The Danger with Classical Music Sites
posted on 10 LINKS on 03-12-2009
The danger of musoc.org is that anybody unlucky enough to come across it early in their exploration of “classical music” might think that it represents the values of the music or its institutions. It doesn’t. Musoc.org thinks of itself as defending “art music”, but with its self-indulgent cultural pessimism and apartheid, it’s the last thing that classical music, or whatever you want to call it, needs. Instead, classical music needs defending against the intolerance of self-appointed guardians like musoc.org. Their “hall of shame” is nothing of the sort - it should be a badge of honour for Classic FM and the DC Philharmonic, the first entries.
Classical works often display a certain degree of complexity through the use of development, modulation, variation rather than exact repetition (as seen in Popular Music), Counter point, polyphony and sophisticated harmonies. Public adoration for classical music has dropped since the 1900s, most particularly in more developed countries like the United States and the United Kingdom. Classical music has taken a back seat behind popular forms of music like: jazz, pop, rock, rap, and many more. One small example is the debut album of the 21-year-old soprano singer Camilla Kerslake which has a very slow start in the charts. I suppose it’s the reason why she made available the very classical White Christmas Song Lyrics on her website for this festive season.
The phenomenon of the castrato in classical music in the 1700s shows that young people haven’t just been interested in classical music throughout the years - they’ve practically been canonised as part of a classical music tradition that, although lost, is not forgotten. And the oldest documented violin to have four strings, like the modern violin, was made in 1555.