Bach at the Burger King
lareviewofbooks.org
lareviewofbooks.org
Most young people? I'd venture that most children who attend US public school encounter classical music in K-5 at some point.
>The average American does not recognize the opening chords of The Four Seasons as the sound of spring but the sound of snobbery.
Rolled my eyes here. We're talking about Burger King, not a country club.
Edit: I disagree with the conclusion but the article is pretty interesting with the history of 'weaponized' classical music.
Also they dynamics is different, typically a piece is building up some sort of context that adds to the experience - even more so than modern music - if you get home and someone blasts the final parts of a symphony on the stereo, it's easily perceived as just a cacophony of irritating tunes. It might have been enjoyable if you had been listening from the beginning.
It seems to me that a lot of recent songs reduce complexity even further - It seems common now with songs that are basically just a repeating theme with minor variations. I'm not saying it's bad, but it doesn't really require much effort to understand the structure, and it probably makes classical music seem even more alien.
Classical music would have been a far more stimulating exposure.
I'd wager that most people encounter classical music whenever John Williams lifts Dvorak/Holst/etc.
"At every one of those concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. Well, there is the same thing in heaven. A number of people sit there in glory, not because they are happy, but because they think they owe it to their position to be in heaven. "
I have made a similar experience as a semi-competitive chess player. As a child, I never perceived chess as an outlandish hobby. Chess clubs are full of people from all walks of life. But nowadays especially (maybe after enough movies used chess players as a trite metaphor for 'genius mastermind') people seem more often associate chess with that kind of stuff.
It strips something from the activity itself if it becomes associated with certain exclusive groups or classes. It's also happening to healthy nutrition or sports which are increasingly seen simply as signifiers of elite status and optimised lifestyles, rather than communal, shared activities.
Yes, I know that players are not advised to read such books until they are relatively high in the rankings, but the prices of those books do tell you that even if a local chess club is open to everyone regardless of class, if you want to continue to progress in the game you’ll have to shell out money.
(Of course, things are easier these days because virtually every chess book every published has now been scanned and uploaded to filesharing communities. I get the impression that the Russian chess community, most of whom either cannot obtain or cannot afford the books, have come together in a joint effort to get this done.)
I ride Marta to work 3 days a week and to the airport when I travel. There has never been any classical music playing at the stations I’ve stopped at or passed through.
I was in NYC a couple weeks ago and never heard it either. I went to the Penn Station stop mentioned in the article too.
Contra the article I don't think it discourages anyone from loitering. The station is full of homeless people asking for money and late at night there's a very large number of folks sleeping in the hallways.
Much more its the armed guards stationed everywhere that prevent disturbances and remove people.
FWIW the characterization of the station as a haven for the rich is not particularly apt either. There are tens of thousands of commuters going through this station every day. Rich, poor, black, white, young and old, from all walks of life. Most of them are just hoping their train doesn't get cancelled so they can get home.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/73wlqo/mcstabbys...
If your business has a Droog problem this is probably the wrong approach.
>>Take your delinquency elsewhere could be the subtext under every tune in the classical crime-fighting movement. It is crucial to remember that the tactic does not aim to stop or even necessarily reduce crime — but to relocate it. Moreover, such mercenary measures most often target minor infractions like vandalism and loitering — crimes that damage property, not people, and usually the property of the powerful. “[B]usiness and government leaders,” Lily Hirsch observes in Music in American Crime Prevention and Punishment, “are seizing on classical music not as a positive moralizing force, but as a marker of space.” In a strange mutation, classical music devolves from a “universal language of mankind” reminding all people of their common humanity into a sonic border fence protecting privileged areas from common crowds, telling the plebes in auditory code that “you’re not welcome here.”
It conflates deliquency with being a commoner, and implies that those who succeed in improving their station in life are somehow deserving of being predated on, at least in terms of their property, by the deliquent.
Essentially this romanticizes and rationalizes deliquency, and discourages any measure to punish it.
In truth, deliquency harms, first and foremost, the common people, whose common spaces are degraded by it. It is perpetrated by a tiny proportion of the poor. It is by no means a common characteristic of the poor.
Making the deliquent out to be victims, and synomous with common crowds, and their behaviour out to be a socially just act of balancing the class scales, is factually wrong, and has an absolutely toxic effect on society.
Most recently in the old shopping centre in Stratford; a place where, due to some weird zoning laws, isn't allowed to kick out homeless people. The focus is always on moving homeless.
Oddly it seems like the natural endpoint for where classical music has been positioned in society. A kind easy listening that is treated so formally it now carries a strong stuffy and oppressive aura.
after years of struggling with this, enter the classical music. apparently pure poison. they proudly try to stand their ground, but you can see the suffering in their eyes. some of them used to last a couple hours, but when they leave its always at a run.
anyways, to address your point, over time sensitivity seems to increase rather than decrease. as exposure increases, lower volumes and shorter durations are required to elicit the flight response.
you would think that the more aggressive, modern composers would be more stressful. apparently, just basic baroque chamber is the least palatable. after that romantic symphonies.
there are a thousand sad things about this situation, one being that I'm losing my appreciation for the music itself.
Also I'm wondering what cultural associations today's music will have, far in the future after its copyrights have expired.
In fact, this is the most snobbish and pretentious article decrying snobbery and pretense I've seen.
The author should stick to reviewing music itself, and stop whining about the "abuse" of same.
My personal guess is that in some fields expertise is ultimately self-justifying. What is art after all? Whatever notable artists and critics and dealers say it is. Try that same shit in software, and you’ll lose your job. At some point the artistic type can be so thoroughly cut off from challenge to their beliefs that they feel free to impose them on society without much reflection.
It's a tough situation and a rather benign solution to the problem immediately at hand (ignoring solving the homeless problem itself).
Disclaimer: my mother was one of those homeless people in the area, so I have some bias here.