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'The music is innocent', says Daniel Barenboim. Daniel Barenboim is not.
Sue Lawley's poser, 'that pop music can have that same transcendental power', was greeted only with laughter and merry-making. Lindsay Caisley's very honest anecdote had illustrated that pop music can indeed cause individuals to have significant personal experiences; Daniel Barenboim's sceptical quip, 'if you feel it, how wonderful for you', demonstrated his inability to perceive the power of other forms of music because he finds them less personally fulfilling than his own style.
'Music is not elitist', says Daniel Barenboim. Daniel Barenboim is.
More understanding of music can indeed bring more appreciation, except in Daniel Barenboim's case, where it brings less. One suspects that Daniel Barenboim will never understand the 'subversive' role played by pop music in its counterpoint to his educated classical music.
The role of music is more than just an intellectual one, it rewards and fascinates in other ways too. Just hearing a regular beat on a drum can activate a person's instincts and imagination. You don't have to count the beats or analyse the rhythm. An unusual beat is nice, but a regular one can do the same job sometimes. Artifice doesn't guarantee a warm response from human beings, neither does simplicity.
All skilled music and even unskilled music, possessing beauty to some degree, can produce transcendent moments. Music is not alone as a medium that facilitates transcendent moments. A sunrise itself will do. Being highly intellectual doesn't necessarily make you more beneficial to others nor does it necessarily make you an attractive, interesting or fulfilling acquaintance. Commonly, people respond most readily to something pitched at their own level.
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classical elitism
'The music is innocent', says Daniel Barenboim. Daniel Barenboim is not.
Sue Lawley's poser, 'that pop music can have that same transcendental power', was greeted only with laughter and merry-making. Lindsay Caisley's very honest anecdote had illustrated that pop music can indeed cause individuals to have significant personal experiences; Daniel Barenboim's sceptical quip, 'if you feel it, how wonderful for you', demonstrated his inability to perceive the power of other forms of music because he finds them less personally fulfilling than his own style.
'Music is not elitist', says Daniel Barenboim. Daniel Barenboim is.
More understanding of music can indeed bring more appreciation, except in Daniel Barenboim's case, where it brings less. One suspects that Daniel Barenboim will never understand the 'subversive' role played by pop music in its counterpoint to his educated classical music.
The role of music is more than just an intellectual one, it rewards and fascinates in other ways too. Just hearing a regular beat on a drum can activate a person's instincts and imagination. You don't have to count the beats or analyse the rhythm. An unusual beat is nice, but a regular one can do the same job sometimes. Artifice doesn't guarantee a warm response from human beings, neither does simplicity.
All skilled music and even unskilled music, possessing beauty to some degree, can produce transcendent moments. Music is not alone as a medium that facilitates transcendent moments. A sunrise itself will do. Being highly intellectual doesn't necessarily make you more beneficial to others nor does it necessarily make you an attractive, interesting or fulfilling acquaintance. Commonly, people respond most readily to something pitched at their own level.
Alasdair Codona
Re: classical elitism
Clearly there is better and worse in music as in anything else; to deny this is to rubbish any type of critical response. And undoubtedly some of the greatest music has come from the Austro-German tradition. But it's not the only tradition worth engaging in, and those who disdain other genres do it a disservice, while also revealing their own worryingly limited mindset.
The argument that much of it dates from times when society was far more hierarchical, and that this is partly responsible for people being unable to appreciate it today doesn't carry weight, as the music has no need of those considerations anyway. However, those overtones probably are perceived by many people today, and they need to be able to see beyond them. Shouting ever more loudly that this music is the greatest, and everything else inferior will hardly encourage them to do so. And to pour contempt on other genres, or music outside the Austro-German tradition often seems instinctive to those who've been trained in it.
Everyone (at least here) wants to see larger and better educated audiences at classical concerts. But people won't pay to sit through music to which they can't relate. Why should they? Clearly music education in schools needs to be of a higher standard and more demanding; certainly a problem in an already overcrowded and beaurocratic timetable. But classical musicians must also be prepared to get out of their ivory towers and engage at the grass roots, not just sit talking amongst themselves, dismissing anything that doesn't conform to certain criteria. That's one of the main reasons we're where we are now.
