Alan Dudley:

>Reading this thread and hearing of how often listmembers listen to a
>recording, I am led to wonder if members realise the effect that the
>ability to record might have on the music itself.
>
>Before recording was possible, a composer had to make his music enjoyable
>at first hearing.  If it was not appreciated then it probably would never
>be heard again.

Interesting, but not historically true.  Music has been "unenjoyable at
first hearing" for far longer than the history of recording.  As Slonimsky's
Lectionary of Musical Invective makes clear, listeners have complained about
Ugly New Music since at least Beethoven.  Furthermore, most music - Good or
Bad, Lovely or Ugly - was forgotten after its first performance.  People
wanted to hear and play something new.  The folks all that interested in
"ancient music" (music written as recently as fifty years before) were
eccentrics or, in some sense, specialist scholars, like Dr. Burney or
Baron van Swieten.  Indeed, recording, as we all know, has made the past
accessible.  We don't depend on having a bunch of, say, Renaissance-music
specialists in our town to hear, say, Josquin's Missa "Hercule dux Ferariae."
We simply buy a CD.

>I wonder if this is the reason why the enjoyment of classical music has
>come to be somewhat elitist, at least in the minds of those who do not
>enjoy it.

I think you've got the wrong end of the stick.  Recording hasn't made
possible elitist music, which has been around since at least the 14th century.
Instead, it's given rise to a class of listener that only listens, rather
than plays or knows enough to read a score.  And, again, it's made almost
the entire past accessible to such a class.  You can happily listen to
Whatever from Whenever, without knowing anything, including enough to be
considered a musical elite.

>It seems likely to me that composers to-day can allow themselves the
>indulgence of writing music which takes longer, and more effort, to be
>appreciated.  I would be interested to read other people's opinions on
>this.

Again, you really ought to read Slonimsky, who compiles major composers' bad
reviews.  You very quickly realize that Beethoven was damned by the same
criteria as Boulez.  This does NOT mean that Boulez is as good a composer
as Beethoven, just that people's notions of why they don't understand or
like some music are remarkably consistent over various styles and times.

>In anticipating replies I can imagine words like "shallow" and "surface"
>being used.  I can't hear anything justifying those words in any music
>I know.  On the other hand, I can think of no works written before
>recording which took me as long to appreciate as a number of more recent
>works.

I doubt it's the existence of recorded music that's giving you the trouble,
any more than it's the fact of libraries that makes Gertrude Stein difficult
to follow.  It may be that new music works differently than the music you
normally listen to.  It may not.  As I say, I have trouble assimilating
some early Romantic music.  Music of the Classical period is hard for me
to comprehend.  I've yet to "get" bel canto opera.  On the other hand, new
music very often turns me on.  I don't see why new music constitutes a
special aesthetic case.

Steve Schwartz