Canons and discovery

[mmcirvin]

Here's another one of those "ten classical albums for newbies" lists.

While I love me some Beethoven's Ninth and Carmina Burana, I do wonder whether this sort of canon-first approach even works. I tried to go the "classical music for newbies" route for years and there were some pieces I liked well enough, but I never really felt confident about digging deeper until I met Sam. What she did, more or less by accident, was introduce me to some specific subgenres that had a more immediate and visceral appeal to me than the standard canon (19th and 20th century wind-band music, in this case), to the point where I became just a little bit of a connoisseur and actually cared about the differences between different recordings and arrangements. Once you've started to specialize like that, it makes you more confident about branching out to other things. I'm still not hugely knowledgeable about classical music today, but I don't feel as if it's something foreign to me.

I think this is also part of the reason why forced readings in high-school English class aren't very effective at getting kids interested in literature. Being forced to read the canon will get you some exposure to the big picture but it usually won't give you the feeling that a little piece of this world is yours.

Unfortunately, that feeling is inherently something it's hard to arrive at systematically; it's hard to see how to contrive to discover something special to you. People sometimes ask me to recommend good science fiction to them, and I had the idea a while back of coming up with a sort of multi-canonical list, of good or important books categorized by style or subgenre; so that instead of reading the whole canon of Books Everyone Should Know, you start with a more depth-first exploration of a piece of the world that has a chance of appealing to you more individually. But even that is probably hit-or-miss.

Comments

[sanspoof.livejournal.com]

I agree completely; shoving people at What Should Be Seen/Read/Listened To isn't the way to hook them. The problem, in part, is that they haven't got any perspective, and can't see _why_ the big famous important stuff is any good (this seems to be important for kids in school, definitely. It's nice when Important and Fun coincide, but that's not to be counted on).
And then you've got the problem of, okay, what ARE you looking for in a media item? And generally, not being familiar with the genre, you probably don't really know. It's a sad state of affairs. I guess that's what people try to get at via tagging music with keywords, but keywords are so fallible, being self-generated that I can't think they work all that often.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

People trying to break into familiarity with some type of art, I think, are often motivated by the feeling that they ought to know about this stuff in order to be educated or well-rounded, which is an attitude maybe not conducive to stumbling on wonders.

With science fiction, it's a little different. Nobody feels they have to know about SF as part of a cultural education, since, while it doesn't have the social stigma it had fifty years ago, it's certainly not considered highbrow Art by people outside the fan community. But I do get the impression that many technically astute people, or people who like a science-fiction TV show or movie or two, do think something along the lines of "this seems like a genre that is supposed to appeal to people like me; maybe I should give it a try". And they maybe pick out a few books at random, or things their friends recommended, and are often dismayed to discover that they're uninvolving or just plain bad.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

I think you've hit on something important with the music. People think of classical music as this big, monolithic thing and don't quite realize that it's an amalgamation of centuries of invention, discovery, and changing aesthetics. They're just presented with, say, Haydn and Beethoven side by side, with no context.

They're also encouraged to think of this music as something that happened in the past and that ended at about the time recording technology made its appearance, which just isn't true.

Big, monolithic things

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

I think "monolithic" is exactly what's wrong with this particular list. Trying to introduce the newbie to the great crowning achievements first is like trying to start freshman physics with QCD and work backwards from there.

Messiah? It's certainly a favorite of those of us who love "that sort of thing," but insanely boring for those who don't. How about something light and funny like Acis and Galatea? Goldberg? Snorefest! (Also, Gould's second recording is just outright creepy, what with all the grunting and moaning. I can't sit in the same room with someone else and listen to it, and it actually makes my wife physically ill.) The Brandenburgs have a lot more of something for everyone. (Hey! I just found my warped copy of the Günter Kehr recording and it's actually playable!) Mozart and Beethoven's most mature symphonies? Well, Mozart maybe, since he was always just a kid, but if you want mature why not the Requiem or C Minor Mass? For Beethoven, I'd sample the middle and late string quartets--skipping the early ones because you'd get there through Mozart anyway.

Re: Big, monolithic things

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The contempt of self-identified sophisticates for music they've outgrown, or gotten bored with, might be part of the problem. secretive_bus quoted a nice joke about it from an early episode of Frazier: "I remember when you thought the 1812 Overture was the greatest piece of music ever written." "Was I ever that young?" But the stuff you've gotten bored with is probably the same stuff you loved when you were first listening, and it might well hook other people for the same reason.

Of course, it's possible to err in the other direction, and emphasize the same self-consciously introductory pieces so much that they become overfamiliar even to newbies. One of the last Peanuts strips that was actually funny was one in which Peppermint Patty remarks on how "Tiny Tots" orchestra concerts ought to play something other than "Peter and the Wolf".

Shot by canon

[infrogmation.livejournal.com]

I feel very fortunate that I first got the hear Louis Armstrong's Hot 5 "West End Blues" without any lecture about how very IMPORTANT it is beforehand.

