# Classical music & entertainment – is there a difference?



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Do you think classical music can be a form of entertainment, like other genres of music? What do you think of classical music - is it purely entertainment, or is it something else? Something more than just 'ear candy?' Should it aspire to big things, or is it ok for some composers to just aim at writing music with less profound or serious intentions? Is entertainment and classical music, especially serious classical music, mutually exclusive or can it go together? Is it too hard to separate (and is it that important, anyway)?…

Here are a few quotes speaking to this issue to start you all thinking before you give your own opinions, if you wish to:

_It is my opinion that the music of a concerto can be happy and brilliant and that it is not necessary to strive for depth or dramatic effects._
- Maurice Ravel on his Piano Concerto in G major

_"Entertainment" is also one of my favourite words. I particularly like to use it to see the shocking effect that it has on many of my composer colleagues and newspaper critics. I've often heard it said that "entertainment" is not a value that a contemporary composer should consider, but I think that music which does not set out to entertain often ends up being boring. To entertain means to excite the senses and the imagination and it certainly does not preclude the possibility of a more "intellectual" engagement with musical materials._
- Graeme Koehne (Australian composer) on his work called Inflight Entertainment for amplified oboe and orchestra (1999)

_…we live in a society that puts music in the "arts and entertainment" section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it's the opposite of entertainment.
…music is not part of "arts and entertainment" as the newspaper section would have us believe. It's not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or amusement to pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express our feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can't with our minds…_
- Karl Paulnack of Boston Conservatory, from a speech at a graduation ceremony in February 2009

_For me…music exists to elevate us as far as possible above everyday existence._
- Gabriel Faure, in a letter to his son Philippe, 1908

_Artists like Bach and Beethoven erected churches and temples on the heights. ... I only wanted... to build dwellings for men in which they might feel happy and at home._
- Edvard Grieg, a famous quote I googled but heard about in the _Classical Destinations_ TV series


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Online Oxford defintion of "entertainment": the action of providing or being provided with amusement or enjoyment.

Merriam-Webster: a : amusement or diversion provided especially by performers; b : something diverting or engaging.

By at least part of these definitions (the words "enjoyment" and "engaging") I would say that any sort of music can be entertaining. If a piece of music doesn't engage me on any level, then it has no value for me. And surely it's also possible to enjoy something no matter how serious or profound it is.

Personally, I don't regard "entertainment" as a pejorative term, and to be honest I have a slight mistrust of anyone who does.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Nereffid said:


> Personally, I don't regard "entertainment" as a pejorative term, and to be honest I have a slight mistrust of anyone who does.


Yes, when people talk about "mere entertainment" I always want to tell them that there is nothing "mere" about entertainment.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

Whichever way you slice it, the only things gained from music are intellectual and emotional stimulation, and I think you'll find that is what entertainment is supposed to provide.

I quite agree with Nereffid and brianvds about "mere entertainment."


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

I'll go with this quote:



Sid James said:


> _For me…music exists to elevate us as far as possible above everyday existence._
> - Gabriel Faure, in a letter to his son Philippe, 1908


I find my everyday existence to be quite enjoyable, and yet, I am sure it would not be that way if I did not have music to take me someplace else for a while (to places like the Rhine Valley in prehistoric mythical times). I suspect one of the reasons a lof of people find their life to be boring and grey is that they are completely mired up in it, without some form of escape, be it music, books ( a lot of people only read books about other people whose life is exactly the same as theirs, who go to the office, watch TV, get married and divorced etc, in the same way the readers do), nature or something else.

So, music may fall into the category of entertainment, but it is not "mere intertainment".


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

Bach wrote some of his works, according to the original title pages, for the "Ergötzung" of the "Gemüt". Both words are a little difficult to translate. Ergötzung is something like a pleasurable delight, and Gemüt is a person's temper, character or mind. So entertainment might just be a modern term for exactly that.


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## LindnerianSea (Jun 5, 2013)

I find classical music to relatively lack the hedonistic aspect of "pure" entertainment. When I listen to modern electronic music, I am convinced that even animals will have a go to dance at the raw beats. I do not wish to convey the message that classical music is 'better' in any sense. It just seems that one requires more effort and passion to really fall in love with it, and I believe that such passion can lead to the projection of qualitatively greater things.


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

Nereffid said:


> Personally, I don't regard "entertainment" as a pejorative term,


neither do I. Since I'm not a musician, of course (all) music is entertainment. What else could it be?


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

The quotes from Ravel, Faure, and Grieg all reflect my ideas about the composers' temperaments and their musical intentions. I suppose everyone has an ergötzung for their own gemüt. Whether I'm listening to the Nutcracker or the Art of Fugue, I'm more or less entertained. I'm not sure I'm not entertained by things I don't even like!

Composing music seems in many cases to be "something else" entirely, though, and I'm grateful to those who make the effort.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

LindnerianSea said:


> I find classical music to relatively lack the hedonistic aspect of "pure" entertainment. When I listen to modern electronic music, I am convinced that even animals will have a go to dance at the raw beats. I do not wish to convey the message that classical music is 'better' in any sense. It just seems that one requires more effort and passion to really fall in love with it, and I believe that such passion can lead to the projection of qualitatively greater things.


Listen to some of Grieg's Hallings if you want raw beats! Your right in the sense that if you've grown up with that sort of thing it will resonate. If you've grown up with Jimmy Shand, that will resonate and will lead you to better music.

It's nonsense to assume that "classical" music is anything other than entertaining. Doing crossword puzzles or sudoku is "entertaining" so is listening to the Art of the Fugue.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

SiegendesLicht said:


> I find my everyday existence to be quite enjoyable, and yet, I am sure it would not be that way if I did not have music to take me someplace else for a while (to places like the Rhine Valley in prehistoric mythical times). I suspect one of the reasons a lof of people find their life to be boring and grey is that they are completely mired up in it, without some form of escape, be it music, books ( a lot of people only read books about other people whose life is exactly the same as theirs, who go to the office, watch TV, get married and divorced etc, in the same way the readers do), nature or something else.


But is something which engages you and which stimulates you intellectually and emotionally an escape or is it something which makes you live more?


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Mozart composed for lay people, and connoissuers, alike. He didn't distinguish. He wasn't writing a thesis, he was writing music to be performed and enjoyed. He wrote dance music too. The demarcation line between "High" and "Low" art came later, I think, but I'm not sure where it lies. I think that even the most deliberately obscure and abstract work can be _entertaining _for the people who love it...


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

> _It is my opinion that the music of a concerto can be happy and brilliant and that it is not necessary to strive for depth or dramatic effects._
> - Maurice Ravel on his Piano Concerto in G major


One of my favorite Ravel quotes (about one of my favorite Ravel pieces), and it seems worth mentioning with respect to the OP that Ravel was partly modeling this concerto after Mozart.


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

Sid James said:


> Music is a basic need of human survival.


Yeah, right. This reminds me of Nietzsche's comment that people 'seldom endure a proffession if they do not believe or persuade themselves that it is basically more important than all others'.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Kieran said:


> Mozart composed for lay people, and connoissuers, alike. He didn't distinguish. He wasn't writing a thesis, he was writing music to be performed and enjoyed. He wrote dance music too. The demarcation line between "High" and "Low" art came later, I think, but I'm not sure where it lies.


Yes and no. Even in Mozart's time there was a distinction between "high" and "low." This was mostly in terms of class, but the class distinction had direct parallels in Mozart's works. Musical symbols of class positively pervade his music, especially in his operas, in ways that reinforce the portrayal of the operas' characters. To name only the most well-known examples: there's Papageno's introductory strophic lied modeled after German folk song, as befits that character's place in the hierarchy, in contrast to the _opera seria_-ish coloratura arias of the Queen of the Night, as befits _her_ place in the hierarchy. There's also the famous Act I finale in _Don Giovanni_ where three different dances with three different class connotations (minuet, contredanse, and allemand) are played simultaneously to symbolize the different social classes that have collided at Don Giovanni's party (the highborn dons and donnas, the middleborn Leporello, the lowborn Masetto). This elaborate system of musical codes refers to, and therefore presupposes, distinctions between high and low.

But "high vs. low" is not the same as "art vs. entertainment." That distinction was not of Mozart's time. As you mentioned, it came later, during the romantic period.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

LindnerianSea said:


> I find classical music to relatively lack the hedonistic aspect of "pure" entertainment. When I listen to modern electronic music, I am convinced that even animals will have a go to dance at the raw beats. I do not wish to convey the message that classical music is 'better' in any sense. It just seems that one requires more effort and passion to really fall in love with it, and I believe that such passion can lead to the projection of qualitatively greater things.


Not at all ,it's far more hedonistic not least because it actually has some real contents.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Never thought I'd say it but you surprise me with thread. Of course it is entertainment but some of it is light and some more serious,but it's all entertainment.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

I wonder if you could say that some of the most well rounded composers catered for both popular taste and also more sophisticated composing, art could bridge a wide audience for them. They might have frustrated attitudes to popular taste at times, while also being embracing whatever the fashion might be with their own style.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I think the word "entertainment" still retains some of its original meaning in the phrase, "care to entertain a few ideas?" meaning to mull them over. To me that answers the question of music's role as entertainment. Also, musicians are said to "play" an instrument. Does this mean they never work for a living? The more complex the mind, the more serious play is for mental health. Same goes for entertainment.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

starry said:


> But is something which engages you and which stimulates you intellectually and emotionally an escape or is it something which makes you live more?


