The Devaluation of Music
No surprise here: the University of Leicester has just released a study noting the dulling of music appreciation. Quote:
"In the 19th century, music was seen as a highly valued treasure with fundamental and near-mystical powers of human communication: It was experienced within clearly defined contexts, and its value was intrinsically bound up with those contexts.... [T]he degree of accessibility and choice has arguably led to a rather passive attitude towards music heard in everyday life: The present results indicate that music was rarely the focus of participants' concerns and was instead something that seemed to be taken rather for granted, a product that was to be consumed during the achievement of other goals. In short, our relationship to music in everyday life may well be complex and sophisticated, but it is not necessarily characterised by deep emotional investment."Jeez, what a great time to start a band!
posted by Paul S. at
5:24 PM
6 Comments:
I'm curious about these 346 people. Are they music fans? Are they regular live music goers? Are they homebodies, for whatever reason? I could find 500 people in both categories who listen to music on their iPods or home stereos.
And to continue a bit of devil's advocacy, blankets statements about musical appreciation from two centuries ago (where? in Europe presumably) are naturally problematic, and even risk retroromanticism. Court music, with patronage by kings and princes, was prevelant; music was supported by the various Churches, of course; music by the lower classes existed, likely in bars and folk gatherings, but we don't know a lot about those situations—churches and kings tend to preserve things a bit better than the poor folk, or even the emerging middle classes.
It's a longer story, anyway.
When Hannah and toured Italy 18 months ago, one of the things I was struck by were the music halls that proliferated the big cities, such as Venice and Florence. I didn't get a chance to listen to a full concert. But poking my head into the empty concert halls (when a concert was not going on) showed me how intimate and classy these places were, and still are. There is something to be said for the immediacy that an excellent music venue offers; it effects perfomers and audience alike. The classiest indie rocks clubs in Chicago (at least as far as I know) are Shubas and the Abbey Pub, and that coincides with the best concerts I've seen.
Thus we can consider the venues of music of today, and to what extent the venues support the kind of appreciation of music and its performers that in and of itself can stir the kind of open ears that allow us to value music all the more. Venues stimulate states of consciousness, in other words.
Some venues rather support moshing, crowd surfing, and lurid behavior, in general. These have their time and places, but none of those encourage deeper listening, or reverance for the musical experience. Rather, music and venue in these cases are merely the vehicle, or afterthought, for the primary purpose of social (or antisocial) displays.
great points md, although i really think there is something to be said re: the probably negative effects of our constant music saturation these days. then again, i sill love it, so....
tell me more -- "probably negative effects" means what, specifically?
with kisses,
md
you know damn well what it means: super kinda/sorta bad!!!
be honest though, don't you get "music sickness"?
i know what 'negative' means, dooty pants -- i wanted to know if you could spell out the effects what you think the effects are.
you ask, do i get music sickness? rarely if ever, if i get what you mean by it.
i'd say i listen to no more than an hour of music on a daily basis. extraneous noises (elevators, tv commercials, etc i don't consider music and just tune out as I would tune out noise when i walk in a city)
focused listening to a couple things is far better than unfocused listening to music all day long
i'm pretty picky about music. i can only listen to so much of a certain genre before i can sense oncoming irritation/boredom with it.
i fill my ipod strategically, with music from around the world (as you know) and this offers great relief from what might be called "Genre Fevers", where the patterns of musical form that make up a musical genre function as a medium itself. we get tired of the same ole mediums--namely, the same ole song structures over and over again.
don't get me wrong...i love indie rock (certain of indie rock, that is) but i simultaneously realize the formula undergirding it. from 50,000 feet away, most every pop song is structured the same way -- as an interplay of 'verse then verse then chorus then bridge then chorus then out'...it is important to be able to realize that.....it sheds light on what one is actually listening to, as a medium, and thus ways to get one's music fix through different mediums (genres, forms, designs) of music that live outside the pop/folk tradition.
cuz after all, the medium is the message.
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