Oh dear, oh dear!

Graham, sorry for being responsible for sort-of hijacking your thread with the Led Zep debate, but in a way it's illustrative of the problem faced by classical music. Several generations have now grown up with the idea that Led Zeppelin and the like is quality music, or even music of any kind - and before anyone starts on me, I respect your right to regard Plant & Co. as geniuses, it's just that I never, ever will. The whole thing is, in a way, a sign of youth wanting to be different, of creating sounds that are diametrically opposed to "adult" tastes - think of the reaction to the first rock'n'rollers, who look just sooo innocent these days, to the filming of Elvis only from the waist up! The thing is that the rebellious youth are now old fogeys like myself, but musically they haven't moved on from, as Tom Lehrer put it, "rock'n'roll and other children's records".

As a result, the language of great music is foreign to the average listener. I also find the "crossover" endeavours that seek to make classical more appealing to a wider audience to be pretty pathetic. So what to do? Frankly, I don't think there's anything that can be done, except soldier on. Classical music should not muddy itself with popular stuff. I don't think this is elitist, it's simply a recognition that the two are different and that they do not belong in the same trough. Does this doom classical to extinction? I suspect not. A lesser presence perhaps, a regrettable reduction in choice perhaps, but great music will live on and the flag will still fly, even in the musical wasteland of dirigibles constructed of heavy malleable metals, simply because it's part of a great artistic heritage, one of the gems of Western culture, and, as people still admire Rembrandt, people will still adore Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, etc. because their work remains ever fresh, ever relevant and will continue thus long after the abovementioned dirigibles have been melted into bullets for the US Army or whatever.

So, Michael, where do I resign from ZG?

 

Hmm - I reckon you could be onto something there, Tones, although personally, I don't think I'll ever move on from rock/dance to full-blown classical in any quantity (although I appreciate good classical when I hear it, then promptly forget the composer/title!)...

"Black Dog" is, I'm afraid, a classic (and my favourite Zep song, oddly enough!). "Stairway to heaven" is soooo worn out though (and I prefer the Rolf version anyway - he he!). Rolf's version of the Stones' "Satisfaction" is blindingly classic (well, funny anyway!) as well...

 

You can't - its like MI5 :MILD:

Not a big Classical fan myself but agree with most of what you say here (especially the crossover attempts - yeek).

Rock and Roll and other Children's music?? Well mebbe, but then, I'm a big kid

Might be worth pointing out though that it likely that "Classical" Music has NEVER been popular, in the sense that the majority (or even a large minority) have listened to it. Even going back to pre recording days, I suspect the vast majority of us would have preferred Ye Olde Fashioned Music Hall and some hilarious songs by a comedy Cockerney about his mother in law to a little bit of Mozart.

 

Or, in days gone by, the IRA - except in a wooden overcoat!

Your point that classical has never been popular is generally true, Uncle, but there have been periods and places where it has been popular. For example, in Vienna during the waltz craze, the works of the Strauss family were both enormously popular and highly respected by serious musicians (Brahms and Wagner both openly admired Johann Strauss Jr). The operettas of Offenbach on the one hand and Gilbert and Sullivan on the other were also enormously popular, probably because they were both very adept at sending up contemporary society, but the music was also of high quality (Arthur Sullivan's "serious" music never bettered his G&S efforts).

Certainly for a long time, classical music was "nobs'" music. Ironically the event that substantially broke down the "upstairs, downstairs" world, the First World War, coincided with the rise of jazz as an alternative popular music form, accelerated by the arrival of the US Army. People like to dance and people don't dance to Beethoven symphonies or Bach cantatas (although they do have their moments...), so jazz-based forms became the popular music of the day in the 1920s and '30s. Classical was never in with a chance. And from a mixture of jazz, gospel/spiritual, country and blues arose rock'n'roll.

I hasten to add that I am not against popular music. I like much jazz and I think the "pop" songs of the '30s and '40s from the likes of Rogers, Hart, Lerner & Loewe and Gershwin are the best ever written - only the Beatles at their best could ever compete with the sophistication of lyric and melody of those guys. Commercialism has ruined popular music. To hear the gems that occasionally surface, you have to go through an awful lot of rubbish.

Rant over!

 

:JOEL:

Michael.

 

I take it that means no....

 

Now I don't know if you're serious tones

There is no way to cancel your membership but I, as the admin, can delete a user from the database. The users posts will then show up as having been made by "Guest".

I've done it a couple of times in the past for some banned members but it's actually better to keep them in the database as "Banned" so they can't re-join again with the same name.

Michael.

 

That which was truly popular in its time was Pop, even if we now call it classical.

