[byteme]

"What DB, I think was trying to convey is the sad passing of an era when there was some sort of awe or respect for the classics, and classical music.  This is something to be lamented and yet, I see it as just part of this everchanging culture that is America."

I'll settle for respect and appreciation of master musicians.
                   d.b. 

I still don't get how this article proves that people don't appreciate or respect master musicians and/or classical music.  Taken from the piece...

"...the 18th-century German philosopher [Kant] felt that to properly appreciate beauty, the viewing conditions must be optimal."

So the Post purposely stages this at a time and point where the conditions are most certainly about as 180 degrees away from optimal as possible and then they were shocked at what they got?  That's crap - they set this up.  This wasn't a controlled experiment - they got EXACTLY what they expected.  They framed the whole thing to get a reaction and it apparently has.  But I certainly don't read this as proof of "the walmartization" of America or that music appreciation and education, appreciation for "the classics and classical music" have forever passed.  That's the kind of "HOLY SHIT MY HAIR IS ON FIRE" argument that for me totally discounts your position into that of sensationalism.

It would be ridiculously easy to re-stage this "experiment" (aka stunt) and have the exact opposite result with crowds forming and listening with all the appropriate levels of respect, adoration and appreciation you deem suitable, just as others have said.

But that wouldn't sell newspapers.

[PhilNYC]

It would be ridiculously easy to re-stage this "experiment" (aka set up) and have the exact opposite result with crowds forming and listening with all the appropriate levels of respect, adoration and appreciation you deem suitable, just as others have said.

But that wouldn't sell newspapers.

I bet it would sell newspapers...!

But I do agree that this experiment didn't prove a whole lot.  I suspect that, barring the recognition factor, you could put just about any great rock, jazz, blues, country, etc musician in a subway station entrance during rush hour and have them play guitar or something, you'd probably get similar results.  And I think if they had put Joshua Bell on the subway platform (instead of the entrance), he would have made more money...

[nathanm]

I see this whole attitude of calling something that we do not necessarily get, boring, something that might fall into the category of the "Walmartization of America" as well as the rise of the "MTV" culture, where if "we" do not get the point within a minute, then there is no point of watching or listening to it.

I think one can have a deep appreciation and respect for music of all forms and still find the long, meandering passages of many classical pieces to be dull and uninvolving.  It's filler.  I don't think this necessarily suggests mediocre taste or a short attention span.  One could level a similar indignation towards those who wouldn't appreciate a band like Sunn or Fantomas' "Delìrium Cordìa" as just an example.  Those aren't instant gratification pop either.

As has been stated before, there may be a case for the decline in music appreciation but this particular article is NOT it.  This was a stunt to catch people off guard and then razz them for their cultural inferiority.  Talk about a biased experiment!

[byteme]

But that wouldn't sell newspapers.

I bet it would sell newspapers...!

You're right, it probably would sell papers, but only if they sensationalized it with a headline

"THOUSANDS STUMBLE UPON FREE JOSHUA BELL CONCERT - ON A SUBWAY PLATFORM!  COULD YOU BE NEXT?"

[bluewax]

I think the operative dimension here is "barring the recognition factor"... Nothing draws a crowd like celebrity; and nothing draws a crowd like a crowd. Cheers, bw

It would be ridiculously easy to re-stage this "experiment" (aka set up) and have the exact opposite result with crowds forming and listening with all the appropriate levels of respect, adoration and appreciation you deem suitable, just as others have said.

But that wouldn't sell newspapers.

I bet it would sell newspapers...!

But I do agree that this experiment didn't prove a whole lot.  I suspect that, barring the recognition factor, you could put just about any great rock, jazz, blues, country, etc musician in a subway station entrance during rush hour and have them play guitar or something, you'd probably get similar results.  And I think if they had put Joshua Bell on the subway platform (instead of the entrance), he would have made more money...

  C'mon Phil! Get real! Break away from those Focus speakers and focus on the subject. Joshua Bell is a well known figure/musician in his medium/genre. Take a well known Rock/Pop musician - put him in the same situation playing a well known Rock/Pop song and surely you must realize the outcome would be totally different.

[PhilNYC]

 C'mon Phil! Get real! Break away from those Focus speakers and focus on the subject. Joshua Bell is a well known figure/musician in his medium/genre. Take a well known Rock/Pop musician - put him in the same situation playing a well known Rock/Pop song and surely you must realize the outcome would be totally different.

So is the point that people didn't recognize Joshua Bell?   I thought the point was that there was high quality (the top quality) music being played and no one cared...