Of course it is not an escape from living, rather it is an escape into another facet of living: a place of ideal beauty in a less-than-ideal world.


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## Kleinzeit (May 15, 2013)

entertain (v.) 
late 15c., "to keep up, maintain, to keep (someone) in a certain frame of mind," from Middle French entretenir (12c.), from Old French entretenir "hold together, stick together, support," from entre- "among" (from Latin inter; see inter-) + tenir "to hold" (from Latin tenere; see tenet). 

Sense of "have a guest" is late 15c.; that of "amuse" is 1620s. Meaning "to allow (something) to consideration" (of opinions, notions, etc.) is 1610s. 

So, sure. You maintain a frame of mind.

It's less a matter of high & low anymore. It's a difference of psychological tone, where the superior believability of a given piece is due to a more intuitive and thus more nuanced, dramatic and less routine handling of materials.

Society is what the living do, at the individual lifeworld level. It has a soundtrack, which tends to have an extroverted address.
What's culture? It's a highway through death, a way people wave at each other through historical time, at a species level. Some art is conceived with this as its focus. It's not inherently privileged, it may or may not be enticing. Entertaining. But not necessarily, why should it.


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## Guest (Jul 8, 2013)

Sid James said:


> _*For me*…music exists to elevate us as far as possible above everyday existence._
> - Gabriel Faure, in a letter to his son Philippe, 1908


My bold. The most important two words here. Music is for what the composer wants it to be, and what the listener finds it to be. Occasionally, the two coincide.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Fundamentally, classical music is an entertainment. -- divorced from being used in rites, and ditto all the extra-musical ideas people will attach to classical music -- music is entertainment, period.


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## LordBlackudder (Nov 13, 2010)

these posts contradict the: 'not classical because pop rubbish, hollywood, cheesy, from a film' comments of the past.

what is an entertaining film score from john williams.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

LordBlackudder said:


> these posts contradict the: 'not classical because pop rubbish, hollywood, cheesy, from a film' comments of the past.
> 
> what is an entertaining film score from john williams.


They don't contradict those comments at all. The point being made here is that classical music is entertaining, not that all entertaining music is classical music.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

LordBlackudder said:


> these posts contradict the: 'not classical because pop rubbish, hollywood, cheesy, from a film' comments of the past.
> 
> what is an entertaining film score from john williams.


The old popular song, "How much is that doggie in the window," entertained many. It is not classical music....

Do not mistake the OP as a query as to 'what is / is not "classical." Take your bias (obsession?) / lobbyist blinders off re: "Final Fantasy" and "Legend of Zelda." to name two, as wanting, in your opinion, recognition as classical.

Read the OP again.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Weston said:


> I think the word "entertainment" still retains some of its original meaning in the phrase, "care to entertain a few ideas?" meaning to mull them over. To me that answers the question of music's role as entertainment. Also, musicians are saqd to "play" an instrument. Does this mean they never work for a living? The more complex the mind, the more serious play is for mental health. Same goes for entertainment.


Who says that is the original meaning---I don't think so.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

There is the entire spectrum of a smorgasbord of musical fare, within classical, of anything from the heartiest of foods to the fluffiest of 'ear candy' as you call it.

Ditto, I suppose, for the other genres; some music, songs, far more 'substantial' than others.

Greek Tragedy is a form of entertainment, and so are Noel Coward drawing room comedies.

It is all entertainment.

As far as 'high, middle and lowbrow,' two things: 
It is about as repellent and classist as it gets.
Aim the pistol at either the high, middle or low brows, you still hit the brain and kill the victim.


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## Ondine (Aug 24, 2012)

I don't experience academic -classical- music as just entertainment. Also some forms of Jazz aren't experienced in that way as also other genres.

In my case, music listening, far for being an entertainment is a relationship that is born, has a honeymoon, develops further, matures and eventually ends in some way or another.

Are my relationships with people entertainment? No. Do I have friends to be entertained? No. Do I share my life with my husband just to be entertained? No. Then, why should be music? Why should be meditation? Why should be teaching?

Now, it happens that sometimes I play some music to be entertained, yes. And I do not feel happy at the end: Something was lost.

Lets keep in sight that Post modernity has as one of its most characteristic traits, that to entertain. People asks to be entertained.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

As others in this thread said, and as I have felt for a while, entertainment = stimulation. So I always like to be entertained, better that than to be occupied with something that is boring.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Ondine said:


> I don't experience academic -classical- music as just entertainment. Also some forms of Jazz aren't experienced in that way as also other genres.
> 
> In my case, music listening, far for being an entertainment is a relationship that is born, has a honeymoon, develops further, matures and eventually ends in some way or another.
> 
> ...


You certainly love to make everything complicated don't you.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

starry said:


> I wonder if you could say that some of the most well rounded composers catered for both popular taste and also more sophisticated composing, art could bridge a wide audience for them. They might have frustrated attitudes to popular taste at times, while also being embracing whatever the fashion might be with their own style.


One could say it. In a certain environment you would have to have documentation from the horse's mouths, though. I think it is a very contemporary soft and wobbly thought, myself.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Thanks for all your replies. Interesting to read them all.

Another quote I could have added was by Louis Armstrong. I've been trying to find the quote online by googling, but can't. I came across it somewhere, it was something like "In Europe they treat me as a true artist, in the USA they treat me just as an entertainer." This must have been before 1945, because after that Satchmo was among those jazz artists who where literally some of American's best exports. He toured all over the world, and on his death was much mourned by his countrymen, even Miles Davis paid tribute to him.

But what that quote, or attributed quote perhaps, says is that the demarcation line between who or what is an entertainer (or entertainment) and artist is blurry at best. Of course, back in those days, there was more of a difference (well, basically in terms of perception)between entertainment and art.

Another anecdote is Dirk Bogarde, the mid-late 20th century British actor, being called early in his career by one director to be merely a star and not an actor. Of course, then he was mainly doing B-grade type films. But when given a chance, he really proved his mettle as more than a matinee idol, in now classic dramas like _King and Country, The Servant_, and _Death in Venice_. So that's another example of how artists can be put down by others who perhaps don't understand their true capabilities. Same with music, there's a lot of that bitchiness going on amongst composers, even precluding the use of certain words. As the Koehne quote strongly suggests - entertainment can be a turn off in some quarters. You want to entertain your audience? Then you must be selling out. Or doing mannerisms. Or some other ideological label.



starry said:


> I wonder if you could say that some of the most well rounded composers catered for both popular taste and also more sophisticated composing, art could bridge a wide audience for them. They might have frustrated attitudes to popular taste at times, while also being embracing whatever the fashion might be with their own style.


With regards to what you say, I think that in his time Offenbach - called the "Mozart of the Champs-Elysees" - is an example that comes to mind. Brilliant orchestrator, tunesmith, inventor of a new dance (the can-can), also his many operettas draw on political and social issues of the time and make comments on them, satirise them. & like Wolfie, Offenbach amongst some quarters at least, was controversial and risque in his time.

Adding to this, I was at a lecture on music of the Classical Era a while ago and the lecturer said today's Mozart would be Andrew Lloyd Webber. Now this may seem out of step with some people's opinions on this forum but I can make sense of this opinion. Same as Offenbach and Mozart before him, Lloyd Webber has composed music engaging with his time, innovating and generally bringing the musical to a high level (I'd say its golden age peaked with him).

But of course, this kind of comparison between the past and present is again imprecise and fraught with personal evaluations of facts based on preference and bias. Its not an exact science, or not a science at all. All I can say is I enjoy the music of these composers, and I think that ultimately they engage, entertain, stimulate, move me (and so on) on different levels. There are common things there, but also differences.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Sid James said:


> I was at a lecture on music of the Classical Era a while ago and the lecturer said today's Mozart would be Andrew Lloyd Webber.


I earnestly hope you did not spend one good Australian cent on that lecture....


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Some time ago this diagram appeared on On An Overgrown Path:









(source: http://www.overgrownpath.com/2011/11/never-underestimate-publics.html)

Obviously one can argue about the particulars - Beethoven doesn't appear in the "entertainment" set?? - but it's a good way of avoiding the either/or aspect of "art vs entertainment". It allows for the possibility of something being "mere entertainment" but by the same token I suppose you can also have "mere enlightenment".


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Nereffid said:


> Some time ago this diagram appeared on On An Overgrown Path:
> 
> View attachment 20934
> 
> ...


Whole other thread: pop entertainment, longevity of engagement, interest being held, including upon repetition, and non-pop entertainment with the same criteria.

At least one person on TC will feel compelled to insert Final Fantasy and / or Legend of Zelda alongside Vivaldi or Beethoven, another will feel the need to assert that Andrew Lloyd Weber fulfills like Mozart fulfills, etc.

So without a salon host / hostess, who allows certain points, actively supervises / moderates the discussion, there will be the same blurring, obfuscation, and pronounced pedantic squawks about the very definition of a word or term.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

PetrB said:


> Whole other thread: pop entertainment, longevity of engagement, interest being held, including upon repetition, and non-pop entertainment with the same criteria.
> 
> At least one person on TC will feel compelled to insert Final Fantasy and / or Legend of Zelda alongside Vivaldi or Beethoven, another will feel the need to assert that Andrew Lloyd Weber fulfills like Mozart fulfills, etc.
> 
> So without a salon host / hostess, who allows certain points, actively supervises / moderates the discussion, there will be the same blurring, obfuscation, and pronounced pedantic squawks about the very definition of a word or term.