Re: classical elitism
Embryos unite! if we can all be musically nurtured early enough then (sorry, Daniel Barenboim) bring on the musak! For the sad fact is, not all embryos, children or adults will find their way to the concert hall. Am I alone in finding great joy in recorded classics in unexpected places? What musicians sometimes fail to understand in some of us non-musicians is that in an urge to get to the core of the music, to what it means to us in our journey through life, we can be impervious to technicalities and refinements. But for the purists among us, I urge you to beg borrow or steal Julian Barnes's Lemon Table and select his 'Vigilance.' Enjoy.
Re: classical elitism
As I read this thread I have the feeling that almost none of you here have actually listened to the lecture at all.
Re: classical elitism
Dear Mr/Ms Guest
I'm recording all the lectures and have listened to them both twice
Kind regards,
Lawrence
Re: classical elitism
I have to agree with the Guest - reading is not just a matter of seeing, it is of understanding - far too many people here don't seem to understand what was said in the lectures.
So far, at no point, has it been said that Classical Music is better than any other type of music (and if people would only bother to read Spinoza - who is fundamental to what is being said - then a lot of the prejudiced drivel that has been written here would bee seen as misguided and off the point).
This is a serious set of lectures by an expert - not an uninformed amateur with opinions.
Re: classical elitism
akfarrar:
Re: classical elitism
Rubbish.
What do musicologists know directly of music? They are experts in talking/writing about music - not performing. (Their ability to communicate in words is their expertise. In terms of music, many are failed musicians -those that can, do: Those that can't, teach.)
This pianist, conductor has a direct connection to the music the "wind machines" don't: That is exactly the point of asking an expert in MUSIC to talk about MUSIC rather than experts in Talking to TALK about MUSIC.
Your apparent wish to hear such people in preference to one of the greatest practitioners alive today could perhaps be compared to a wish to hear a Crib Notes writer talking about Shakespeare in preference to Shakespeare himself. Perhaps you would, I certainly wouldn't.
And since when has an ability to communicate in writing or speaking been excluded from the talents of Musicians - most people are multi-talented and an ability in one area does not exclude ability in another.
The problem of "understanding" that some people seem to be having lies in themselves, not in the speaker.
Re: classical elitism
Akfarrar; you write:
'What do musicologists know directly of music? They are experts in talking/writing about music - not performing. (Their ability to communicate in words is their expertise. In terms of music, many are failed musicians -those that can, do: Those that can't, teach.)'
There are good, bad and mediocre representatives of all three disciplines (performing, teaching, musicology), often in various combinations such as performer/teacher, performer/musicologist, etc.
As you seem to be posting your messages from Hungary, let me mention Béla Bartók. By all account he was one of the most significant composers of the 20th century. He earned his living by teaching the piano three days a week and also by giving piano recitals/concertos all over the world. Bartók was also a great scholar: his musicological works are immense both in quality and quantity - indeed, he left behind several volumes of musicological work of great significance.
Though on a different level, there are also others who combine two/three disciplines with distinction. You may have not come across them, but they do exist. So, dear Akfarrar, you are profoundly mistaken.
Re: classical elitism
You miss the point (not unexpected on this posting: With guest, I don't think people actually understand what Barenboim is saying or are they wanting him to talk about something else).
I do not think a musicologist has the ability to deliver these lectures and the point of the lectures is not subject to academic musical study.
You should have thrown in Kodaly as a better example of a musician who was doing a better job of mentoring and teaching music - my point exactly - the real musician does a better job than the academic or teacher, even in the academic's supposed field. Why do professional musicians seek to work with great musicians if they can get as good from musicologists?
The fact that a musician as eminent as Bartok was forced to teach to make a living does not justify the belief that teachers who are not good musicians have a better insight into the music - nor that they are capable of discussing music and it's meaning (whatever that is) better than a practising musician.
Bartok was researching (I happen to have been listening to some of the Folk music he collected last night as a way of further understanding his string quartets) as a way to develop his own musical language as a COMPOSER.
I very much doubt Barenboim has never "studied" the music - it is part of his "job".
My response was to a post which suggested a Musicologist could do a better job of delivering these lectures than Barenboim because the musicologist is an expert in words (implication, Barenboim, because he is a musician, is incapable of stringing two comprehensible sentences together).
Re: classical elitism
I have heard Daniel Barenboim on the radio several times in recent years, and have been impressed by him, his ideas, and particularly his pioneering work with the Arab/Israeli orchestra project. I therefore looked forward to the Reith Lectures, and indeed I enjoyed hearing his ideas as the first one progressed.
