will Classical music ever return to mainstream?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Bolero, Sep 9, 2015.

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  1. Yovra

    Yovra Collector of Beatles Threads

    I think you're exaggerating a bit here. My tip is to read Donald Clarke's " The Rise and Fall of Popular Music" for the full picture of what 'popular' (or 'mainstream') means in the context of six centuries of music. Mozart was popular among the courts and palaces, but became more mainstream when parts of his opera's and arias were performed in the theatres and music halls. Things got (a bit) better with music notation and even (a lot) better with LP's.
    But was Stravinsky ever mainstream? He might have been infamous for some time....
    The music is brilliant and significant, but the 'mainstream'-bit is debatable...
     
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  2. D.H.

    D.H. Forum Resident

    Location:
    Malmö, Sweden
    Wish I was present when Stravinsky caused a riot in 1913.
     
  3. Yovra

    Yovra Collector of Beatles Threads

    It must have been a lively scene! Later accounts mentioned that the 'riot' ensured more attention to the ballet and it was a bit of a media hype (even then!) There were five far more 'peaceful' performances later that year.
     
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  4. Robin L

    Robin L Musical Omnivore

    Location:
    Fresno, California
    Stravinsky was not the cause of the riot, the choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky's angular moves caused the disruption.
     
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  5. ShockControl

    ShockControl Bon Vivant and Raconteur!

    Location:
    Lotus Land
    Please see my previous post about film scoring. While I think there is some truth to this, I don't consider all film scores to be "classical music," nor do I consider all film composers to be "classical composers."
     
  6. muffmasterh

    muffmasterh Forum Resident

    Location:
    East London U.K
    actually i would be more inclined to say that classical music of the late 20th century onwards has morphed into originally composed film music...
     
  7. D.H.

    D.H. Forum Resident

    Location:
    Malmö, Sweden
    Audiovisual stuff.
     
  8. royzak2000

    royzak2000 Senior Member

    Location:
    London,England
    The three tenors really was a flash in the pan. I worked in a second hand record store at the time, within months we had so many people trying to get rid of them we were offering 20p.
    within a year we had boxes of them we would never get rid of.
    Don't know how many people it turned on to Classical, I would suggest not many.
     
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  9. Daedalus

    Daedalus I haven't heard it all.....

    There is an abundance of classical music performances available at halls across the country and many first rate orchestras and quartets, etc are touring. I regularly attend live performance. Radio play is scarce today however even in major markets but satellite is available and streaming . Is classical mainstream? No and I don't think it ever really was but it probably was emphasized more as something one should aspire to as part of one's education or personal development- like great literature. Perhaps classical music appreciation has been diminished by the dumbing down of popular culture? Do teachers today have time or the freedom to play classical music to their classes with the enforced teach to the test environment?
     
  10. ShockControl

    ShockControl Bon Vivant and Raconteur!

    Location:
    Lotus Land
    It was the "O Brother, Where Art Thou" of the classical world. ;)
     
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  11. DJ LX

    DJ LX Forum Resident

    Location:
    Madison WI
    That wasn't the intention. What ubertrout was getting at, and what I agree with, is that so-called 'classical' music was never the music of the masses. It was always more elitist, sponsored by aristocrats, and attended by well heeled audiences. The masses were into folk songs. Granted, some of those folk melodies made their way into some classical works by composers like Bela Bartok, but classical has never been the music of the people, in the way folk and pop music has been.
     
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  12. Robin L

    Robin L Musical Omnivore

    Location:
    Fresno, California
    Apparently quite distracting from the soothing sounds coming from the pit. It was a lot like a Beatles concert—all you could hear was the screaming.
     
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  13. Robin L

    Robin L Musical Omnivore

    Location:
    Fresno, California
    Just as Rasputin's 25¢ used CD bins are filled with Indigo Girls and Sarah Mclachlan titles, their 95¢ classical bins are overloaded with Three Tenors and "Chant".
     
  14. Robin L

    Robin L Musical Omnivore

    Location:
    Fresno, California
    By way of example—Philip Glass, one of the best known composers of the 20th century has, for most of his career, composed for films as his primary source of income. I'm certain that would be an upgrade from his previous employment as a NYC cabbie.
     
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  15. ShockControl

    ShockControl Bon Vivant and Raconteur!

    Location:
    Lotus Land
    In the US, many professional orchestras are or have been teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, cutting the size of their string sections, and/or cutting the pay of their musicians. It is hardly a rosy time for many orchestras. Just sayin...
     
