Erm - and the connection with Peter Maxwell Davies - A case for classical music, old and new is......
Oh well, at the risk of supplying my own highly subjective interpretation of the thread so far, here goes:
1. Max said that loud repetitive music is even more insidious than the propaganda of Goebbels and Lenin -->
2. Probably referring to a type of music associated with the clubbing scene where people "lose their individual identity" -->
3. Which lead to a discussion of whether or not people really do lose their identity in this 'insidious' way (or perhaps 'compartmentalise' their lives in some ways - preferring different kinds of music at different times and for different purposes) -->
4. Which lead to an interesting analogy to the way that people can separate their 'essential' selves from the roles they play in certain other 'scenes' - the relevance being, if one needs to be snatched out of a hat, that - particularly in the area of popular music - there is a huge crossover between musical taste and lifestyle or, as someone expressed it better than me:
this "case" is arguably incapable of thorough discussion without any reference to those things that he said
Yes, this was indeed is what I myself wrote but, whilst still sticking to it now, I would nevertheless urge a sense of proportion rather than the taking of one relatively small aspect of what PMD said and running with it to other matters best discussed in another thread altogether; by this I mean to refer to the principal thrust of PMD's speech, which is what I had understood to have initiated this thread in the first place.
On reflection though I can see that some people genuinely do find this sort of thing a distasteful intrusion - hard as I find it to sympathise with that myself - and a previous suggestion of a wider 'music and society' section might not be a bad idea. (We would, of course, still have the issue of a certain type of censorship in the other sections, but perhaps that can't be helped...)
It's not for me to say one way or the other about whether other members here found there to have been a "distasteful intrusion" earlier during the course of this thread, for other people's "tastes" are their own prerogative and concern; what I will say, however, is that my own concerns were not about "taste" - good, bad or indifferent - but about proportion, perspective and extent of relevance. PMD's speech centred largely around the current state of - and future prospects for - what we loosely term "classical" music and was, after all, given to the ISM, is an organisation ostensibly dedicated to the profession of music.
Whether or not - or to what extent - a "'music and society' section might not be a bad idea" is another subject altogether.
Best,
Alistair
