Stephen Heersink:

>Under the medieval system of music and the later patronage system of the
>Enlightenment, the "best that was every thought or done" was accomplished
>for "us", even if we didn't know a thing about what was done for our
>benefit.  With the apotheosis of democracy, all values are relativistic
>to the individuals who hold them.  Excellence is eschewed, the more
>individualistic and vulgar is esteemed.  Democracy sounds like a great
>idea, especially every July 4th, but in reality, it's ultimately an appeal
>to the lowest common denominator, so that no one, even the refusnick, is
>not left out.  And so, has our musical state of affairs improved or
>devolved?

According to your own paragraph, the only thing one can say is that our
musical state of affairs has changed.  I hesitate to bring this up, but
the stuff about excellence and vulgarity has always been true.  Sturgeon's
Law:  85% of everything is crap.  Sometimes, the vulgar have been excellent
and the elite have been forgettable:  see American music up until Ives
or British music between Arne and Elgar.  If this state of affairs has
persisted throughout many eras of history under all political systems, then
it makes no sense to blame democracy for bad art.  You want really bad art,
take a listen to most of what Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany produced.
Sure, there were Prokofiev and Shostakovich, but there were also a host of
hacks who turned out mounds of kitsch.  Prokofiev and Shostakovich weren't
created by the political system.  Their talent was within them.  Indeed,
the political system, as we know, often hindered and threatened them.

Here's another reading.  De Tocqueville said, among many other things,
that the great advantage of American democracy was its genius for
"spontaneous associations." Groups, corporations, organizations form and
break up with much greater speed than elsewhere and are formed for many
different purposes.  The marketplace, fortunately, doesn't determine all of
our cultural life.  People form spontaneous associations (like this list,
for example) to satisfy their need for something beyond what the market
normally provides.  There are few restrictions to this kind of
collaboration.

Steve Schwartz