  16. royzak2000

    royzak2000 Senior Member

    Location:
    London,England
    I'd forgotten about Chant, and all those Venetziano Rondo things.
     
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  17. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    Well, you know, it was a ballet, the whole thing -- the "primitive" dance, the kind of erotic quality of almost sexual vicitimization in the sacrifice of the young girl by elders, the wildy rhythmic polytonal music that doesn't develop conventionally, I'm sure the whole thing together made quite an impression, the impact of each element heightened by the other, as it should be in a multimedia work like a dance performance. And it's hard to say what touched off the furor, some kind of argument seems to have started between factions in the audience before the dancers even entered the stage, during the intro, maybe riled up by local critics. The contemporaneous NYT article reported that during subsequent performances there were hisses and counter cheers and management would bring the house lights up which would quiet the crowd and the performances would continue. Sounds like something similar to the British reaction to Dylan's first electric tour in '66 which in part was in part organized by groups on the political left aligned with the folk movement -- less of just a spontaneous reaction to the one performance, more of the ongoing part of the artistic energy and polemical battles of the time. But, jeez, was there ever a more fertile enterprise than the Ballet Russe in those years? Firebird, Petruchka, Rite of Spring, Daphnis & Chloe, Jeux...what a run.

    BTW, for those who haven't seen it, although the original choreography was lost, 30+ years ago the Joffrey Ballet did a recreation based on what records and descriptions they could find. It's up in three parts on YouTube from an old PBS broadcast, here's part 1:

     
  18. Anthology123

    Anthology123 Senior Member

    Thanks for the correction, but I think you get the point of my post.
     
  19. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    Yes and no. Vienna had 16 public opera houses at the beginning of the 18th century, some were posh, some were less so, but opera drew a crowd from the working class up to the aristocracy, so did, in earlier days in England things like the plays of Shakespeare, which we now think of as high-brow. Opera was a variety of pop entertainment for much of its history.

    And the musicians who played in court also gathered to play in other public places -- like Teleman's organization of music students playing in a coffeehouse in Leipzig, maybe it was a relatively posh coffeehouse, but it wasn't sponsored, court music -- and then, of course there were the churches and religious meetings, for which the top composers wrote weekly and where they often performed; plus, there were schools, you know, Vivaldi was the violin master at an orphanage and a lot of his early work was written for performance by his students -- it was being played by poor orphans. And of course the musicians themselves weren't aristocrats. They played and wrote the music, taught it to their children, and otherwise had it as part of their home lives.

    This idea that classical music through its entire history was strictly a courtly endeavor segregated entirely by and for the upper classes is an oversimplification, interest in it, the styles of it, access to it, the whole kit and kaboodle of class, art, performance and access to and interest in music "high" and "low" resists reductive simplification I think.
     
  20. royzak2000

    royzak2000 Senior Member

    Location:
    London,England
    At Verdi's funeral, as the coffin was carried through the streets the people broke out spontaneously into The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves from Nabucco.
    At this time he had become a favorite politician, but the main thing is they knew the piece.
     
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  21. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    You know, before Beatlemania there was "Lind mania," which was a contemporaneous term that the NY press coined when Swedish soprano Jenny Lind toured the US in the 1850s backed impressario P.T. Barnum -- not a guy who made his fortune by catering to the exclusive tastes of the upper crust. And even in this century musicians like Heifetz were once written about in the gossip columns. Hell, even in my lifetime, Bernstein and Glen Gould were famous, public figures.
     
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2015
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  22. royzak2000

    royzak2000 Senior Member

    Location:
    London,England
    Not to mention Callas.
     
  23. violarules

    violarules Senior Member

    Location:
    Baltimore, MD
    The interest in the Strings and Band programs at the schools where I teach in is still strong. Just because classical records don't sell doesn't mean that people aren't exposed to it. There are several musicians on Youtube with large followings who produce "crossover" music and videos. In contrast, I think more children, because of technology, have access and experience with listening to a variety of music. Just because classical CD's or records aren't available doesn't mean people aren't experiencing the music.
     
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  24. Robin L

    Robin L Musical Omnivore

    Location:
    Fresno, California
    Not to mention that hot couple, Greta Garbo and Leopold Stokowski.
     
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  25. PHILLYQ

    PHILLYQ Forum Resident

    Location:
    Brooklyn NY
    Good points. My 23 year old son listens to European classical, rap, metal, etc because he has access to all of that(He also likes all of that).
     
    Chris DeVoe likes this.
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