I'd go further, and say that such music doesn't induce responses in a manner akin to propaganda, but often actually is propaganda.  Maybe not how it's usually thought of politically, but certainly in a commercial sense.  I'm not saying it's impossible to create work of intrinsic artistic merit with an eye on making a profit (god forbid artists not be allowed to make a living and still be considered artists).  But all too often the profit and the "brand" far outweigh anything else.

This is veering incredibly off topic, but I have to say something else because it's touched a nerve.  I don't want to "rank" or denigrate anyone's emotional response.  But there are times I think we all individually ought to accept - and expect form others - more responsibility for understanding what is provoking that response.  It may seem as simple as not criticizing people for their choice of music at a funeral.  But unquestioningly allowing our emotions to be manipulated, and not recognising how, can have dire repercussions.  I don't want to get into politics on this board, seeing what happened last time.  But I think it would be no bad thing for us all, both as individuals and as a society, if we all had better tools for understanding (and sometimes resisting) how our emotions can be manipulated.

That being said, I do weep at Casablanca, and at much, much worse schlock than that.  Sometimes I enjoy the release, sometimes I hate myself for it.

Umm, Thomas Zehetmair.  How long is the quartet concert on LA?  I've never heard them.  I heard him playing the Bach A-minor violin concerto and got quite annoyed despite the evident thoughtfulness and facility - it sounded so precious.

That's a type of characterisation regularly called upon to apply to anyone working in a supposedly modernist vein. Which works of Holliger do you have in mind when you say this, and how do they manifest such qualities?

Strina: couldn't agree more with you on music as propaganda. I do think there's more to Casablanca than that, though.

George: I take your points on music that someone might find moving in certain circumstances, such as Karl Jenkins at a funeral, and wouldn't particularly want to negatively judge someone for feeling that way then, but aren't the emotional responses in question really more about the context in which the work is heard than things which are somehow inherent to it? To give another type of example: one might feel all sorts of memories, desires, yearnings, when hearing a particular ice-cream van jingle, because one associates it with a particular time in one's life when it could be heard regularly (actually, I think a large amount of the appeal of certain popular music works on this sort of basis). But that wouldn't be to assign any innate value to the jingle in and of itself.

Antheil: Can I be like a 1970s Blue Peter presenter and insist on not referring to a type of object by a brand name (kleenex for tissue; similarly biro for ballpoint pen, hoover for vacuum cleaner, xerox for photocopy, and so on)! Do we really want to be so Americanised that we think of everything in terms of commercial labels?

Wasn't Blue Peter itself a brand?! (and shouldn't "biro" have a "c" on the end here?!). Otherwise, point taken and you're on the ball here (sorry!), although it might be worth asking ourselves en passant why a tiny handful of brand names have achieved that kind of status when 99.99+% of others in the same commercial world haven't? (indeed, I'm already struggling to come up with any to add to your list here).

I agree entirely with your views on the rest of the matter; Mr Jenkins and those of his ilk are welcome to do whatever they like, of course (and laugh all the way to the bank as a consequence, if so they choose), but the principal reason why I find myself unable to engage meaningfully with that kind of stuff is because the emotions involved in and elicited by it seem to be almost entirely manufactured rather than genuine - popped onto the score with a paint-sprayer rather than inherent in the music itself, as it were - and for that very reason I tend to despair when I discover people being "moved" (or assuming that they're being "moved") by some of it because it almost makes me wonder whether such stuff may on occasion have the effect of dulling emotional responses so that some people end up less capable of being genuinely moved by something that has the capacity to do so. What do you think?

I remember John Noakes once accidentally doing so, then sternly correcting himself afterwards. Maybe it would have been quicker to say if he'd been trying to stop Shep eating one of them?

It could be considered a subversive act to use a brand name as a generic term.  Companies fight tooth and claw to make sure their names don't get used generically so they can continue to make money from the brand.

My grandma also had a sewing machine which she called a "Springer", if I remember rightly.

Sorry, that's not meant to prove or disprove Ian's point. Just reminiscing.

 

My grandma was a closet modernist!?!?!