But I was very disappointed when I heard his somewhat sneering comment about the power of pop music: "If you feel it, how wonderful for you! " Yes I do hear it, and it is wonderful for me. I can remember relating to someone how, for me at times, certain moments of guitar music have been sheer 'droplets from heaven'.
At the age of 48 I recently bought a new guitar, and began attending a guitar class, in the hope of understanding, yes, more of the structure of some of the music which thrills me. Please don't waste any more breath trying to write off my enthusiasm, it won't work.
And yes, I shall listen to some of the following lectures.
Re: classical elitism
These are the worse Reith lectures I have encountered. I can't even listen to them without wanting to post arguments on this site.
The Reith Lectures have always struck me about trying to explain universalities in science and society.
All Barenboim is doing is expressing a bourgois philosophy of 'hearing' through the expression of classical music.
This is so much rubbish.
His audience may find him funny, I find him shocking. His elitist approach takes, predominatly, western modes of music as a form a universitlity. And then expands this to cover the role of hearing. Music is not even close to be a universal experience of listening, let alone hearing.
What he his doing is making an argument for expanding bourgois classical forms and using them to shape people - to convert people to the clasical civilisation. And this will solve the worlds problems?
Erm, no, I think even a simple review of global political history since the enlightenement will show it is part of the problem.
Thank you BBC for this peice of middle-class propganda.
Utter tosh. Classicalism as a solution. Ah!
Re: classical elitism
Daniel Barenboim is a wonderful musician, but he is also the very 'crisis in classical music' that was referred to in the second Reith Lecture. First, there is no need to denigrate the visual in order to affirm the value of the aural. Second, there is no need to rubbish Muzak or any other kind of music in order to justify classical music. If a retailer, like M&S, is going through hard times it makes little sense for its Chief Executive to stand outside its competitors's shops shouting at customers for deserting their stores. Far more interesting, enlightening and 'controversial' (if that is what the BBC required of their 2006 Reith Lecturer) were the late Glenn Gould's arguments in favour of Muzak.
Though not a musician I love classical music more than any other, but I cannot bear the snobbery of Barenboim, Brendel and, no doubt, Norman Lebrecht, towards the musical tastes of others unlike themselves. If they have their way classical music, in London at least, will be restricted to the Wigmore Hall. Fra better the populism of Classic FM or the open-mindedness of Sean Rafferty on Radio 3's Drivetime.
Instead of sounding off against a series of musical Aunt Sallies, Barenboim should have used his gifts to explain to the potentially enormous audience which the Reith Lectures can reach how classical music works . A golden opportunity has been missed.
Re: classical elitism
I very much appreciate your comments on 'classical elitism'. However; as I don't care much for Barenboim's evident take on the St.John-Goethe-Barenboim line (see my message posted on 'Barenboim and music'), can I now ask you not to mention Norman Lebrecht in one breath with Barenboim and Brendel? True; all three of them make an impressive living from classical music but Norman Lebrecht, according to the best of my knowledge, had no musical training (indeed; he is illiterate in music). It is both a mockery and a tragedy that a person without even minimal musical training can command such powerful position in the world of classical music.
Agnes Kory
Re: classical elitism
I cannot understand how you can distort what Daniel Barenboim said! He did not 'denigrate the visual'.
He spoke eloquently that sound is the most important sense to understand emotions and produced a reasoned argument for that case supported by scientific evidence. Argue against that please and adduce your evidence to the contrary.
Why should classical music be rubbished by inappropriate usage for advertising toilets, or any other commodity? Why should I be forced to listen to a 'popular' snatch from the Marriage of Figaro in the lift? These are the questions Daniel Barenboim raises and if you disagree, then address the questions.
You asked Daniel Barenboim to explain how classical music works. You say he has missed a great opportunity.
It seems to me that you have heard his talk, but not listened. In order to ask for such an explanation of how music works, shows that you have not listened and this is exactly the point he is making.
Can I suggest, you re-listen to the broadcast and then respond to the arguments raised. Please do not make unsubstantiated remarks, of no value.
