# Is there any classical "ghetto" music?



## Kajmanen (Jun 30, 2017)

Most classical sounds like its for the rich and famous and for fancy events. Is it possible to get away from this feeling when listening to it? 

Whom wrote some for the poor? Who wrote something more down to earth?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Italian opera. I know it looks as though it's just for the rich at their leisure, but it isn't necessarily. I remember once seeing this film, Rossellini or Visconti I can't remember, someone like that. ItaliN realist. Two lovers were on a road trip through rural Italy and they go into a bar and it's full of peasants singing Rossini or Verdi arias. In the 1980s Nessun Dorma became a big football song, and we had the three tenors.


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

Die Dreigroschenoper.


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## Botschaft (Aug 4, 2017)

Requiems are written for the poorest of all: the dead.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Kajmanen said:


> Most classical sounds like its for the rich and famous and for fancy events. Is it possible to get away from this feeling when listening to it?
> 
> Whom wrote some for the poor? Who wrote something more down to earth?


The negative feelings you write about are irrational, unfair and unjust stereotypes perpetrated by many, as to why they stay away from classical music.

The simple truth is, anybody can enjoy classical music: tall or short, fat or thin, white or black, male or female, rich or poor, heterosexual, homosexual or transvestite; whether you live in a Malibu beach house or in a Chicago South Side housing project.

Simply leave the negative emotional baggage behind and approach it with an open mind.

It has all been written for YOU!!!!

Listening to and enjoying classical music is the HUMAN thing to do!!!


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> Italian opera. I know it looks as though it's just for the rich at their leisure, but it isn't necessarily. I remember once seeing this film, Rossellini or Visconti I can't remember, someone like that. ItaliN realist. Two lovers were on a road trip through rural Italy and they go into a bar and it's full of peasants singing Rossini or Verdi arias. In the 1980s Nessun Dorma became a big football song, and we had the three tenors.


I remembered the film with the peasants singing opera in a bar, it was Fellini's La Strada.


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## Bettina (Sep 29, 2016)

Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

OP, when you say "sounds like its for the rich and famous and for fancy events" what pieces do you have in mind? I honestly can't think of a single piece that fits above statement. I understand where that notion comes from - popular media has been depicting classical music that way for years - but there is nothing inherent in the music that fits your description. 

In fact, I am not famous nor rich and I listen to classical music in my underwear by myself, hardly a fancy event, although sometimes I would put on my fanciest Calvin Klein briefs when I listen to a Haydn string quartet.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

I guess that impression is due to the "presentation". Look at classical concerts, with everybody (musicians included) in suit and tie, and it's easy to understand why a lot of persons don't even try to approach it.


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## Johnnie Burgess (Aug 30, 2015)

norman bates said:


> I guess that impression is due to the "presentation". Look at classical concerts, with everybody (musicians included) in suit and tie, and it's easy to understand why a lot of persons don't even try to approach it.


Robert Palmer did his concerts in a suit and tie does that change the music he did?


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Bettina said:


> Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man.


Unfortunately, most regular folks never heard this work.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

As much as I dislike the bias in the OP, as in many negative stereotypes, there may be grain truth in there somewhere. One of the paradoxes of Classical Music, at least in Europe, was that while most Composers and Musicians came from humble backgrounds, they depended upon the support of the Aristocracy at a time when there was not a significant Middle Class with purchasing power. Therefore some of the Music produced inevitably tries to curry favor with the fat cats. How many Bach Cantatas have lyrics that compare some Leipzig burgher to a God from Antiquity? Or the stuff that Mozart had to crank out for the Salzburg Archbishop?
Nor was the situation improved when Russian Composers were forced to kowtow to the Dictatorship of the Proleteriat.
Great Composers have always transcended these limitations. One doesn't need to be stuffed with money to be awed by the vistas of Beethoven's last Piano Sonata, or the terrors of Verdi Requiem. Anyone who can't appreciate the Universality of Classical Music is to be worthy of pity


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## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

That feeling you get from the music isn't from the composer... you've just let modernity and its stereotypes infect your impression of the music.


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## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

norman bates said:


> I guess that impression is due to the "presentation". Look at classical concerts, with everybody (musicians included) in suit and tie, and it's easy to understand why a lot of persons don't even try to approach it.


