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Why is older better?

Posted by Ozymandias (A) on June 5, 2002 at 08:14:14

This has probably been extensively aired before, but I haven't seen it since I started following this group a couple of months ago and I find it most interesting. It seems that there is a definite group of very knowledgeable people who believe that, for the most part, modern conductors and soloists are inferior to those from the 30s 40s and 50s. What I am trying to understand is whether this is simply a case of what I term "willful nostalgia" (akin to people of my father's generation insisting that none of today's ballplayers are as good as Williams, Mays and Mantle), or whether there could be some objective merit to this view. What I cannot figure out is WHY this would be the case (in baseball, one could even come up with a rational theory in defense of the nostalgia, namely that back then all the good athletes played baseball whereas now they play a variety of sports, so the talent pool is diluted, but I cannot come up with a similar theory for music). Surely the musical education today's elite performers received cannot be inferior to that received by the prior generation (or perhaps more accurately stated, two generations ago). And I cannot believe the explanation is that truly talented musicians don't go into classical music anymore, if for no other reason than I see no real evidence of any genius in rock and roll performers. So what's the explanation, if there is one? Enlighten me.

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