Yes, my point simply being that an intersection of various properties is a much more sensible way of seeing the issue compared with the either/or. The thought that you can _actually_ construct a Venn diagram onto which your favourite and not-favourite composers can be slapped is of course ridiculous. (ETA: Well, I don't think anyone reads On An Overgrown Path for the science and maths...)

Also, re: Offenbach. He wasn't the Mozart of his day. He was the Offenbach of his day.


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

Ondine said:


> Do I have friends to be entertained? No.


so what do you do with your friends?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

deggial said:


> so what do you do with your friends?


Their is a fundamental dynamic which is shared between genuine friends and it is reciprocal: they find each other "engaging," ergo, "entertaining."

A real friend already finds you "entertaining."

(Hosting other than genuine friends, part of the job, which is some real work, is working at making sure they are entertained.)


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

^ ah, but that is what _you_ have friends for. I wanted to know Ondine's take on social interaction!


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

deggial said:


> ^ ah, but that is what _you_ have friends for. I wanted to know Ondine's take on social interaction!


Little semantic blip, I think... friends, anyone's friends, need no entertaining. Acquaintances, whatever degree of friendly, are another matter.

In an age when people think they have hundreds of friends, ala facebook, etc. The older definition of true friend included the general statistic that if you had true friends, you were more than rich if you could count them up and need more than the fingers of one hand to do it.

Outside that circle are friendly acquaintances. I think the true friend, and the low number of true friends one can accumulate in a lifetime, are still the reality, though current usage of the word is often extremely diluted.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Just back tracking a bit since I got more time!



Kieran said:


> Mozart composed for lay people, and connoissuers, alike. He didn't distinguish. He wasn't writing a thesis, he was writing music to be performed and enjoyed. He wrote dance music too. The demarcation line between "High" and "Low" art came later, I think, but I'm not sure where it lies. I think that even the most deliberately obscure and abstract work can be _entertaining _for the people who love it...


What I'd add to that is that Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert all wrote dance music, eg. German dances and schrammel-musik type stuff. What about Boccherini with his something like 124 string quintets? Or the minuets of Haydn? I think the classical era had a stong focus on music for entertainment, definitely. & this feeds into this:



Eschbeg said:


> One of my favorite Ravel quotes (about one of my favorite Ravel pieces), and it seems worth mentioning with respect to the OP that Ravel was partly modeling this concerto after Mozart.


The kind of anti Romantic aesthetic of Ravel and others doing neo-classical type things in the early 20th century feeds into that too. Of course, that Ravel piece was influenced by jazz and blues too. None of this, eg. Ravel's aims to mainly please the ear as the original classicists did, detracts from the quality of Piano Concerto in G or other works of this sort.

So what you got now, well more recently, is this feeling that entertainment - or aiming at less profound things, as Grieg's quote hints at - has something wrong with it. Well I think it doesn't, it can be just a question of the aims of a composer, the aesthetic direction he's going in, even what he's reacting against. Just as Ravel railed against the heavyness of late Romanticism, so too did the composers of the Classical Era to a certain extent eschew the heaviness and solidity of the Baroque, that feel of weightiness and outright profundity. No big deal either way. There have been great composers of all types, light and heavy and in between, in all eras. So too with the choices today's composers make (or listeners), we're free to choose from the variety of options available.

& I like that diagram Nefferid, very interesting.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Sid James said:


> So what you got now, well more recently, is this feeling that entertainment - or aiming at less profound things, as Grieg's quote hints at - has something wrong with it.


I'm not sure it's all that "recent." Of course it's impossible to put an exact date to any of this, but lots of milestones can be identified. In the 1950s we had Babbitt drawing a distinction between academic music and "the whistling repertory of the man in the street." In the 1940s we had Schoenberg saying "If it is art, it is not for everyone; if it is for everyone, it is not art." In the 1910s we had Schoenberg founding the Society for Private Music Performances in Vienna, whose mission statement stated that neither praise nor criticism were welcome among its members, as if to suggest that enjoyment or lack thereof were irrelevant. In 1880 we had Wagner saying that art had come to replace religion as the bearer of divine truth and revelation, and this was in part a reiteration of things Liszt had said in the 1830s. As early as 1823 there was an article in the British journal _The Harmonicon_ praising Beethoven for rejecting flattery and disdaining to court favor with people, and predicting that he would therefore eventually overshadow Rossini. (On the other hand, a German music history book from the 1830s referred to the then-current era as "The Age of Beethoven and Rossini," acknowledging that the two were equals.) So if I had to pinpoint an approximate time when the tide began to turn against entertainment, I'd say it's somewhere in the 1830s. In short, it started with romanticism.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Sid James said:


> Adding to this, I was at a lecture on music of the Classical Era a while ago and the lecturer said today's Mozart would be Andrew Lloyd Webber. Now this may seem out of step with some people's opinions on this forum but I can make sense of this opinion. Same as Offenbach and Mozart before him, Lloyd Webber has composed music engaging with his time, innovating and generally bringing the musical to a high level (I'd say its golden age peaked with him).


I disagree with this judgment (though I understand that it wasn't strongly asserted, and that ultimately there is no solid ground for opinion on the matter--so take the following for what it's worth!). One of the things that impresses me about WAM--as opposed to ALW--is the way he developed as a composer over the course of his career, sometimes at the expense of commercial success. The decisive transition, for me, is his exploration of baroque manuscripts in Gottfried van Swieten's library, and his subsequent addiction to fugues. I apologize if I am giving Webber too little credit, but I suspect he would have remained satisfied with the style galant. Mozart was always attracted to abstract proportion (as a child he obsessively studied mathematics for fun) and it manifests itself in large-scale sonic symmetries in his music: the subtlety of his fugal writing strikes me as particularly indicative of a mind straining towards a musical ideal, if usually with a sense of humor about the whole enterprise. Like Bach, I think he had the intention both to delight and to instruct--and he had many willing and good students.

All this is to say that, like Shakespeare, I'm sure Mozart would be a popular and distinguished film director rather than a Broadway composer were he alive today!


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## Guest (Jul 10, 2013)

Kleinzeit said:


> [...] *It's less a matter of high & low anymore. It's a difference of psychological tone, where the superior believability of a given piece is due to a more intuitive and thus more nuanced, dramatic and less routine handling of materials* [...]


I'm writing this from Berlin where yesterday I had an experience that positively resonates with what Kleinzeit (my Master) has written above. The experience? A visit to the Museum Berggruen- Picasso Museum (in the Charlottenburg quarter of the city). Three floors chock-a-block of Pablo Picasso works that left me reeeling.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Enjoy your time in Berlin, TalkingHead! I don't know of another museum in the city that can offer as much as what you just saw, but I was moved by some Anselm Kiefer paintings at the Hamburger Bahnhof some time ago--hopefully they're all still there!


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## Guest (Jul 10, 2013)

Thank you, Whiterock. Berlin - what a place! I'm not finished with it yet, I can assure you!


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

*@ Eschbeg *- I don't know when entertainment and art became more divided. I don't think its important for me to put a date to it. What you say about it happening in Romantic era makes some sense. However if you look at that time, as I said, the likes of Beethoven and Schubert did music for entertainment (eg. their schrammel-musik pieces). Brahms and Dvorak did their dances, Liszt did heaps of stuff (eg. transcriptions) more as fodder for the public (he never played the Sonata in B minor at a public concert, only fellow musicians and critics and others in the 'in crowd' could hear him play it), Elgar and Saint-Saens made a huge amount from encore-type pieces. Generally speaking most composers thru the 19th century made big bucks out of such pieces, their concertos and symphonies didn't make that much comparatively. But things like the Hungarian Dances or Slavonic Dances have withstood the test of time, just like their serious works.

I'm seeing that the divide probably occured back then, but coming closer and closer to our own time, the gap widened. Composition became more and more specialised. Entertainment was not good enough, music had to be a religion, and you got cults built around it - Wagner, Mahler, Schoenberg, whatever. But even the likes of Schoenberg admired Johann Strauss II, as being a master of theme and variations which his waltzes where, and Arnie and his students even made arrangements of these works.

But now its different from Schoenberg's time. The Australian composer I put the quote by in my OP, Greame Koehne, is very popular with audiences and musicians alike, but not with critics of a certain ideological persuasion. That's a kind of schism that's opened up in music since Ravel, who died pre-war. But after 1945 you got all manner of ideologies getting in the way of composers just aiming to entertain. Not necessarily, as Koehne says, be devoid of content but have less serious aims. What about going back to the past, not only Ravel but Mozart's A Musical Joke, for example? If its no problem then, why is it a problem now? Isn't it natural to want to be entertained, and entertained in different ways (I'm not saying serious things can't entertain here!).

However, I must emphasise I don't see much of a divide in terms of my own listening. Different music meets different needs and purposes. & amongst people I know who are into music, its much the same. I have heard none of them deride the lighter composers compared to the heavier or more serious ones. Nor is much time given in real conversations to things such at the tonal versus atonal fallacies we got cropping up perenially online. I just go with what I like and I think most listeners are like that. No?

As for my comparison of Mozart to Offenbach and Lloyd Webber - I'm speaking to *Nefferid *and *Blancrocher* here - its not a literal comparison. However, both Offenbach and Lloyd Webber added to music, both raised their respective genres of operetta/burlesque and musicals to a level arguably not seen before. Dunno if its generally known around here, but ALW innovated by composing the first so called rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar. He did stuff like that, within his genre, that marks him out as hugely significant. That's what that lecturer was alluding to, and I agree with that assessment.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Sid James said:


> As for my comparison of Mozart to Offenbach and Lloyd Webber - I'm speaking to *Nefferid *and *Blancrocher* here - its not a literal comparison. However, both Offenbach and Lloyd Webber added to music, both raised their respective genres of operetta/burlesque and musicals to a level arguably not seen before. Dunno if its generally known around here, but ALW innovated by composing the first so called rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar. He did stuff like that, within his genre, that marks him out as hugely significant. That's what that lecturer was alluding to, and I agree with that assessment.


