The Tragic Decline of Music Literacy (and Quality)

I dont give a dam about the communist chinese party....History will condemn it completely for killing millions....

BUT

When an American diplomat or any Occidental diplomat speak to a chinese diplomat does he know that after the great historian school works for 70 years now of Joseph Needham that:

Time between discoveries in China and the West (source: Joseph Needham *)
(ex: 800 years passed between the discovery of vaccination in China and its discovery in Europe)

Agriculture

Row cultivation, intensive weeding: 2200 years
Iron plow base: 2200
Harness trait: 500 - collar: 1000
Rotary tarare: 2000 Multi-row seed drill: 1800

Astronomy
Sunspot observation: 2000 
 Solar wind observation: 1400
Engineering arts Cast iron: 1700
Crank: 1100
Cardan suspension: 1100
Cast iron / steel transformation: 2000 -
Siemens process: 1300
Suspension bridge: 1800
Technology Oil and gas use: 2300
Paper: 1400
Wheelbarrow: 1300
Caliper: 1700
Porcelain: 1700
Umbrella-Umbrella: 1200
Matches: 1000
Printing: 700 - movable type: 400
Paper Money: 850
Seismograph: 1400
Navigable canals at levels: 1900
Rudder: 1100
Watertight bulkheads: 1,700
Medicine Blood circulation: 1800
Circadian rhythm of the bodies: 2150
Endocrinology: 2100
Diabetes / Urinalysis: 1000
Thyroid hormone usage: 1250
Vaccination: 800
Maths. Decimal system: 2300
Zero square: 1400
Negative numbers: 700
Magnetism Compass: 1500
Declination of the earth’s magnetic field: 600

Education
The first draft of the examination dates back to an edict of 134 BC. AD under Emperor Han Wudi who founded a school to train future civil servants in Confucian classics. One of its most important reforms is the establishment in 134 BC. J.-C. competitive examination for the recruitment of civil servants. The system of exams is fixed under the Sui Dynasty (581-618). In 606, under Emperor Sui Yang, the Jinshi was established an advanced examination system for the selection of civil servants *

Joseph Needham, author of the great encyclopedia on Science in China of which Wiki says: One of the pioneers in the field, he contributed to the recognition of China’s scientific past with, in particular, the publication of the monumental Science and Civilization in China (en), an encyclopedic collection that addresses all the developments in Chinese science. 





What do you think cross the mind of any chinese listening to the complete arrogant ignorance of history at large of most  Occidental people and nowadays even of their own history?

@mahgister,

"Incredible..... Without history people are pathetically lost about societal issues...How easy it is to manipulate the brain of someone knowing no history....How difficult it is to try that with an educated man...."



This is the point. History itself is under attack, along with truth.

How many of us are familiar with the old germ v terrain theory debate?

And why not? Could it be that the pharmaceuticals might be less than favourable to anything that challenges germ theory?

Education can be a wonderful roadmap for the journey ahead, but it’s only that.

No more than a map.

Better than nothing for sure. Otherwise you are at great risk of being manipulated. Usually for the goal of increasing someone’s profits.

In any case musical literacy matters less and less today due to technology. It didn’t even matter that much in the days of the Beatles. Remember they couldn’t even read or write music, just chords.

Luckily for them they had George Martin and they still had to build songs up by constant rehearsal.

I suspect the way most songs are assembled today are quite different. And a different set of skills are required. The only thing that counts is the end result. Everything is geared towards that goal.

Sales.

In that way nothing has changed. Today’s artists are still doing what Bing, Frank, Nat, Elvis, Buddy, and the Beatles were all trying to do - make money.

I don’t believe any of them were trying to make art that would last even 50 years. But they did.

Yet who knows what tomorrow’s audience will be into? Artists like authors are also prone to the vagaries of fashion.

W Somerset Maugham was the best selling author in the world in the 40s and 50s. How many read him now?

Maybe it's not about the decline of musical standards after all?

Maybe it never was?

Maybe instead it's only more about the decline of our generation?

Great Post....

I concur with you on all points...

And why not? Could it be that the pharmaceuticals might be less than favourable to anything that challenges germ theory?

They are 2 points in one here and very important one...

By lack of education most have forgotten that science is never and never will be anything else than an history of science...Dixit Goethe :

«History of science IS science» Majuscules are mine...

And techology power and technocratic authoritharism with money power combined is the absolute negation of science.... Transhumanism is a religion of the worst kind....

It will be easy to deconstruct it entirely with a Cassirean analysis of the symbolic form, like the one Cassirer himself did about Nazism in his days and under it exiled in the US...



Music being also a symbolic form, the analysis of the decline of music must be an analysis of the decline of all the other artistic forms in the repolarization of the values dominating european and Occidental culture and civilization...

This forgotten values origin and source explain the drying up of the blood life of Occidental spirit and his freezing up under the techocratic refrigerator....

I guess I understand, although I will never agree with, the prevalent mistrust and dismissal of rap on this forum. Maybe it reflects the aging white demographic that is many of the members here, but to write off a brilliant art form with so many gifted and talented artists has rap and hip-hop has seems short-sighted.

I guess I understand, although I will never agree with, the prevalent mistrust and dismissal of rap on this forum. Maybe it reflects the aging white demographic that is many of the members here, but to write off a brilliant art form with so many gifted and talented artists has rap and hip-hop has seems short-sighted.

I am too old to like rap music in general , but i am enough young to appreciate the real poetry, and rythmic rethoric.... Then it will not change my musical taste but you were right about the ignorance linked to the complete dismissing....

Like for any musical form in considerations, there is "rap" and there is rap.... I already listened sometimes to some very beautiful rap artistically done....

It is like free jazz; there is indeed "free jazz" and free jazz.....And some free jazz is truly genius....Like some rap....

Music in all his manifestations are only many perspectives takes on the human soul, and most of us can only take a short part of this pie....

How many in america feel love for classical chinese erhu music? Or japan koto? Or Persian tanbur? Or arabic Oud ? Or Bulgarian folk voices?




History of mathematic is for me a part of the  history of the human spirit...
History of music and poetry  is part of the history of the human soul...
How many portion of these pies constitute also a part of our own spirit and soul journey in our less than one  century visit  on earth? Not so much....