As I said, Paul McCartney did this a few years ago in London...all bearded up and in disguise...and there was no big crowd forming around him.  I think the difference with Rock/Pop guys is that their faces are known via videos and such.  To me, this wasn't an experiment testing the celebrity of Joshua Bell.

I suspect if they used Buddy Guy instead of Joshua Bell, the same thing would have happened...

[JoshK]

I'm with Phil here.  I have heard many a street performer in subways living in NYC, so I can completely emphathize with this story.  I probably would have listened and enjoyed from afar if the performance was on the platform.  I remember two or three times hearing someone sounding really professional playing on a platform and I listened and enjoyed. 

However, it doesn't change the fact that this is as much a social experiment and testament to the lives we live in these times (esp in a big city) and the behavior we exhibit in morning rush hour. 

[ooheadsoo]

In the article and in the post article followup, it states that the experiment depended on Bell not being recognized because they wanted to test the music, not Bell's celebrity.  It also says that Bell was not paid except for getting him there, not even the $37 or whatever, and that was the only day he had in his schedule free.  So they didn't have a choice on the date, and the metro wouldn't let them play around the platform, so they had to play just outside of official metro property at the top of the escalator in the adjoining space where the plaza owner/manager decided to give it a green light.

[Daygloworange]

They could have put a sword swallower there in the same spot performing and had thousands of people just walk by without giving much notice. Now, what would that prove?

Cheers

[chadh]

Since many classical melodies are based on folk songs that should be no surprise. Note how Pop music has changed over the past century or more and you will observe a consistent lowering of the "common denominator".
           d.b.

It's this sort of attitude that I find pretty offensive.  A lowering of the common denominator?  Because people are less interested in the music that you like?  It must be nice to be so assured of the superiority of your tastes.

You need to understand that tastes are simply that: tastes.  There is no "better music", and no "worse music".  As painful as it may be, there is no way you can establish that JS Bach or WA Mozart produced "superior" music to Britney Spears or Jessica Simpson.  More complicated?  Certainly.  More challenging intellectually?  I'll acknowledge that.  But is Bach more capable of communicating the depths of human emotion?  I think not.  And the fact that many more people today are far more interested in listening to Britney Spears or Jessica Simpson is all the proof I need.

There's this sense in which your posts suggests that humanity should aspire to appreciate classical music.  As though appreciating classical music were a valid goal.  The implication is that, with better education, society will be better equipped to reach that lofty goal.  But since when has humanity existed to validate an artform?  Shouldn't things be the other way around?  Shouldn't the artform strive to satisfy the desires of humanity? 

As far as I'm concerned, the fact that people don't appreciate classical music is the fault of classical music, not the fault of society.  Classical music has ceased to be relevant to the overwhelming majority of people.  There are many reasons for this: none of them are good news or bad news, they are simply reasons that peoples' tastes have changed, and that classical music is not relevant any more.

First there are economic issues.  Classical music (chamber performances excepted) tend to be extremely labor intensive enterprises, and have taxing environmental requirements.  How many people do you need to put on stage in order to perform a symphony?  How hard is it to provide appropriate recording environments for a symphony orchestra?  All of this makes it relatively expensive to produce classical music.  So classical music performances are expensive, to provide and to consume (especially as perfomers typically are highly educated, and so demand higher wages).  In the 19th century, the average person would have considered listening to classical music live.  Now, classical music is the domain of rich white people almost exclusively.

Compare this to popular music that can be produced by three people in a garage, can be recorded by anyone with a microphone and a computer, and improved with cheap sampling equipment.  Popular music is cheap to produce and cheap to record.  So we should see a big substitution away from production of classical music, and classical music to be relative expensive to hear.  I think both claims are borne out in our real world observations.

Next is the matter of time.  Classical music is long, relative to popular forms of music.  This is neither good nor bad.  It is simply a difference.  However, when people are busy, it provides another reason for consumers of music to substitute away from classical music towards popular forms.  And I don't think this should be discounted as a trivial issue.  To compare the demands on our time and our attention today with the demands placed on peoples' attention 250 years ago generates a mind-boggling contrast.  The claim has been made that, around the time of Sir Isaac Newton, the typical person collected about as much information in a lifetime as is contained in an average daily newspaper today.  Imagine, then, how much extra time people had to devote to the leisurely pursuit of classical music appreciation.  Today, time pressures and competition for our attention mean that the short, sweet hit from popular music is far more desirable, and this contributes to the lack of interest in classical music from the general public.