IMHO most Pop music has almost certainly always been rubbish, just as most classical has never been popular. Commercialism has merely enabled it. Recorded music is only just over a hundred years old. In an accessible form probably only about fifty. The idea of"sifting" through the rubbish, so to speak would have been pretty meaningless 100 years ago (you are however absolutely correct - you just need to suffer through TOTP to see/hear that )

 

You could simply create a new user category "resigned" (or something) iwth no posting or reading rights and stick Tones in that, if he so desired (I don't think he does, but what do I know).

BTW, Tones, what you wrote is poppycock and almost on a par with RdS' ridiculous categorization of African music as "frenzied"

 

Not at all, ol' spud! - I was expecting the sky to fall on me or for there to be demands for my head on a platter for canning the divine Led Zep, so I jokingly suggested that I get out of town before the guys with the tar and feathers arrived!

 

Always a good way to start an interesting discussion, Joel! And of course you might be right. OK, tell us all why this is even more poppycock than what I usually write.

 

No but Chuck Berry could:

"Milo's Venus was a beautiful lass
She had the world in the palm of her hand
But she lost both her arms in a wrestling match
To get a brown eyed handsome man"

 

Genius no, ingenious yes, mythologically inaccurate but at least armless (mostly).

 

Ahh. Tones, I never said ole Chuck was a genius, I merely said it was "as genius" as the AC/DC lyric Well actually, I think its a lot better, and funnier (and not mythologically inacurate either as he's clearly referring to the statue, not the goddess, who as you point out - I think - had a full complement of arms).

 

hi im a hippy and i like classical music,not all of it,then again i dont like all rock music , ein duecher requiem was being blasted out earlier,very stirring stuff.The other week i had the pleasure of seeing both touringdot and tosca live(and getting payed for it )both were very enjoyable.
As a teenager i though classical stuff was for the snobs,even though my dad liked the stuff,and never realy listened to it,much prefered led zep and pink floyd.my views changed after working on a couple of large outdoor gigs,large ochastra,fireworks,one or two lasers and the odd dancing fountain.i was soon borrowing my dads lps and realising theres something in this stuff,but never realy took it any further until i ended up working at a venue that had reqular classical music events,some of it ,mainly the chamber pot stuff, wasnt for me, but other bits were very enjoyable,even to the point of actually buying cds of the stuff i liked.nowerdays im just as happy blasting out a bit of bhrams or beehtoven (love pastrol) inbetween zeplin and moterhead.

 

The goddess did indeed have a full compliment of arms - the arms were already missing when the French dug up the statue on the island of Melos (and she didn't lose them, as was widely reported, in a battle when the Russians tried to make off with the statue!).

 

Well I don't suppose she lost them in a wrestling match either

 

No, but perhaps Chuck Berry had heard the story of the alleged battle and made suitable modifications (according to one account, it took place on the beach, just the place for semi-nude ladies, I guess). And I guess that one could probably deduce that most Greeks are brown-eyed even if not handsome (at least the present lot are - don't know about the previous inhabitants).

 

I heard that it was a greek fellow found it in a cave and hid it because he knew the Turkish authorities, would take it, which they did when they heard of it, but it then "mysteriously" found its way to a French ship. A Turkish official was flogged for corruption. I also heard that for decades the French tried to pretend it was about 300 years older than it is and actually "lost" part of it that proved otherwise - the French huh.

I suspect Chuck just made it up for a good lyric

 

From a book review on the subject:

"In 1820 on the island of Melos, a young French naval officer and a local farmer discovered the hulking halves of an armless statue. The Venus de Milo has since graced car advertisements, adorned matchboxes and inspired artists from Dali to Jim Dine. Former Texas Monthly editor Curtis simply chalks up the Venus's omnipresence to its timeless beauty, and he impressively details an era when the statue seemed "less like a thing than an event." Relating how the French returned to Melos just in time to intercept a Russian boat bearing their treasure away, Curtis dismisses the mythic "fight on the beach" in which the Venus supposedly lost her arms; she had been found without them. Inspired by Johann Winckelmann's theories of Greek art, the Louvre's officials insisted on dating their acquisition to the classical age, rather than to the Hellenistic period of artistic decadence. Hence, the inscribed base that attributed the work to the Hellenistic sculptor Alexandros was conveniently "lost" for a time. For his part, Curtis ventures that the Venus once stood in the niche of a Greek gymnasium and held an apple, symbol of Melos and of the debate that launched the Trojan War. But more compellingly, his sense of a good anecdote revives the myriad characters (often shown among the 21 illustrations) who furiously debated the statue's origin, identity and even placement in the Louvre as late as the 20th century. Such scholars exuded "an enthusiasm for the statue, almost a gratitude for its presence in their lives." This enthusiasm, Curtis's work suggests, is what museum-goers maintain and contemporary critics too often forget; his judicious book may push them to remember. "