In Reply to: The classical music continuing struggle and the 800-pound gorilla in the room: posted by tinear on April 17, 2014 at 07:22:54:
We live in an audio-visual environment. Everything has changed. In fact as humans we always were more visual than auditive - our visual processing system is more complex.We also live in a much more interactive environment - computers quite rightly have replaced TVs to a large extent. Part of the change here is that far fewer hours are spent reading books - particularly among males.
The other big change is the degree of stimulation modern generations have in their lives (action movies, video games etc) and consequently crave.
Classical music - unless you play it yourself - has all the features that mark it for obsolescence.
- It's intellectual rather than stimulus rich - no beat to get the body moving
- Videos of classical concerts are so BORING you could fall asleep. Contrast that with pop videosIt's just not much of a "SHOW". And turning it into a show often cheapens it - the problem with crossover.
The demise of classical music goes hand in hand with the demise of another narrative form - narrative film that depends on character depth, psychology and carefully crafted dialogue. Take the films of Eric Rohmer - masterpieces that would never be made in Hollywood (or Bollywood...)
We're in the generation of Michael Gleik's "Faster - The Acceleration of Just About Everything".
People don't have the patience for anything longitudinal. Their brains are conditioned to switch to another "song" every 3.5 minutes.
It's a fundamental change in how we process information in so many ways. In our hyperlink world we look for information laterally, not longitudinally.
And that's bad for classical music.
Edits: 04/18/14
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Follow Ups
- We live in an audio-visual environment - andy evans 00:48:04 04/18/14 (1)
- Monty Python - Bob Neill 07:21:29 04/18/14 (0)