Published: 7 Dec 12 07:59 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/education/20121207-46617.html
Few countries have produced more acclaimed classical composers than Germany. But there are discordant signs that the home of Bach, Beethoven, Wagner and Handel could be squandering its musical heritage.
What do you think? Leave your comment below.
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Your comments about this article:
Just as in the USA, the arts have been cropped from the school bugets and these %s and numbers are the direct result....
It doesn't take a number cruncher with a Phd. to figure that one out, now dos it?
Clearly, most Germans prefer to abandon their rich heritage and win a race to the cultural bottom. In the long run, it will be their downfall. For further thoughts on the same general issue, there is Chris Hedges' "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle".
Boys today don't really think playing a guitar is even that cool, Guitar Hero maybe. Girls today don't want to be on stage playing a solo in a skirt, white stockings and a Clarinet. Kids want to be on stage playing a laptop and a drum machine. And they are.
There is also no lack of kids studying art, either. But just like their musical contemporaries, it is more likely that is not taught in schools, and increasingly more digital. Almost every young person is a photographer today. Just look at all the original content on the Internet created by young people. Music and Art evolve.
Grow up, stop blaming Americans for your failings and put on your own pants. You certainly have no problem claiming sole responsibility for your successes.
Music *is* still being made.. but I really dispute the quality. I'm talking as a 40 year old guy who studied music 20 years ago, later audio production, and have worked as a professional musician (when I could) *as well* as having been fascinated by modern and electronic music.
There are some creative musicians around, but a few MAJOR aspects have been lost from music.
1. The actual performance aspect ie - being able to produce a sound without going in and somehow doctoring it after the fact.
2. The desire to be "virtuosic" at all on whatever you play. To really have put in serious practice time and really be able to do something special vocally or instrumentally. That is considered "wanking" since the nineties.
3. The necessity to have a band i gone so many musicians create in a little "bubble", and the experienced ears of an external producer is no longer needed to make an release .. so many musicians are missing out on what has traditionally been a very valuable aspect of the music making process.
4. Much electronic music is largely music of accident. You may argue, but if you have made music "in the box" you know how much of it is selecting random loops and seeing how they sound, or tweaking random knobs to see what they do, or going through random presets until one sounds good.. in that aspect a certain amount of "intentionality" has been lost. Traditional playing (mostly) involves having a sound in your head and then trying to play that, as opposed to simply interacting with a device long enough until something not-bad sounding comes out.
Don't even get me started on how so much of "pro" design today looks like stuff my half-skilled friends were scratching into their school desks when I was a kid.
I'm just saying that the over-accessibility of music and other media creation devices may have positive sides, but it has many negative. We will never see greats like we once had. The musical ecosystem has changed too drastically.
rant off.
Happy to be able to agree. Here you seem to share my American liberal ideas, like education and just wages. One must not necessarily play classical music on traditional instruments. Whitney Houston's repertoire, for example, is on an extremely high level.
IchBinKönig said: "Gone are the days of acoustic guitars and tubas. Kids nowadays are making music on their Computers and a whole new and evolving set of electronic instruments."
Yes, but history is repeating from time to time. Not really imitating the past, just going back to older values. I've been a traditional jazz amateur (piano, winds, vocals) since my high school days. Later I got interested in soul and synthesizers and became sort of home-recording freak. Partly I even got into hip-hop and rap.
Today I'm done with electricity in music. Soul actually helped me to finally find into bebop too. But I prefer unplugged and I speak for it. Even the most expensive PA system pains my ears. I can record my clarinet sound in CD quality, and I do. But just playing my clarinet in the kitchen sounds way nicer, better, warmer. In sessions I prefer trumpet, because today people are used to a terrible sound level and a clarinet can't do without amplification then. I hate to use mics and rather use brass.
Actually, instruments like clarinet and pianos don't necessarily need amplification. As brass player I am ready to hold my horses. I can always use a mute, if I feel like playing more aggressive. Under these reasonable conditions, even a skilled singer doesn't need a mic. Today I love to be totally independent from electricity. No crackles, noises, overdriving squeaks. Just me, my instrument and my fellow musicians. Much better.
