Has education expanded your listening tastes?

Mapman:

Your response sounds right to me. I remember that a lot of Artist, Musicians, Poets and Writers, actually fought in the First world war. And some died. That war had a tremendous impact on Europe that is not appreciated today. And all the causes of the second world war began in the first world war.

And of course the most Influential Music Critic of all time, Stalin, shaped music in Russia / Soviet Union. A bad review there could be fatal!! One man changed the course of music???

Thanks for the input.

Cheers

Mapman, Your question "What changed" is a great question, but change didn't occur abruptly at the end of the 19th century as an unprecedented phenomenon. Change, even change in music, is relentless.
The audience changed, beginning in the late 18th century, shifting from the clergy and the nobility to increasingly include the merchant class. The venue changed from the elector's palace to the city's music hall. The practice of one performance per piece changed to one where the major composers had their works published, printed, and widely distributed. The works enjoyed multiple performances across Europe. LvB's 3rd symphony was worlds apart from Haydn's 10th not just in in structure, scope, and content, but also in terms of its receiving audience. Haydn's early symphonies could afford to be more formulaic than LvB's. Beethoven also had music critics to deal with. LvB had to do something new with each subsequent symphony. With the turn of the 20th century, this pressure became that much more pronounced as recorded and broadcasted music came on the scene.
Music had to change, and the change had to accelerate and become more radical. Stravinsky was going to go nowhere if he produced a 4 movement symphony in the style of Brahms.
It could be argued that the rate of change has accelerated. The baroque period is generally recognized as lasting 150 years. Bach continued producing Baroque works 25 years after everyone else had stopped. There were a few guys who continued to write romantic pieces into the 20th century. Not many people would recognize their names, apart from Richard Strauss and Rachmaninov, perhaps.

Another question is why was the change not as monolithic as it was at other periods? The passing of the romantic genre was not followed by emergence of a single predominant new genre. I suspect that this is because Mahler, Brahms, Dvorak etc were hard acts to follow. Their music was the end of a road. The road did not extend.

Now is the time to call in Frogman for an expert opinion.

I've read where the public response at the time to bombastic new compositons from Shoenberg, Stravinsky and such early in the 20th century were the first public signs of teh phenomenon that eventually lead to rock and roll, which followed in the same revolutionary footsteps and registered with the masses at first in similar ways.

..not to mention the similar very early influence of Mahler as a revolutionary modern day classical composer.

Also wanted to add that in addition to education and emotion, spirituality has always played a huge role in the most popular and enduring forms of music, classical music aside even.

In other words, the greatest works perhaps are those that register highly on a spiritual level with the audience.

Spirituality is also perhaps the hardest thing to quantify or measure in that some groups may have similar reactions to certain forms, but there is great variation person to person at this level based on individual circumstances.

Interesting stuff!!!!

Mapman, The first performance of Bach's St. Matthew passion in Leipzig was met by utter bewilderment. They had never heard or conceived of the like. Reportedly, his estate, including far too much of his work, now lost to us, was auctioned off as scrap. We have a gentleman who visited a fish market in Leipzig 80 years after Bach's death, who found his fish wrapped in part of the autograph score, who fortuitously recognized its value and delivered it to Felix Mendelssohn, to thank. Otherwise, it would be lost to us. If these reports are true, it proves Martin Luther was quite right on this subject. Likewise, LvB's Eroica Symphony was met with head shaking. The first movement was longer than most symphonies. Stravinsky's Rite of Spring caused a riot, which in turn caused him to withdraw the ballet. These works are of course foundational works of the repertory now-- indisputably great in the minds of nearly everyone, except my good friend Schubert, who is not too keen on Stravinsky. In fact, as opposed to Mozart and Haydn, much of LvB's work did not meet with general public or critical approval. It was the cognoscente who sponsored him and truly appreciated his work. Give a listen to his Grosse Fugue or very late piano sonatas for an appreciation of how radical LvB was. 30 years ago, the works of Charles Ives was lost to me. Now I appreciate him very much. Let us be slow to condemn that which we do not immediately assimilate.

As for any comparisons of these Ikons to present day rock composers, I think it is a stretch.

And we still need Frogman and Learsfool to speak.