As an American, I grew up with the mistaken impression that Opera (and art song, for that matter) was at the periphery of classical music-making and musical culture. I've now been in Europe long enough to understand that, in the European countries with strong operatic traditions, this is definitely not the case. Here in Budapest, for example, the opera house is the center of musical life and the recital or orchestral concert is a satellite activity. The Budapest opera is a very traditional house, playing standard repertoire (from Mozart through Count Bluebeard's Castle and Turandot) in mostly traditional productions with repertoire singers drawn overwhelmingly from the Hungary. These singers become important local figures praised, critiqued, gossiped about, and treasured by a public that crosses class lines. Instrumental music doesn't carry much of this social cache, it is rather more of an elite activity.
In the US, pop music is essentially a vocal genre. Instrumental pop successes are novelty or niche items (what instrumentals have made the top ten in the past fifty years? Herb Alpert, disco-fied Beethoven, and---?) . But American popular song has roots in both European and African-American Art musics, often via the theatre. But why the present divorce between "serious" instrumental music (whether Jazz or classical) and "popular" song? I have lots of small ideas (for example, the musicians' union strike from recording during WWII) but no grand ideas to explain this.
Daniel Wolf
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