Klarinet Archive - Posting 000170.txt from 2005/01

From: orm1ondtoby@-----.net (Ormondtoby Montoya)
Subj: [kl] Klocker
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 16:14:06 -0500

I wrote:

> Many people in the audience would not be
> familiar with what the composer actually
> wrote and therefore would not be aware of
> the distinction between cadenza and
> non-cadenza phrases.

Dan wrote:

> Not the audience of Mozart's time! What you
> are noting is the clearly established fact that
> audiences of today are not nearly as well
> educated musically as were the audiences of
> Mozart's time.

I wonder if this is due to the (possible) fact that the common person
was not as likely (or able) to attend a performance of Mozart (or other
great composer) in those days?

The introduction the my copy to Anna Magdalena Bach's notebook explains
that a person wasn't truly accepted in court or 'upper crust' society if
they didn't know music, if they and their children didn't have their own
music notebooks and repertoires, if they couldn't perform at social
gatherings, and so forth.

What the introduction doesn't discuss is what portion of the population
(grocers, seamstresses, maids, carpenters, etc) actually attended (or
could attend) such performances.

Perhaps (???) today's 'average musically uneducated person' is more
likely, compared to his/her counterpart 250 years ago, to attend a
concert of classical music (heh! and therefore needs to read the program
notes), but the degree of musical eucation in the entire population
isn't much different?

What is your opinion about this possibility?

(but of course, there's more to know in order to survive today.
Perhaps it's inevitable that musical knowledge has to share the
population's attention with computer literacy, repairing autoobiles and
knowing the traffic laws, medical knowledge, and so forth).

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