Re: classical elitism
i read your statement with great interest. thank you for that. it is likely that barenboim is 'elitist' in the sense that he may not realise that music outside of his sphere of knowledge can bring about transcendental moments. you're right: even a sunrise will do it.
however, i believe that transcendental moments, though welcome and potentially life-changing (i personally knew i was to become a musician after an epiphany listening to a mozart piano concerto), are random and arbitrary. knowledge deepens one's appreciation on a more sustainable level; this 'heightened awareness' of deeper levels in the music is constantly with you. ironically, you could even argue that it increases the likehood of transcendental moments happening more often.
and as for 'people responding most readily to something pitched at their own level' - yes, absolutely. BUT, to different extents, we also enjoy being challenged as it opens us up to those deeper levels. i wouldn't have enjoyed reading and thinking about your message if it wasn't the case.
Re: classical elitism
I actually enjoyed the limited world view of music that Barenboim presents, but to me classical music never appealed since its classicism was too sterile and "fixed" in its sense of expression. I always did (and still do) prefer the freedom of expression in jazz because the improvisation it allows transcends the strict formal parameters of the classical.
Re: classical elitism
I started listening to the Reith lecture (on the World Service as a Brit living in the USA) with great interest but by the end I was talking back to my radio in utter irritation at his dismissive attitude towards anything which isn't western classical music ( and let's be honest here, what he is talking about is white music.) The clear attitude was, that if us lesser mortals can feel an emotional response to - say - rock or blues or my own particular current favourite, certain types of African music, then we are clearly to be patronised.
As a child at a posh English boarding school, I was forced to endure weekly music appreciation classes where we sat neatly in silent rows, listening the that week's chosen piece of the classics, then wrote an essay on it. It was enough to put anyone off for life. My own kids spent their early years strapped in their car child seats "forced" to listen to their mother's choice of The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Clapton and other greats of the baby boomer generation. The result? My daughter plays anything from classics to showtunes on the piano and also drums, my son plays electric guitar and recently scrounged a cello on loan that he's keen to play. Both write their own songs and are endlessly creative with music, as many of their friends also seem to be in this musically democratic age. I, on the other hand, have never done anything remotely creative in my life, despite all that early musical "education".
Oh, and by the way, in my opinion before the sound - there was the rhythm!
Re: classical elitism
< Oh, and by the way, in my opinion before the sound - there was the rhythm!>
"As music 'evolves' its dependence upon rhythmic-intensity is supplanted by other less-tribal and ritualistic musical devices - hereby the sophistication and emancipation of musical form reaches away from the solid and material into the realms of inspiration - the mental and spiritual ream - the mystical and ethereal..... the cosmic...."
I'm still feeling brave in my anonymity:-) and I continue to 'illustrate':
"As music 'evolves', its dependence upon rhythmic intensity is supplanted by other less-tribal and ritualistic musical 'devices'. Lyricism and melodic sound patterns becomes more and more self-sufficient without the accompanist 'beating' the audience into submission."
"Music is the international language of the human spirit."
"Elitism is too often confused with the persuit of excellence - or with empowerment facilitated by money."
"The pursuit of 'Excellence' is a native entitlement of all humanity."
According to the state of the 'spirit' the affinity to musical form is 'tuned' - the perceptions of 'elitism' in classical music arise from the 'pretences' that this genera is better 'tuned' to the intellectual mind and that the 'base-ness' of 'others' is counter-evolutionary.
IMO, this is only true from those among humanity who would divide and segregate by 'artificial' non-egalitarian boundaries that do NOT recognise the musical rights of others. That we make judgment according to our rules-of-discernment is natural - that we 'evolve' our rules-of-discernment to higher standards of excellence is progress.
Judgement of higher-from-lower is a relativity empowered by our sensory observations and reasoning about the merits of consequences.
There have been 'Classical-musicians/teachers' who pretended that only cultured Western-Europeans could ever 'interpret' the music of the great European composers.
How many GREAT Eastern/Asian pianist etc. (Fou Tsong was among the trend-setters) how many do we have today?
Elitism is an 'artefact' of the pretentious - the persuit of excellence is internationally enabled for anyone whose desire is strong and responded to the encouragement of the 'egalitarian-minded' patron.....
AlanD (a 'patron' of egalitarian excellences)
Re: classical elitism
What rot. Sounds like inverted snobbery to me.
Did you listen to what he said or come to the programme already with a view?
He made it very clear at the outset, you cannot talk about music, you can only talk about people's reactions to music.
He is a classical (western) musician so of course he will talk about western classical music. That is what he was invited to do - he is not an "expert" in any other area. There is no value in attacking him for what he was not asked to do and would most likely not have agreed to do.