There was probably no need for me to quibble, since I agree with the general points you're making in your last couple posts. Perhaps it was lack of coffee that drove me to defend Mozart's honor first thing this morning!


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Blancrocher said:


> There was probably no need for me to quibble, since I agree with the general points you're making in your last couple posts. Perhaps it was lack of coffee that drove me to defend Mozart's honor first thing this morning!


Well I thought that the Mozart and Offenbach comparison might raise and eyebrow (but in the 19th century, people made that comparison already). The Lloyd Webber comparison I thought would be seen by some here as an attempt by me at trolling, which it isn't. I think that whenever we make such comparisons, there are limitations to them. Composers like Mozart don't come that often. Even look at his mastery of all genres, whereas the other two guys can only be said to be significant in stage works. Added to that of course the changes in society, economics, politics, history over that time. Its immense.

So I don't decry your "quibble" as its got lots of validity. However of course if we only make statements aiming at being quibble-proof so to speak, then I think it would be a boring forum indeed. People should feel free to let their guard down a bit and express what they're thinking is what I'm basically getting at. Opinions are just different, not necessarily better or right or wrong.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

I think it would be fair to say that the vast majority of people listen to music because it is enjoyable; that there is enjoyment out of doing so. Enjoyment is a broad term here and the key term. Whether that is perceived as "entertainment" or not, is not so relevant. I enjoy listening to a complicated Bach fugue because it in part provides me with musical intellectual enjoyment (and Bach probably as well as when he composed one). Some might find the complicated fugue as entertaining.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

We have Mozart writing Die Zauberflaute for Emanuel Schikaneder's near vaudeville-like theater. In that time, there was an already established 'lighter entertainment' for the more 'ordinary man.'

It is within the romantic era we have the historic blooming of a very sizable bourgeois middle class consumer, who now with money in their pockets becomes interested in the higher forms of entertainment, and the arts becoming that much more a commercialized business venue in order to cater to and take economic advantage of this segment of the populace.

I am certain that the roots of where so many find 'class issues' of low, high entertainments, and the supposed disdain of those who enjoy the high towards those who enjoy the low, originates from this point. Members of the bourgeois who were class-conscious, who decided that to consume the higher forms of entertainment was also gaining them 'upward mobility' and stamping them as cultivated and upper class.

It is a fact that within the aristocracy, by an older definition of to condescend, condescend meant to have all the skills and applied energy to put anyone of any class at complete ease in the most formal or 'higher' social situations to which they were not accustomed, without any rancor or judgement. 

The arrogance and / or disdain then, did not stem from either the true aristocracy or the cognoscenti, but from those of the bourgeois who felt they had elevated their class rank, and having thought they had arrived (psych 101) were prone to bolstering their own new position, important to them, by plainly looking down upon others and letting those people know they had not arrived. The typical pull up the ladder behind you once you've made the climb.

Those snobs, so often mentioned, are the transformed bourgeois consumer, who belie their background every time they do disdain those who are not as "cultivated" as they think they are. In other words, they are us, and not the aristocracy or the cognoscenti.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

The division between "light" CM and "serious" CM was already quite pronounced in Beethoven's time. In the last two decades of his life, Rossini led the former contingent and Beethoven (almost by default) led the latter. This seems to have been quite an issue in Viennese musical life.

A funny story. Beethoven had not made any money from the 1824 premiere of his 9th Symphony, despite its popular success. So he arranged a second concert, where he took no risk but agreed to a fixed fee. As it happened, attendance was poor and the second concert was even less of a commercial success than the first.

There were several reasons, but the concert had included a Rossini aria, "Di tanti Palpiti." Nephew Carl, who helped with the arrangements, wrote Beethoven with several reasons for the lack of success, specifically mentioning the aria: "One group stayed away because the Rossini aria disgusted them, as it did me too."


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Sid James said:


> Well I thought that the Mozart and Offenbach comparison might raise and eyebrow (but in the 19th century, people made that comparison already). The Lloyd Webber comparison I thought would be seen by some here as an attempt by me at trolling, which it isn't. I think that whenever we make such comparisons, there are limitations to them. Composers like Mozart don't come that often. Even look at his mastery of all genres, whereas the other two guys can only be said to be significant in stage works. Added to that of course the changes in society, economics, politics, history over that time. Its immense.
> 
> So I don't decry your "quibble" as its got lots of validity. However of course if we only make statements aiming at being quibble-proof so to speak, then I think it would be a boring forum indeed. People should feel free to let their guard down a bit and express what they're thinking is what I'm basically getting at. Opinions are just different, not necessarily better or right or wrong.


My problem with the "X was the Y of his day" construction is not so much that it's not "quibble-proof" but that it relies too heavily on the exact context. On a very specific level we can consider whether Lloyd Webber is a modern-day Mozart, but there are so many ways he _isn't_!
So my reflexive reaction to an "X was the Y of his day" is to dismiss it as unhelpful - even in cases like this one where a reasonable point is being made. That's just me. It's borne from hearing nonsense like (this was one from someone discussing classical to a mostly rock/pop audience) "Elgar was the Morrissey of his day".


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Reading this thread serves to remind me why I like Baroque and folk-oriented composers. I find it fascinating that Vaughan Williams went out collecting songs from gypsies in Herefordshire and Suffolk. A fascinating group at the Royal College of Music - Holst, Ireland, Coleridge Taylor, Vaughan Williams and Martin Shaw. Shaw had a fascinating career, playing with Isadora Duncan before coming back to the organ loft with Percy Dearmer. All of these are fine classical composers but all had a good sense of an ordinary English tune. No nonsense about high and low - just art!


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

Writing music specifically to entertain others, not yourself, means that you're producing something for other people's needs of diversion and escape. Art, I think, is rarely produced for others to begin with. But if it is, it is probably produced for people's needs to "face it".


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Taggart said:


> Reading this thread serves to remind me why I like Baroque and folk-oriented composers. I find it fascinating that Vaughan Williams went out collecting songs from gypsies in Herefordshire and Suffolk. A fascinating group at the Royal College of Music - Holst, Ireland, Coleridge Taylor, Vaughan Williams and Martin Shaw. Shaw had a fascinating career, playing with Isadora Duncan before coming back to the organ loft with Percy Dearmer. All of these are fine classical composers but all had a good sense of an ordinary English tune. No nonsense about high and low - just art!


A good tune is a good tune, wherever it comes from -- just as Duke Ellington said, "There are two kinds of music, good music and the other kind,"


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## Ondine (Aug 24, 2012)

moody said:


> You certainly love to make everything complicated don't you.


Just to be amused, moody


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## mtmailey (Oct 21, 2011)

Well it is plus much more to some people it is how they make a living.Certain people get paid great money for music.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Blancrocher said:


> There was probably no need for me to quibble, since I agree with the general points you're making in your last couple posts. Perhaps it was lack of coffee that drove me to defend Mozart's honor first thing this morning!


I will 'defend' you -- maybe it is not just a contemporary phenomenon for academics and lecturers to stretch a point of comparison to beyond a frazzled and friable thread beyond disbelief, or same comparison gets qualified by so many also paper-thin analogous sub-point connections that it makes no real sense, but I've noticed there "Seems to be a lot of that about these days."

The Mozart Lloyd Weber analogy, I thought, was yet another one of that type stretched beyond legitimate credibility -- coffee or no coffee.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

PetrB said:


> A good tune is a good tune, wherever it comes from -- just as Duke Ellington said, "There are two kinds of music, good music and the other kind,"


Quite agree with that. I said English because this group were working to develop a specifically English music in opposition to the German music of Wagner, Strauss and others.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Taggart said:


> Reading this thread serves to remind me why I like Baroque and folk-oriented composers. I find it fascinating that Vaughan Williams went out collecting songs from gypsies in Herefordshire and Suffolk. A fascinating group at the Royal College of Music - Holst, Ireland, Coleridge Taylor, Vaughan Williams and Martin Shaw. Shaw had a fascinating career, playing with Isadora Duncan before coming back to the organ loft with Percy Dearmer. All of these are fine classical composers but all had a good sense of an ordinary English tune. No nonsense about high and low - just art!


Thanks for all the latest replies. On the run now but I'll just address this one by Taggart.

I am also fascinated by that era. Not only the Brit guys collecting and studying folk stuff, but also Bartok, Kodaly, Grainger, Saygun, Canteloube, de Falla, even Ives in America did similar stuff. I am saying "stuff" because it wasn't just music, it was the customs, the folk art, the dances, even the architecture and homewares/furniture of the villages and towns. In terms of what you say, I think it illustrates where different types of arts meet and there are many examples of this. Thing is that in the 1900's, folk arts was beginning to die out from industrialisation and increased urbanisation and mobility of populations. So these guys where fighting to keep it alive as well as incorporate it into their music.

