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MUDGE’S Musings
Events, continue to conspire, making it unacceptably late to start a fresh project, but hey, recycling is IN, right? We’re all about doing the right thing here at Left-Handed Complement, and in that spirit we’re recycling some of yr (justifiably) humble svt‘s favorite electrons.
I hereby stop apologizing for observing the prime directive of blogging: Thou Shalt Blog Daily!
And, I’m guessing that most of you weren’t here nine months ago. As one of my favorite paper publications used to say as they flogged unsold back issues: “If you haven’t read it yet, it’s new for you!”
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Blast from the Past!
A post we really, really loved to write, and read, and re-read…
From last fall, and always in season, especially since it’s back to school time for millions, originally posted November 5, 2007, and titled “mm185: Time for a classical music post.”
MUDGE’S Musings
We’ll do this a bit differently today. Slate.com has an interesting dialog going on jazz and classical music, and what people listen to.
So, go read it (perhaps even taking in some of the Fray) and come back for MUDGE’s take.
[Please click the link below for the complete article — but then please come on back!]
Alex Ross and Ben Ratliff discuss jazz, classical and pop – Slate.com
I grew up in a house where classical music was heard everywhere, on the radio, on records, on the piano in the living room. We were taken to concerts in the rarified atmosphere of a cathedral of the arts.
So I listen to classical music most of the time. Not all of the time: Constant reader will recall the frequent references to Pandora.
In the home my children grew up with, the radio that I controlled always had classical music playing, but, of course, there was more than one radio in the house by this generation, television was much more pervasive, and the piano in the living room (the same one, appropriated rather embarrassingly one remembers ruefully) was largely silent. Piano lessons were attempted, and dropped. Live concerts were usually way beyond the budget.
So those children listen (so far as I can determine; they’ve long since established households of their own) mainly to pop. Indeed, MUDGElet No. 3 is a musician of growing accomplishment, in the modern pop vernacular of drum machines and Pro-Tools.
And so the slice of the cultural pie populated by classical music grows smaller with each generation.
But.
As alluded to in the Slate dialog, there’s more going on here than generational taste.
And as mentioned in at least one of the comments, perhaps our definition of classical music has been allowed to become too narrow.
Posted by mudge 
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Left-handed Complement 