On Mar 28, 2008, at 3:49 AM, dhbailey wrote:
David W. Fenton wrote:
On 27 Mar 2008 at 12:53, Chuck Israels wrote:
This was an unusual period of sophisticated "common practice" in
the world of American popular music and jazz, and I believe that
there was a considerably higher percentage of good quality,
durable music than Sturgeon's Law would predict. Of course, only
time will tell. A personal opinion but, I believe, an educated
one.
I wonder the completeness of your 100% sample. I know an awful lot
of complete dreck from the period, and it occurs to me that if
you're only looking at Gershwin and Berlin and so forth that you're
really not seeing the whole picture.
Given the huge number of touring musicians in the time period under
discussion, along with the enormous number of recordings which were
issued, usually with one song on each side, I think that a closer
examination will show that Sturgeon's Law is just as accurate about
that period as well.
What has happened is just what happened to all preceding historical
periods -- public taste and performers' selections have already
edited out much of the garbage. The same thing happens if a person
investigates recordings of music from the Baroque or the Classical
or Romantic periods at Borders or Barnes&Noble they will find only
masterworks of high quality and thus think that those periods only
turned out masterful composers and compositions.
History is a great sifter of quality, but not perfect. Just as spam
filters on our e-mail programs sometimes put valid e-mails in the
trash and sometimes let spam get through, I'm sure that some very
good music made it into the dustbins of history and I know that some
totally forgettable works continue to be available. On the other
hand, in the rush to supply an ever increasing appetite for Baroque
music, libraries and monasteries and castle archives were raided and
the music was published with the thinking that simply because it
survived it was worthwhile.
But I agree with David's point that we may well not be seeing the
whole picture -- those songs which survived into the "Great American
Songbook" may still only represent 10% of the output of the era,
leaving the 90% which was "crap" (I realize that's a very subjective
term and not all will agree with labelling something as crap).
OK guys, I have no detailed way of measuring this and cannot defend a
firm number. However, there have been unusual periods in the history
of art when there were many artists working in similar ways, and an
informed audience for that art, an audience that understood and
accepted the relatively sophisticated parameters within which the
artists were working. As far as I can tell, and this is just an
instinctual estimate, the proportions get skewed somewhat more in
favor of quality during those periods. Of course, I cannot measure
this, and I don't know all the the bad songs, movie music, musicals,
revues, and jazz compositions and performances of this period, but the
indelible impression remains that this period of American popular
music was an unusually fecund one. I believe that there were socio/
economic reasons for this. I am neither historian nor economist, but
I have lived long enough, and observed this as things have changed, to
have an impression that is supported strongly enough by my own
experience to risk voicing an opinion. That's all it is, an opinion.
That said, I also believe that an examination of the conditions that
supported this fertile phenomenon (if, indeed, it was one) might be a
worthwhile pursuit. That's how it seems to me from my, admittedly,
subjective perspective.
Chuck
Chuck Israels
230 North Garden Terrace
Bellingham, WA 98225-5836
phone (360) 671-3402
fax (360) 676-6055
www.chuckisraels.com
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