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Thoughts on Taste and Tastlessness
North Miami Beach, FL May 20, 2002
A.H. Schectman
THINKING ALLOWED
Essays on Issues, Ideas and Reflections on the Times. Published now and
then. Opinions pro or con are welcome.
THOUGHTS ON TASTE AND TASTLESSNESS
The demise of classical music over the air-waves is not the end of the
world. It is, however, the recitative of listening to music over radio and
to a lesser extent over TV. The tastes of listeners have changed since my
youth. The youth of today can be characterized as not being educated and
interested in what we call "classical music."
There was popular music and classical music in the early days of
the 20th Century. There was always popular music of the people through the
ages. And, there was the music of inspired composers who inspired royalty to
sponsor them through flattery and celebrity through consanguinity.
Brahms, Beethoven and Mozart are just a few of the names of the
greats. Their music is of another time and probably will never be equaled.
The instrumentation may have become electronic and digitalized and enhanced
but not bettered by rewriting or decomposing. The greatness of Handel,
Chopin, Shostakovich and Copeland will last long after the present
generation that listen to severely limited themes and sounds have gone to
final slumber with deafened eardrums.
I am not trying to mark the differences between "good" music and
"bad" music. The Beetles and Dizzy Gillespi have added, along with a good
many others, memorable sounds that will last as long as even the most
pedestrian orchestral pieces. But, there is a lacuna left by the
disappearance of radio classical programming that cannot be ignored. We can
still buy recordings and play them on our new and better digitally
reproduced discs and downloaded from the "Web" treasuries if we can but
unlock the secrets of manipulation known only to little children and the
adept.
We have down here in Florida a magnificent tribute to the vision
of a few lovers and practitioners of producing classical music. The lucky
few who know about it and can afford (at prices much lower than the Mecca of
classical music in NYC) it, the New World Symphony. That is taste. The
rest? Carol's Evaluation: 10 out of 10.
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