But I would really urge people to find the Paulnack speech, the guy I quoted in my opening post (from Boston Conservatory). Last time I looked it was online in full, a thread was made about it on TC forum, which is how I found out about it. I got a lot out of his speech, and I don't think it necessarily contradicts the views of others I quoted in my OP. Music does lift us and take us to many different places. But you look at certain composers who where huge innovators - eg. Haydn - who often did what is on the surface just light and elegant music, nothing much more. But since I've delved into his London symphonies more recently (numbers 93-104), each one of them has some innovation, and he basically prefigured the innnovations in embryo that Beethoven would flesh out later. Haydn also did things like engage with technology of his time (eg. the 'clock' symphony, #101, and other perpetuum mobile type works), he also incorporated many sounds from gypsy fiddles to bagpipes, environmental sounds from nature, bells and I can go on. He prefigured not only Beethoven in bending the rules of sonata form, being inventive and creative with conventions like theme and variations, innovating in sonority and thematic unity, but arguably also many things later - impressionism, collage techniques, and much else. All this from a composer who I think some still think is just a guy who did cookie cutter stuff. Well that's not true, or not entirely.

So its the same thing with those composers you meniton, Taggart. Innovation can be entertaining, it doesn't have to be wierd or kind of out there, oddball. Doesn't have to aim at mega profundity. It can be but doesn't have to be. I'll just leave you all with that thought!


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

I've had a look at the Paulnack speech. I find the basic Platonism unappealing. Music is closely akin to Mathematics and while Mathematics does describe inner realities which are expressed in the real world, I don't think the same applies to music. I love this though:

"Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft."

You mentioned the Americans in folk music and I look at Pete Seeger. His dad was Charles Louis Seeger, Jr. who was a respected ethnomusicologist and his mum was a teacher at the Julliard and a concert violinist. Pete picked up his love of folk music through working on collecting projects in the thirties. Apart from the Lomaxes (for the Library of Congress) there were a whole range of collecting projects funded through the New Deal.

Ultimately, I think if somebody the problems that Paulnack mentions, they would be better served by the Weavers or the Almanac Singers (both groups involving Pete Seeger) and a real hootenanny than some ethereal nonsense masquerading as music. If music is to heal the soul then it must be connected to the community it aims to serve. I think Charles and Jackson Pollock did more good through their folk music than through their attempts at art. (They were involved with Pete Seeger in the thirties.)


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

KenOC said:


> There were several reasons, but the concert had included a Rossini aria, "Di tanti Palpiti." Nephew Carl, who helped with the arrangements, wrote Beethoven with several reasons for the lack of success, specifically mentioning the aria: "One group stayed away because the Rossini aria disgusted them, as it did me too."


the aria had been the equivalent of a number one hit across the nation 10 years before. Disgusting, indeed. Damned if you do, damned if you don't


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Taggart said:


> Quite agree with that. I said English because this group were working to develop a specifically English music in opposition to the German music of Wagner, Strauss and others.


A lot of folk tune gathering by various composers and musicologist in the late 1800's through the first quarter of the 20th Century were impelled by that "nationalist' music impulse, as well as this was the time people became highly conscious that social and cultural traditions which had held for hundreds of years were about to dissipate or disappear near completely.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

deggial said:


> the aria had been the equivalent of a number one hit across the nation 10 years before. Disgusting, indeed. Damned if you do, damned if you don't


Maybe Ludwig shouldn't have tried a "crossover" concert!


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Taggart said:


> ... If music is to heal the soul then it must be connected to the community it aims to serve...


That sentence, the exact words you use, remind me of a quote by Ralph Vaughan Williams (found it below!).

"Music is above all things the art of the common man … the art of the humble….What the ordinary man will expect from the composer is not cleverness, or persiflage, or an assumed vulgarity … he will want something that will open to him the 'magic casements.' … The art of music above all other arts is the expression of the soul of a nation … any community of people who are spiritually bound together by language, environment, history and common ideals, and, above all, a continuity with the past."

Source: http://www.answers.com/topic/ralph-vaughan-williams#ixzz2YoaWjaQ8

Not surprising given what we're discussing here, that going back to roots of music - in his case Renaissance choral music and folk musics. But you know, it went together with his influences from classical composers of his own time such as Wagner, Brahms, Ravel, Sibelius, but also going back to Beethoven. So it goes together, but aesthetically that folk movement was different for those outside of classical (an area which I know little about, although I have heard a couple of Pete Seeger's songs).

I must say in passing that RVW is a composer who I admire for the way he conducted himself throughout his life showing a good deal of simplicity and integrity. For example, being offered a knighthood and refusing it exactly because of such sentiments - he saw himself as an ordinary person, no better or worse than anyone else.

In terms of the Paulnack speech, what I got from it was not his philosophical emphasis but more on memory. Like the anecdote about the war veteran hearing Copland's violin sonata for the first time and being moved to tears, thinking of friends he'd lost in the war. & whether by coincidence or not, that work was written in memory of someone who died in the war.

There is that element, and it happens in many works. I must say that regarding works like that, or another he mentions which goes to the heart of humanity - Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time - I would not call this entertainment. As someone said on this thread, it can be things like engaging, but I don't see it as entertaining. There is a line between certain aesthetic aims, sometimes its clearly drawn, sometimes it isn't. & sometimes it depends on what we know. Recently listening to Janacek's choruses for male voices, the music sometimes does the opposite of the words, and therein you get a sarcastic and bitter comment made implicitly by the composer. At the end of a song about striking miners who are most likely going to get massacred, they sing lines praising the mine owner, but the way its sung is what I'd describe as chaotic, brutal, beyond dark, even psychopathic. & there you have another composer drawing on folk traditions, but in a very unique way (they where all unique, really). But what I'm saying is that if you only listened to the music, you would not get that irony, you would only see one side of the coin so to speak.

I don't know where I am going with this exactly, other than to say that if there is a dividing line between "mere" entertainment and "real" art or whatever, well its not always easy to discern. As I said, to me personally, more often than not it doesn't matter. I tend to take things on their own terms. As I said I realize the limitations of making comparisons between composers, even contemporaries. I see music as being made for different purposes. As long as a composer fulfills the goal or solves the problem he sets out to, and does it well, then who am I to complain? There's many shades to the human condition, and they kind of map it with their music.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Sid James said:


> That sentence, the exact words you use, remind me of a quote by Ralph Vaughan Williams (found it below!).
> 
> "Music is above all things the art of the common man … the art of the humble….What the ordinary man will expect from the composer is not cleverness, or persiflage, or an assumed vulgarity … he will want something that will open to him the 'magic casements.' … The art of music above all other arts is the expression of the soul of a nation … any community of people who are spiritually bound together by language, environment, history and common ideals, and, above all, a continuity with the past."
> 
> ...


This is all fine, well and good. I feel I must assert it is not the way for every artist / composer. Some write, with full intention to communicate, but while just hoping to Apollo (or fill in the Deity or force of your choice) that others will like it.

I also think the mission thing comes after the fact, i.e. those composers who say such is their goal already have an innate affinity for just that sort of music which fits the bill of that particular agenda, so it is both rather easy for them to say, and not as 'noble' and community service oriented as one might think. In other words, no real 'sacrifice' or amazing selfless consideration for others is going on there.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I don't want mere "entertainment," except when I am tired, apathetic, and want a passive experience. To truly "engage" with serious art, I want to be challenged. Otherwise, you are just like every other drone in America.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Not that the false dichotomy between being entertained and being engaged is lacking in its drones either. That party line, romantic in origin but assimilated into modernism, has been going strong for close to 200 years now.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Eschbeg said:


> Not that the false dichotomy between being entertained and being engaged is lacking in its drones either. That party line, romantic in origin but assimilated into modernism, has been going strong for close to 200 years now.


There is no dichotomy between being entertained vs. being engaged. Being engaged is certainly part of being entertained, to what degree is another matter of perhaps petty academic hairsplitting.

I'm certain everyone can really tell the difference in degrees of engagement between a popular novel and the more 'profound' of literature. To say 'they are all the same,' I find disingenuous at best.

But to use the word 'entertain' to mean give me something at least with a heft similar to the heft of (the heftier of) Beethoven is neither a misuse of the word, nor is that meaning archaic in any way.

I think the predominance of popular culture and calling that 'entertainment' may be tipping the balance to the point where it may be showing up as distinguished that 'entertain' means the fluffier stuff, but I don't think that has yet taken place.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

PetrB said:


> There is no dichotomy between begin entertained vs. being engaged. Being engaged is certainly part of being entertained, to what degree is another matter of perhaps petty academic hairsplitting.
> 
> I'm certain everyone can really tell the difference in degrees of engagement between a popular novel and the more 'profound' of literature. To say 'they are all the same,' I find disingenuous at best.
> 
> But to use the word 'entertain' to mean give me something at least with a heft similar to the heft of (the heftier of) Beethoven is neither a misuse of the word, nor is that meaning archaic in any way.


Agreed on all fronts.



PetrB said:


> I think the predominance of popular culture and calling that 'entertainment' may be tipping the balance


Yes, that is a common tactic in these debates. I often find myself, against my will, rehashing this conversation with several acquaintances who are committed modernists, and whenever it comes time to proffer an example of "entertainment" they can always be counted on to cite reality TV or last year's Billboard chart-topper. The instinct to cite the most trivial and inept examples possible (or, on the other side, the most self-congratulating cerebral performance-art pieces possible) is practically a requirement for the debate.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Eschbeg said:


> ...rehashing this conversation with several acquaintances who are committed modernists, and whenever it comes time to proffer an example of "entertainment" they can always be counted on to cite reality TV or last year's Billboard chart-topper. *The instinct to cite the most trivial and inept examples possible (or, on the other side, the most self-congratulating cerebral performance-art pieces possible) is practically a requirement for the debate.*


Of course, because at the pith of it is there is no debate, unless one is arguing over dictionary usage 1a, 1b, or 2a. If you're not going to quibble over that, there is no topic, no debate -- and, lol, this thread would not exist: the question then arises, was it sincere, a red herring, or someone simply making their own kind of fun?


