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In Reply to: RE: Remember JP Sousa's warning . . . posted by Brian H P on February 23, 2015 at 10:50:35
Actually, I don't remember J. P. Sousa's remarks on that. He died well before I was born, and I don't remember coming across them before. But I tend to agree with him on learning to play instruments and buying them. Before all that recorded music and radio, etc., if a lot of people wanted music at home, they had to supply it themselves or depend on friends and neighbors and go to such concerts as came their way. Churches have long had live music, and still do, though now microphones help out a lot.
I am a good example of this, though my brothers were not as they could sight read music and learned to play instruments. We all sang, one brother was a voice major. I am not much of a technical musician, but I do sing pretty well in most people's opinion, though my voice teacher thinks I need improvement, though she admits I have a beautiful voice.
Concerts I don't know about. Many churches had live music in the past, of course. But how many concerts did most people attend years ago? Nowadays, a lot of churches still have live music, too, but many in the choirs have little musical training. There are many live concerts but so many of them are amplified. So, Sousa may have been only partially right about the effect of recordings on concerts.
Our local choral society is devoted to performing great choral works (we're working on the Brahms German Requiem this year), and as a group, read music pretty well, especially the sopranos and altos. There are enough that do sight read music to carry the rest along. The tenors as a group read pretty well, but some are women. Most of the bass section dont't sight read well, although one of our basses sight reads music very well. But he also plays flute in the orchestra, so if we perform with the orchestra, he can't sing with us.
I understand some European countries have great musical traditions.
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"A fool and his money are soon parted." --- Thomas Tusser
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. . . before radio and record players, when probably MOST well-off households had a piano -- the ability to play was considered a social grace -- and MANY working folks had a guitar or banjo or dulcimer or penny whistle or whatever. For entertainment, people would get together to sing and play, not at a professional level but well enough to have fun. And there really were traveling instrument salesmen like in The Music Man, promoting their companies' products all over the country. I suspect that a much larger percentage of the population played instruments then than do now.
As for live performances, in addition to church music, nearly every town of any size had a community band which played regularly in the park and marched in parades. Most larger towns had a dance hall or concert hall or opera house which regularly hosted both local talent and traveling troupes.
I am not quite so old, as I have always lived with recorded music and broadcast music (like the Saturday afternoon Met broadcasts). My mother played piano pretty well, sight read piano music quite well, and could even do some transposition.
There is still quite a lot of music in various cities and communities.
I have never seen a good historical account of the general level of musical knowledge and participation over time. But maybe that's because I never looked very hard.
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"A fool and his money are soon parted." --- Thomas Tusser
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