At no point did he comment on the value or "quality" of any other type of music. Your interpretation of the laughter could be taken as a mistake. Sue Lawley pushed him to make the "quip" - which could have been very sincerely meant - if YOU feel, how wonderful, for YOU.
The attitude of pop music is BETTER because it is subversive is fine - provided you have choosen that attitude based not on a narrow knowledge of only pop music, but have also a knowledge of classical music, Indian, Chinesse and African, Jazz, Salsa, Romanian Folk and its difference in performing style from Roma, etc,etc,etc.
Willard White made a point about free will and black youngsters in America - Barenboim countered that ignorance is not free will.
Here (this talk) he was talking about making music rather than listening. What he said was applicable to a wide range of musical genres - even though he was concerned with "classical". Too many of the selected audience questions were 'off the point' of the talk.
Re: classical elitism
While Barenboim's first Reith Lecture seems to be getting a hearty thumbs up from his core R4 audience, his generally aloof manner and distaste towards other anything outside his experience will win no-one to his cause. I Listened to the broadcast with some young musicians (rock and orchestral) around at the time in school holidays, and Barenboim seemed only to confirm a stereotype for them of the classical artist as a musician jubilantly blinkered in their sense of their own natural superiority. I look forward to hearing more from Barenboim to see if he can pull this round this extraordinarily poor representation of this subject, or dig himself an even deeper hole.
Re: classical elitism
Edward,
I think there is a very real question, not as to whether classical or popular forms of music are better, but to what extent they are inherently different and work in different ways. If that is the case, it may be that the points Barenboim is making only apply to music in the classical tradition, which needs training and a certain sort of education to be understood. It could be said that popular music perhaps has a greater power because of its immediacy. On the other hand, it could be the very fact that classical music needs greater attention and relies on delayed gratification, that makes it so valuable.
My own view is that they are as different as painting and photography. Both have very real value, but work in different ways, adn it is a waste of time and space trying to say one is better than the other. Equally it is wrong to say one is elitist and the other not. That may be the way society views classical music, but that is society's problem, not the fault of the music!
Re: classical elitism
Read my posting: I said nothing about a value judgement. I'm simply responding to Barenboim's sneering and ill-informed manner towards music he doesn't perform. Perhaps he should be left in his utopia where he imagines that ALL music before Bach and since will fit on the twelve notes of his piano.
The production most shows its knickers is in the transcript of the first lecture
http://www.bbc.co.uk/print/radio4/reith2006/lecture1.shtml?print
where Barenboim's suggestion that EVEN the music of the 'The Beatles' would be reducible to the same twelve notes as Bach used in the WTC has been rendered in the transcript as 'The Levitas', whatever that means. Obviously not Barenboim's slip: even he remembers who the Beatles were.
Re: classical elitism
I like the analogy between painting and photography though there are times when I'm not sure which is which! Perhaps you could extend this to the polarity sometimes set up between theatre and film. I have problems with the issues of immediacy and understanding as well as the generic delineations that we all use (I'm guilty of this myself).
Immediacy: I believe that much popular music does rely on an awareness of its style and subtexts for effect. This may potentially prevent such music from communicating with its audience in a particularly immediate way - our responses are conditioned by our experience, which may not be quite the same as our learning. Similarly though, I believe there's much so-called 'classical' music which may not require much thought, prior experience or learning in order to be effective.
Understanding: my understanding of Beethoven's music is no doubt different to that of Barenboim, Susan McClary or Tovey (to say nothing of Schubert, Berlioz or Shostakovich). I think we all bring a lot of baggage to the debate which is what makes it interesting. However, we shouldn't be seduced by the idea that there is something objective waiting to be understood or believe that deliberate and identifiable meanings may necessarily be unlocked by education or experience.
Barenboim was no doubt chosen for the series because he's a high profile figure, a very accomplished performer (at least in my view!) and an articulate musician. I doubt whether he intends to be especially polemical and I certainly don't think they will give rise to any great political or cultural consensus. What I find rewarding is that we're giving airtime to a representative of a particular tradition and of a remarkable specialism.
Re: classical elitism
Elitism and Barenboim's view that we need to be educated about classical music will become a major issue in his next lecture. Having spent my life lecturing on music - to adults, kids and university students - I agree with him: learning about music, from all angles, deepens you appreciation. I still learn, and it still widens my perspective. And that's by no means just 'classical music'.
