The world has changed beyond measure. When I was young you could find musicians everywhere, and because all around the world there so many there many great ones. Now the music is faithfully reproducible, musicians are not needed as once were. And music itself has changed. Though small cadres of classicists kept the sacred and ineffible the are under siege by coarse generations who music is hardly as musical as a bus engine or a chain saw. Something must have occured during their mother's pregnancies. How else is it possible to explain that playing Bach keeps them away from public spaces the way iron spikes drive pigeons from cathedral ledges?
A sample from Mark Halpern's Il Colore Ritrovato, a story in The Pacific and Other Stories , wonderful collection of short stories that are full of texture and light and the mature themes of existence, meaning, and belief.
The meme that recorded music changes the cultural role for musicians is fascinating. His comments on the devolution of modern music is well taken. Consider the narrow, constricted offerings released by the movie industry, and you have the same scenario, right? Replace Bach with any of the classics of Hollywood's byone era and compare those classics with the works nominated for best picture this year. Bus engines and chain saws compare comfortably with the films so highly regarded by the petulant, evangelical movie industry.
Lurking herein is relevant, important criticism of PostModernism, deconstructionism, and the barren, cacaphony that is social, cultural relativism.
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