Things I like at the moment…
I’ve been thinking a lot about my negotiated study recently and to get back into the swing of things I thought I’d upload some imagery that I have come across this summer to get me started. I think doing this will give me a better idea of what I like and what I don’t, and motivate me to do the things I like.
This one I love, I love the whole concept of handmade pieces – I think this it is the field where I want to spend my time this year. In the past two years the two projects I liked the most, if I had to choose from first and second year, are both the briefs that i produced something handmade and then photographed it as part of a final piece.
I think the image above is more personal to me and thats why I like it. When I read it, it reminds me of an important part of my life and makes me feel stronger. It’s also true too. I think it’s quite quirky how they have used Scrabble pieces in the photograph – It’s an interesting idea.
I chose this one to upload because I liked the illustration and the overall message it conveys, I think with me, I like something when it looks totally innocent, and happy – even if the actual meaning of the piece is entirely different. I think that if the meaning clashed with the style of the image I would like it even more!
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So I decided to take advantage..
.. Of other people answers, and why not. That’s what the websites there for? And plus I thought it would give me some inspiration!
My question simply was: How can we get the younger generation to like Classical Music?
So far, I have had 6 or 7 answers – some are quite good, others are from really bitter people. I will paste in a few quotes from their answers. Some are amusing..
“We no longer educate our young. We give them meaningless degrees which are little better than the old 11+ in standard, and we tell them that they are educated. The appreciation of Art Music, requires hard work and a decent education……Why do you expect the current generation to possess the qualities in abundance? This is the generation that considers Twilight and Harry Potter to be literature for pity’s sake ! Western Art music is now seen as elitist, and elitism is seen as a bad thing. Quite where the human race would be without elitism, I shudder to think.” – So theres a nasty one!
“Commercial treatment of the Art of Music in such a society is not aimed at adventurous exploration of sound. To maximise profit, certain strong rules have been formulated..
(i) produce something that the dumbest, least sensitive member of the community can understand and like…
(ii) plaster it with irrelevant, but attention-grabbing facets [such as hair styles, clothing eccentricity, fan clubs, etc.]
(iii) be very wary of significant change once the cash register makes its noise.
(iv) expose this material as often and as widely as is possible
(v) constantly say how exciting it is to be ‘modern’.
(vi) et cetera.
Opposing this in our schools is, so often, a timid little person playing recordings of his/her favourite music (rarely more recent than 100 years). The staff in our schools generally regard this teacher as a useless, unsuccessful fossil. [Maybe they are almost right?] In my opinion, there is one solution that has a remote chance of propagating Art Music in a community.
Music classes, similar to enlightened classes dealing with visual arts, theatre, dance, etc., must DO IT, not ‘learn’ to venerate it.
Composition of melodies, group improvisations, taking part in quality classroom singing (omitting ‘fa-la-la’ perhaps?), etc. are relevant. Listening to Mozart will not produce massed veneration of Art, though performing his music (even badly) has a chance. We must also be very clear in our minds WHY we want our community to love creative music.
It is surely not just to prove to ourselves how wise we are to love it? Again, it is NOT to create new audiences for old music, magnificent as we feel it is. [ A museum Art is pathetic, surely?] The only ‘acceptable’ reason for evangelic passion in propagation of Art Music is that it has immense communal life quality benefits, is ennobling, comforting, stimulating, etc. It must be seen as a relevant CONTEMPORARY activity, as well. Newness must be encouraged, and the old should not be overly venerated during educational activity in this wonderful Art.” – Hmm informative?
The reason why i did this was to get people opinion. Almost like a survey, and its not me just asking people I know, it’s me asking the world. Where a whole range of people from different backgrounds can input their opinion.
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Classic FM
The first thing I think of is boring! The website is so plain and samey – I don’t like it, it doesnt invite me to look at it.
http://www.classicfm.co.uk/
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The Philamonic Orchestra
“The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the oldest concert-giving organisations in the world, and the second oldest in Britain. The origins of its concert series date back to the formation of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society, which administers it, in 1840. The Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, as it was called then, acquired the title ‘Royal’ in 1957. In 1989 the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society and Orchestra received an Honorary Fellowship from the Liverpool John Moores University and in 1991 were the first organisations to be granted the freedom of the City of Liverpool. A further honour of Meritorious Service was granted by the City of Liverpool in 1997.
The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra gives over sixty concerts from September to June in the bright, pleasant ambience and excellent acoustic of Philharmonic Hall, as well as presenting a regular concert series at Preston Guild Hall and Blackburn King George’s Hall, and making frequent appearances in concert halls throughout the United Kingdom and abroad.”- (http://www.liverpoolphil.com/content/abouttheorchestra.aspx)
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Charlotte Church – Odd one out?
