Paul Morley on classical music

[Minstrel SE]

Mark Hollis isn't pop music, it's MODERN classical music

Yes I agree. It wasnt the right example to give. I mean the people who consider anything but classical and opera to be a lowbrow form of entertainment.

 

[Mullardman]

So, if someone starts listening to classical, jazz etc at 12 years old then that is good and because of that when a person starts listening to classical music in his 50s that then becomes bad and their ideas and opinions become useless, inappropriate or ill-informed?

So, by extension, if for example, a person was found who started listening to Bartok, Stravinsky, Ornette Coleman etc in the crib then would that be more good? And if so would the previous event of someone starting to listen to classical, jazz etc at 12 become bad or mores sensibly, a lesser experience?

Also, someone doesn't like the idea of, or doesn't agree with, for whatever reasons a certain kind of music, and then later changes their mind. This is incomprehensible?

I'm just trying to get this one straight.

Then you are not trying very hard. Very little of what you presume above has anything to do with what I said.

I'm just railing against the 'presumptiion' amongst many, including many professed music lovers, that 'classical' is somehow 'difficult'. This is after all, the context in which Morley's 'conversion' seems to exist.

I'm just making the point that the 'divide' between classical and 'pop' is more a cultural convention, or an affectation, than a reality.

I contend that 'classical' is music which you either like or don't.. just like all other music. In that sense, it is no more, or less valid than other forms.

I go further and say that within all fields and genres, there are bits which some will like and respond to and others to which they won't.

All of which brings me back to my central point that I find it utterly bizarre that someone so allegedly knowledgable as this Morley bloke has only just 'got' a whole realm of music.

For my money.. he's just being a journalist. It's what they do,

Mull

 

[mr.datsun]

I'm just railing against the 'presumptiion' amongst many, including many professed music lovers, that 'classical' is somehow 'difficult'. This is after all, the context in which Morley's 'conversion' seems to exist.

All of which brings me back to my central point that I find it utterly bizarre that someone so allegedly knowledgable as this Morley bloke has only just 'got' a whole realm of music.

For my money.. he's just being a journalist. It's what they do,

Mull

I don't think he says anywhere that he has 'just got' it. The only relevant sentence is:

'During the 1970s and 80s, I mostly listened to pop and rock music'.

I'm also not sure he says 'classical' is somehow 'difficult'. And I agree with you. It's not difficult it just requires a different idea about listening but may also be rewarded with familiarity and some knowledge of extraneous information.

One thing he does say is that :

'Classical music is not all big, mighty orchestras and epic, overpowering, bloody-minded symphonies, or tarted-up operatic fussiness; it is also filled with ravishing intimacy, the small, constantly varied combinations of instruments and exquisite, ever-surprising solo recitals'

That rings a bell with me as I only tended to be attracted to obscure string quartets in my teens and certainly not the romantic orchestral mush my mother listened to. (And to large extent I still do!)

Reading your post makes me think you agree with much that Morely says.

Maybe the problem many (some) of us (seem to have) is perhaps, as you say, his 'being a journalist'. Maybe just he's stealing our ideas, taking the all that hard but loving work we may have put in over the years and making out it's his own. Or maybe he's being duplicitous – pretending to have been converted in order to make a point. Or maybe by writing it down, he's implying that we don't know already know the same things.

I got really angry a year or two ago when a Guardian writer told me (and everyone else stupid enough to read it) that I'd been listening to Penderecki in films soundtracks and I didn't even know it! As if no one bothered to check who wrote the music in film soundtracks or had come across Penderecki outside of hollywood movies. I thought (and wrote) something like - 'you presumptuous git - f*ck off!'.

But then I do actually get annoyed when people write about things (in music, books, films, art) that I've spent my life digging out of the dark nooks and corners and then they say something like 'Hey look at this, it's cool, I just found it'. Those cheap clever b*stards.

 

[Barrymagrec]

I got really angry a year or two ago when a Guardian writer told me (and everyone else stupid enough to read it) that I'd been listening to Penderecki in films soundtracks and I didn't even know it! As if no one bothered to check who wrote the music in film soundtracks or had come across Penderecki outside of hollywood movies. I thought (and wrote) something like - 'you presumptuous git - f*ck off!'.

But then I do actually get annoyed when people write about things (in music, books, films, art) that I've spent my life digging out of the dark nooks and corners and then they say something like 'Hey look at this, it's cool, I just found it'. Those cheap clever b*stards.

This is just normal Meeja bo***x. They simply assume that because they are pig ignorant everyone else is too.

 

[adamdea]

Is it impossible that there exist people who's tastes do reflect the zeitgeist?

I think it's very possible. It's a fascinating thing about fashion that to a greater or lesser extent, and at varying stage in the wave, almost all of us follow it unwittingly.