BUT
Alasdair Cordona's very slickly-written response is very welcome. Do you HAVE to learn so much about classical music to appreciate it? And Barenboim's put-down of other forms of music was very evident in his sarcastic response.
Here's where Charles Wiffen's point comes in. To my mind there IS a hierarchy of worth and depth in music and certainly it's not the central German-Austrian repertoire which is always the best, though many would have it so. Is 'serious' music somehow better? Is complex music somehow better? Is written-down music somehow better?
Not to my mind.
The whole concept of the 'worth' of music is fraught with problems, not least because it depends on function, ability to participate, and all kinds of other things. We may each have our 'tops' partly because of what we are: our own individuality. And our pet-hates may also teach ourselves something. (I loathe Brahms and Bob Dylan for example).
My pleasure is always to discover new things in music, some of which are helped by knowledge, in fact most of them I'm currently into Flamenco and Cante Jondo - reading a little has helped me.
In my teens I went to Eel Pie Island and the 'Stones' were my celeb heros. That was part of my teens and then I left Pop music behind and moved on to Jazz: I'll be bold enough to say I grew out of it. Perhaps I'd be musically richer if I hadn't.
Don't we all have our own stories, and isn't that the pleasure of it, rather than rights or wrongs?
Except I still think there are betters and bests, though they transcend any barriers of genre.
Re: classical elitism
RLS you make a very valid point about the 'the repetoire'.
The validation of DBs thesis is that formal music can be leanred and appreciated according to a rule-set. It can be written down and played to specification. Therefore it is transferable. And repeatable ad infitum.
There is significant double helix that underpins DBs thesis: the 'classical' enlightnement and empiricism.
The 'classical' form of music transcription is very much a beast of empricism. The division of tone and time is very much a 'empircal' rendering of music.
DB wants us to be better humans by educating us - his thesis is that we have missed out on a crucial pillar that can make us 'enlightened' and that the formality of classical music is as good a training regime as any...
Yes, DB use classical music becaue he is a classical musician, but he is also promoting/propogandising a classical approach to civilisation.
The read-back from this is that the classically-literate are already civilised and everyone else is lacking somehow.
This is as elistist as European's have been since the 15th century.
Re: classical elitism
Yes, Barenboim's terms of reference may seem quaintly narrow to our postmodern eyes and ears. He speaks and performs with the authority of a musician who has led a charmed artistic and professional life and comes from a now-distant world in which the Austro-Germanic canon still survives and holds significant influence (if not the hegemony which it once enjoyed). Barenboim is unlikely to recognise the sociological and aesthetic significance of popular or world musics and it is indeed tempting to take issue with his stance. However, we should not ignore the transcendent potential of the repertoire for which he makes such a compelling argument. A culture in which everyone agreed the merits of everything and in which no hierarchies were postulated would be horribly bland.
Re: classical elitism
Barenboim does not play jazz or blues or world music so he should not be expected to talk about them. His area of expertise is classical music. I was surprised by the debate that Barenboim's lectures have triggered but it has been very interesting. Perhaps someone could explain to me a little more about these "transcendent moments". Are you talking about a some kind of spiritual experience?
Re: classical elitism
It is precisely his inability to acknowledge, let alone engage with popular or 'world' musics that will leave many younger or more progressive listeners who happen to stray into Barenboim's indulgent diatribe to feel both both ignored by his monocular vision of music, and disrespected by his smug replies to attempts to make him address seriously non-classical traditions. Maybe the problem is that the (Austro-Germanic) music that he is prepared to engage with intellectually is too rooted in a distant age of vivid hierarchies, when folk knew a Count Waldstien or an Esterhaz prince when they saw one, which to our postmodern eyes all seems strangely irrelevant.
Re: classical elitism
> It is precisely his inability to acknowledge, let
> alone engage with popular or 'world' musics that will
> leave many younger or more progressive listeners who
> happen to stray into Barenboim's indulgent diatribe
> to feel both both ignored by his monocular vision of
> music, and disrespected by his smug replies to
> attempts to make him address seriously non-classical
> traditions.
