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Don Basilio
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« Reply #30 on: 10:57:29, 30-06-2008 » |
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I have been in correspondence for six months with a young man on death row in Texas. He asked me where I went to University. I told him. He replied, and I have the letter in front of me, "Wow, you studied English Language and Literature at the U of XXX, very prestigious place. But, Don, (not my real name), you don't seem snobbish or uptight!  That's like attending Harvard, Princeton or even Duke." Actually I could be accused of snobbery. Not sycophancy to the great or contempt for the humble. But my attitude to ostentatious and tasteless display of wealth is withering. |
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To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance
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Ruby2
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« Reply #31 on: 11:07:49, 30-06-2008 » |
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The become impatient and critical of Victora Beckham. Does anyone want to argue that's a bad thing?  Absolutely not. ...my attitude to ostentatious and tasteless display of wealth is withering.
Justified. See above. |
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"Two wrongs don't make a right. But three rights do make a left." - Rohan Candappa
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Philidor
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« Reply #32 on: 11:10:51, 30-06-2008 » |
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Absolutely not. But I won't have the Yanks being rude about her.  |
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martle
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« Reply #33 on: 11:17:45, 30-06-2008 » |
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the U of XXX, very prestigious place. ...That's like attending Harvard, Princeton or even Duke."
Nonsense. My dear, the U of XXX is so common compared to Princeton. |
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Green. Always green.
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...trj...
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« Reply #34 on: 11:28:19, 30-06-2008 » |
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Much of the inverted snobbery that for instance I faced at school about my musical taste is rooted in fear and that all too common tendency to decry that which you don’t “get”.
It would also be enormously easy for someone to look at this discussion and brand everyone involved as a music snob, based on the fact that they understood about every 7th word. It can simply be a word that gets thrown at people to make them shut up and stop scaring people, essentially.
Wise words. Snobbery seems to me an aspect or variety of the sort of tribalism that goes on all over the place. In that respect I would qualify Philidor's comment that snobbery is easier to locate within classical music circles than in popular music: I think that the use of certain words ("snob" is one, "rockist" is another) to define and exclude groups of listeners (and "to make them shut up and stop scaring people") happens everywhere. For historical reasons of class, social status and so on that have been mentioned already in this thread, "snob" seems to be the word that best captures some of the qualities of the classical music listener who people might wish to set apart in such a way. "Rockist" in pop music discourse has a similar function to "snob" - it's a way for fans of pop music (predominantly of the Top 40 chart variety) to categorise and silence a particular kind of rock fan. But where "snob" carries a set of associations to do with class and what have you, "rockist" carries associations to do with adherence to a classical aesthetics, a certain conservatism, and so on. |
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George Garnett
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« Reply #35 on: 11:34:21, 30-06-2008 » |
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On further reflection I think 'priggish' might be the word for my earlier post. A slightly different crime. |
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« Last Edit: 12:13:45, 30-06-2008 by George Garnett »
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perfect wagnerite
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« Reply #36 on: 11:34:36, 30-06-2008 » |
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I’d like if I may to go back to the issue touched on earlier about subjective “liking” versus objective appreciation. I can’t help thinking about the idea I first came across in Pirsig’s book “Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance” that people divide into those with classical and those with romantic tendencies, and that these tendencies would more than likely define how someone approached appreciation of music.
Ruby, if you want to encounter snobbery of a venom rarely encountered in any musical debate, just mention that book in a University philosophy department. In my case it was reading it as a teenager that made me want to study philosophy, which I eventually did. At the U of XXX, as it happens. But I think that's part of the point; there is always a sort of freemasonry of experts (self-appointed or otherwise) who seem to want to keep their enthusiasm pure and can't bear to think of it being tainted by the common populace (try attending a meeting of the Wagner Society - if you've got the stomach for it - and you'll see what I mean). So the three chord tradition, embedded in the music which drives Western youth culture, only works if Western youth is kept musically ignorant. That helps explain why my pop group friends - who were making large sums of money from the culture - became so excited when I criticised it: deep down they know they’re producing conservative tripe which only works if their audience is kept ignorant, which is a double irony for a leftist band.
They remind me of other musical authoritarians in history - Plato, medieval Popes, Stalin - who recognised the power of music and, for political or financial reasons, wished to keep the proles ignorant.
The deep conservatism of a lot of pop music is an important factor here, and I think so is its ubiquity - the three-chord pap that Philidor refers to is constantly in our ears, in shops, in the street, in lifts. It makes it much more difficult to make the conceptual leap to a music that isn't somatic, but which demands attention and a response. I think a lot of the talk about snobbery is really about the incomprehension of music that one doesn't experience passively, and has to work at. I believe that what, for want of a better term, I would call art music is available to anybody - in some ways much more than it has ever been before. Much of the inverted snobbery that for instance I faced at school about my musical taste is rooted in fear and that all too common tendency to decry that which you don’t “get”.
