some guy
New member
OK. Here's the deal.
JHC, I do not have enough time to devote to your suggestion on the baroque thread that I upload bits and pieces of my collection to a filesharing site. That is true. And even if I did, what you'd get would simply be bits and pieces of my collection, not necessarily what you, JHC, or anyone else (Corno? Contratrombone?) needs to hear to be convinced that contemporary music is worthwhile.
But I do have time to share a wee bit autobiography with y'all, if I may have your indulgence. Here it is. When I was little, the only music I knew was Hollywood music, Lawrence Welk, 101 Strings, Percy Faith, Warner Bros cartoons, and all the miscellaneous rags and tags of TV shows. But I loved music. It was the most powerful thing in my life, I think. When I was around nine or ten, I inherited a bunch of 78s from my dad's stepbrother. These included Count Basie, Fats Domino, top fifty classical snippets, sides one and four of Peter and the Wolf, and the two sets called Sparky's Magic Piano and Rusty in Orchestraville.
Magic.
As I would write later for a high school English class, what I thought (though not in these words, yet) was "Oh. So this is what music is supposed to sound like."
Beethoven, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Haydn, Grieg, Dvorak. I was in love. And I was insatiable. Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi, Schumann, Rachmaninoff, Grieg, Smetana, Debussy, Ravel, Mussorgsky, Berlioz, Wagner, Liszt, Saint-Saens, Palestrina, Pergolesi, even Poulenc and Prokofiev (a little). Then, in 1972, I bought a recording of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra.
More magic, this time opening up the whole world of twentieth century music. And I was insatiable. Carter, Mumma, Stockhausen, Cage, Mimaroglu, Reynolds, Behrman, Oliveros, Eimert, Shields, Smiley, Ussachevsky, Luening, Ives, Brant, MEV, AMM, the Sonic Arts Union, Diamanda Galas, Schoenberg, Glass, Riley, Young, Raaijmakers, Dockstader. (And, of course, Poulenc, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Hindemith, Messiaen, Janacek and all those types....)
The 78s came to me in 1961 or 2. Bartok in 1972. By 1982, I was listening to music written in 1982, not because of any desire to be "caught up" or even to "be cool," but just because I loved the music so much.
And I've never looked back. Well, OK. I've continued to buy CDs of music by Bach and Suk and Gluck and Mendelssohn. But I've never stopped liking and collecting music of my own time. Now.
I even, when it came time to quit my evil corporate job, started an online music magazine devoted entirely to the newest, most radical of the current avant garde, which takes me around the world several times a year to attend (and write about) concerts and festivals, meeting composers and performers and hearing lots of new music.
Oh, it's fun.
The moral, of course, is that modern music is perfectly fine. It's engaging and approachable and listenable. It might not be "pretty" like Chopin is. But Chopin was not at all "pretty" when he was alive. He was dangerous and ugly and unmusical. But I digress.
I don't think that anyone will be convinced that modern music is enjoyable by listening to modern music. Why? Because it's difficult and ugly? No, because there have been too many people saying that it's difficult and ugly for too long.
You think that has no effect? Well, when I first started listening to twentieth century music, I had heard nothing (living such a sheltered life as I did) about how awful this crap was supposed to be. So I was free to simply listen and enjoy. And I enjoyed it, I hope you've noticed, a lot. And I've heard many people say that they've gone to lots of new music concerts and hated all of them.
Of course. You go into something expecting that you won't like it, and, surprise, surprise, you don't like it.
That's why I don't think listening to it will do any good. Changing our attitudes has to happen first. Once that's happened, and I don't know how to do that or even if it's possible, then the beauties of twentieth and twenty-first century music will suddenly be quite obviously apparent.
There's a lot of great music out there, and it's a lot more fun to enjoy it than it is to take cheap shots at it, fun though the cheap shots are!!
JHC, I do not have enough time to devote to your suggestion on the baroque thread that I upload bits and pieces of my collection to a filesharing site. That is true. And even if I did, what you'd get would simply be bits and pieces of my collection, not necessarily what you, JHC, or anyone else (Corno? Contratrombone?) needs to hear to be convinced that contemporary music is worthwhile.
But I do have time to share a wee bit autobiography with y'all, if I may have your indulgence. Here it is. When I was little, the only music I knew was Hollywood music, Lawrence Welk, 101 Strings, Percy Faith, Warner Bros cartoons, and all the miscellaneous rags and tags of TV shows. But I loved music. It was the most powerful thing in my life, I think. When I was around nine or ten, I inherited a bunch of 78s from my dad's stepbrother. These included Count Basie, Fats Domino, top fifty classical snippets, sides one and four of Peter and the Wolf, and the two sets called Sparky's Magic Piano and Rusty in Orchestraville.
Magic.
As I would write later for a high school English class, what I thought (though not in these words, yet) was "Oh. So this is what music is supposed to sound like."
Beethoven, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Haydn, Grieg, Dvorak. I was in love. And I was insatiable. Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi, Schumann, Rachmaninoff, Grieg, Smetana, Debussy, Ravel, Mussorgsky, Berlioz, Wagner, Liszt, Saint-Saens, Palestrina, Pergolesi, even Poulenc and Prokofiev (a little). Then, in 1972, I bought a recording of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra.
More magic, this time opening up the whole world of twentieth century music. And I was insatiable. Carter, Mumma, Stockhausen, Cage, Mimaroglu, Reynolds, Behrman, Oliveros, Eimert, Shields, Smiley, Ussachevsky, Luening, Ives, Brant, MEV, AMM, the Sonic Arts Union, Diamanda Galas, Schoenberg, Glass, Riley, Young, Raaijmakers, Dockstader. (And, of course, Poulenc, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Hindemith, Messiaen, Janacek and all those types....)
The 78s came to me in 1961 or 2. Bartok in 1972. By 1982, I was listening to music written in 1982, not because of any desire to be "caught up" or even to "be cool," but just because I loved the music so much.
And I've never looked back. Well, OK. I've continued to buy CDs of music by Bach and Suk and Gluck and Mendelssohn. But I've never stopped liking and collecting music of my own time. Now.
I even, when it came time to quit my evil corporate job, started an online music magazine devoted entirely to the newest, most radical of the current avant garde, which takes me around the world several times a year to attend (and write about) concerts and festivals, meeting composers and performers and hearing lots of new music.
Oh, it's fun.
The moral, of course, is that modern music is perfectly fine. It's engaging and approachable and listenable. It might not be "pretty" like Chopin is. But Chopin was not at all "pretty" when he was alive. He was dangerous and ugly and unmusical. But I digress.
I don't think that anyone will be convinced that modern music is enjoyable by listening to modern music. Why? Because it's difficult and ugly? No, because there have been too many people saying that it's difficult and ugly for too long.
You think that has no effect? Well, when I first started listening to twentieth century music, I had heard nothing (living such a sheltered life as I did) about how awful this crap was supposed to be. So I was free to simply listen and enjoy. And I enjoyed it, I hope you've noticed, a lot. And I've heard many people say that they've gone to lots of new music concerts and hated all of them.
Of course. You go into something expecting that you won't like it, and, surprise, surprise, you don't like it.
That's why I don't think listening to it will do any good. Changing our attitudes has to happen first. Once that's happened, and I don't know how to do that or even if it's possible, then the beauties of twentieth and twenty-first century music will suddenly be quite obviously apparent.
There's a lot of great music out there, and it's a lot more fun to enjoy it than it is to take cheap shots at it, fun though the cheap shots are!!
