Hi Ray,
I somehow thought you'd reply to mine. Note that in my message I wasn't
giving my views about modern "serious" music (whether by contemporary
composers or otherwise) but simply describing what is happening and what
seems likely to happen in the foreseeable future. I sat on the fence as
regards my personal views. But as you've given yours in your own inimitable
way I'll give mine now.
I think that there is a significant industry of people (performers,
artists, impressarios, CD manufacturers, newspaper critics, rich collectors
of paintings, etc, etc) who all have a living to be made by puffing up the
"arts" to a level of sanctity which is now verging on the insane. Although
I now publish choral music wearing another hat (www.handlo.com), I claim to
be more knowledgeable about visual "art", and of that I am even more
certain that I am right and that you, my very good friend Ray, are plumb
wrong. (Wrong in the sense of assuming that your values and tastes ought to
be shared by all.)
But let me keep it general. I would say that all institutions, techniques,
activities, and so forth have their day as a continually developing process
and reach the end of the road sooner or later. I would therefore suggest to
you in the kindest possible way that music, poetry, philosophy, art,
sculpture and dance of the medieval era had all flowered by about the
1920/30s. Why? Because they had finally reached the limits of what the
individual can create with his/her mind and/or body. Nothing new can be
created that the public enjoys (which they indubitably did previously),
except fashionable variants which flourish briefly before subsiding just as
quickly. This is not to say that these activities are not still well worth
doing and can give a tremendous amount of personal satisfaction (such as I
have when singing Tomkins, or Lasso or Bach), but let's not be carried away
by any notion that any real innovation continues, or can possibly do so
unless we produce an altogether new version of homo sapiens with enhanced
abilities.
So what do we have today which passes for "serious" art? Cage's "Four and
a half minutes" (of total silence), an unmade bed winning the Turner Prize,
Joyce's "Ullyses" (which no-one can understand unless years of study are
devoted to it), orchestral works that are played backwards (to acclaim from
a "discerning" audience!), and so on and so on. The list of quasi- and and
utter-madness continues.
By all means, let people enjoy these, if that's what they want to do, but
let's noy inflict them on the rest of us as any sort of "high art". I don't
think we should be treated so patronisingly.
The above is from the aesthetic point of view. But there's no reason why it
shouldn't be approached from the economics points of view, as Harry Pollard
does. The art of the past only arose in the commercially rich parts of the
world, and the artists only existed because they were paid for a job of
work. Brilliant though many of them were, geniuses even, they were still
jobbing workers and journeyman and weren't yearning for transcendent
greatness. That only came with the romantics and the beginnings of an
affluent bourgeoisie who were buying (or investing in) in"taste".
The medieval arts were a tremendous achievement of mankind -- reaching a
pinnacle of individual creativity. But the modern "arts" of cosmology,
quantum physics, and genetics, even though each requires the efforts of
hundreds or thousands of workers to make progress, are no less an
achievemnt. They create in most of us just the same sense of wonder and
enjoyment that what we now call the "serious" arts used to have in their day.
Keith Hudson
At 02:10 12/04/01 -0400, you wrote:
>> Hi Ray,
>>
>> At 12:38 09/04/01 -0400, you wrote:
>> >HP has an orchestra for their employees. Anyone with any sense at all
>> >knows you can't "downsize" the flute player and still have an ultimate
>> >product. That is also the reason my computer and scanner is HP. I've
>had
>> >almost no need to call their tech support and when my scanner developed a
>> >slight problem they simply replaced it rather than taking both our time
>and
>> >money. REH
>>
>> Sadly, though, this is what it's coming to.
>>
>> Three days ago my better-half was singing in Bach's St Matthews' Passion
>in
>> Bath Abbey. It was a suberb performance and the Abbey was full -- and all
>> seats were at sky-high prices. The Bath Bach Choir is probably one of the
>> best half-dozen in England, and three of the soloists were of
>international
>> standard. Yet the "Friends" of the Choir had to subsidise the soloists and
>> the Musicians Union had to subsidise the cost of the Wessex Chamber
>> Orchestra. And it just about broke even.
>>
>> Orchestras are being remorselessly ground out of existence. All four major
>> orchestras in London are massively subsidised, just as the opera houses
>> are. In our case, they're all subsidised by the State and there are
>> indications that all these will be reduced substantially in coming years.
>>
>> In the field of choral music, which interests me particularly, I've
>> detected the beginning of what may be a new trend. This is the rise of
>> "sing-alongs" whereby singers gather for ad hoc,
>> all-in-one-rehearsal-and-performance events for which they, not the
>> audiences, pay. These seem to be economically viable whereas the average
>> choral concert loses money, even though the singers have to pressurise all
>> their friends and relatives to buy tickets.
>>
>> I think that "serious" music is dropping back to being enjoyed by
>> performers for its own sake (or as background music for church ceremonies)
>> as in the formative era of western music 300 to 500 years ago. We've now
>> gone past the romantic period of prima donnas (performers, conductors,
>> composers) of a century ago when vast concert halls were built and where
>> audiences went to concerts as much to be seen by the other notables of the
>> city as to enjoy the music.