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Sid James said:


> _…we live in a society that puts music in the "arts and entertainment" section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it's the opposite of entertainment.
> …music is not part of "arts and entertainment" as the newspaper section would have us believe. It's not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or amusement to pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express our feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can't with our minds…_
> - Karl Paulnack of Boston Conservatory, from a speech at a graduation ceremony in February 2009


I'd stayed out of this thread because I misunderstood its title. When I read that title, I thought, "Of course classical music is [at least one form of] entertainment. What's there to discuss?"

But reading that quote made me realize that we misunderstand the idea of entertainment, and perhaps especially of music. As the guy says, it's not an unnecessary addition to other material human needs.

We misunderstand ourselves as animals when we think we are the kind of animals that only require food and shelter. We are a social animal. To most if not all humans, going two or three days without food would be much less stressful than going two or three days facing unremitting rejection and scorn from everyone around us - and even that is probably preferable to a complete lack of human interaction. Read up on solitary confinement's effects on the human mind.

It makes sense, really. For the past 6 million years or so (well, longer, obviously, given chimp and bonobo behavior, but I don't know how much longer), the gravest threat our ancestors ordinarily faced wasn't starvation or exposure or even predators, but each other. In that context, survival and safety meant membership in a group. Of course a decently trained individual can find food and shelter in most environments, but no individual could defend themselves (or their children) against a coordinated attack by a group of another humans.

So, membership in a group has been the single most important thing to our ancestors for about 6 million years. We've evolved to care about it greatly. We are such social creatures that when we're alone most of us behave as if we were not alone - we talk to ourselves, we make hand gestures and facial expressions, and of course we spend a lot of that time preparing not to be alone, such as by rehearsing arguments, grooming ourselves, and so on.

The ways in which humans form group identities include dialects, in-jokes, fashions in clothing and self-decoration, and many more - including, relevantly for this discussion, music, dancing, and religion. (I include religion because I suspect that it is and has been very intimately related to music and dance in our psychologies, that the three sorts of behaviors involved together, interactively, and subject to approximately the same selection pressures.)

We are basically hierarchical social animals as well. In any human group larger than a dozen or so, someone becomes leader-ly, and others become follower-ly. It appears that having higher status has mattered for the past 6 million year or so, especially to males (reproductively) but to females as well in terms of the way the group distributes resources.

So, not for nothing do we see youths trying to fit in or stand out by listening to (or even performing!) certain music, flamboyantly scorning other music. They know (on some level) what they're doing, just as they do as they learn the dialects of their peers rather than of their parents. Hopefully by early adulthood we've sorted out our identities to a degree that we don't have to be so flamboyant about it, but that is another way of saying that we are hopefully secure enough in our stations to be, at least, more subtle about it.

So this means that music is indeed not _mere_ entertainment, if anything is. It is inevitably a very important part of how most of us define ourselves - to ourselves of course, but to others as well.

Something really serious is going on when a group of people jam together, as important as sharing food, praying, gossiping, or acknowledging each other's pair bonds. A community of trust and mutual respect is being created, a community in which each of us can enjoy a bit more security and happiness than we otherwise could.

And this is also why we tend to feel so strongly about music. There's something more at stake than merely personal preferences. "Rap or country?" is not the same as "Boxers or briefs?"

Of course, we don't have to be aware of this for it to be true, and most of us would probably be a bit happier without being aware of it. But I find it much too fascinating to ignore!


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Yes, yes, go on...


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

millionrainbows said:


> Yes, yes, go on...


Don't tempt me, friend. I have real work to do!


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

science said:


> ...
> 
> The ways in which humans form group identities include dialects, in-jokes, fashions in clothing and self-decoration, and many more - including, relevantly for this discussion, music, dancing, and religion. (I include religion because I suspect that it is and has been very intimately related to music and dance in our psychologies, that the three sorts of behaviors involved together, interactively, and subject to approximately the same selection pressures.)
> ...


I have to mull over your post a bit, but the paragraph above also links in with what Vaughan Williams said (what I quoted in my last post) which was similar to what Taggart said. Music goes together with other things. So you look at these images, of course its easy for us to imagine what music and other things perhaps - social milieu and customs, norms and so on goes with these people and the way they dress, their cultural and historical context, etc.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I get what you mean but I know little about this anthropological side of music, esp. that outside classical music. Its a fascinating area, music goes back to our roots. A while ago I was watching a documentary on world religions, and its obvious that music is fundamental to all of them. Whether its the major world religions or other more regional things like Japanese Shintoism or Australian Aboriginal spirituality or voodoo in West Africa, music is central to these things (as well of course to modern life where its more homogenised and global). All this stuff, like tribalism, it goes right back to the roots of humanity.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Classical music & entertainment - is there a difference?

This quandary reminds me of an old joke, "In France, I'm an Artiste. In America, I'm a **********.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Eschbeg said:


> Not that the false dichotomy between being entertained and being engaged is lacking in its drones either. That party line, romantic in origin but assimilated into modernism, has been going strong for close to 200 years now.


Yeah well that feeds into what I wrote on Haydn earlier in this thread. He did most of Beethoven's innovations in embryo, but by some he's seen as less than Beethoven. But looking at what Haydn did, he was one of the most important innovators, and one of the most influential, of Western classical music. So 200 years is back to Beethoven. I think millionrainbows actually did a thread in recent months on the topic of these cults being formed after Beethoven, and classical become a home to these cults. So if you are serious like Beethoven, the implication is you are "real" music. But if you're lighter and less deep, such as Haydn, well you're "merely" something else, less profound, maybe entertainment but many words can be used.

So yeah it is a dichotomy, if expresses in this black and white way. As I wrote before, if a person wants to draw a line between these things, its impossible. Better to take music on its own terms is what I'm saying. Its what I see as most useful and then I start thinking of say how Haydn's innovations feed into Beethoven's - or to composers closer to today. But it takes time and needs some effort, but overall for me as a listener, its a pleasure to do.



Vaneyes said:


> Classical music & entertainment - is there a difference?
> 
> This quandary reminds me of an old joke, "In France, I'm an Artiste. In America, I'm a **********.


Well I said I remember Louis Armstrong saying something like that (or its an attributed quote?). Looked but hard to find. Did someone really say it or is it like a cliche? You know, that stereotype of Americans being lowbrows, or a cut below Europe, all that stuff.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Sid James said:


> You know, that stereotype of Americans being lowbrows, or a cut below Europe, all that stuff.


Well, Americans may indeed be lowbrows. But at least they don't go around thinking that stuff written by Sartre or Derrida makes any sense, or believing that anything people like Boulez or Stockhausen say is worth listening to. Just a couple of points in their favor!


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

KenOC said:


> Well, Americans may indeed be lowbrows. But at least they don't go around thinking that stuff written by Sartre or Derrida makes any sense, or believing that anything people like Boulez or Stockhausen say is worth listening to. Just a couple of points in their favor!


Instead, we have William Lane Craig and David Lanz.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

science said:


> Instead, we have William Lane Craig and David Lanz.


William Lane Craig's "primary contribution to philosophy of religion is his revival of the Kalām cosmological argument...he formulates the argument in the following manner:

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence."

It's good news that you can still get a PhD by writing garbage like that. But it's even better news that no real person has ever heard of William Lane Craig. Re David Lanz, a lot of lowbrows seem to like his music, so he's probably OK in my book.


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## Guest (Jul 14, 2013)

KenOC said:


> But it's even better news that no real person has ever heard of William Lane Craig.


[email protected], and I was just about to post my claim to be a real person.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

KenOC said:


> William Lane Craig's "primary contribution to philosophy of religion is his revival of the Kalām cosmological argument...he formulates the argument in the following manner:
> 
> 1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
> 2. The universe began to exist.
> ...


Offense taken.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

KenOC said:


> no real person has ever heard of William Lane Craig


Dude, get away from the ivory tower. In West Virginia, no one has heard of Boulez or Derrida.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Sid James said:


> *@ Eschbeg *
> Lloyd Webber added to music... to a level arguably not seen before. Dunno if its generally known around here, but ALW innovated by composing the first so called rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar.


Jesus Christ Superstar, initially a concept album, 1970 / stage production Broadway (Manhattan) 1971
The Who ~ Tommy, Rock opera, double album -- released, 1969.

A.L.W. up to his now thought of as old tricks, even way back when. 
_*Who* woulda thunk it?_






...innovator, schmimmovator.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

science said:


> Dude, get away from the ivory tower. In West Virginia, no one has heard of Boulez or Derrida.


No, you're NOT going to talk me into moving there, no matter how attractive you make it sound.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

KenOC said:


> No, you're NOT going to talk me into moving there, no matter how attractive you make it sound.


B-b-b-but, no state taxes, and creationism taught in the public schools -- certainly have some allure?


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

PetrB said:


> B-b-b-but, no state taxes, and creationism taught in the public schools -- certainly have some allure?


I know you'd have to live there to believe it, but the community of "cultured" people in a place like West Virginia is pretty nice.