If you let the people who listen to that music and their suits and ties put you off the music/genre itself then that's your own fault, I guess.


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## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

Kajmanen said:


> Most classical sounds like its for the rich and famous and for fancy events. Is it possible to get away from this feeling when listening to it?
> 
> Whom wrote some for the poor? Who wrote something more down to earth?


Who it is written for is secondary. The aesthetic value of the music, separate from its audience, is primary. Haydn wrote to please, but I can enjoy it by separating that from the fact that his music is also beautiful as a purely musical, joyous entity.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

norman bates said:


> I guess that impression is due to the "presentation". Look at classical concerts, with everybody (musicians included) in suit and tie, and it's easy to understand why a lot of persons don't even try to approach it.


I don't know where you go to concerts, but I find that most folks dress casually when attending.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

norman bates said:


> I guess that impression is due to the "presentation". Look at classical concerts, with everybody (musicians included) in suit and tie, and it's easy to understand why a lot of persons don't even try to approach it.


Not at the concerts I attend (in NYC). the performer - maybe; the audience very rarely.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

Bulldog said:


> Unfortunately, most regular folks never heard this work.


Referring to Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man"

How about "Rodeo" then?






(From a 1993 TV Commercial)

Or this:






And United Airlines theme is "Rhapsody in Blue."


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Kajmanen said:


> Most classical sounds like its for the rich and famous and for fancy events. Is it possible to get away from this feeling when listening to it?
> 
> Whom wrote some for the poor? Who wrote something more down to earth?


Classical music is there to lift you up, not to bring you down, so no, there is no ghetto classical. And it is for everybody, so all these stereotypes are merely in your head.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Mozart - Leck mich im Arsch


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

norman bates said:


> I guess that impression is due to the "presentation". Look at classical concerts, with everybody (musicians included) in suit and tie, and it's easy to understand why a lot of persons don't even try to approach it.


So what? I would not care if the orchestra was in suit and tie or naked, as long as they play beautifully. The orchestra in Bayreuth plays some of the most wonderful music on Earth while wearing t-shirts and slippers, because the orchestra pit is too hot, and it does not influence the quality of the music, so what?


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

I'd love it if their where a ring of classical composers running a drugs and human trafficking crime network and simultaneously pumped out innovative masterpieces


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

ST4 said:


> I'd love it if their where a ring of classical composers running a drugs and human trafficking crime network and simultaneously pumped out innovative masterpieces


Led by Carlo Gesualdo.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Taking the thread topic literally, there were some fine Jewish composers imprisoned first in the Warsaw Ghetto, and later, in Nazi concentration camps, writing some terrific classical music under the most anxiety-ridden, harrowing conditions; literally, "ghetto classical music". Pablo Haas, Gideon Klein and Erwin Schulaf come to mind. There are CDs of their fine efforts.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Kajmanen said:


> Most classical sounds like its for the rich and famous and for fancy events. Is it possible to get away from this feeling when listening to it?
> 
> Whom wrote some for the poor? Who wrote something more down to earth?


I wonder whether the audience were rich and famous in the classical cannabis smoking concerts in Colorado. I fear they may have been









http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/..._colorado_symphony_orchestra_s_high_note.html


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Someone once said to me that the love of Bach is so widespread in Holland that if you go to a provincial recital by (eg) Leusink the audience is working class. Maybe some Dutch person can comment on that.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Is this what you mean?


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Or........


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

Kajmanen said:


> Most classical sounds like its for the rich and famous and for fancy events. Is it possible to get away from this feeling when listening to it?
> 
> Whom wrote some for the poor? Who wrote something more down to earth?


I believe this stereotype of classical music sounding like it is for the rich and famous only applies to certain periods of classical music.

Most classical from the 20th century, does not fit this stereotype.



SiegendesLicht said:


> Classical music is there to lift you up, not to bring you down, so no, there is no ghetto classical. And it is for everybody, so all these stereotypes are merely in your head.


Not the case for me.

Classical music, for me, is to experience ALL emotions, including some of the negative ones.

The feeling of catharsis after listening to a particularly difficult, and and less than uplifting piece, is satisfying in an entirely different, and I would argue, deeper way.


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## Der Titan (Oct 17, 2016)

Kajmanen said:


> Most classical sounds like its for the rich and famous and for fancy events. Is it possible to get away from this feeling when listening to it?
> 
> Whom wrote some for the poor? Who wrote something more down to earth?


