# It’s time to let classical music die



## nolotrippen (Nov 20, 2020)

Found this on the interweb. Got my juices flowing a smidge (not the way the author intended, I'm sure). Your thoughts?









It’s Time to Let Classical Music Die


There comes a point in some abusive relationships where the victim wakes up out of their Stockholm syndrome and learns that they need to plan an escape. My fellow musicians of color: it is time to accept that we are in an abusive relationship with classical music.




nmbx.newmusicusa.org


----------



## youngpokie (Nov 20, 2020)

I feel like every new generation after J. S. Bach has had a different set of reasons of why classical music must die and why this or that new music must be promoted and financed instead. This latest justifications seem inspired by Critical Race theory that everything white is inherently racist. 

But the truth should be acknowledged - the much-loved modernist composers of the 1920s and 1930s in Europe and America destroyed the advances that "negro music" made by suggesting it was too primitive and these were not "real" composers. 

And so William Dawson wrote Negro Symphony, his major work, in the 1930s. He died in 1990.


----------



## TGV (Nov 20, 2020)

Perhaps this is better moved to the Ranting Drama Zone?


----------



## Stringtree (Nov 20, 2020)

"Promoted and financed" as @youngpokie wrote might be the heart of the issue. 

These articles are well-written and good. I'm looking from the outside in. I appreciate reading about real experience. From what I've read, this is real.

In fields outside of subsidized music, the kind that doesn't need foundations and boards and committees, people of color have knocked it out of the park for a long time. 

But once the ones with the agglomerated money put on their fancy clothes and start meeting in groups of their own to decide how the money should be spent, many dynamics are at play. Social, political, economic, historic. 

What is classical music, anyway? If it only exists within the structures built by our forebears, how would I go back to a time before racial identity? How could anybody? 

I do think the solutions proposed are a little confusing. Meanwhile, my mind is open to a lot of music.


----------



## givemenoughrope (Nov 20, 2020)

It's Time to Let EDM Die


----------



## nolotrippen (Nov 20, 2020)

TGV said:


> Perhaps this is better moved to the Ranting Drama Zone?


Thought that since this dealt with composing, this was the spot.


----------



## nolotrippen (Nov 20, 2020)

Stringtree said:


> In fields outside of subsidized music



But isn't all music that "sells" subsidized, either by cloistered academia or someone with some cash for iTunes?


----------



## Stringtree (Nov 20, 2020)

nolotrippen said:


> But isn't all music that "sells" subsidized, either by cloistered academia or someone with some cash for iTunes?



1.
a sum of money granted by the government or a public body to assist an industry or business so that the price of a commodity or service may remain low or competitive.


This is the sense in which I meant it. An audience may appreciate it, but not without the 'handicap' in the golf sense that subsidization affords payment of the artists and infrastructure that support it. 


Sure, if audiences existed that were interested enough in this music to keep it alive, meaning classical art music, by all means, it might be competitive on a platform like iTunes. 

Historically, though, it has been something we 'ought to do,' like public broadcasting, or equal time given to Cookie Monster.


----------



## nolotrippen (Nov 20, 2020)

Stringtree said:


> 1.
> a sum of money granted by the government or a public body to assist an industry or business so that the price of a commodity or service may remain low or competitive.
> 
> 
> ...



Money is money. I think Cookie Monster said that. 😉


----------



## youngpokie (Nov 20, 2020)

Stringtree said:


> If it only exists within the structures built by our forebears, how would I go back to a time before racial identity? How could anybody?



I agree - to a large extent this is part of the dilemma. 

On the one hand, the real issue of the article is whether or not there should be an "American school" of classical music, organically and locally developed - just like Western European classical school was a locally developed, organic tradition evolving from modes, Gregorian chants and so on.

What happened instead was that Western European tradition was imported to America and then, most critically and tragically, held up as a cultural benchmark to the exclusion of everything else. 

