
Why do we hate modern classical music?  - jamesbritt
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/nov/28/alex-ross-modern-classical-music
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eldenbishop
I am annoyed by this post a bit. I think the first problem is that to the
average person who likes classical music, the stuff he is talking about has
absolutely nothing to do with what they think of as classical music. They have
attempted to hijacked a genre from its popular meaning. His analogy to modern
art is revealing as modern art took great pains to distance and distinguish
itself from the movements that came before it. By contrast, this "new" music
is desperate to inherit the mantle of the classical label while abandoning the
core tenants of why people like it in the first place. In all other walks of
music, artists just write and play it, the listeners categorize and name it.
Classical music is, by contrast, a tightly controlled club with a bunch of
smart guys deciding behind a curtain what is and is not legitimately
classical. In the real world, new genres are formed constantly and people are
expected to have preferences. I can imagine how silly this article would sound
if he was pondering why more Trance fans don't like Industrial (after all,
they are both electronica). Mostly though, I find it massively hypocritical to
criticize audiences as obsessed with "dead composers" while insisting that
this new music, unrecognizable to most listeners be called classical music.
They are themselves attempting to lay claim to the same legacy that the author
is deriding his audience for obsessing over.

~~~
jamesbritt
The terminology is unfortunate. "Modern music" or "serious music" might be
better. But, for many people (least that I know), "serious music" ==
"classical music", regardless of when it was written.

But the author makes a larger point, that even the stuff people have grown to
like was often considered outre and difficult in its own time, and that people
have gradually grown accustomed to some amount of dissonance.

"Classical music is, by contrast, a tightly controlled club with a bunch of
smart guys deciding behind a curtain what is and is not legitimately
classical."

Really? I've never gotten that sense. At least form what I've read or heard
from composers such as Michal Nyman, Philip Glass, Nico Muhly, John Adams,
they all see pretty open that what might be called "classical music" and
really only seemed concerned that their own stuff might get pigeon-holed
(e.g., tagged as "post-minimalism" or something). Shows on NPR, for example,
are also quite broad in what gets included on the club.

Maybe some critics or authors have some scheme to control the meaning, but
they seem to be doing a poor job of it.

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frankus
If you're interested in whether and how postmodern art/music/architecture has
innate and/or learned appeal to people, there's a whole chapter Steven
Pinker's book The Blank Slate that discusses it. IIRC he argued that while one
can acquire a taste for nearly anything, not all tastes are acquired.

