On Monday 22 June 2009 09:24:42 Fons Adriaensen wrote:
On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 02:51:53PM +0200, Bengt Gördén
wrote:
Den Monday 22 June 2009 14.35.19 skrev Fons
Adriaensen:
On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 05:00:26AM -0700, Mark
Knecht wrote:
I vote mostly prophetic.
Given that this was written in the early 50s, it is quite
prophetic.
On the other hand he is wrong about musical creation being restricted to
a certain number of people so I vote for him being just dyspeptic.
He's not saying that musical creation should be restricted to a
small number of predetermined people. But de facto, like all
artistic endeavour, it is a minority activity, We may all be
potential great composers or artists, but most of us do not
exploit that potential, just look around. Maybe 10% of the
population is capable of producing anything that would be
regarded by the remaining 90% as music they'd want to listen to.
Less than 1% could do something that would survive a generation
and become part of music history,
Yeah, which is why we don't know any of the "great" composer's
contemporaries
anymore that made the music that is crap.
I've stated it once in a panel discussion that the problem with
modern/contemporary art is that you have to listen/see/watch/experience a lot
of it, to find some good stuff, since it has not been weeded out for us yet by
our ancestors.
That however should not stop us from making it.
There's also statements that technologies like the gramophone and radio
actually stopped people from being creative and play music by themselves,
since there was no need anymore, since you could put up a record or turn on
the radio if you wanted to hear some music, rather than to have to have a
person in the family play something.
So in a way, modern technology has made things less democratic too.
sincerely,
Marije