Klarinet Archive - Posting 001261.txt from 1998/07

From: Bill Hausmann <bhausman@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Clarinet Column
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 08:44:45 -0400

At 01:46 AM 7/27/98 -0700, Matt Palasik wrote:
>I believe the reason many people only like their genre of music and are
>close minded has nothing to do with the musical notes themselves. Often
>enough each genre of contemporary music has a generl emotional
>attachment. Country is often romantic . ROck is about having good
>times, love and rebelion. Of course rock is a large genre in itself and
>I by no means want to classify each style of nmusic with a title.
>Styles and subject to vary within a genre but you can stat to lump many
>of them into catagories. Ad because most modern music has lyrics which
>give the music a certain meaning the words become more important then
>the music. In my opinion the music to most modern music with lyrics is
>inferior in quality to that of mozart Beethoven Brahms Schuman etcBUt
>because I can relate to the words i often like the music genre better.
>I can listen and perform classical. I apreciate but all to often i dont
>like the music . I do however find a piece from time to time that i
>really do like. ROck and heavy metal is what I grew up on and it is
>musically inferior to classical but enjoy it more then classical because
>i can relate to then langue of rock whitch is the lyrics.
>But many have said that music itself is a language. SO in my opinon the
>problem is not the fact that people are turning away from classical its
>that they have never learned the language of music from that time. They
>prefer their own language of words.
>
Good point, Matt! People fear what they do not understand, and classical
music is seriously misunderstood these days, mostly due to lack of
exposure. The young people who DO get it are typically the most
intelligent ones (the NERDS) and thus the music is further denigrated as
"uncool." Your point about lyrics is also well taken. Despite many hours
of forced listening in the car to classical music and mostly instrumental
jazz, my two daughters both have strong preferences for music with lyrics.
Fortunately, they paid enough attention to have their taste raised to the
level of musical theater, at least. They both became singers, since their
junior high band director was a jack...um, insufficiently skilled. They
always request "music with WORDS" when we travel together. Of course, as
singers, they are hopelessly biased in this direction! My son, judging
from his CD purchases, leans that way, too, although he does play
percussion in band (different school now). You need no musical
understanding to understand the words, and therefore sung popular music
appeals to people with relatively unsophisticated tastes. This explains
why hard rock, etc., is mainly the music of the very young (discounting
baby boomers in their desperate attempt to REGAIN their youth).

Bill Hausmann bhausman@-----.com
451 Old Orchard Drive http://www.concentric.net/~bhausman
Essexville, MI 48732 http://members.wbs.net/homepages/z/o/o/zoot14.html
ICQ UIN 4862265

If you have to mic a saxophone, the rest of the band is too loud.

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