There's only like a thousand of you, so you get to know each other well, and there's a kind of "I hope they aren't going to shoot us tonight" camaraderie that you really miss in a place like NYC. Plus, it's diverse, since kids into Japanese comic books don't have enough of each other so they have to hang out with the cellists and David Lynch fanboys and the philosophers and the chess players and the would-be gonzo journalists and the poets, and everyone gets along discussing Kundera and Plato and Schoenberg and new trends in rural drug use, until the cellist turns out to be a member of a skinhead group and he has to be kicked out of the coffee shop (there was one) to avoid offending the Jewish lawyers' wives who are among the most regular customers and enjoy buying the work of local artists that are displayed there. None of this is fiction. I was there, saw it all, and loved it. I was the skinny, extremely weird kid trying to read Kierkegaard and figure out whether a shot of mint syrup in my coffee was worth paying an extra quarter.

I've never experienced a more generous, more interesting community.

And when the bookstore closed we could go to a diner and hope the Holy Rollers (actual Christian motorcycle gang) wouldn't beat us up if we criticized capitalism or creationism too loudly, which they never did, because we were really just some punks.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

MacLeod said:


> [email protected], and I was just about to post my claim to be a real person.


1. Real people exist.
2. You are a real person.
3. Therefore, you exist.


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## Guest (Jul 14, 2013)

Crudblud said:


> 1. Real people exist.
> 2. You are a real person.
> 3. Therefore, you exist.


Phew! Thanks for being my ontological (?) saviour.


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## Guest (Jul 14, 2013)

Just to put an entirely personal spin on things, had a message this morning from my son, who is travelling in India, to say that he's unwell, can't afford the medication, struggling to find cheap enough accommodation and beginning to worry about getting from Hyderabad to the coast and back to Delhi in time for his flight home on 8 August. So I ring him on his mobile - which cuts out after about 20 seconds and I can't reconnect.

So, now fretting, and I have to stop listening to Fleet Foxes' _Helplessness Blues_. I need a diversion, and Beethoven's 1st Symphony provides just what I need as an antidote to worry.

Conclusion? Beethoven is more entertaining than Fleet Foxes!


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

There's existence, and there's non-existence.

1. Real people exist.
2. I am a real person.
3. Yet, I do not exist to the other real people.
4. So, I might just as well not exist.
4. This is known as having your existence suspended.
5. But now I exist again.
6. Therefore, my existence is contingent upon some force beyond my control.
7. Does this prove the existence of God, or Gods?


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

MacLeod said:


> Just to put an entirely personal spin on things, had a message this morning from my son, who is travelling in India, to say that he's unwell, can't afford the medication, struggling to find cheap enough accommodation and beginning to worry about getting from Hyderabad to the coast and back to Delhi in time for his flight home on 8 August. So I ring him on his mobile - which cuts out after about 20 seconds and I can't reconnect.
> 
> So, now fretting, and I have to stop listening to Fleet Foxes' _Helplessness Blues_. I need a diversion, and Beethoven's 1st Symphony provides just what I need as an antidote to worry.
> 
> Conclusion? Beethoven is more entertaining than Fleet Foxes!


Wow, good luck to him!


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> There's existence, and there's non-existence.
> 
> 1. Real people exist.
> 2. I am a real person.
> ...


Yup.

1. Some things in the universe are capable of existing and not existing.
2. Anything capable of both existing and not existing goes out of existence at some point.
3. If all things were capable of not existing, then there was a time when nothing existed.
4. But anything that doesn't exist can only come into being through the agency of something that does exist.
5. Therefore, there must be something that always exists (i.e., that is necessary rather than contingent) because otherwise nothing would ever come into existence.
6. The necessity of some things that are necessary is caused by an external source.
7. There must be something necessary whose necessity is not caused by an external source.
8. God is the only being that is capable of being necessary in itself, of being the cause of the necessity and existence of all other beings.
9. Therefore, God exists.

Not that proof is needed.


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## Guest (Jul 14, 2013)

Taggart said:


> 1. Some things in the universe are capable of existing and not existing.
> 2. Anything capable of both existing and not existing goes out of existence at some point.
> 3. If all things were capable of not existing, then there was a time when nothing existed.
> 4. But anything that doesn't exist can only come into being through the agency of something that does exist.
> ...


Look, it's Sunday - it's supposed to be a day of rest...this is too much like hard work!


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> Look, it's Sunday - it's supposed to be a day of rest...this is too much like hard work!


 Please excuse him - he went to a Jesuit school!


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## Wood (Feb 21, 2013)

Taggart said:


> Yup.
> 
> 1. Some things in the universe are capable of existing and not existing.
> 2. Anything capable of both existing and not existing goes out of existence at some point.
> ...


Point 8. doesn't logically follow from point 7. You make a leap.

It is not possible to provide a logical proof of 'God's' existence. Or at least, it hasn't be done yet.

Good try though.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

hayd said:


> Point 8. doesn't logically follow from point 7. You make a leap.
> 
> It is not possible to provide a logical proof of 'God's' existence. Or at least, it hasn't be done yet.
> 
> Good try though.


 Reminds me of what Bertrand Russell replied when asked what he'd do when he got to heaven and met God: 'I'd say, God, God, why did you make it so hard for human beings to prove your existence?'

(Taggart will riposte later when he has had his forty-winks-restorer. I don't think I'd better wake him to deal with this, and I'm afraid I can't - I had to give up philosophy at university & did Chinese Civ instead...)


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## Wood (Feb 21, 2013)

Ingenue said:


> Reminds me of what Bertrand Russell replied when asked what he'd do when he got to heaven and met God: 'I'd say, God, God, why did you make it so hard for human beings to prove your existence?'
> 
> (Taggart will riposte later when he has had his forty-winks-restorer. I don't think I'd better wake him to deal with this, and I'm afraid I can't - I had to give up philosophy at university & did Chinese Civ instead...)


Oh dear, what have I got myself into here?

I'll end up offending 75% of the Americans who view this site.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Ingenue said:


> Please excuse him - he went to a Jesuit school!


I've had more than enough of this for the few posts it covers, and never had any such, Jesuit, or any other stripe, in school or at home. Besides, isn't this a bit sophomoric, like are you that tree in the forest which may or may not exist if no one is there to see it or hear it fall?

Puhleeeeze. Leave the tree question and all like to the indigenous fauna, like bugs 'n' bears.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

hayd said:


> Point 8. doesn't logically follow from point 7. You make a leap.
> 
> It is not possible to provide a logical proof of 'God's' existence. Or at least, it hasn't be done yet.


LOL, that is why it is called _faith_ vs. maths, science or logic.


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## Wood (Feb 21, 2013)

PetrB said:


> LOL, that is why it is called _faith_ vs. maths, science or logic.


And yet they never stop trying.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

science said:


> I know you'd have to live there to believe it, but the community of "cultured" people in a place like West Virginia is pretty nice.
> 
> There's only like a thousand of you, so you get to know each other well, and there's a kind of "I hope they aren't going to shoot us tonight" camaraderie that you really miss in a place like NYC. Plus, it's diverse, since kids into Japanese comic books don't have enough of each other so they have to hang out with the cellists and David Lynch fanboys and the philosophers and the chess players and the would-be gonzo journalists and the poets, and everyone gets along discussing Kundera and Plato and Schoenberg and new trends in rural drug use, until the cellist turns out to be a member of a skinhead group and he has to be kicked out of the coffee shop (there was one) to avoid offending the Jewish lawyers' wives who are among the most regular customers and enjoy buying the work of local artists that are displayed there. None of this is fiction. I was there, saw it all, and loved it. I was the skinny, extremely weird kid trying to read Kierkegaard and figure out whether a shot of mint syrup in my coffee was worth paying an extra quarter.
> 
> ...


A post of great charm to me, btw: 
Change the locale, the names of the characters, shift a few 'types' while retaining the diversity or downright polarities of the cast, and it is easy for me to wax sentimental on about every decade I've been through to date. A playwright or author really couldn't have come up with much better, richer, or more 'entertaining.'


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

hayd said:


> And yet they never stop trying.


Misery loves company: Joy wants to be shared. Take your pick.


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## Wood (Feb 21, 2013)

PetrB said:


> Misery loves company: Joy wants to be shared. Take your pick.


Then Joy is morally questionable.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

hayd said:


> Then Joy is morally questionable.


I think that "questionable" is reserved for a few calvinists, puritans, and a handful of dour protestants, and perhaps a few various stripes of American style "Christian" fundamentalists.

The big question, though, is faith "an entertainment, and does it come packaged in tiered echelons -- varieties of high, middle and low brow?


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> There's existence, and there's non-existence.


The world of being... Or the world of non-being...

Both at the same time?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Ramako said:


> The world of being... Or the world of non-being...
> 
> Both at the same time?


There is a similar premise which runs common to many a philosophy and religion: we are just walking hollow zombie-like shells, here but not here, most not even aware of the yearning to be awakened -- by and for the tenets of the particular philosophy or religion, of course 

P.s. While this is somewhat 'entertaining,' maybe at least you and I ought to get back to the main point of the OP, or let this rest?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

..............................


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Okay - return to topic.

Is classical music entertainment?

It's all down to words and what they mean to you, and entertainment can be seen as something that passes the time pleasurably, even if the pleasurable emotion is something like awe or sadness; or it can be seen as 'mere' entertainment, something that airheads indulge in, cheap emotion et cetera. Graham Greene made this distinction, by calling his serious works like 'The Power and the Glory' *novels* and his comic potboilers like 'Travels with my Aunt' *entertainments*. There's a sort of implied sneer in the latter.

