The Desire To Protect "Culture"

[Banquo's Ghost]

Shakespeare is good at what he does which is first of all to describe. Most of his plays are as much about describing the scenery as they are about actual plot -- with only so much budget for the stage he needs to give his audience the necessary visual cues through their imagination. But his writing is not that earth shattering to me

Clearly, you have never read the bard.

He is responsible for some of the most iconic and revisited plots of all Western literature. One can level many criticisms at Shakespeare, but description over plot is not one of them.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Clearly, you have never read the bard.

He is responsible for some of the most iconic and revisited plots of all Western literature. One can level many criticisms at Shakespeare, but description over plot is not one of them.

I have read him, and that (scenery over plot) is not my criticism. I don't find fault in his writing, rather the quality of his writing is in his ability to describe the scenery clearly without overwhelming his plots. Still, to me it doesn't hit those notes which make the reading of it memorable rather than his writing merely famous.

[Beirut]

Clearly, you have never read the bard.

He is responsible for some of the most iconic and revisited plots of all Western literature. One can level many criticisms at Shakespeare, but description over plot is not one of them.

[Tuuvi]

Indeed, it's not the same quality. Modern pop music is far betteer, I agree. Mozart had a thousand other composer to beat if he wanted to be considered the best. Lady GaGa has to beat millions to get to the top. In the modern age, we have also figured out that it's OK to cooperate with others to create art. Mozart was alone inh his basement, a modern artist works with a huge team.

And when all is said and done; if you could offer Mozart a modern mega-hit, like Bad or Pokerface, would he take it? Of course he would. He was an artist, and his mission was to make other people happy. Bad and pokerface makes people happy, millions of them in fact, and I'm pretty sure Mozart would've seen the value in that, instead of snobbing it.



Bah, there's not much difference in how they're expressed either.

Actually, I was trying to say that classical music is better quality than pop music. If you listen closely to a good classical piece, you'll hear many different tones, melodies and rhythms and it's amazing to me how they work together to form a song. You don't really get that with pop music. The composition in a lot of pop music is really pretty bland because the the songs are lyric oriented, so the instrumentation is just mean to stay in the background. I've always felt that pop music is more for casual listening, because it seems to me like people who are more interested in music seek out other genres like rock, classical, jazz, alternative, etc.

Not that classical music should be put on a pedestal and be considered "high art" or whatever, because there are some pretty boring classical pieces out there.

As someone who likes to listen to obscure punk rock bands I disagree that popularity should be one of the main measures of quality, there are hundreds of unknown musicians out there with more talent than today's top artists who just lack the finances, social network, luck, or even desire to become famous. Plus your statement "Lady GaGa has to beat millions to get to the top." implies that making music is some sort of competition, which is false.

Of course the quality of music is completely up to the listener and this is just my opinion.

[Banquo's Ghost]

Actually, I was trying to say that classical music is better quality than pop music. If you listen closely to a good classical piece, you'll hear many different tones, melodies and rhythms and it's amazing to me how they work together to form a song. You don't really get that with pop music. The composition in a lot of pop music is really pretty bland because the the songs are lyric oriented, so the instrumentation is just mean to stay in the background. I've always felt that pop music is more for casual listening, because it seems to me like people who are more interested in music seek out other genres like rock, classical, jazz, alternative, etc.

Not that classical music should be put on a pedestal and be considered "high art" or whatever, because there are some pretty boring classical pieces out there.

As someone who likes to listen to obscure punk rock bands I disagree that popularity should be one of the main measures of quality, there are hundreds of unknown musicians out there with more talent than today's top artists who just lack the finances, social network, luck, or even desire to become famous. Plus your statement "Lady GaGa has to beat millions to get to the top." implies that making music is some sort of competition, which is false.

Of course the quality of music is completely up to the listener and this is just my opinion.

The problem with "classical" and "popular" music being compared at all is that we do not have access to the entire classical oeuvre - only those works that were popular enough to survive (and some snippets of dross). Add to this that the "classical" era actually spans a thousand years - from plainsong to movies, and we can see that we are comparing apples and oranges. For example, I am greatly fond of early Renaissance church music but less keen on the Romantic composers of the 19th century (what my father used to dismiss as "blowing, banging and scraping music").

And of course, I am being sadly euro-centric there. The classical music of Japan is either inspiring or excruciatingly dull depending on one's taste. We are discovering more and more wonderful music from mediaeval Africa. The list goes on.

Classical music is not more complex than popular music. True, one finds much of modern music execrable and repetitive, but this is usually the stuff turned out factory-style from the big studios (and, as you note just my opinion). But even Mozart had to turn out low-grade stuff to make a living - The Magic Flute was a bit of pop theatre, which was wildly successful compared with his true masterpiece opera of Don Giovanni. But there are plenty of pop music works that are astonishing in their complexity - perhaps the best known is Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody' - many here will be better placed to name others.

And (in my opinion) almost all modern pop music is several orders of magnitude better than almost all of modern classical composition. The latter is atonal garbage in virtually every case as composers try to be "innovative". But then my distant ancestor probably said much the same thing about that Handel fellow with his harpsichords, trumpets and fireworks. What's wrong with a nice tune on the good old hurdy-gurdy?

[Skullheadhq]

double post, please ignore or delete

[Fragony]

Clearly, you have never read the bard.

He is responsible for some of the most iconic and revisited plots of all Western literature. One can level many criticisms at Shakespeare, but description over plot is not one of them.

It just reminds us that people could think up kewl plots even then, feel free to marvel at that but I'm not that surprised they could do that. Had Harry Potter been written hundreds of years ago people would be equally awed by Rowlings clever observations of society.