Tako Oda wrote:
> I truly appreciate your giving me the benefit of the doubt here, and I
> promise I'll try not to test your faith in me again ;-)
LOL!
Dear Tako,
Many thanks for your fabulous and fascinating response!
I have to say that the question of
"lost"/"surviving"/"inferior"/"classsical-v-popular"/"old-v-new" has now
kept me half-awake for half the night, and since I'm not in a position
to do this myself, I wonder if you or anyone else has done any work on
the matter of how we could ever know just how much music (as in musical
composition/creation) has existed and now no longer seems to, and for
what reason. This thread could well open up some very interesting ideas.
> Thanks again for giving me a chance to explain (redeem ;) myself.
Which I think you have done far more than adequately :)
My reaction about the inexperienced teenager sprang from having had to
teach many such from day to day, and their reliance on The Charts <quick
genuflect> as a measure of what was good or even of lasting
fashion/popularity was very disheartening. The assertion that - and I
know this isn't what you were saying, quite - "all classical music is
rubbish" - was boringly common, and at least one wrote that when I was
young (or "alive" as I think she actually said!) the fashionable music
was classical but now it's pop and it's about time teachers realised
that it had changed... :( :)
>I
> realize even this time that I have probably over-emphasized the role of
> the wealthy in shaping our perceptions of classical music. I will try to
> behave myself!
No, please don't do that! Certainly not now you've opened up this
particular line of enquiry.
Don't you find it engaging, though, that some stuff that is not lost but
simply stashed away by some musicologist who thought it not worth
reviving might next year - because tastes have changed, shifted
slightly, perhaps because of our recent exposure to some other work that
points in the same direction - suddenly turn out to be delectable after
all? (Wry thought: is there a lost Salieri gem out there somewhere, or
are the two words incompatible by definition?)
cheers, take care,
Linda
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