Absolutely. |
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At every one of these [classical] concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. (Shaw, Don Juan in Hell)
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John W
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« Reply #37 on: 11:38:10, 30-06-2008 » |
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the appalling Holliger work between two sublimely beautiful classical works The attack from the contemporary snobs was about a year ago. John, the only "contemporary snob" here is you. Ha Ha! No Richard, you are just afraid to admit YOU are  You know very well that I do make an effort, I listen to contemporary music works on R3 and may make a comment, often negative, on appropraiate threads here but I get hounded out as if I was a fool who can't understand that seemingly random noise is music. That is dreadful snobbery from contemporary composers who seem bitter because they fail to get a broad acceptance of their music.  John W |
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time_is_now
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« Reply #38 on: 11:41:49, 30-06-2008 » |
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But I think that's part of the point; there is always a sort of freemasonry of experts (self-appointed or otherwise) who seem to want to keep their enthusiasm pure and can't bear to think of it being tainted by the common populace (try attending a meeting of the Wagner Society - if you've got the stomach for it - and you'll see what I mean). One of the most important aspects to me of my appreciation of anything I enjoy musically is to try and share it with someone (though not necessarily with everyone: I don't assume everyone I know will be interested in everything I like). But I do recognise the attitude you're describing, PW. Not sure how relevant this is but I remember complaining once, back in the old old days when we all posted regularly on the BBC messageboard, that one of the things I didn't like about Kurtag was the discourse around the music, and the apparent resistance of the music itself to misunderstanding, misinterpretation, and the sort of rough and tumble to which other kinds of music get exposed in everyday life. |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #39 on: 11:50:49, 30-06-2008 » |
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[Moderator's comment.]
John,
I'm going to ask you to stop right there: on a board where a substantial number of posters are personally involved in contemporary music, that last comment cannot be construed as anything other than inflammatory. You have an official capacity on this board and should be upholding its values rather than flouting them.
You've caused quite enough trouble in the past: don't you ever learn by your mistakes?
Ron
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perfect wagnerite
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« Reply #40 on: 11:52:47, 30-06-2008 » |
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But I think that's part of the point; there is always a sort of freemasonry of experts (self-appointed or otherwise) who seem to want to keep their enthusiasm pure and can't bear to think of it being tainted by the common populace (try attending a meeting of the Wagner Society - if you've got the stomach for it - and you'll see what I mean). One of the most important aspects to me of my appreciation of anything I enjoy musically is to try and share it with someone (though not necessarily with everyone: I don't assume everyone I know will be interested in everything I like). But I do recognise the attitude you're describing, PW. I agree very much, T-i-n: musical enthusiasms are things to be shared. I sometimes wonder how far the ubiquity of recorded music has turned music from a collective into a privatised activity; even though so much recorded music is present in public spaces. Probably one for another thread, though. |
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At every one of these [classical] concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. (Shaw, Don Juan in Hell)
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Ted Ryder
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« Reply #41 on: 11:55:38, 30-06-2008 » |
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When the Holliger kufuffle arose at TOP it resulted in RB recommending I try Holliger's violin concerto, I purchased it and am very grateful to him. Now I doubt I understand it any better than John W would if he sat down and listened to it, in fact, since I have probably have less technical knowledge of music than anybody on this board and cannot even transpose "Three Blind Mice", I expect all of you could understand it better than I can. This does not prevent me from enjoying the sound of this piece, as I like the sound of most modern music that John W or S-S would throw into the bin (Birtwistle, Carter Ferneyhough etc) but can an illiterate be branded a snob?
I tried to listen to Don Carlo the other night- I hated it, as I dislike all of Verdi's music- to me it is all rum-tum-tum even the last operas. does that make me an ordinary bloke fit for the real world outside that of the poncy elite, or a snob because I much prefer and indeed have loved the work of Wagner and Berg for 50 years?
Swimming into deeper waters I would like to ask Ian and Richard if their own attitude to the work of Goehr and Holloway does allow a charge of "political" snobbery to be levelled against them.( It's fine for every one to enjoy Abba but it is off-limits to enjoy music that purports to be "modern" but quotes Schumann or sounds deathly academic, ( "Like watching paint dry" I think was Richard's phrase) I enjoy RB's music but I'm also fond of Goehr, enjoyed the new Clarinet Quintet and was pleased that the BBC asked him to write it. Were I of any consequence in the world of new British music would I been seen as "letting the side down"
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I've got to get down to Sidcup.
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burning dog
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« Reply #42 on: 11:56:19, 30-06-2008 » |
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When it comes to pop music I much prefer "three chord pap". The idea that progressive rock /pop "gives more" because someone plays a bit of cod Tchaikovsky on a synthesizer while someone else plays boom cha boom-boom cha drums (sounds like they are playing in different rooms) has never convinced me.
Chart Pop music is social music, it may have been commodified to near death but that doesn't make the content worthless.
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« Last Edit: 11:59:03, 30-06-2008 by burning dog »
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burning dog
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« Reply #43 on: 11:57:09, 30-06-2008 » |
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double post
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Don Basilio
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« Reply #44 on: 12:10:18, 30-06-2008 » |
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I tried to listen to Don Carlo the other night- I hated it, as I dislike all of Verdi's music- to me it is all rum-tum-tum
Now Verdi is an interesting case. Nowadays he is regarded as a Great Composer, possibly with the additional cachet that, although maybe not working class in the strict Marxist definition, he was at least only one step up from the peasantry (and like Dickens and Shakespeare he never had any Higher Education.) But I can remember when it was not the case, and you probably can too, Ted. At the start of my second year at the University of XXX there was a freshman who subsequently became a music critic. I have even heard him interviewed on Classic FM. Getting to know him in hall, he told me he liked music. "I like Verdi" I said. He gave an affected laugh. "O, vulgar Verdi" he said and told me how he couldn't possibly take Verdi seriously as he had seen a production of Nabucco, where the chorus all threw up their arms at the end of the big number. But you are just honestly saying it doesn't do anything for you, Ted. Fair enough. |
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To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance
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