Should I like rap, rock, pop, jazz, country, the blues, bluegrass, opera? And all those other genres that I can't recall at the moment? Well, yes, actually I do like them. More or less, and for shorter or longer periods of time. Charlie Daniels band? Yes. Stephane Grappelli? Yup. But I don't have time to study them all. I do want to learn more, to be an educated consumer of the music. To help others enjoy the music. My kids, maybe. Even violin music is too large to learn it all, but not so large that I can't see the width and breadth of the field, from start to finish: instrument, implementation, composers, compositions, performers and recordings.
I grew up with classical music. And I grew up playing the violin. Now I wish that I had practiced. I'm not bad, considering I haven't played in almost 30 years. But I'm not any better than that high school student was, so many moons ago.
I took up trying to learn about piano music. I did this to try to support my kid M, the piano player. But the relative lack of variety of the piano as compared to the violin, my lack of empathy for the piano, the huge extant of piano music and pianists made it too difficult for me. Do you realize many top pianists are known for playing sometimes one single composer? Imagine a life playing mainly a single composer's music? Wow. I take that not as a symbol of a pianist's dedication or overspecialization, but that the field of piano and piano performance is so large that it can support specialists like this.
But I lost interest. My daughter S also started piano. Her story in another issue. But later she took up violin. She's getting good now. Beginning to start that classic Vivaldi Concerto in A minor that everyone plays. E AAAA ACBA CBA CBA GFE DCBEA. Heck, even Isaac Stern played it! And I've gone back to violin, violinists, and violin music.
I'm trying to find CD's, to collect all the violin concerti I can. The 20th century has been good to violin music. A lot of wonderful violin music: Kurt Weill, the composer of ThreePenny Opera and Whisky Bar (The Doors covered it) has a violin concerto! And many others.
I'm particularly trying to learn 20th century music as well. Dissonant you say? Unplayable? Unlistenable to? Nah. Different? Yeah. Creative? Definitely. If you want to stick to Beethoven, Brahms and Tschikovsky, please do. And with my blessing, not my condemnation. I love the old warhorses and have multiple recordings of many. But, let me warn you: the old classical music has been picked over, for many decades, by experts. What you have is the best of the best of the best. All the crap has gone by the wayside, floatsam and jetsam.
Why is that so bad? Isn't that wonderful? NO! NO! There's no danger. No loss. No chance at being disappointed. And similarly, no chance at discovering a new unheard gem. No chance at growing as a person, to discovering that you like a modernist with bizarre sounds and avant-garde taste. Not everything Saint Saens wrote is played today. Respighi not respected? Mozart not perfect?
You hear about classical music dying. The audiences are getting older and dying out. Somehow I doubt it. Sure, the audiences are getting older. But so is the audience for rock music. Still young people try to become classical musicians. A few even make it professionally. But most don't. The same is true of rock musicians and soccer coaches and football players. Are those areas growing merely because the superstars are getting paid more and more and more till the bank bursts? Look at hockey. Suddenly dying out? No, but perhaps entering an era of more limited expectations. Gotta be careful. Hubris before a fall.
Classical music. Will it adapt, adopt? Change? Morph. I hope so, expect so. Will it support its new musicians and composers? Seems so. I hear about new music all the time. And if we segregate the new music, that's ok by me. The new music, the new musicians, the new venues, can supplant the old ones, when or if they die out.
-- DCJ