I personally think that there's no difference between classical music & entertainment, but all the difference in the world between classical music and *mere* entertainment - a point that has already been made above by several people more knowledgeable than I.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Sid James said:


> I have to mull over your post a bit, but the paragraph above also links in with what Vaughan Williams said (what I quoted in my last post) which was similar to what Taggart said. Music goes together with other things. So you look at these images, of course its easy for us to imagine what music and other things perhaps - social milieu and customs, norms and so on goes with these people and the way they dress, their cultural and historical context, etc.


You missed at least one 







About one half a millenium of folk tradition, right there.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Ingenue said:


> Okay - return to topic.
> 
> Is classical music entertainment?
> 
> ...


Ah, the Divertimento!


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Taggart said:


> I've had a look at the Paulnack speech. I find the basic Platonism unappealing. Music is closely akin to Mathematics and while Mathematics does describe inner realities which are expressed in the real world, I don't think the same applies to music. I love this though:
> 
> "Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft."
> 
> ...


It's too bad that this fine post got buried in the discussion. So, here it is again!


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

I derive enjoyment from Classical Music. Is this enjoyment the same as entertainment?

That really depends on what entertainment means to the precise person involved (in this case, me).

For me, therefore, entertainment implies a sense of relaxation that I do not usually get from Classical Music. I don't usually listen to it as 'entertainment', unless I am doing something else and putting it on in the background (or to pass the time in a journey, say). But it is too intense for me to describe ordinarily as music. I do not finish listening to a Mahler symphony and think "That was really fun, now let me get down to work". I ponder it, think about it. I cannot understand people who say that music helps make sense of the world, but I do try to make sense of the music.

It is extremely stimulating, of course, so in that sense it is entertaining. But in as much I do not find it relaxing, in the way that I find watching a film, playing a game, or eating a cake relaxing - I want to get on to something more substantial - I don't want to describe it as entertaining. Just my spin on the word I suppose.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Taggart said:


> ...the Paulnack speech. // I love this though:
> 
> "Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft."


I doubt if their is more than one or two composers or musicians who would disagree with that statement. (Musicians tend to be a little cocky in this regard, they believe that music is good for -- and helps -- people [ insert that well-known quote of Haydn's here ] 

The statement does not in any way state or remotely imply the specifics of the repertoire, or qualities of the music being played. It it is just such a statement of a type that many use in support of arguments for tonal music, the familiar, the tuneful, the music which resonates on a semiotic level with the community, etc. I.e. it is too often used in defense of a sort of retro-conservative plank as to what music is and should be.

All it clearly says is, "Play to the highest of standards."

With this pith of its meaning overlooked or ignored, it could be an apparently good argument for the repeated programming of the familiar, the safe, the less exciting, less innovative musics, a prescription of how to balm and heal "The tired businessman" who goes to a concert to "relax." The tired businessman (or the weary businesswoman) could just as readily take a hot soak in a tub to solve that problem, perhaps while listening to a CD recording of their choice.


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

PetrB said:


> There is a similar premise which runs common to many a philosophy and religion: we are just walking hollow zombie-like shells, here but not here, most not even aware of the yearning to be awakened -- by and for the tenets of the particular philosophy or religion, of course
> 
> P.s. While this is somewhat 'entertaining,' maybe at least you and I ought to get back to the main point of the OP, or let this rest?


Ah, I'm glad you clarified by moving that to a ps! I wasn't sure before (when you quoted yourself) as to whether you were referring to me, or somehow demonstrating the duality of your existence (or non-existence) by conversing with yourself! :lol:


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

PetrB said:


> I doubt if their is more than one or two composers or musicians who would disagree with that statement.
> The statement does not in any way state or remotely imply the specifics of the repertoire, or qualities of the music being played. It it is just such a statement of a type that many use in support of arguments for tonal music, the familiar, the tuneful, the music which resonates on a semiotic level with the community, etc. I.e. it is too often used in defense of a sort of retro-conservative plank as to what music is and should be.
> 
> All it clearly says is, "Play to the highest of standards."


Crossing over from the Thomas Weelkes guestbook, I saw David's Lamentation. I know another version of this and had a quick google and came across William Billings the father of American Choral Singing. The version I know is by the Watersons and fairly raw but it meets exactly Billing's description of his own work:

"The audience is entertained and delighted, their minds surpassingly agitated and extremely fluctuated sometimes declaring for one part and sometimes for another. Now the solemn bass demands their attention; next the manly tenor; now the volatile treble. Now here, now there, now here again. O ecstasis! Rush on, you sons of harmony!"

Yes, it's retro-conservative but none the worse for that, but it does show that music that heals the soul does not have to be what Classic FM describes as "Smooth Classics" but can be vibrant and rugged. The Paulnack speech quotes an example of a modern composer doing the job and I don't disagree with that.

William Billings (1746-1800), was a Boston tanner, singing school teacher and amateur composer important in the musical life of early America. Once enormously popular, Billings's compositions survive nowadays only among users of the old vernacular hymnbooks such as Southern Harmony and Sacred Harp.

So, I don't disagree (totally) with you, just happen to like older music and feel it "works" better. To conclude, the Watersons singing David's Lamentation


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Ramako said:


> Ah, I'm glad you clarified by moving that to a ps! I wasn't sure before (when you quoted yourself) as to whether you were referring to me, or somehow demonstrating the duality of your existence (or non-existence) by conversing with yourself! :lol:


Nope, just a very common frailty resulting from having gone to bed at 10 a.m. having woken up at ca. 11:45 a.m. -- and then having been foolish enough to go directly to the computer and participate in an online forum.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Taggart said:


> Crossing over from the Thomas Weelkes guestbook, I saw David's Lamentation. I know another version of this and had a quick google and came across William Billings the father of American Choral Singing. The version I know is by the Watersons and fairly raw but it meets exactly Billing's description of his own work:
> 
> "The audience is entertained and delighted, their minds surpassingly agitated and extremely fluctuated sometimes declaring for one part and sometimes for another. Now the solemn bass demands their attention; next the manly tenor; now the volatile treble. Now here, now there, now here again. O ecstasis! Rush on, you sons of harmony!"
> 
> ...


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Honestly you want to plug atonal music and then say that classical fans can't cope with the Watersons! 

Quite agree that there is a (wide) range within the tradition. I gather they had a Sacred Harp day today in Norwich. Fun music, entertaining and yet totally serious and representing a side of music that many classical fans would find challenging although it is technically on the classical side of the spectrum.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Ramako said:


> ...I do not finish listening to a Mahler symphony and think "That was really fun, now let me get down to work". I ponder it, think about it. I cannot understand people who say that music helps make sense of the world, but I do try to make sense of the music.....


Its interesting you mention Mahler because even his 4th symphony, my favourite, which is considered his lightest, has a dark edge to it. Death of course, that was his obsession, it creeps into his music all the time. This was said at another talk I went to during Mahler's anniversary year. The whole vibe of the piece is child like, but at the end you get this song about a child's view of heaven. There's all these animals, all this food to eat, there's all these nice things there which where in children's dreams. In Mahler's time, if you survived childhood, you where doing well. Infant mortality was high. & of course, the irony of heaven, which was the destination many children went to, prematurely. Well, in terms of the subtext of this song anyway.

Even seemingly innocent things like that, not only in his work but other composers, well you look back at history then and its different. So I agree about Mahler, and as I said I too draw a line. I don't see certain pieces, esp. those pondering the most horrific events of the 20th century, as entertainment. To do so imo would be as perverse as looking at a photo of some mass grave of one of those massacres that happened, and say "how entertaining." Of course, where one draws the line personally is not always that easy, my example is a pretty blatant one, but I only do it to illustrate a point.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

On a more positive note, I was listening to the radio, and they where talking about some things going on in the USA to open up the arts to the masses. One of the people interviewed as Damian Woetzel, a former ballet dancer, who has set up this thing called Arts Strike. He and the cellist Yo Yo Ma and other artists, take to schools, veteran's homes, and other communities to do performances, engaging with the people there. Ma's philiosophy is one of "art for life's sake" turning around the phrase "art for art's sake."

Another organisation called Random Acts of Culture is taking art to American streets and shopping malls. One big such random act, which has gotten over 8 million hits on youtube, was singing Handel's Messiah at Macy's store in Philadelphia.

I think this ties into this discussion. How would you classify these things? Art or entertainment? Is it necessary to classify, is it more important to engage. The interview included discussion of these and other issues. It was on the BBC 'the panel' radio segment. I found it fascinating.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Sid James said:


> ...Random Acts of Culture is taking art to American streets and shopping malls. One big such random act, which has gotten over 8 million hits on youtube, was singing Handel's Messiah at Macy's store in Philadelphia.
> 
> I think this ties into this discussion. *How would you classify these things?* Art or entertainment?


Why, an *"Art Music Flash Mob,"* of course


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

If one believes as I do, that music, all music, exists because of the pleasure and satisfaction that is experienced by making it or listening to it, then one must conclude that there is no difference.

One can be entertained and also be touched, moved, edified and transported at the same time.

To be entertained is just the opposite of being bored. Some music entertains me and some I find mind numbingly boring (no examples shall be given lest an argument ensues)


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Petwhac said:


> To be entertained is just the opposite of being bored. Some music entertains me and some I find mind numbingly boring (no examples shall be given lest an argument ensues)


Go on please ... That's just another way in which music "entertains" us - pistols at dawn as we stand up for what we like!


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

Taggart said:


> Go on please ... That's just another way in which music "entertains" us - pistols at dawn as we stand up for what we like!


tempting but.......


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

Taggart said:


> Honestly you want to plug atonal music and then say that classical fans can't cope with the Watersons!


_those_ classical fans would cope.


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