But on the other hand, there is a legitimate question of what such American "local" tradition could be based on if not the black, Amerindian and any non-white music. 

To me, the author of the article is advocating for option 2. 

But, despite the sordid history, I genuinely do not understand why the rest of Americans cannot participate and contribute to the development of a distinctly American classical school and therefore avoid making it all about white and non-white...


----------



## thesteelydane (Nov 20, 2020)

I sympathise hugely with any and all attempts to level the playing field for every race, sex and minority, but I have a huge problem with this bit: "White composers can spend time analyzing their own history and influences on that history – i.e. Gregorian chants and their influence from the Middle East; Pagan and other minority religions; minority histories within Europe; or traditional Celtic, Greek, and Italian music. A lot of has been explored in European tradition, but since the Romantic era, too many works have been explored from the belief that white Western culture is superior to all others. Abandoning this vantage point can lead white composers to explore a more nuanced, more accurate history than the one presented to us."

This is such narrow-minded, academic view of what it means to be a composer. I come from a classical, European background, but my influences are certainly not limited to that, nor do I consider myself to be a product of that history. Maybe academia is still this way, but literally every working musician and artist outside of that small circle are influenced by a huge variety of cultures. And as someone who has chosen to live in a culture completely foreign to my own (South East Asia), I can confirm that EVERYONE suffers from cultural bias. Everybody thinks their culture to be superior and judges other cultures on how they compare to their own. Traveling and ripping your roots up, is the only antidote to that that I know of. After 7 years in Vietnam I still have daily moments of WTF? but at least now I also recognise my own cultural bias in those moments.


----------



## Stringtree (Nov 20, 2020)

With respect to the articles, I don't believe the author is someone who tried and failed, but someone who went through all the 'classical' gauntlets and emerged as a real practitioner. And he's disillusioned, because when he looks at the programs, they don't reflect the diversity of composers that he's expecting to see.

Indian Classical music or Cuban rumba are not going to entice 'mainstream' western audiences unless there's a film hookup that charges the wider musical audiences receptive to unfamiliar sounds.

Cases in point: the "Chant" hysteria of the 90s, or "Brother Where Art Thou" in 2000, Perez Prado in the 1950s, or 1920s 'Orientalism' fashion. Flash in the pan, and certainly not books on the shelf at eye level. Niche.

Imagine just being a person, of ordinary American descent, and regarded as someone 'exotic' and outside the 'mainstream' you gave your whole life and education to. 

That's worth reading, I think, the experience of someone who finds himself a little perturbed that it's not the beautiful world of sound he expected after working so hard to get into the water. 

As for calling for the death of classical music, I'm not going to stop listening. I just think the ire might be a little shy of its target in these writings.


----------



## Henu (Nov 20, 2020)

Stringtree said:


> the "Chant" hysteria of the 90s, or "Brother Where Art Thou" in 2000, Perez Prado in the 1950s, or 1920s 'Orientalism' fashion.



And the 60's India-vibes (into less extent also seen at the late 90's after "the chant") + the whole Africa- thing in the mid-80's! Just discussed about that with my wife yesterday when I was listening to Paul Simon's brilliant Graceland.

(Poor Paul, so obviously stuck in his Western way of composing.  )


----------



## Virtual Virgin (Nov 20, 2020)

Stringtree said:


> 1.
> a sum of money granted by the government or a public body to assist an industry or business so that the price of a commodity or service may remain low or competitive.
> 
> 
> ...



Or you could start with an accurate description of the world, which is that far more people are listening to classical music now then when it was originally created.

Try-








Sorry Beyoncé, Mozart actually had the best-selling CD of 2016


This year's biggest release came from a musician who has been dead for more than two centuries.




www.newsweek.com




.

or



The YouTube video in the link above for "The Best of Classical Music" has +100 million views.

