I've learned a lot on forums. I doubt I'd have discovered as much new music otherwise. I have access to everything on Qobuz, but trying to find worthwhile music there on my own would be an impossible task given the thousands and thousands of recordings there.
-
WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!
The demise of Amazon Classical Music Forum: music terrorists?
- Thread starter nnamelet
- Start date
I've learned a lot on forums. I doubt I'd have discovered as much new music otherwise. I have access to everything on Qobuz, but trying to find worthwhile music there on my own would be an impossible task given the thousands and thousands of recordings there.
The IMDB forums were fun. They were often very stupid, but even that I found amusing (I suppose I'm easily amused.) Easy to understand why pampered and coddled Hollywood types would want the forums shut down, though.
JustAnandaDourEyedDude
Addicted to Fun and Learning
There are some areas of human endeavor or performance in which the top performers or most skilled are understood and appreciated by even casual observers. Some areas of athletics, competitive sports, martial arts, even culinary artistry come to mind. In contrast, when it comes to many other areas requiring advanced skills, over the years I have come to picture in my mind a graph with something like a composite of excellence and complexity (of performance and of observer understanding of the same) along the horizontal axis, and the (density of) the population with whom it resonates along the vertical axis. It seems to me that in most areas the graph is something like a bell curve, though for some fields the curve's peak is skewed to the right with a long tail to the left, and in others to the left with a long head to the right. I sense a distribution of this sort for music appreciation too. Your young nephew's or niece's rehearsal for a middle school performance may bring warm applause at a family dinner but inward winces from all but the fond parents and grandparents [this is not a knock on youth; these days I would not be taken aback to see on YT a fetus crawl onstage and proceed to toss off Paganini's Caprice no. 24 with dexterity befitting Heifetz or Oistrakh]. Toward the far right of the graph may be a skilled performance of an advanced composition that finds few listeners able to grasp its beauty. The listening skill, knowledge, attention and empathy of individual listeners also waxes and wanes over the course of a lifetime. And some of the devotees who fall further to the right side of the graph indulge their egos with elitism to no lesser degree than the person who pulls up alongside me at a traffic red light and insists on stirring my coffee with cranked up music through the rolled-down windows in his car.
Sometime in the 1980s, I came across the book linked below, which some of you may already have read. IIRC, I bought it for about $2 from a bargain bin at a university bookstore. It was first published around 1955, and based on the publisher's note caused quite a furore back then (though no less than Erich Leinsdorf found the book's arguments logical). The book analyzes the dramatic popular rejection of avant-garde (then contemporary) classical music, referred to by @julian_hughes. Some of the chapter titles are "The Crisis of Harmony", "The Crisis of Melody", "The Crisis of Rhythm", "The Crisis of the Orchestra" and "The Composer's Dilemma". The blurb on the back cover of the paperback version begins "Modern music is not modern and is rarely music". By "modern music" is meant the contemporary classical music of the second quarter of the twentieth century. And the first chapter beings with "Serious music is a dead art."
The Agony Of Modern Music by Henry Pleasants
The author uses no musical notation, and attempts to keep his arguments intelligible to interested lay readers. However, with my lack of knowledge of even basic music theory, I am unable to critique the author's arguments, though they have an internal logical consistency. One of the author's major arguments involves the early shift in the western classical music tradition from melodic and rhythmic emphasis to emphasis on harmonic novelty, the subsequent exhaustion of harmonic resources and the listeners' ears becoming jaded by overexposure to abrupt harmonic shifts and dissonant harmonies. I wonder if this argument has any relevance concerning the plaint of many younger listeners who, though exposed to and fairly knowledgeable about western classical music, have been seduced by the barrage of dissonant harmonies and new musical instruments of the far reaches of several modern genres, and find traditional western classical music dull, unexciting and unappealing by contrast. As expressed in, for example, the following thread
A millennial's rant on classical music originated by @Fluffy.
I agree with @Daverz and @julian_hughes that contemporary classical music has to a large extent moved away from the serialism and other movements of that time, and that many contemporary composers are attempting to communicate with a larger audience. I salute music labels like Naxos and others which attempt to bring recordings of much contemporary classical music to a wider audience. Particularly the bravery of labels like Navona which are focused entirely on contemporary classical. And I salute musicians lucky enough to land an album release who sneak in a contemporary composition or two that thrill them, on their recordings alongside the traditional warhorses and chestnuts.
Sometime in the 1980s, I came across the book linked below, which some of you may already have read. IIRC, I bought it for about $2 from a bargain bin at a university bookstore. It was first published around 1955, and based on the publisher's note caused quite a furore back then (though no less than Erich Leinsdorf found the book's arguments logical). The book analyzes the dramatic popular rejection of avant-garde (then contemporary) classical music, referred to by @julian_hughes. Some of the chapter titles are "The Crisis of Harmony", "The Crisis of Melody", "The Crisis of Rhythm", "The Crisis of the Orchestra" and "The Composer's Dilemma". The blurb on the back cover of the paperback version begins "Modern music is not modern and is rarely music". By "modern music" is meant the contemporary classical music of the second quarter of the twentieth century. And the first chapter beings with "Serious music is a dead art."
The Agony Of Modern Music by Henry Pleasants
The author uses no musical notation, and attempts to keep his arguments intelligible to interested lay readers. However, with my lack of knowledge of even basic music theory, I am unable to critique the author's arguments, though they have an internal logical consistency. One of the author's major arguments involves the early shift in the western classical music tradition from melodic and rhythmic emphasis to emphasis on harmonic novelty, the subsequent exhaustion of harmonic resources and the listeners' ears becoming jaded by overexposure to abrupt harmonic shifts and dissonant harmonies. I wonder if this argument has any relevance concerning the plaint of many younger listeners who, though exposed to and fairly knowledgeable about western classical music, have been seduced by the barrage of dissonant harmonies and new musical instruments of the far reaches of several modern genres, and find traditional western classical music dull, unexciting and unappealing by contrast. As expressed in, for example, the following thread
A millennial's rant on classical music originated by @Fluffy.
I agree with @Daverz and @julian_hughes that contemporary classical music has to a large extent moved away from the serialism and other movements of that time, and that many contemporary composers are attempting to communicate with a larger audience. I salute music labels like Naxos and others which attempt to bring recordings of much contemporary classical music to a wider audience. Particularly the bravery of labels like Navona which are focused entirely on contemporary classical. And I salute musicians lucky enough to land an album release who sneak in a contemporary composition or two that thrill them, on their recordings alongside the traditional warhorses and chestnuts.
Last edited:
Google tells me that ConcertArchive was on Yahoo Groups, which recently shut down service. During the past year, I was receiving emails from Yahoo warning about impending Yahoo Groups shutdown.
I can't seem to find or request to join SymphonyShare on Google Groups, but I see it mentioned on r.m.c.r. The Google Groups website was updated last year and many people have been reporting problems ever since. I think there might be a permissions problem and SymphonyShare is currently only visible to people who were already members.
rec.audio.high-end was indeed moderated. Sometime around year 2000 it had many spirited debates and eloquent posters (Stewart Pinkerton springs to mind). rec.audio.opinion, OTOH, was best avoided.
I think you are looking for reasons inherent in the music for why some people reject classical music, particularly why some young men on ASR would reject, say, Mozart. It has much more to do with those listener's own self-conception than the music.
Exhibit 1: 4chan.
So no, that does not work.
I have my own theories why usenet (mostly) worked for years.
Last edited:
MakeMineVinyl
Major Contributor
I call it G#. If you call it A flat, you are a terrorist commie pinko. 
