Radiohead have stopped playing "Creep," more or less, but it still hits home when it comes on the radio. When Beavis of "Beavis and Butt-head" heard the noisy part, he said, "Rock!" But why, he wondered, didn't the song rock from beginning to end? "If they didn't have, like, a part of the song that sucked, then, it's like, the other part wouldn't be as cool," Butt-head explained.
Uhuhuhuh, yeah. That show ruled. And who knew Butt-head was hyphenated?
The guys in the swing bands of the 1930s through the 1950s had training and discipline in common with their classical counterparts. They could cross genres in a natural way and casual listeners could perceive their kinship and follow them. Pop and classical music were built on essentially the same kinds of harmonies, melodies and rhythms and performed on the same instruments. In such an environment, symphony pops concerts made musical sense and could draw an audience.
That is no longer the case. Rock, with its harmonic simplicity, non-orchestral instruments and emphasis on attitude as a main marketable commodity, stretched the relationship thin. More recently, synthesized sound and sampling have replaced traditional musicianship in most arenas of popular music.
Britney Spears -- 'Oops, I Did It Again' Modern teen pop is more about sexual display than about music, although it's not inconceivable that Britney Spears will wash up on the 2030–31 symphony pops circuit. (How will Britney's navel look then?)
Rap, the dominant pop style of the day, has no use for traditional musical skill and no harmony or melody to speak of. Its rhymes-with-bitch crudity offends the civilized sensibility of classical music. Unlike many former pop and folk stars, no washed-up rapper will ever find second life on the pops circuit.
Some generalizations are excusable in a column like this one, but here Strini just seems like too much of a snob to really give these other musical styles a chance. For me, rock and rap music complement classical stuff in my listening, and while classical would be my favorite if I had to choose, there's plenty of other great music that I'd hate to be without. I know lots of other people, including classical musicians, who feel the same way. Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, is one of them. He wrote a fantastic article a while back on his personal relationship to different genres of music, and how he sees other styles of music evolving in the same way that classical music did. The opening paragraph in his writeup from this week's magazine shows that Mozart, for one, would not have been offended by rap's "rhymes-with-bitch crudity":
The breathtaking profanity of Mozart’s letters—“Whoever doesn’t believe me may lick me, world without end,” and so on—has led one British researcher to conclude recently that the composer had Tourette’s syndrome. What’s interesting about this theory, which has become the goofball classical-music news item of the season, is that anyone would actually need a far-fetched medical explanation for the fact that a young male with healthy appetites swore a lot and liked to talk about sex. Mozart, like Shakespeare, moved with equal ease through the most refined and most raucous circles of his world. Only if classical music is confined to the fleshless end of the spectrum does Mozart’s exaltation of the body become a psychological anomaly crying out for interpretation.
Anyway, Strini does have some good points in his column, and it's totally fine if he dislikes most non-classical music. But I think that when he dismissively generalizes about the musical qualities of genres that he doesn't seem to understand, he exhibits an attitude of almost wanting to keep classical music exclusive and marginalized.
Management promises that its proposals would never harm the orchestra's artistic level.
"We want to preserve the jewel of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Orchestra," said Mr. Albertini, a public relations executive hired to present the orchestra's case. The players have their own outside public-relations man.
But John Koen, a cellist and the chairman of the players' committee, says that reducing full-time positions - even though the same number of musicians would always be onstage through the use of substitutes - could undermine the orchestra's fabled artistic tradition.
For example, he said, one position singled out is the full-time second harpist. The "Philadelphia sound" is partly based on decades of playing large French symphonic works, which often require two harps. Eliminating that job would run counter to the tradition, he said.
I'd like to see how many musicians on stage could tell the difference in the orchestra's sound between using a full-time second harpist and a substitute (in those relatively rare cases where two harps are needed), let alone audience members. I know the union is just trying to keep as many benefits and positions as possible, but this claim is so ridiculous that it's just funny.
In September, prior to the opening of the story, Lane (Mia Farrow) once attempted suicide because of a deep depression. In the course of the film, we see her again depressed and again contemplating suicide. Her friend, Stephanie (Dianne Wiest), tries to help her:Stephanie: Now give me those pills. Tomorrow will come and you'll find some distractions. You'll get rid of this place, you'll move back to the city, you'll work, you'll fall in love, and maybe it'll work out, and maybe it won't, but you'll find a million petty things to keep you going, and distractions to keep you from focusing on -Again, the point is clear: we need distractions, we need illusions and self-deception, in order to help us avoid the terrible truths of our lives.Lane: On the truth.
I'd been having some vaguely similar thoughts lately (though not nearly so fatalistic), and seeing them laid out pretty explicitly in this film was a bit disturbing.
On a cheerier note, I got some more cool music recently. Björk's new CD Medulla is way weirder than her previous stuff, at least to my ear. And those who instinctively recoil when they hear Björk's voice should stay miles away from this CD. I didn't find any of the music completely nonsensical, and I have a feeling that a bunch of the songs will really grow on me after a few listens. I also just got Nico's Chelsea Girl, which I first heard in Keunwoo's car this summer. Nico has such a bewitching voice, and the intimate, folksy style of the songs on this CD fit it perfectly; good stuff.
Finally, I was at DNA Lounge for a while last night, and I realized that it had been so long since I'd been to a club that I'd actually forgotten what it was like to feel a beat. I've been using headphones too much lately, and I need to get out to a place with good, loud music again soon.
Now throw your hands in the ai-yerrI guess you need to hear Andre do it to get the full effect :). So go listen to it.
And wave 'em like you just don't cay-yerr
And if you like fish and grits and all the pimp shit
Everybody let me hear ya say O-Yea-yerr