I agree with all this and yet again, R4 deliberately alienates the Neil Young and John Peel generation with this year’s Reith lecture. They did the same thing with the recent ‘Soul Music’ series, by only choosing classical pieces (OK with one exception). Why no Neil Young, Van Morrison or Rory Gallagher? R4 hates people who love folk, rock, blues, garage and any kind of music that isn’t classical or opera. One only has to witness the endless numbers of opera programmes hosted Hugh Edwards – more establishment upper-class music. Even the Ken Clarke series doesn’t consider any of the modern jazz musicians who must have influenced my generation: Dick Heckstall Smith, Elton Dean, Jon Hiseman…..
I was a teenager when ‘The Soft Machine’ played at the proms and recall being full of excitement and hope that things were finally changing. The upper-classes weren’t going to be allowed to dictate the kind of music that I should have to listen to.
The only classical musician who ever influenced me in any profound way was the late Iona Brown and that was a consequence of listening to the description of her own musical journey when she played ‘The Lark Ascending’. This was featured in the R4 programme ‘Little Brown' Job’ which I regard as an R4 classic.
Finally, the audience sounded like those that one observes on R4's ‘Quote Unquote’. It struck me that the ‘celebrities’ were more interested in hearing their own voices, rather than listening to Mr Barenboim's response to their questions. PLEASE, no more celebrities in future audiences.
Re: classical elitism
Is Barenboim guilty of elitism? Yes, of course, but only the entirely necessary elitism of that values Shakespeare over Eastenders, Tolstoy over The Beano and Rembrandt over drawings on toilet walls.
Pop or rock or whatever term you want to use is clearly inferior to true art music - what the more ignorant pigeonhole as 'classical music'. The only people who could ever claim otherwise are those with no musical feeling or understanding whatever.
Pop/rock is music written by people who know little harmony and no counterpoint, for performers who have no understanding of singing and can barely manipulate their instruments - having deliberately chosen electric guitars and drums, the least expressive of all. It is music that cannot sustain a structure beyond the length of one side of a single, that is wedded to the banal form of a verse and refrain and has no notion of how to escape it. It is music with intellectual pretensions - but only through the ignorant pretentiousness of its proponents - but with no intellectual merit whatever. To set it on a pedestal over genuine art music is to advocate ignorance over knowledge, stupidity over understanding.
It disgusts me, quite frankly, to see, as we so often do nowadays, people who claim to be intellectuals, who will earnestly discuss the literature of the past and the visual art of the past, who would not dream of dispensing with The Tempest, Ulysses, Leonardo's Last Supper or Michelangelo's David, affecting ill-informed contempt for the equivalent works of the other major category of western art.
How dare you claim that its hegemony is over, or whatever high-falutin term you use? How dare you impose your own petty 'preferences' on an art-form that is infinitely greater than you, than me or than any of us? How dare you try to chuck away 600 years of western culture, in order to replace it with something of such low achievement and limited shelf-life? You might as well walk into the National Gallery with a flamethrower, and replace the contents with graffiti.
It is indeed unfortunate that Radio 4 should alienate the 'Neil Young generation' - I'm sure a corporate apology is even now being drafted. But has it occurred to you why you all talk of 'this generation' and 'that generation', of the 'era of punk' and 'the age of hiphop'? Because the popular musics you love so much are entirely ephemeral. Because they have so little innate musical value that they cannot sustain themselves beyond the childhoods of the people who were twelve when they came out. Because, like a Big Mac or a KFC bucket, there is nothing intrinsic to them that can possibly last.
This is not true of Othello, Bleak House or The Waste Land - or would you claim that their hegemony has also ended? - nor is it true of, say, the St. Matthew Passion, the late Beethoven quartets, The Rite of Spring or Mahler's 9th Symphony. To name but a few. Works with beauty, intellectual rigour and emotional depth. Works that use harmony, counterpoint and an understanding of the expressive qualities of real instruments - not just the sort that beat you around the head - to create genuinely profound statements of the sort that you might otherwise look for in Hamlet, Anna Karenina or the paintings of Van Gogh. Works that have not survived to this day - any more than Shakespeare has - because of some 'bourgeois' conspiracy to foist elitist art on the working man (grow up, for goodness sake!), but because successive generations, over hundreds of years, have recognised, either as performers or as listeners, that they contain the most valuable contributions of any musicians to our collective culture, and that, because of this, they bear greater repetition and more varied interpretation than the fashionable music of the moment, whatever it happens to be.
If that's elitist, then I'm happy to be so. If you'd rather not be, then off you go with your flamethrower. There's an awful lot of western culture to set burning.