I don't want to beat around the bush: Yes, there is music, which is not for everyone. But the point is: That has nothing to do with "the rich and famous". And by the way: I regard myself as "poor", at least for a German. I somehow missed a great career. But I certainly don't need a music, especially written for poor people like me.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> Someone once said to me that the love of Bach is so widespread in Holland that if you go to a provincial recital by (eg) Leusink the audience is working class. Maybe some Dutch person can comment on that.


Just a myth.----------


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## Der Titan (Oct 17, 2016)

Mandryka said:


> Someone once said to me that the love of Bach is so widespread in Holland that if you go to a provincial recital by (eg) Leusink the audience is *working class*. Maybe some Dutch person can comment on that.


I am not Dutch, I am German. But as least as Germany is concerned something like a "working class" is simply not existing. These are mindsets who are belonging especially to 19th century and maybe early 20th century. I simply don't think in classes. I believe in chance equality. And if you have chance equality you have no classes.


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## Sina (Aug 3, 2012)

Der Titan said:


> I am not Dutch, I am German. But as least as Germany is concerned *something like a "working class" is simply not existing*. These are mindsets who are belonging especially to 19th century and maybe early 20th century. I simply don't think in classes. *I believe in chance equality*. And if you have chance equality you have no classes.


It might be way off topic but a question out of curiosity: is what you are saying based on factual observations in your country or just your "beliefs"?


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## Der Titan (Oct 17, 2016)

Sina said:


> It might be way off topic but a question out of curiosity: is what you are saying based on factual observations in your country or just your "beliefs"?


No, it's not my "beliefs". The point is: If your father is a teacher, you have an advantage to become a teacher. If you are a son of a bagger, your chances to become a teacher may be not completely equal. That's true and nobody denies that. But that doesn't already mean to think in terms of classes. And to think in classes is something old-fashioned. There may be still some people who think in categories of classes, but it's my experience that this happens very rarely. You have of course still some kind of jet set. Things like that will never die. But to think that because of things like that we would be a class society would be cynical for it would be neglecting the fact that a lot of efforts have been done to overcome classes. And for example our former chancellor Schröder was the son of a single parent cleaning woman.


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

There is a theory that we have a new class system based on intelligence. Liberalism's equality (of opportunity) and The America Dream broke down the old class system: everybody who had the brains could go to university and become a member of the elite, even if the rest of his family/class could not. It doesn't matter anymore where you come from. But intelligent people tend to get intelligent offspring so elite breeds elite. And less intelligent people get stuck in at the bottom of society because of their DNA. Or if you don't buy this biological talk, then substitute it with culture: elite maintains a culture which is favorable to breed elite offspring. So there is not much social mobility left. And so again we have a class society (which in fact explains the rise of populism in politics because the non-elite - 'the people' - are excluded from the elite class who actually rule).


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Agamemnon said:


> There is a theory that we have a new class system based on intelligence.


This theory is set forth in the still-controversial book "The Bell Curve." One author of that book was recently driven from a college campus where he had been invited to speak (on another subject) by the antifa, and a professor injured in the melee.


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## Der Titan (Oct 17, 2016)

Agamemnon said:


> There is a theory that we have a new class system based on intelligence. Liberalism's equality (of opportunity) and The America Dream broke down the old class system: everybody who had the brains could go to university and become a member of the elite, even if the rest of his family/class could not. It doesn't matter anymore where you come from. But intelligent people tend to get intelligent offspring so elite breeds elite. And less intelligent people get stuck in at the bottom of society because of their DNA. Or if you don't buy this biological talk, then substitute it with culture: elite maintains a culture which is favorable to breed elite offspring. So there is not much social mobility left. And so again we have a class society (which in fact explains the rise of populism in politics because the non-elite - 'the people' - are excluded from the elite class who actually rule).


For "biology". I think it's proved that very intelligent parents are more likely to have more intelligent children although statistic says us, that the children of intelligent people are much more close to average than their parents. As children of intelligent people tend to an average intelligence again, it's not possible to have classes of intelligence. And all that means only average. You have also stupid children of intelligent parents and intelligent children of stupid parents. Therefore a class society of intelligence classes just plain will never exist.