If the Germans are unlearning music, maybe I should volunteer as musical development worker....
Downfall from what? Classical music was first entertainment for the nobility, then an escape mechanism for an oppressed upper middle class (along with German literature). And during the entire period, many Germans were living in abject poverty, which is why so many emigrated to the US.
"It's easy to see that Germany, as a US colony of sorts, has been increasingly assimilated by American pop culture in recent decades, like much of the western world."
If only. US "pop culture" is extremely creative and innovative. Germany has nothing of even remotely comparable quality.
Today, there's nothing as creative as jazz. But even a jazz band gets on the anti-creative pop-culture path, if they make commercial concessions. Add a pretty girl and you get yourself an audience which won't appreciate good improvisations anymore. She pretty much sings all the time and the instrumentalist perhaps get a bridge for a solo. 'Sexy' will be more important than creativity.
People are too text-oriented these days. It's easy to listen to lyrics, but to analyze chords and scales you need a skilled ear. So the average audience is dumber today indeed. I don't tolerate any singers within my band projects, if they cannot play an instrument as well. I want skilled musicians. Those who only sing, dumb jazz down to pop-culture level and that's what I don't want. Why not add a Whitney Houston title to my program? I might, but won't sing so much like Whitney did. No, I'd present it the creative, jazzy way.
By the way, extremely creative were the 1600s and early 1700s, when they also improvised a lot. The generations after that then changed from creativity to vanity, which is always bad.
Get a life .or end it whatever.
In the 1600s and 1700s, Germany was a collection of fiefdoms, wrecked by hunger, war, and religious strife. This was not an "extremely creative" time. There were a few brilliant people whose works managed to survive despite all the disaster around them, but overall, it was a dreadful time for creativity.
"But even a jazz band gets on the anti-creative pop-culture path, if they make commercial concessions."
I see you have fully absorbed the German belief that if it's popular it can't be any good. No doubt that's a consequence of the fact that art and music used to be something only the nobility could afford and people used it as a mark of wealth and status.
"People are too text-oriented these days. It's easy to listen to lyrics, but to analyze chords and scales you need a skilled ear."
The focus on music over text in Germany was also a consequence of political escapism: the only topics that were reasonably safe for lyrics were the beauty of the fatherland, procreatively oriented love, and glorification of God. Anything else could land you in hot water with church or prince or both.
Now, let's revolve the stage and start with a new scene: Jam session in a club, Doris Day comes in as private guest. The musicians decide to play "Sentimental Journey" for her. She's singing the second chorus, then she leaves the stage, so everybody can see the musicians. And you hear and see them improvise a lot of interesting, beautiful choruses. Now, if I'm pop-culture-stupid, I probably feel like I rather wanna see pretty, sexy Doris all the time. I probably wanted it all like I know it on her famous records. But maybe Doris won't agree and tell me, this jazz thing actually was better. Because she really was experienced in many ways.
Commercialization is bad for music and very bad for creativity. I guess you just don't appreciate the musical standard I love and need. If so, you cannot judge. So what? What you say about ancient music sounds very ignorant. I wouldn't like to live in the Constantinople of the year 1700 and know quite a bit about this history and it scares me. Nonetheless, Jordi Savall's CD projects, with music of that old Ottoman culture are very fascinating. The same Jordi Savall recorded lots of Marin Marais "pièces de viole". I don't reject that music because of the sun king. The German baroque is perhaps even more interesting, because the kind of gallantry there was very open-minded and the state rulers did a lot for music. I know composers you've never heard about. If I challenge you on musical skills and knowledge, it soon comes to light you have no clue.
What I hate is Merkel's Berliner conservative-libertarian coalition. The sun king or the sultan in Constantinople cannot bite us anymore, but she can harm a lot. And all those banksters in the background make it even more dangerous. I'm not totally rejecting commerce, but it can be a threat in many ways. And I say this as an American liberal, as all my fellow liberals in the U.S. say all the time.