>>
>> Keith Hudson
>
>
>
>Welcome to the world of "neo-liberal" economics. Economist William
>Baumol first documented the productivity lag issue in 1966. It even has
>a name in economic circles. It is called Baumol's disease and it is much
>worse than mad cow or hoof and mouth. There is no cure and the whole
>culture dies.
>
>Unless there is an answer outside the private enterprise zone. For example
>we could return to Aristocracy where only the landed folks vote and they pay
>for the performances as in times past. Or we could do as the American
>military, CIA and later the CIA through the Ford Foundation did in Europe,
>including England, which is to fund artistic ventures in order to defeat the
>Communist claim that Capitalism is incapable of sustaining real complex High
>Art. (They also supported and funded civil rights in the US for the same
>reason.)
>
>Your observations certainly seems to bear out the Communist claim since the
>demise of the Soviets has removed any reason for serious arts funding by the
>intelligence community. So military socialism defeated communist
>socialism in European Art but the free market is incapable of solving the
>Baumol disease dilemma. Baumol has also traced it into the other public
>sectors like health, education, religion etc. In other words, anything
>with an intellectual capital public goods side to it is trapped in
>Capitalism and dies a slow death as the public abandons it due to its costs.
>
>Taylorist "science" made the "dumb worker" the ideal while small ensembles
>playing basic harmonies over and over with complicated texts that are cheap
>to hire and that technology makes it run for the simple cost of the
>electricity are the ideal productivity for commercial music. These are
>the issues as I have said ad infinitum on this list and others. That it
>costs as much today to pay an orchestra as it did in 1900. Everyone
>else's wages have gone down and the product has limited seating and the
>orchestra still costs 4 to 8 dollars a second. A rock band is five
>musicians and kills your ears so you don't care. The loudest noise in 19th
>century Europe was distant cannons. There is some hope in that the
>electronic media's cost, like TV and the movies, has gone up faster then the
>live music recently but that is probably a fluke. I would suggest that
>you take another look at state support for public goods industries that have
>values outside of simple profit and loss. Read Justin Lewis Art Culture &
>Enterprise (in the UK) Routledge. The day of big government and big
>private enterprise will return and the little guy will not be tied to
>private enterprise. Democratic government supported by an informed
>population is the only answer. The process of art is
>Perception>Virtuosity>Intuition = Art. Its complexity is relative to the
>sophistication of the composer and his audience. So just like IBM, Art
>must have consumers with a willingness to learn its abstractions. People
>who participate in the artistic process carry that "built" intuitive process
>creatively into other professions. That is why the best Doctor is called
>an "artist" at healing and often plays a musical instrument.
>
>How long did the followers of Ptolemy tinker before they just gave up the
>system? They did eventually give it up not because it failed but because
>it took too much to make it work and then it didn't make common sense.
>Modern neo-liberal economics has eliminated so many of the reasons that we
>consider life to have meaning that it is amazing that it is still here.
>People like Friedman and Weber are praised for their genius but the world
>they inhabit is barren. Why would a genius want to live in such a world?
>Either he's emotionally ill or he is not a genius, just clever like a
>savant.
>
>And welcome to the world that Harry Pollard and I have been arguing about
>for several years except he is wrong. Like the internet music freaks,
>he thinks its just choice. The only way it gets out to the public is if
>the musicians are amateur or have another job and pay for it themselves.
>We call that Vanity Press in the real world. So where is the Future of
>Work folks? What are those 40% with no jobs going to be doing? Lying
>around at home, making babies and demanding "there fair share." How about
>paying them to grow and make art? Develop the quality of life for the
>WHOLE society. But the issue is now and has always been the impracticality
>of Utilitarian theories and their inability to deal with all of the elements
>that make a society human. Value is not use. It is much more than that.
>
>Ray Evans Harrell
>
>
> >
>> >----- Original Message -----
>> >From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> >To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> >Sent: Monday, April 09, 2001 11:54 AM
>> >Subject: Another way
>> >
>> >
>> >>
>> >> THE "HP WAY": AGILENT CHOOSES SALARY CUTS OVER LAY-OFFS
>> >> Rather than lay off workers during the current economic slump,
>> >> Hewlett-Packard spin-off Agilent Technologies will temporarily cut the
>> >> salaries of all 48,000 workers, including management, by 10%. The
>decision
>> >> is consistent with the famous "HP Way" developed by company founders
>Bill
>> >> Hewlett and Dave Packard, who stressed the importance of showing
>respect
>> >> for individuals. (San Jose Mercury News 5 Apr 2001)
>> >> http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/svtop/agilen040601.htm
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> ___________________________________________________________________
>>
>> Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org>
>> 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
>> Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727;
>> mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> ________________________________________________________________________
>
>
>
>
___________________________________________________________________
Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org>
6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727;
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
________________________________________________________________________