And don't mix up things. There will always be a kind of elite. But to have elites is something completely different than to have classes. Elite is something completely different than classes.

By the way is this "Off topic"? No, because it might me possible that certain parts of classical music are more likely found followers in a certain elite. Not necessarily a very "erudite" elite. You don't need "erudition" to listen to classical music. So you don't need to be rich or famous to listen to classical music, you don't even must be erudite, but something you certainly need is *musicality*.

Therefore you don't need classical music for the ghettos. Why? There will be some people in the ghettos who like Beethoven and some not, but it will be the same thing with English aristocrats. And then in all this there is a lot appearance. The simple point is that a lot of people in the so called ghettos don't like Beethoven. That's very honest. But this applies for the jet set too. So there is a lot of "hot air" of people who pretend to be great lovers of classical music but only go to the concerts to show that they are tremendously erudite. Don't buy that!


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Kajmanen said:


> Most classical sounds like its for the rich and famous and for fancy events. *Is it possible to get away from this feeling when listening to it?*
> 
> Whom wrote some for the poor? Who wrote something more down to earth?


In my experience, no, it isn't.

Music - like religion, fashion, dialects of speech, rules of grammar, and most of the rest of human behavior - is intended to unite and divide people, to create insiders who "get it" or whatever, and outsiders who don't.

We'll never be disembodied minds without a cultural context, without class, without a set of experiences that have shaped the way all our faculties experience the world.

I don't know what to do about it. Personally, I straddle a few different classes and cultures (one from my birth family and early childhood, one by adoption and later childhood, another by education, income, and primary inclination). I think I will never be a whole person because of the forces pulling me in different directions. In a bad mood, it makes me hate everyone. But in a good mood, I feel fortunate that I have all that heritage. Unfortunately, I have a lot of bad moods, and pretty much everyone in all three of the mutually hostile cultures I have inherited conspires to ensure that I do!

Oh well, I guess. Screw 'em all. I get the music, the books, the wilderness, whatever I want. Screw 'em all.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

ST4 said:


> I'd love it if their where a ring of classical composers running a drugs and human trafficking crime network and simultaneously pumped out innovative masterpieces


You would have loved the British empire. Fortunately, its music survives!

Edit: The Spanish empire would please you too, as long as your notion of "running drugs" includes tobacco.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

SiegendesLicht said:


> So what? I would not care if the orchestra was in suit and tie or naked, as long as they play beautifully. The orchestra in Bayreuth plays some of the most wonderful music on Earth while wearing t-shirts and slippers, because the orchestra pit is too hot, and it does not influence the quality of the music, so what?


So a I think that lot of people see classical music as a conformist show for rich people, more than something alive and relevant that could say something to a young person. I'm not saying it's like this... or better, there's certainly a part of truth but it's just a part of the story.
But when I was younger that was an aspect that keeped me from listening to it. And I know for sure it's like this for a lot of persons.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

norman bates said:


> So a I think that lot of people see classical music as a conformist show for rich people, more than something alive and relevant that could say something to a young person. I'm not saying it's like this... or better, there's certainly a part of truth but it's just a part of the story.
> But when I was younger that was an aspect that keeped me from listening to it. And I know for sure it's like this for a lot of persons.


I am a young person (still) and I see classical music as the most non-conformist, rebellious music of all. All those other styles - pop, rock, metal, rap etc. are just a wanna-be form of rebellion, orchestrated by major corporations. Learning to love music that is centuries old, before the corporations and the advertising campaigns ever appeared - that takes some really independent thinking.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Ho ho, here we go. The usual piffle about the non-existence of class. The chief pieces of evidence always being sons and daughters of rag 'n' bone men made good and now at the top of society. Never mind that the people surrounding them are not products of this fictitious meritocracy.

The concept of class has nothing to do with this anyway. If you are a day-labourer (i.e. swapping your labour for a wage) with not many prospects and not waiting to graduate from university, you are a member of the group or 'class' of people who work for a living in the most basic form of that arrangement. Of course there is a cultural history of 'working-class culture' rendering the idea broader than just individual members by dint of being a wage-labourer.

