I've got a new post at 3 Quarks Daily:
Roll over Beethoven: Where’d classical music go?
Classical music is still with us, of course, but it no longer has the cultural salience it once had. I’ve been aware of the “slide” for three or four decades, but it’s been going on longer than that. I don’t know how long people have been writing and fretting about it.
I figure that, on the one hand, composers had pretty much done all they could with tonal harmony by the turn of the twentieth century. So the ventured into new territory; serialism is the most obvious arena, but there are others, including forms of electronic music, which abandoned ordinary instruments and pitches for various kinds of sound.
At the same time, the world turned upside down. World wars remade the geopolitical landscape in the first half of the century, and destroyed the European home of classical music. In the USA people moved from the country to the city, and from the South to the rest of the country, especially the larger New York City and Chicago areas. Technology created new ways of presenting, recording, and disseminating music. The radio and movies gave people new sources of entertainment. The result was a new and changing cultural ecosystem.
The post sketches all that out and then analyzes a mid-century performance of “St. Louis Blues” in which Harry James switches back and forth between classical and pop/swing/jazz styles. Crazy.
One topic I neglected is that of sexual expressiveness in music. The classical tradition is weak here, but jazz/swing/pop is strong. I touch on that in this post:
Beethoven in Memphis [on the limits of civilization and sexuality in music]
I discuss it at greater length in this article:
Music Making History: Africa Meets Europe in the United States of the Blues, in Nikongo Ba'Nikongo, ed., Leading Issues in Afro-American Studies. Durham, North Carolina: Carolina Academic Press. pp. 189-233.
Come to think of it, though, the issue is implicit in the Harry James clip (and the film from which it is taken). His first bit of playing, over the tango section of “St. Louis Blues,” is very sexy and in radical contrast with the stiff classical introduction. I suppose, in a way, that's one reason I included the clip, though that certainly wasn't on my mind.
On Harry James, the late Terry Teachout wrote a nice article about him:"Don’t Forget Harry James," Commentary, April 2016.
"World wars remade the geopolitical landscape in the first half of the century, and destroyed the European home of classical music."
ReplyDeleteThe city of Bristol was bombed very heavily during world war 2 some residents took to hiding in old mine shafts (not a good idea).
Authorities were particularly worried by a sub-section of the population that took to leaving the city at night after work and setting up camps in the local countryside.
Public were subject to close monitoring to measure morale in wartime, here a population beyond reach.
Part of the wider fail was an intentional focus to portray Coventry as the worst hit city. Media coverage of bombing, was limited so as to not affect the morale of the population.
In Bristol this lead to resentment, no defences, constant bombing raids.
'is very sexy and in radical contrast with the stiff classical introduction.'
An example of administrative 'moral panic' in part.
"Yes" to moral panic. Jazz, rock and roll, hip-hop, all greeted with moral panic.
ReplyDeleteBristol is an old centre of free thinking from pirates, to hippies, its in the west country not far from Glastonbury. The free festivals old and new, very much a part of city life.
ReplyDeleteBack in the day moral panic and then some. Greenham common (women's protest outside an American air base). Then the peace convoy grew out of that ( a feature of the festival circuit). After the miners dispute, Thatchers government turned its attention here.
Policing and processes of arrest in the 80's was brutal. As was a lot of the music, difficult times.