Fundamentally, classical music has lost relevance to the majority of society.  It cannot appeal to the masses because it is expensive, and time consuming.  Like other expensive, time consuming activities (golf and skiiing come to mind) it remains of great interest to a relatively small (but vocal) portion of the community: rich white folk.

Is this sad?  Not really.  It's sad for someone who likes classical music who finds it harder and harder to consume the thing he likes.  But for the rest of us, it just means that different forms of art develop to satisfy our desires.  This is the nature of society:  it adapts to the needs and wants of the community.  It should not be the case that the community adapts to the need that an artform has for continued validation, nor the insecurities of an artform's proponents who feel the need to assert some absolute superiority of their preferred artform.

Society has discarded the horse-drawn carriage in favor of the car, because the horse-drawn carriage has proven less useful to the demands of society.  If you really like horse-drawn carriages, you can still enjoy them at the track by watching or participating in harness racing.  If classical music is not to go the same way, the classical music will have to establish that it is relevant to society in a way that horse-drawn carriages are not.  And honestly, if the best way you can establish the relevance of classical music today is by referring to the endless number of John Williams' scores produced for Hollywood, then you may as well just give up now!

Chad

[PhilNYC]

As painful as it may be, there is no way you can establish that JS Bach or WA Mozart produced "superior" music to Britney Spears or Jessica Simpson.  More complicated?  Certainly.  More challenging intellectually?  I'll acknowledge that.  But is Bach more capable of communicating the depths of human emotion?  I think not.  And the fact that many more people today are far more interested in listening to Britney Spears or Jessica Simpson is all the proof I need.

Eh...this is one comment I can't get behind...Britney and Jessica are more interesting to look at than JS Bach, but I can't agree at all that they are more capable of communicating the depths of human emotion (except for one very specific emotion... )

As they say, "Video killed the radio star..."

(fwiw and all kidding aside, I do agree that the "quality" of music is a measurement of taste and personal preference.  On the other hand, I do think there are some generally-accepted standards of sophistication.  For example, teen comedies are widely regarded as hugely popular but of low-sophistication, whereas Shakespeare is regarded as not very popular but of high-sophistication.  If sophistication is a barometer for quality, then it's certainly something that could be "ranked").

[Thebiker]

Now, classical music is the domain of rich white people almost exclusively

Funny, my daughter, son-in-law and grand daughter don't qualify as rich.  They work hard, manage to pay their bills, pay for child care and don't have much left over by the next paycheck.  But on March 31 my daughter & grand daughter went to Boston Symphony Hall to hear the Children's Symphony playing to classic Warner Bros. cartoons, followed by an instrument petting zoo.  Total cost, $9.00/ticket = $18.00.  Let's see you get a ticket to a popular concert for that.

My grand daughter who will be 6 in June likes opera......friggin' opera .  I don't even like opera.  Every Sat night the local classical FM station broadcasts the Boston Symphony live.  The little girl reminds her mother to turn on the radio so she can listen......cost - not a thing.  Benefits, immeasurable.  

This kid also will sing along with the top 40 station as well.  The bottom line is if you are exposed to as much music as possible, you will probably have a very wide appreciation of many forms of it.

So kindly take what sounds like the attitude of a bigot and re-think things.  

Initial appearances are frequently not everything.  I am an old time biker (for over 35 years) and I wear black leather, but funny, I don't remember terrorizing any small towns

[PhilNYC]

"Now, classical music is the domain of rich white people almost exclusively."

I find that most of the people I know who are seriously into classical music as Asian...

[rajacat]

 Chad,

Hmmm, I wonder if Britney Spears will still be listened to a couple of hundred years from now? To put Britney on the same level as Beethoven is really absurd. : The test of time is about the only gauge for greatness. 

Raj

[Thebiker]

Phil and Raj,
The "rich white people" quote is actually from Chadh.

It's what actually set me off.....bigotry just ticks me off .

Up to that point, I was trying to just behave myself.

[woodsyi]

Actually,

Classical music is everywhere.  You may not hear it as such but they are in movies, tv, sports, other music genre, dentists, malls and many other places. 

[PhilNYC]

Actually,

Classical music is everywhere.  You may not hear it as such but they are in movies, tv, sports, other music genre, dentists, malls and many other places. 

It's funny...I was recently playing some Tchaikovsky on my system the other day, and my wife asked me "why are you listening to an American Airlines commercial?"