The idea that class distinctions have disappeared is a fantasy which now seems to be very widely accepted by people under thirty (and very much so by the middle classes). Which I discovered when talking to my ex-girlfriend's large friend circle at parties. She is 11 years younger than me and those friends range from about 21 - 30. The dawn of the 21st century has raised people who now actually believe the rot that a person's destiny is always in their own hands - the sort of claptrap that has coursed through the U.S. for many years.

Anyway with regard to classical music's role in this. Quite some time ago there used to be a deliberate push among working-class 'amelioration societies' to expose people to 'good music' and art, books and ideas and what-have-you. It wasn't just an attempt to buy into the culture of one's 'betters', but an attempt to show that this culture was everyone's, rather than the property of some elite circle. Some of that mindset did filter into public policy, but it has since ebbed away in an austerity culture allied with political individualism. 

My personal belief is that like all culture classical music will be taken up by anyone who feels favourable toward it and this often comes from positive exposure and involvement in musical activity. On the other hand to expect youth in the 21st century to devote themselves to the cultural products of the 19th century is unreasonable.


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## Der Titan (Oct 17, 2016)

Frankly, if one doesn't define certain words very precisely, one can lead a discussion which leads nowhere. For example if you say: we have poor people in the society, therefore we have classes, this is a kind of argumentation which is completely void of any kind of precise definition of a word. But if words are not precisely defined, you shouldn't even start a discussion. 

"Class" means that you have a society, where people are defining themselves as members of a certain class. That was true in Germany of the 19th century and I guess in other European countries too. People lived in classes, they married in their classes, they had friends in their classes, they go to a pub in their classes, the go to the schools of their classes, they had the job in their classes, and when they went dancing, they only danced with people of their classes. That exactly is a class society. And this class society we have overcome. That doesn't mean that we have still poor people, or that the real chances of people can't be the same, even in a society which is not a class society. But this problem you can overcome only with communism and I am not a communist.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Der Titan said:


> Frankly, if one doesn't define certain words very precisely, one can lead a discussion which leads nowhere. For example if you say: we have poor people in the society, therefore we have classes, this is a kind of argumentation which is completely void of any kind of precise definition of a word. But if words are not precisely defined, you shouldn't even start a discussion.


Like a precise definition of 'poor'? Sometimes words and ideas rae not things to be pointed at in a simple detonative way.



Der Titan said:


> "Class" means that you have a society, where people are defining themselves as members of a certain class. That was true in Germany of the 19th century and I guess in other European countries too. People lived in classes, they married in their classes, they had friends in their classes, they go to a pub in their classes, the go to the schools of their classes, they had the job in their classes, and when they went dancing, they only danced with people of their classes. That exactly is a class society. And this class society we have overcome. That doesn't mean that we have still poor people, or that the real chances of people can't be the same, even in a society which is not a class society. But this problem you can overcome only with communism and I am not a communist.


No, class doesn't mean that. It is not a self-definition. The class behaviour you describe has been challenged many times, two of the of the biggest shifts occurred after the great war and the second war and fluidity of behaviour transcending so-called 'position' always occurs, but it still defines much of behaviour because of the circles people end up moving within and the people in those circles. It has not been 'overcome', I'm afraid you are gravely mistaken about this.

The question of what to do about it or whether it requires attention from some sort of policy initiative is a wholly different matter (the 'communism' remark as expressed makes little sense to me). The fact that class society is still in evidence is not really all that difficult to ascertain.


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## Der Titan (Oct 17, 2016)

I don't know the American society, they may be different from Germany. My personal view is: You can somehow change a kind of a "society regime" of a class society ( which has been done). But you can't achieve that people are poor, although you can of course change the life of poor people, and making the life of poor people much better ( but that's a matter of politics). And the second point: If somebody thinks that he is something better because he somehow comes from a "refined society" and if somebody is snobbish or is a proud member of a jet set, these are things in the minds of people you can't change. You can change the regime, yes, but if people somehow think that they are something better than others for very foolish reasons, then you might regret it, but this is part of the personal life of everybody. But all that has nothing to do with a "class society".


