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

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.