*The entire population of Europe around the time of Mozart was only about 200 million.*


----------



## Stringtree (Nov 20, 2020)

Thanks for bringing that to my attention. I was coming at it from a performance perspective, which has been hampered by the nasty virus. I'm glad Mozart is still a thing. Cheers!


----------



## cqd (Nov 20, 2020)

This person is an idiot..

Ignore him..

(oh sh1t..I misgendered him..ignore them...he's plural apparently..)


----------



## Stringtree (Nov 20, 2020)

When I went downstairs to the chest freezer to free up some Haluski for lunch, I held my head high, as I knew there would be at least one dude at my back. 

Tossing out an Internet comment like a Frisbee (TM) has never been so easy. 

Thank you, brother. Or sister? I don't care not a whit. 

/Shiraz helps
//Meanness it don't 
///Time for bacon, sausage, and cabij. Maybe some Mahler.


----------



## CT (Nov 20, 2020)

Yawn.


----------



## cuttime (Nov 20, 2020)

Adam Neely video from 2 months ago redux. I was flamed for not wanting to spend 45 minutes on that video. Just for the record, I went back and watched it.


----------



## wholeonions (Nov 20, 2020)

Hmm, that's a hot take, let's see what this article is about...

| *Classical Music is Inherently Racist* 

Aaaaaaand closed.


----------



## GtrString (Nov 20, 2020)

Rock has died several times, but is alive and kickin'! Just saying, death is not the end of it.


----------



## CT (Nov 20, 2020)

The people who write about things dying tend to die before the things do.


----------



## Ivan M. (Nov 20, 2020)

Too lazy to read, but "let XYZ music die"... why do people have the need to force their world view onto others


----------



## South Thames (Nov 20, 2020)

Yup, total phoney baloney. Academic composer with all the trimmings writes a 'woke' critical-theory infused take on classical music to burnish their credentials, under the pretence they are doing something original or brave. In truth this sort of stuff is lapped up in US academia.


----------



## Trash Panda (Nov 20, 2020)

Ivan M. said:


> Too lazy to read, but "let XYZ music die"... why do people have the need to force their world view onto others


Probably because they spend their entire lives having others' world views forced on them via mass media, laws and institutions.

Edit: This isn't aimed at one group of people with the "they" but rather everyone always having others' world views pushed on them. Some individuals respond by joining in and pushing their opinions on everyone else.


----------



## Virtual Virgin (Nov 20, 2020)

Make sure to read history friends:

This is from Wikipedia on the Cultural Revolution in China-

*"Destruction of the Four Olds[edit]*
Main article: Four Olds

Between August and November 1966, eight mass rallies were held in which over 12 million people from all over the country, most of whom were Red Guards, participated.[48] The government bore the expenses of Red Guards travelling around the country exchanging "revolutionary experiences".[57]

*At the Red Guard rallies, Lin Biao also called for the destruction of the "Four Olds"; namely, old customs, culture, habits, and ideas.*[49] A revolutionary fever swept the country by storm, with Red Guards acting as its most prominent warriors. Some changes associated with the "Four Olds" campaign were mainly benign, such as assigning new names to city streets, places, and even people; millions of babies were born with "revolutionary"-sounding names during this period.[58] Other aspects of Red Guard activities were more destructive, particularly in the realms of culture and religion. Various historical sites throughout the country were destroyed. The damage was particularly pronounced in the capital, Beijing. Red Guards also laid siege to the Temple of Confucius in Shandong province,[59] and numerous other historically significant tombs and artifacts.[60] Libraries full of historical and foreign texts were destroyed; books were burned. Temples, churches, mosques, monasteries, and cemeteries were closed down and sometimes converted to other uses, looted, and destroyed.[61] Marxist propaganda depicted Buddhism as superstition, and religion was looked upon as a means of hostile foreign infiltration, as well as an instrument of the ruling class.[62] Clergy were arrested and sent to camps; many Tibetan Buddhists were forced to participate in the destruction of their monasteries at gunpoint.[62]"


----------