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Triplets said:


> As much as I dislike the bias in the OP, as in many negative stereotypes, there may be grain truth in there somewhere. One of the paradoxes of Classical Music, at least in Europe, was that while most Composers and Musicians came from humble backgrounds, they depended upon the support of the Aristocracy at a time when there was not a significant Middle Class with purchasing power. Therefore some of the Music produced inevitably tries to curry favor with the fat cats. How many Bach Cantatas have lyrics that compare some Leipzig burgher to a God from Antiquity? Or the stuff that Mozart had to crank out for the Salzburg Archbishop?
> Nor was the situation improved when Russian Composers were forced to kowtow to the Dictatorship of the Proleteriat.
> Great Composers have always transcended these limitations. One doesn't need to be stuffed with money to be awed by the vistas of Beethoven's last Piano Sonata, or the terrors of Verdi Requiem. Anyone who can't appreciate the Universality of Classical Music is to be worthy of pity


"Ghetto" is a slang term meaning "hood" which is a slang term meaning "the projects". Nothing biased about it.


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

jegreenwood said:


> Led by Carlo Gesualdo.


I'm getting excited now, unfortunately he died a long time ago like the rest of us, so that won't be happening


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Agamemnon said:


> There is a theory that we have a new class system based on intelligence. Liberalism's equality (of opportunity) and The America Dream broke down the old class system: everybody who had the brains could go to university and become a member of the elite, even if the rest of his family/class could not. It doesn't matter anymore where you come from. But intelligent people tend to get intelligent offspring so elite breeds elite. And less intelligent people get stuck in at the bottom of society because of their DNA. Or if you don't buy this biological talk, then substitute it with culture: elite maintains a culture which is favorable to breed elite offspring. So there is not much social mobility left. And so again we have a class society (which in fact explains the rise of populism in politics because the non-elite - 'the people' - are excluded from the elite class who actually rule).


How do poorer intelligent people in America finance their time at university?

Intelligent qualified people may find themselves excluded from power and wealth because of their backgrounds, their families, their schools.

What we've found in the UK is that poorer people don't go to university so much because they don't want to take the financial risk of a loan to do so -- their poverty has made them financially risk averse. And when they do get qualified they find themselves trapped in the lower, less well paid echelons, because the elite preserves the power for "people like themselves" A similar thing happens in France (though there loans for first degrees are much more accessible) The grandes ecoles are much harder to access if your family has not already been to a grande ecole, like Oxford here, or, I guess, Harvard. And the best jobs are in the hands of Oxbridge people, enarques etc.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Mandryka said:


> How do poorer intelligent people in America finance their time at university?
> 
> Intelligent qualified people may find themselves excluded from power and wealth because of their backgrounds, their families, their schools.
> 
> What we've found in the UK is that poorer people don't go to university so much because they don't want to take the financial risk of a loan to do so -- their poverty has made them financially risk averse. And when they do get qualified they find themselves trapped in the lower, less well paid echelons, because the elite preserves the power for "people like themselves" A similar thing happens in France (though there loans for first degrees are much more accessible) The grandes ecoles are much harder to access if your family has not already been to a grande ecole, like Oxford here, or, I guess, Harvard. And the best jobs are in the hands of Oxbridge people, enarques etc.


The HYP colleges all offer "full need" financial aid to anyone admitted (I got this myself), but if you look at the admissions numbers, the recipients of it turn out to be tokens. The majority of the students admitted are from the kind of families - a tiny minority - that can pay the bills.

But hey, made my life good, and the world's going to poop faster than I can keep up with.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

science said:


> The HYP colleges all offer "full need" financial aid to anyone admitted (I got this myself), but if you look at the admissions numbers, the recipients of it turn out to be tokens. The majority of the students admitted are from the kind of families - a tiny minority - that can pay the bills.


It's hard to see how anyone can say that class is disappearing given this state of affairs. It just looks like the group who currently control the power are attempting to keep control by excluding those who own less. And a cynic may say that all the talk about the disappearance of class is a smoke screen.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

hpowders said:


> "Ghetto" is a slang term meaning "hood" which is a slang term meaning "the projects". Nothing biased about it.


The bias that I was referring to in the OP wasn't with the use of the word "Ghetto" but rather with the notion that Classical Music is only to be enjoyed by the upper socio economic strata


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

Der Titan said:


> For "biology". I think it's proved that very intelligent parents are more likely to have more intelligent children although statistic says us, that the children of intelligent people are much more close to average than their parents. As children of intelligent people tend to an average intelligence again, it's not possible to have classes of intelligence. And all that means only average. You have also stupid children of intelligent parents and intelligent children of stupid parents. Therefore a class society of intelligence classes just plain will never exist.
> 
> And don't mix up things. There will always be a kind of elite. But to have elites is something completely different than to have classes. Elite is something completely different than classes.
> 
> ...


