Andrew: I will spell it out for you: I understand Pavlov's experiment. They bells combined with the feeding caused their minds to expect food when they hear a bell, hence the behavior of salivation. My analogy is not perfect, but the if the constant overexposure to music causes us to subconciously filter it out or block it, isn't that blocking behavior akin to the salivation?
And... I never said anything about the STYLE of music. You and someone else who responded intimated that this was related to a particular style of music. RUBBISH; It has to do with ALL MUSIC getting force fed in every conceivable environment. You also missed the point with you remarks about your familiarity with Haydn's music. YOU SOUGHT OUT THE MUSIC. It was not force fed to you everywhere you went. And I beg to differ that muzak is not more prevalent now that it was 50 years ago. And it is naive to claim that there is not a concerted effort to manipulate the music industry marketplace by Muzak (the corporation) and everyone else who licenses recorded music (from publishers, recording companies, radio stations and their playlists, et al), which ultimately leads to somewhat less than your democratic view of supply and demand driven by the consumer. When I go to the market, I go to buy groceries, not listen to music. When I want to listen to music, I select what I want to hear. I'm going to drop this issue and let everyone indulge their own conclusions. It apparantly is a divisive issue rather than and unifying one, which surprises me. And I don't want to aggravate my colleagues as I seem to have done by not staying true to the intent of this site, which is Finale. > > On Feb 20, 2007, at 1:00 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> Just a quick recall of the bells and Pavlov's dogs should >> illustrate what happens with repeated stimulus; If they salivate >> whenever >> they hear a bell now, when someone who has systematically and >> subconsciously shut down their antennae to music, what do you think >> happens when they get in a concert hall (if they even go)? > > Pavlov's dogs salivated because they had been taught to associate the > sound of a bell w. the provision of food. Where's the analogy? > >> Do you honestly >> believe that they still have the same facility to hear/perceive music >> as >> well as they could before the saturation syndrome? I'm not talking >> about >> the "educated" and disciplined listeners who are dedicated to their >> appreciation of music (like the readers of the Copland book); I'm >> talking >> about the millions of every day folk who are becoming numbed to the >> experience through no fault of their own. And who will not seek it out >> as >> a consequence of the overexposure. If I'm wrong, I don't see anything >> to >> support your claim that it's garbage: everything I see leads me to the >> conclusions I've made. > > The tendency to view popular music with alarm is very old. Decriers of > ragtime, early jazz, and rock-n-roll in their day all took the exact > same position that you are taking: that popular music deadens the soul > and makes it impervious to more sophisticated fare. Theodor Adorno > built an entire career on this notion, presenting it at book length in > his most opaque German (translated into equally opaque English). > Charles Ives and T.S. Eliot both decried "phonographs and gasoline" as > spiritually deadening--which a century of subsequent history has proven > they are not. > > All these critics have it upside down: popular music is composed and > distributed because it is what people want to hear. It is just not true > to assert that the music comes first and is imposed manipulatively upon > an unthinking populace. What is going on here is basic > supply-and-demand, nothing else. > > All that has changed--the *only* thing--is that people can get > *whatever* music they want more easily, quickly, and in greater variety > than ever before. Popular music is by definition the music of the great > mass of people, and therefore the greatest mass of available music will > be popular music. Nothing is being forced on anyone, and no-one is > forced to hear music they don't seek out. (Musak and its ilk have been > around for 50 years and are no more pervasive now than when first > introduced). > > As a child of my generation, I am aurally familiar with all 107 Haydn > symphonies, which nobody of any previous generation (except Haydn > himself!) could say. Am I therefore to be deemed less able to > appreciate them--or other music--than the less Haydn-saturated folk of > yore? Or does classical music saturation not count, somehow? > > _______________________________________________ > Finale mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale > _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
