different and new every so often.
And if you really hate that avant-garde stuff you better stay away from the movies and turn off your televsison because musicians who write for those efforts are using toolsets and forms which you despise.
But it really isn't about music, it is about how you define yourself. Pretense may be the real lure because classical music is somehow superior, high brow and refined. It is just old pop music that you don't have to pay royalties on. They came up with orchestras because they wanted to be louder and more powerful. Now amplification, electronics and computers have rendered that device obsolete because the average musician or composer cannot afford to have an orcherstra or compose for one.
Which is why pop music forms dominate. You can afford to do that.
Who will sell more records this year, Britney Spears or Beethoven?
Hell I bet even Bjork will sell more and she is often avant-garde.
So keep listening to the same 60 pieces over and over again until the groove in your brain is so deep that no light can reach you.
I'm pretty sure that on the way to work today I will hear Pachelbel's Canon, Bach's Brandenburg Number 4 and Vivaldi's Fall from the Seasons on the radio.
YAAAAWWN!
I wore that grove out when I was a teenager.
Eat your burgers and fries, I'll go for something different.
Too bad you narrowminds never heard PDQ Bach. Music is fun.
BTW - Glass and Adams bore me to tears and Glass didn't invent minimalism and those who love him should check out Moondog and Riley so they can get some context.