Good points. I realize though that perhaps things got mixed up and lost in translation. I wanted to speak about a new "standenmaatschappij" but I don't know the English term for it so I used 'class' but that may be something completely different:

In Dutch we use the word 'stand' (as in 'standenmaatschappij') which phenomenon is typical for The Old World (the Middle Ages) but I don't know the proper English word: perhaps 'social stratum' (although this doesn't seem to convey it's meaning very well)? Class - like in Marx' class struggle - is quite the opposite of it and a typically modern phenomenon: the class division is simply the economic division between the haves and the have-nots, the owners and the (slave-like) owned.

As I wrote several times in the thread about the Middle Ages it is true that we are returning to the Middle Ages in a lot of ways. Here is another example. We witness the end of Modernity, e.g. in the diminishing of the classes in the West: we are (almost) all white collar workers now (as we outsource the labor to the Third World). And we see the return of the 'standenmaatschappij' of the Middle Ages. Marx told us that capitalism pushes more and more people from the middle classes to the lowest class of proletarians. But characteristic of the 'standenmaatschappij' is that social mobility is impossible: you belong to the social stratum in which you are born and no-one is able to get into another 'stand'. The social strata are totally separated and even communciation between them is impossible. Different social strata are thus totally different worlds.

My point was that we see the return of these Middle Ages thing called 'standen' which divides society in high educated people and low educated people. These people live in completely different worlds and they can't even communicate with each other. Like in the Middle Ages the high educated are internationally oriented (speaking a lingua franca) while the low educated never leave their village, etc. And like the aristocracy in the Middle Ages, the new aristocracy - the academics - rule all societies, suppressing democracy and national identities as they strive for supranational (mondial) government from which they can rule the world. Lower educated people feel politically left behind and retreat to religion (as already Spengler foresaw) and put a 'protest vote' on the ballot. Compare: in a class society we have nothing but political division with for every class a strong political party which represents that particular class. In a 'standenmaatschappij' the (lower-educated) people are completely excluded from politics.

PS. To return to the music: if it's true that we live in a new 'standenmaatschappij' then you would expect that people in different strata listen to completely different types of music.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

SiegendesLicht said:


> I am a young person (still) and I see classical music as the most non-conformist, rebellious music of all. All those other styles - pop, rock, metal, rap etc. are just a wanna-be form of rebellion, orchestrated by major corporations. Learning to love music that is centuries old, before the corporations and the advertising campaigns ever appeared - that takes some really independent thinking.


pop, rock, metal, rap, are far from being "all those other styles", and besides this, this is still a wrong generalization (Rock music has their Captain Beefhearts like classical music has their Stravinskys).
And onestly a lot of composers of the past composed on commission. And now in 2017 there are still tons of musicians playing Mozart, instead of new or lesser known stuff. That's hardly what I would call "the most non-conformist, rebellious music". Actually, and I'm not saying this about the quality of the music obviously, this is a very conservative situation, that has clearly practical reasons (Mozart attracts people more than some new unknown composer, so if the orchestras want to survive they have to play it for the 1000000 time), but that's it: classical music survives thank to people who want to listen again and again the same classical music composed centuries ago on commission for some king played by musicians dressed in a conservative way.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

SiegendesLicht said:


> I am a young person (still) and I see classical music as the most non-conformist, rebellious music of all. All those other styles - pop, rock, metal, rap etc. are just a wanna-be form of rebellion, orchestrated by major corporations. Learning to love music that is centuries old, before the corporations and the advertising campaigns ever appeared - that takes some really independent thinking.


How true. One requires an independent spirit in our conformist schlock culture to assert their love of Classical.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

ST4 said:


> I'd love it if their where a ring of classical composers running a drugs and human trafficking crime network and simultaneously pumped out innovative masterpieces


Then Jean Baptiste-Lully was your man


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Triplets said:


> How true. One requires an independent spirit in our conformist schlock culture to assert their love of Classical.


that means that all th tv celebrities doing horrible tv shows I usually see at La Scala and ready to declare their love for classical music are independent spirits?


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