Some people have a knack of being ahead of the curve either by thinking hard about it or by instinct, and equally some people (certainly not always the same) have a knack of being aware of the mysterious movements and expressing them. This is exactly what (for example) the Guardian's "The Measure" does.

However, when applied to things other than fashion, it can be frustrating and seem strange (eg the relative reputations of Raphael, Michelangelo and Caravaggio over the last 100 years) and trying to identify personally with the fluctuations is more annoying it seems to me.

Anyway Paul Morley seemed determined not to accept his changing taste as the result of getting older and being alienated by popular culture for that reason. Spirit of the aged, sadly, not spirit of the age.

 

[mr.datsun]

Anyway Paul Morley seemed determined not to accept his changing taste as the result of getting older and being alienated by popular culture for that reason. Spirit of the aged, sadly, not spirit of the age.

Is it impossible that pop has run out of ideas? Movements in art run out of steam, fizzle out. Jazz kind of ran its course (even though, I know that's contentious). Can it only be down to age? Probably impossible to test.

 

[Colonel_Mad]

Is it impossible that pop has run out of ideas?

Hard to say. But listen to pop music now and compare it to that from year 2000 and I doubt you'll find any discernible difference.

Try again with music from '50 and '65.....or '65 and '80.....or '80 and '95.

Massive differences.

 

[Minstrel SE]

I agree with Mull on most of what he says. However I do think you can quite suddenly "get" things.

I dont know. Call it late development, a shift in brain chemistry a sudden wisdom or senility.... I have been listening to Tosca and really enjoying it. I wouldnt have done that 10 years ago.

Have I not been educated to like these things or did they just do nothing for me in the past? For all those years, I thought classical music was boring. I got handed Vivaldi etc but it would get half a play and hidden away in my collection.

Radio 3 is now going on more and more to sooth me. I've often got to switch over from 4 and 6 to get my head together and relax. A Radio 3 day is both moving and relaxing. It gives the day a whole new feel.

I have been really enjoying Choral Evensong....Whats that all about? Am I going mad?

 

[ciderglider]

Hard to say. But listen to pop music now and compare it to that from year 2000 and I doubt you'll find any discernible difference.

Try again with music from '50 and '65.....or '65 and '80.....or '80 and '95.

Massive differences.

I agree to some extent, but maybe we're just not tuned into the nuances of recent pop, so we can't detect the progress?

Didn't Paul Morley predict that once it had run out of ideas, "pop will eat itself"?

 

[Minstrel SE]

I agree to some extent, but maybe we're just not tuned into the nuances of recent pop, so we can't detect the progress?

Didn't Paul Morley predict that once it had run out of ideas, "pop will eat itself"?

I think recent pop is utter crap but am I just turning into my Father?

Is that the natural order of things and do we finally mature and see most pop music for what it is?

Have I lost touch or do I see the stupidity of pop music aimed at the young? Theres a tendency for me to see the young as thick and grossly immature. That may say more about me than anything else.

 

[Cuyahoga]

For all those years, I thought classical music was boring. I got handed Vivaldi etc but it would get half a play and hidden away in my collection.

But why did you think that?

There is a tendency, which I have long encountered, to something like inverse snobbery, for want of a better term, meaning that many people I knew would deride classical music as boring, fuddy duddy, dull, etc,etc for little reason I could fathom...

I was fortunate, I suppose, in being exposed from a young age to various classical composers by hymn tunes (VW, Bach for example), then the likes of Gilbert and Sullivan, Gershwin, Offenbach and others via amateur operatics, without it ever occurring to me that some of these were "classical", it was all good tunes and songs. This made it easier for me to take to other things when subsequently introduced to them, although the Romantic repertoire took a lot longer and opera still doesn't work for me...

It has always intrigued me where this "classical is boring" meme comes from.

 

[uctpa08]

FFS! I was listening to classical, jazz of many eras, folk, blues, R&B plus Pop at 12 years of age.

But clearly not punk as otherwise you'd have heard of Paul Morley.

 

[PsB]

I don't think he says anywhere that he has 'just got' it. The only relevant sentence is:

'During the 1970s and 80s, I mostly listened to pop and rock music'.

I'm also not sure he says 'classical' is somehow 'difficult'. And I agree with you. It's not difficult it just requires a different idea about listening but may also be rewarded with familiarity and some knowledge of extraneous information.

One thing he does say is that :

'Classical music is not all big, mighty orchestras and epic, overpowering, bloody-minded symphonies, or tarted-up operatic fussiness; it is also filled with ravishing intimacy, the small, constantly varied combinations of instruments and exquisite, ever-surprising solo recitals'

(...)