Re: classical elitism
Thank you for such a detailed and thoughtful response Mr./Dr./Professor Follows. I think your intolerance of other people’s musical tastes and interests will have the effect of driving away potential new recruits to the grim, stagnant, and humourless musical world that you appear to inhabit.
Please define ‘art music’. Does this include Jazz, Blues, Folk, World…….? Did Elgar compose ‘art music’, since I’ve detected powerful polarization forces at work when I hear his compositions discussed?
Factually incorrect and I’m sure that a guitarist such as Mr. John McLaughlin will be delighted to know that his instrument of choice can’t be regarded as musically ‘expressive’ or that he belongs to a group of individuals who ‘can barely manipulate their instruments’. Perhaps you’d be kind enough to supply details of musical instruments that are expressive? If performers such as Ms. June Tabor possess no understanding of singing, then why is her voice able to penetrate the very depths of my own emotional reservoir?
So how does one define ‘intellectual merit’ within music? Must all composers posses an IQ >> 160 to produce music of ‘intellectual merit’? Does this also apply to the listener? Is a binman qualified to listen to ‘art music’?
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Really? Have you ever listened to the song ‘Darling Belle’ by The Incredible String Band and the intriguing path this song weaves? I’ve heard Mr. Stephen Fry speaking on the radio (the Radio 2 Folk awards) in respect of how important this piece was within his own life. Does this mean that Mr. Fry is a musical intellectual derelict?
Was this comment aimed at me? If so, I never made (or implied) any reference to ‘hegemony’ in my original posting and simply pointed out the accurate observation that Radio 4’s musically related output is skewed in favour of classical and opera. If the average age of the R4 listener is about 53, then it suggests that quite a few of these will have grown up with the music of Roy Harper, Lamont Dozier and Frank Zappa. Why doesn’t R4 ever consider these listeners? Lack of poshness or an Oxbridge degree shouldn’t disqualify them from representation by a publicly financed radio station.
Well, I consume prodigious amounts of R4 and have heard endless trails for this series of Reith Lectures – sadly with no accompanying music :) – yet not a word of apology to Mr Young. I believe he could have made an important contribution to this first lecture.
Yes, of course, but trends within music don’t remain undifferentiated and the rate of change of this differential will be strongly dependent on social factors such as improved communications (radio etc) and mass access to music. Hence the reason for the transient nature of popular music trends. If a musical style doesn’t change for a significant amount of time then it’s bound to be assigned the degree of absoluteness to which you allude.
I’m quite prepared to admit that my own musical blindness causes me concern and I’m hoping that some of the eminent psychologists and neuroscientists taking part in these lectures can shed some light on this mystery. I’m even one of those unfortunate individuals who loves listening to the music associated with adverts! Hee-hee-hee-hee, I’m fascinated with this current Channel 4 advert (think it’s a financial company) with someone playing ’Swinging Safari’ on the guitar!
Re: classical elitism
I couldn't agree with you more! There seems at present a whole cluster of modern society who not only deny the gold of our cultural past but almost guarantee that we won't have one worth singing about in the future. I actually quite like pop music but with all due respect it has no real lasting value nor is it the stuff of building a new cultural future for all of humanity, not just an elite group as is feared.
Re: classical elitism
Oh, Stephen, Stephen.
How I feel sorry for you.
To deliberately close your ears to the beauty of the Jesus and Mary Chain's finer moments; to not know the sublime humour of Phil Oakey suddenly announcing "but this is Phil talking, I want to tell you..." in the middle of the Human League's Love Action. To feel nothing but contempt for the deep, real trickle of ice down your spine when Jarvis Cocker retraces the last few hours of a doomed teenage girl on Pulp's The Night Minnie Timperley Died. To have a mind permanently closed to the Bhundu Boys and (early) Madonna.
Only early Madonna, mind - the later stuff is quite poor.
I have songs that meant a lot to me when I was nine which, three decades later, still stop me in my tracks. And songs created before I was born whose beauty stands alongside the best of Mozart.
I feel sorry for someone who cannot hear Fontella Bass and feel their soul resonante. Have fun in your ivory tower.
Re: classical elitism
I couldn't agree more about the carefully pre-planned audience questions. Why not have some spontaneous responses to the lecture instead? It doesn't particularly concern me whether the questioners are celebrities or not as long as they are not hopelessly sycophantic....