In Reply to: RE: Bizarre twist in musical taste (long) posted by Emsquare on July 3, 2012 at 21:53:22:
That's a question that's troubled me ever since I was a kid. Why was the greatest music written over 150 years in the past? Why don't we have our own Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven? Surely, a society that is more technologically advanced, better educated, richer, and has more people in it should be able to produce better music than 18th-century Germany? And yet nothing we create today -- either in the popular realm or the conservatory -- holds a candle to it.
The best I've come up with is a shift in the primary audience that accompanied a shift in purchasing power from the aristocracy to the middle class to the masses. It isn't a sraightforward matter of education, although that plays a role (both negative and positive) in the change.
In any case, I agree that great music will survive. My main concern is that as it has become increasingly a dead art and fallen out of our culture, fewer and fewer children are being exposed to it. I'm saddened when I see friends who have the IQ to appreciate Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, but who never get to know their music during the crucial childhood period when musical syntax is mastered. Life without Mozart seems like no life at all.
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Follow Ups
- RE: Bizarre twist in musical taste (long) - josh358 04:39:56 07/04/12 (11)
- RE: Bizarre twist in musical taste (long) - steve.ott@kctcs.edu 16:08:57 07/09/12 (3)
- RE: Bizarre twist in musical taste (long) - josh358 16:23:17 07/09/12 (2)
- RE: Bizarre twist in musical taste (long) - Raymond Leggs 12:00:33 07/27/12 (1)
- RE: Bizarre twist in musical taste (long) - josh358 17:30:40 07/27/12 (0)
- RE: Bizarre twist in musical taste (long) - Emsquare 19:03:14 07/04/12 (6)
- RE: Bizarre twist in musical taste (long) - josh358 06:18:46 07/05/12 (5)
- RE: Bizarre twist in musical taste (long) - Emsquare 18:12:56 07/05/12 (1)
- RE: Bizarre twist in musical taste (long) - josh358 18:36:39 07/05/12 (0)
- RE: Bizarre twist in musical taste (long) - Inmate51 09:15:20 07/05/12 (2)
- RE: Bizarre twist in musical taste (long) - Raymond Leggs 14:45:34 07/05/12 (0)
- RE: Bizarre twist in musical taste (long) - josh358 11:29:35 07/05/12 (0)