Maybe the problem many (some) of us (seem to have) is perhaps, as you say, his 'being a journalist'. Maybe just he's stealing our ideas, taking the all that hard but loving work we may have put in over the years and making out it's his own. Or maybe he's being duplicitous – pretending to have been converted in order to make a point. Or maybe by writing it down, he's implying that we don't know already know the same things.

I think that it is more likely that after 30+ years he has finally got tired of pop and become interested in a genre that he had previously dismissed (due to his pre-conceived ideas) as bourgeois, conformist etc. Not an entirely startling evolution for a middle-aged bloke. He is now trying to market this to us as something driven by a change in the environment rather than in himself. A world trend rather than one in his own mind. Hence claims that pop is no longer relevant and that technology is somehow making classical more accessible. Why Spotify would make classical more relevant than rap or didgeridoo is not very clear to me.

 

[Space is the Place]

I'm sure he did a whole program on Miles Davis's Milestones it was great.
I sort of understand his point but shirley music is music and good music or any good art, to coin a cliche is timeless, i dont see (of hear) any difference in how vital a piece of music can be, it could be Legeti, Katy Perry, Ravel, Coltrane or Death Grips it's all interesting.

 

[herb]

Seeing Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange when it first came out (1971) unexpectedly kick-started renewed interest in classical music with a bang. I had just gone through early Stones etc, then Mingus, Monk and Coltrane. Beethoven, Mahler, Shostakovich and Stockhausen just added another musical layer. A decade later I 'discovered' Beefheart.

I have never heard of Morley, but if he promotes classical music in any way best of luck to him.

 

[bownose]

There comes a time in everyone's life when you look at the tools you have at your disposal and say, "these are insufficient, inefficient or they are an impediment to my development: as an artist, as a human being" the toolsets we have are informed by a priori assumptions and are as much reflection of our limitations as they are our aspirations. Classical music can and always has been radical when the listeners are radical in they way they listen, when music transitioned from simple dance and devotional forms to popular music designed to exist in order to be listened to and only that with ever more complex structures enabled by even temperament, the toolsets were discarded or rather the divisions in the notes were more sympathetically ordered to accommodate the new radical invention that was to become the modern pianoforte. (Just one example).

Toolsets are not just instruments or technological, some toolsets in music are ideas and the underlying philosophy of challenging "why (not just how) a thing works": a composition is a composition, it is fixed in time and space and reinterpretation of that position is as much a product of where we are with new a priori assumptions, new tool sets, fewer limitations (or more, depending on how you look at music education) cultural impositions and so on. Mozart is very very different then as it is now.

Paul Morley has found his tools insufficient, hardly damascene but it happens. Former styles that were engaging become less so and vice versa. Thus he has discovered new toolsets to help him engage with whatever he does when he listens to music. But I think he is making a common mistake: The musical genre is not the radical shift, he still has his a priori assumptions holding him back -- they have simply moved to new terrain... but his analysis and attitude towards a style of of engagement with listening is something I encourage in every single person listening to sound around them.

There is more to simple emotional engagement, indeed emotional engagement may be precisely not what is asked or expected of the listener but other aesthetically important aspects of sound' positionality and spacial awareness; new styles of listening are usually enforced by the musical style, but it is not required, pop music can be as radical to listen to as any other genre, it's how you listen, not what you listen to.

 

[Ptah]

Paul Morley as always been a fart in my opinion. Group with Danny Baker and and put them against the wall.

Bit unfair on Danny IMHO. At least DB's book was full of amusing anecdotes - even though I hate him for constantly falling on his feet at every turn in his teens, 20s and 30s...

Morley on the other hand is just unpleasant. He wrote some extremely rude reviews in the 70s about musicians who have more talent in their little fingers etc etc etc.

Having said that, he wasn't the least watchable person on the now defunct BBC4 Review show! But he did contribute to the general pseudery.

 

[Ptah]

Paul Morley has found his tools insufficient,

Definitely.

 

[SteveS1]

I'm still most grateful to a music teacher who combined an excellent insight into what we were listening to, with the development of music, particularly orchestral. So the lessons contained examples of popular music with education about the development from Baroque through the Classical to Romantic period and beyond. She knew where to drop the needle and find the hooks that inspire people to explore further. It was a pretty basic state school and I wonder how much time is left for such things on the current timetable.

 

[bownose]

None because it does not result in worker-bees. Any form of critical analysis is being systematically removed from the curriculum from the ground up.... Teaching people how to think is as fundamental as physics and maths and English, it is being removed because it is not good to have people able to work out for themselves how the world really works, how the cards really are stacked rather than how the world is sold to you.

Music would be regarded as one of those subjects that requires critical thinking, toe in the door as it were.

It is all but gone from most state schools.