Why are Classical Arts Dying?

Poststructural Pub
1

When I was a kid there were great poets
who we talked about and studied, Yeats,
Eliot, Pound.

I can’t think of anybody of that stature today,
indeed, poetry is much more peripheral to
the arts (no slight intended to poets on
the board).

When I was a kid there were great artists like
Picasso and Matisse. I have entirely lost touch
with painting and sculpture. I can’t think
of any great painters today. Painting has
moved to the periphery of the arts.

When I was a kid there were great composers
like Stravinsky, Copeland, Shostakovich.
I can’t think of any to day, except perhaps
Philip Glass, who most people don’t like.

Same goes to some extent for play writing;
there was Shaw and Inge and Eugen O’Neill.
Nobody of that stature now.

Dance also seems to have descended considerably,
there are no contemporary rivals to Martha Graham
and Isadora Duncan, great dance theoreticians
as well as dancers.

Why?

2

3

i know what you mean, although sadly I was born too late for just about everyone you mentioned.

I’m going to hazard a guess… It may have something to do with intellectual property laws.

4

I reckon that Jim was a bit after Yeats and Shaws time. Their work is still as vibrant today as it was then.
The same goes for the composers and painters, it’s all out there today.

There is plenty of talent out there today but we don’t get to hear/see it as easily probably because of the mass media/ cable and the general dumbing down of society.

Slan,
D. :confused:

5

The arts haven’t fallen into decay. There are playwrights, composers and poets today to rival the greatest of old.
The issue lies in the nature of modern media.

6

Who are the great composers of today?

7

There is also the issue that you only know the “greats” when you read their obituaries.

When you say poets I think: Roger McGough, Wendy Cope, Seamus Heaney…

When you mention playwrights I think: Tom Stoppard…

Artists: Anthony Green…

As Cofaidh says, the nature of modern media is part of it.
Another part is the nature of historical media. Characters were built up a little out of proportion to their acheivements. But hindsight being 20/20 vision is a big part of it. And there is a lot more history than there is present.

8

John Williams comes to mind…

9

Gorecki has done some lovely stuff.

Slan,
D. :slight_smile:

10

Yeah, good point. I’d forgotten about him. and Part. and Gubaidalina…

11

I like to think this is the case. It is taking longer for the chaff to settle unfortunately sometimes not within the life of the artist. I am sure my art work will be used in textbooks from now until 2012… when textbooks become obsolete, alright I’m being optimistic…

12

I asked a musician friend if there were any living composers whose work was considered great. She mentioned Gorecki and Arvo Part. I got some of their music from the library but I’m sorry to say I didn’t like Gorecki at all and found Part ok. Maybe I listened to the wrong stuff but The Gorecki was mainly big blocks of sound.

13

The baby got thrown out with the bath water. After the turmoil of the 60s, wholesale cultural rejection of the 70s, and political correctness of the 80s and 90s, works of dead white men (and women in some cases) are discredited as well as their imperial and/or colonial culture.

The thing is, there was an organized and coherent motion inherent in post-Enlightenment artistic and literary production, criticism and institutions that led people along a path, ever upwards. It could be confining as hell, but it was something. It actually gave artists something to rebel against, even while being a part of it (I am thinking of those French salons, I guess). The two world wars didn’t help, which coincided with the post-modern eclecticism especially in music and visual arts, which alienate so many.

Into the void moves sellable and catchy world music, neo-tribalism, etc etc. Short attention span everything. Politically, activists calling for resurrection of cultures, any but Western, help speed up the abandonment of Euro-centric institutions. You end up with aggressive rejection of the fruits of the Enlightenment.

Then lately, the demise of the middle class results in tiered marketing and demographics, locking a lot of people out of experiencing older arts and culture by ticket price.

By adopting a culture of revolution and questioning of authority and social norms, a curious thing has happened, even to the Weekender. Despite the fact that I am a classically-trained musician, there are times that I watch a symphony or chamber music performance, and feel very alienated from the players. They seem so stiff and pretentious even foolish, yet I know they are sincere in their execution. I feel like they are the symbol of Euro-centric thinking, and I am an ill-fitting hybrid of the New World. The stupider of my clan would even mock them, even though my intellectual mind tells me that what they are doing is refined and highly disciplined…

It’s a very weird feeling, but bottom line is that the arts do not have the exalted position they once had in an increasingly disordered and culturally ambivalent world. There is no generalized feeling that the symphony, for example, is one of the greatest expressions of organized music-making. There used to be one, methinks. Opera, too…

14

television

15

Not to mention that our only classical radio station (maybe you have more choices up your way) markets itself in the most pretentious and pathetically barf-worthy way. Classical music is apparently no longer useful for anything other than soothing yourself during your stressful commute.

16

Oh, in a way it’s worse than that even: If it doesn’t have vocals and if it lasts longer than 3 or 4 minutes tops, it doesn’t register as music with a large part of the populations, at least if you look at CD/online sales and ClearChannel (what, 80% of all US radiostations? :boggle: )

Jim in the OP mentioned Dance among the dying classical arts. I don’t agree. Isodora Duncan was pioneer, but not a theoretical artists. Other pioneers were Martha Graham (of course), Mary Wigman, and Ruth St Denis and Ted Shawn. I’d also include Doris Humphrey since she is the root of a style that is still very important today. Modern dance really only flourished in the middle of the 20th century, and while it’s gone through several post-modern phases, it’s still a viable form of artistic expression, with a substantial number of great, even classical artists living today: Merce Cunningham (nearly 90 now), Paul Taylor, Pina Bausch, William Forsythe, Tricia Brown. There are several well-established middle-generation choreographers like Mark Morris, Garth Fagan, Jiri Kilian, to name a few.

17

Other forms of art have supplanted them, such as pop music, photoshopping, and porn.

18

Absolutely. Drive-time classics. Oh, the fall from exalted art.

Back when I cared, I used to use this example about how overwhelmed we are with noise and music and how we can’t get away from it fast enough.

Imagine being a villager somewhere back in Europe in Bach’s time. You would work all week, hearing mostly the rhythms and sounds of your work, maybe your own work singing or two and nature. Then, on Sunday, you went to church and heard the music. Marketplace maybe once a month.

Can you begin to imagine the impact it made on people’s ears and minds? Especially if they lived in Bach’s hood? A musical person would just hunger for that fix, I reckon.

We can take it or leave it, if we can even hear it above the din and through our tired ears.

That sparkling impact of music is something that I idealize because it’s so hard to come by.

19

Every time I hear “Casual. Comfortable. Classical” I wish the Large Hadron Collider would create a black hole.

20

Sorry, I would disagree with this assumption. It was the growth and spread of the middle class through the 20th century that lead to the demise of the “classical” arts. Those arts were fostered by a privileged few in an isolated, supremist cultural bubble. With their growth in afflenuence, it was the tastes of the middle class that helped move the arts away from the thin air of the remote and obscure, and encouraged things like jazz and abstraction, until these too devolved into more and more vulgar forms - the drek we are saddled with today.

Least, that’s the way ah sees them.

djm