[swinehund.livejournal.com]

I just listened to a lot of CBC and tried to catch the titles of stuff I liked. I do the same sometimes with modern music on Brave New Waves. Of course, I miss more titles than I catch, but the radio has the advantage of playing a broad range of music so that you can contrast things you like with things you don't.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

WHRB (the Harvard college station) has this show called "The Jazz Spectrum" that I've been listening to while driving to work, and it's particularly interesting because they play all sorts of stuff that is not necessarily what some Clear Channel radio programmer would consider commercial, but a lot of it is clearly important and really interesting. I am a jazz ignoramus but I think I'm rising slightly above total ignorance, in that once I guessed that some piano piece was Thelonious Monk, and then the DJ announced that it was some other guy who had been heavily influenced by Thelonious Monk.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...Though now WHRB seems to be into their season of Orgies, which knocks their schedule for a loop, though those are also an interesting way to get a comprehensive introduction to something random.

[swinehund.livejournal.com]

season of Orgies

More detail, please?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

They do these multi-hour (sometimes multi-day) shows called Orgies that are devoted to a single subject. Often they'll play an artist's entire recorded work, or a large chunk of it; though sometimes they're broader—they just did one called the "Texas Orgy" that was just music of many types that happened to be from Texas.

I've heard it theorized that the Beethoven week on BBC radio that I blogged about a while back may have been inspired by WHRB's Orgies, though I do not know if there is any real connection.

snooty nerds are still nerds

[swinehund.livejournal.com]

I'm still trying to flesh out my jazz catalogue. I've kind of latched onto Charles Mingus and not branched out much from that aside from the Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday albums that almost everyone owns. I think I'm okay with this, though, because while most jazz is fine for background listening, I don't find most of it so deeply engrossing that I want to have it on demand. I generally feel the same about classical music; I'm fixated mostly on the stuff I know I like without worrying too much about how that fits into the whole field or milking every bit of meaning and context out of every note. For some people, it's really their thing, and that's fine, but like many things, it's a form of geekery that I don't feel ashamed of not getting totally involved in. The air of refinement and sophistication around classical music, jazz, and certain types of booze (mainly wine) seem to confer more status on people who know a lot about them, but I treat them pretty much the same way as I treat people who speak fluent klingon. I want to know enough about the area to know if I'm missing out on something I'd really enjoy, but that's about it.

I actually feel more embarassed for not knowing more about the Brave New Waves kind of stuff, because of that annoying indie rock cred angle more of my friends seem to play off of. The unfortunate part is that I am slowly admitting that I generally hate indie rock, mostly on account of not liking rock, guitars, or impassioned wailing much at all. Techno is usually okay in its more experimental forms, but I get the impression that it is passe now and cutting-edge music is all back to screaming and distortion (with some techno in the background). ugh.

Re: snooty nerds are still nerds

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

All I know about Mingus is that he trained his cat to use the toilet and wrote a pamphlet about how he did it.

Re: snooty nerds are still nerds

[swinehund.livejournal.com]

It's true! Here it is!

You will also find some of his music here. There only seems to be three pieces, though.

[glitter-ninja.livejournal.com]

The "books that shall be read" idea does bother me somewhat, because you cannot possibly ever read all that should be read to get a complete picture of past literature. My high school freshman English teacher tried to get around this by giving us two very lengthy lists of "suggested readings" that she yoinked from past textbooks, and we were free to choose which we wanted to read.

Unfortunately, she had a problem with preconceived ideas, so when I read Frankenstein, she flunked my report without even reading it. The book was my first experience with public perception (based on a tremendous number of film and TV adaptations of the Frankenstein idea) versus the reality of the book and I learned a lot from it, more so than any other book I read that year.

What connects with a student is not easily pre-determined. Encouraging them to read anything is a good idea, and if a student latches on to a series or genre they like, be happy about it. You'd be surprised how many teachers try to pound certain books down their students' throats. It's probably near 100% of English teachers.

[asienieizi.livejournal.com]

"Encouraging them to read anything is a good idea, and if a student latches on to a series or genre they like, be happy about it."

This is precisely what I did with my son. With the obvious exception of porn, I never censored what he read. As a result, he was tested at 12th grade level english skills in the 8th grade. That's the secret, I think. Be happy about it. They're reading and they're enjoying it.

The Gravity Stealers

[timchuma.livejournal.com]

Hi Matt,
did you ever get to look at this book I sent Kibo? It was meant to be written and illustrated by children from "The Argonauts Club" (radio show from the 50's) in Australia. I am trying all find all of my books randomly like that.

On classical music, the concerts with music from the Final Fantasy games and other Japanese composers are also a good way to introduce classical style music to a new audience. I think the Miyazaki music nights also sold out. I also remember reading an interview with a member of an orchestra who talked about "throwing up" in her mind when she has to play the same old stuff over and over.

Re: The Gravity Stealers

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

No, but it sounds very strange...