[rajacat]

Much of today's popular music is not conceived from an artistic vision but created to appeal to the largest possible market. Britney might be a good example of this "corporate rock".

Raj

[Daygloworange]

Chadh,

Very well put.

Everybody else, very well put as well.

I'll agree with a lot of what most people here, on both sides of the issue, have said. A lot, but not all. It's just different strokes for different folks. It's like comparing classical paintings to modern abstract art. Some argue that a 4 year old could splash paint on a canvas and make it, and they wouldn't necessarily be wrong. But I've seen a lot of both I really like and enjoy equally.

It's just expressionism. Be it music or art. Some of it complex and grandiose, and some of it, simple and unsophisticated. They both have merit. I wouldn't want to be without either.

Cheers

[chadh]

Now, classical music is the domain of rich white people almost exclusively

Funny, my daughter, son-in-law and grand daughter don't qualify as rich.  They work hard, manage to pay their bills, pay for child care and don't have much left over by the next paycheck.  But on March 31 my daughter & grand daughter went to Boston Symphony Hall to hear the Children's Symphony playing to classic Warner Bros. cartoons, followed by an instrument petting zoo.  Total cost, $9.00/ticket = $18.00.  Let's see you get a ticket to a popular concert for that.

My grand daughter who will be 6 in June likes opera......friggin' opera .  I don't even like opera.  Every Sat night the local classical FM station broadcasts the Boston Symphony live.  The little girl reminds her mother to turn on the radio so she can listen......cost - not a thing.  Benefits, immeasurable. 

This kid also will sing along with the top 40 station as well.  The bottom line is if you are exposed to as much music as possible, you will probably have a very wide appreciation of many forms of it.

So kindly take what sounds like the attitude of a bigot and re-think things. 

Initial appearances are frequently not everything.  I am an old time biker (for over 35 years) and I wear black leather, but funny, I don't remember terrorizing any small towns

I'm glad your grand-daughter likes opera, and indeed she's lucky that she gets the opportunity to hear different types of music at reasonable prices.  However, I don't think your single example of reasonably priced classical concert tickets refutes the idea that, in general, listening to classical music is a more expensive pursuit than listening to popular music.  To make the point: when your granddaughter went to Boston Symphony Hall to listen to the concert, what proportion of the crowd was African American?  What proportion Latino/a?  What proportion had to take public transport because the parking near Symphony Hall was too expensive?  What proportion had developed some interest because they had had the opportunity to play a little on the piano at home, and what proportion had no piano in the house?  Of course, there's no way for you to answer these questions.  But I'd hazard a guess that the mean family income of those attending the performance was well above the mean family income of those living in the greater Boston area, and that the racial composition of the crowd was different from that of the greater Boston area.

I totally agree with your comment that exposure to a wide variety of music encourages a wider appreciation of music.  But I still contend that exposure to classical music is expensive in terms of time and money, and so it becomes less and less relevant for our modern society.

As for the charge of bigotry, I'm not really sure where that's coming from.  The only comment I made was that different groups in the community might consume differently.  There was no sense in which this comment was made negatively, and certainly no intention to demean anybody.  It's a simple contention about the state of the world (a statement with which you are free to disagree).  It's no more or less bigoted than a claim that the majority of NBA small forwards are African American, that the majority of people buying lutefisk are Scandanavian or that the majority of people in the US buying pay-per-view broadcasts of the current cricket world cup are south asian.  Honestly, it's such a cheap shot to claim that any comment that refers to race is necessarily bigotry that it's tempting to ignore the rest of your comments.

Phil's comment about the interest in classical music from those of Asian background is the best critique of my claim.  However, I think the general implications of my arguments are still valid.  The point is that African and Latin Americans, for example, are overrepresented in the lower percentiles of the US income distribution, and I'm reasonably sure that this wealth constraint makes these groups less inclined to support classical music.  This is important, because in many ways (in music and sports, especially) it seems to me that the African and Latin American communities are the ones currently making the greatest contributions to real cultural innovation in the US.  If we wanted to do something as silly as equating "sophistication" of music with quality, then, we would almost necessarily be bound to discount the wealth of primarily African American musical contributions (from gospel, to blues, to trad jazz, to swing, to be bop, to R & B, to motown, to hip hop, and whichever others I've missed) as inferior to classical music, and would in fact be committed to maintaining this type of bias whilst classical music remains the only music style taught widely in the conservatories, and while those racial groups overrepresented in the lower strata of the income distribution continue to have restricted access to higher education.

Chad