I just thought you ought to watch this. She must be our age or younger. People love her, but do they love her music? Personally, I prefer her newer stuff! But, I decided to add it because I feel like shes the anomoly!
So thats what she started out as.. This is what she ended up like..
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Yahoo – Questions and Answers
http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080509031102AA8lRop
I thought this was quite interesting. Older people are really bitter…
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Nyman’s and Williams’ Music
Okay, so what do I think of their music? I don’t like it. But, do i not like it because is a physiological thing or because I really don’t like it? I will try to explain, do I not enjoy it because it has always been seen as ‘uncool’ to listen to it, even since I can remember.. or is it not to my taste. When is is socially acceptable for someone my age to listen to it? When you reach 50? It sounds highly stereotypical, but in a weird way, I think it’s true.
You can say the same thing for people over 50 though, any of them listen to people like chase and status? Hardcore drum and bass? Rap? Chris Brown? I don’t think so. Not unless they have a kid who insists on playing the CD in the car where ever they go. (That’s what my brother does anyways) I feel sorry for my Radio2 following mum, who puts up with Queens of the Stone Age when ever he gets in the car. You wouldn’t get my mum going to one of their concerts, but, then I don’t think you would get her listening to Vaughan Williams either.
Perhaps, it’s what you have been brought up with? My mum and dad listened to Jimmy Hendrix, Page and Plant, Bob Marley, Funkadelic, Simply Red, Michael Jackson and so on. You wouldn’t catch them listening to classical music. In fact, I think my dad would refuse. It would make him feel old… And he hates that. He hated having to make the big leap from Radio 1 to Radio 2 when he realised he couldn’t listen to Chris Moyles and Chart Music anymore. He was almost in denial about changing what he listened to.
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Michael Nyman
“As one of Britain’s most innovative and acclaimed composers, Michael Nyman’s work encompasses operas and string quartets, film soundtracks and concertos. Far more than merely a composer, he’s also a performer, band leader, author, musicologist and now a photographer and film maker. Although he’s far too modest to accept the description ‘Renaissance Man’, his restless creativity and multi-faceted work has made him one of the most fascinating cultural icons of our times.” – michaelnyman.com
Michael Laurence Nyman, CBE (born 23 March 1944, London) is an English composer of minimalist music, pianist, librettist and musicologist, perhaps best known for the many movie scores he wrote during his lengthy collaboration with the filmmaker Peter Greenaway, and his multi-platinum soundtrack album to Jane Campion’s The Piano. His operas include The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Noises, Sounds & Sweet Airs, Facing Goya, Man and Boy: Dada, and Love Counts, and he has written six concerti, four string quartets, and many other chamber works, many for his Michael Nyman Band, with and without whom he tours as a performing pianist. Nyman has stated his preference for writing opera to other sorts of music. (taken from wiki.com)
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Vaughan Williams
“Ralph Vaughan Williams OM (12 October 1872 – 26 August 1958) was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song; this also influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, which began in 1904, many folk song arrangements being set as hymn tunes, in addition to several original compositions.
Vaughan Williams’s music has often been said to be characteristically English, in the same way as that of Gustav Holst, Frederick Delius, George Butterworth, and William Walton. In Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination, Peter Ackroyd writes, “If that Englishness in music can be encapsulated in words at all, those words would probably be: ostensibly familiar and commonplace, yet deep and mystical as well as lyrical, melodic, melancholic, and nostalgic yet timeless.” Ackroyd quotes music critic John Alexander Fuller Maitland, whose distinctions included editing the second edition of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians in the years just before 1911, as having observed that in Vaughan Williams’s style “one is never quite sure whether one is listening to something very old or very new.”
His style expresses a deep regard for and fascination with folk tunes, the variations upon which can convey the listener from the down-to-earth (which he always tried to remain in his daily life) to the ethereal. Simultaneously the music shows patriotism toward England in the subtlest form, engendered by a feeling for ancient landscapes and a person’s small yet not entirely insignificant place within them. His earlier works sometimes show the influence of Ravel, his teacher for three months in Paris in 1908. Ravel described Vaughan Williams as “the only one of my pupils who does not write my music.”"
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Sound and Image
For this brief I am required to help the Philamonic Orchestra in Liverpool reach out to a different audience of the younger generation. This is such a hard one! It’s nearly as hard as my mums job, trying to get young people into librarys and encourage them to read. I think this is on par with that. Classical music though? I never listen to that, ever! I suppose its because I never really hear it that much? When I listen to the radio or go out its always “fashionable” young music. And thats what I’m used to because its what I know. To try and get people my age to actually want to go and listen to this kind of music is insane, unless it was free! The majority of people my age wouldnt even go then! I suppose it’s seen as “uncool”. Theres nothing like that in the chart etc.. The only time when there is a classical tune in the chart is when some DJ has re-mixed it…
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