When European classical music was new, there was a known distinction between the music composed by life-long composers trying to advance the art (between a bulk of standard/religious stuff) with wealthy patrons/institutions, and everyone else. This doesn't discount the "everyone else" who also tried avante garde in the popular music of the time, but that stuff wasn't recorded.herodotus wrote:Well it's funny, but that part of the interview came at the end of a long discussion about an academic conference Babbitt had attended where every possible name for 'classical' music had been tried and rejected. They tried 'concert music' but no, because no one goes to such concerts. They tried 'cultivated music' but that was too elitist. Everyone but Babbitt and one other guy favored calling it 'classical', but they both pointed out how inaccurate that term was, so in the end, no name was chosen at all.
This changed over time. With a standardized musical notation system, then audio recording, and platforms like YouTube and Soundcloud, anyone can create and distribute music worldwide. It is an equalizer of sorts. But the real equalizer is time. However, we haven't had well-recorded music for 100 years yet, so it's hard to tell.
We can still think of what mainstream "pop" music has made it to today, and what musically avante garde (or what it has resulted in) is still here. Yeah, there's the avante garde in, for lack of a better term, formalized and institutionalized academic music tradition, then there's avante garde everywhere else. And they both survived, evolved, and are celebrated. We're talking about rhythm and blues, jazz, spirituals, basically African and Latin influence and cultural syncretism (I'm focusing on America here; forgive me, but Babbitt is in this context too, and it's gone worldwide).
So fast forward 100 years from now and think of what music will survive. Surely, some of that academic stuff will. A lot of the pop stuff won't (Gucci gang Gucci gang Gucci gang), but some will. I feel some people are losing sight that advances are being made in pop music. Not in the same way that academic music is, but come on, there is legitimately new music focusing on rhythm, on sound design, etc.. Aren't these questions academic music ask(ed) too? And it's #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Not true. The New Yorker has a Jazz section. And people hate Jazz, but there's a significant number of people who love it to make it worth it. And no one covers the "indie" scene—the $12 cover at a bar scene. At least not until there's significant buzz (and money). Will you see prog rock in The New Yorker? They talked about ELP, Yes, and Tool but nary a mention of Dream Theater. There's elitism, but more importantly, cost/benefit ratio everywhere.And it should be pointed out that it's not just the New Yorker that ignores well regarded bit unpopular music. The New York Times does it too. So does almost every journalistic outlet.
You said the operative word. Economists. Once you factor capitalism in, everything gets distorted to whatever makes money. Pitchfork is part of this entertainment ecosystem, and like it or not, they are an authority in this domain. That is to say, they make more money than interviewing whoever Babbitt thinks they should.But the more interesting case to me was the story I linked to where academic economists, looking for information about the quality of all contemporary music, quoted the opinions of writers at Pitchfork, as if they are the experts on music. I really don't see how we can blame Babbitts elitism for that. There is another kind of elitism entirely at play here.
I get Babbitt's ire. But it's a very complex situation and he doesn't know where to direct it at. He'd rather blame plebes who he thinks don't know any better, who are avante garde in their own way, who are struggling under the same system with generally fewer opportunities to put experimental music out, who need to put food on the table instead of taking a chance like that, and are perfectly capable of approaching music as a betterment of humanity but would rather dance and drink to it when they actually have time off.
No one person can fix this situation. And it would take a mass consciousness to overhaul it. So there are many paths of least resistance, so I get it. But if you're not working toward this mass consciousness then you're wasting your time and possibly making it worse.
finding it hard to get back in to society...
