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It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes.

'who are ultimately crowned "great artists" with "towering achievements"'

-by some, evidently. ;-)

"yesterday's artists can never convey today's message. They aren't around"

Then how do you explain that so many of today's film scores are written in an older romantic or post-romantic style? These films and their music are eagerly consumed and celebrated by today's audiences - whose size positively dwarfs today's so-called "serious concert" audience. To me, that shows that the "new for the sake of newness" or "new because today's message is different" arguments are bogus. The romantic style of the average "Theme from Star Trek", especially when written by a Jerry Goldsmith or even a James Horner, is going to move and influence far, far more people than anything that Ades has written. In fact, I've noticed that such things as the "Theme from Ladies in Lavender" (a Maggie Smith special!) have started to appear - multiple times - on the student recitals I accompany. Same has been true for much longer with the "Schindler's List" themes, which of course Perlman himself plays. This music just seems to have so much more of an impact on audiences than, say, Lindberg's Violin Concerto (much as I love Lisa most of the time!).



Of course, I'm not necessarily claiming that this kind of film music is "great music". But I've noticed that when the SF Symphony needs to get a lot of people in the seats, they'll roll out a "film music" extravaganza, and MTT will conduct the complete score to, say, "Vertigo", or something similar. It seems to be something that the audience needs far more than it needs the latest creation of a more exclusively "classical" composer, safely ensconced in his academic position with his grant money, but without the necessity to connect with the average audience member.

I forget who the author was, but I read one book wherein the author claimed that the style of ancient Egyptian music seems to have remained unchanged for at least 1500 years. Why are some of us in the West now so anxious to get to the "next big thing" that we largely have lost the very essence (the ability to move people in some way) of the art we supposedly celebrate?


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