tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post8615505285122682420..comments2024-03-29T03:19:09.227-04:00Comments on The Philosopher's Stone: AND THE WINNER IS ---Robert Paul Wolffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-41273718475352916732014-11-13T20:12:13.494-05:002014-11-13T20:12:13.494-05:00Hah, yes, I suppose they would! Actually I'd l...Hah, yes, I suppose they would! Actually I'd love to hear poetry recitation in the way that the Odyssey (or for that matter Beowulf) was recited. I hear the art is lost, though. (This, I gather, thanks to that devilry of modern technology, the printing press.)<br /><br />You make the point about Baroque music rhetorically, I think; but let me pretend you didn't. It's certainly lamentable how few young people go to classical concerts. (I think I've related to you before that I'm often the youngest by several generations.) But it's also something performers and directors and so on are acutely aware of, and are trying very hard to remedy. No-one knows why it is, and everyone has their own crackpot theory and crackpot solution ("Increase the bass level" was one I heard put forward in earnest, "so that it's more like the club music they love so much"), and nothing's changing much, it seems. But I'm hopeful that the labour will eventually reap dividends. But then I'm a hopeful person. (I notice that I ended my previous comment with hope too, which just goes to show, I suppose!)James Camien McGuigganhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08323424421768387480noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-77778703578599108282014-11-13T19:54:47.841-05:002014-11-13T19:54:47.841-05:00James, an interesting thought -- the ancient Greek...James, an interesting thought -- the ancient Greeks would have been with you all the way. But here is something I have been thinking about. When I was young, the young and the old knew the same popular artists. Everyone knew whom Frank Sinatra was, whether they liked him or not. I don't think there was a youth culture and a grown-up culture [leave to one side Black culture -- another matter entirely]. By the time I was in the Army, in 1957, a split had occurred, and somewhat later, there really were two utterly different cultural worlds. This has nothing to do with high culture of course, just popular culture.<br /><br />But I am painfully aware that when Susie and I, 80 and 81 years old, go to an early music concert, we tend to lower the average age of the audience! Will anyone go to a Baroque music concert in fifteen years?Robert Paul Wolffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-53084632617142607072014-11-13T19:06:24.725-05:002014-11-13T19:06:24.725-05:00This is fascinating and sort of sad, but, speaking...This is fascinating and sort of sad, but, speaking as a young person who fancies himself pretty on it when it comes to art and brains and who didn't get any of the answers (apart from the Beatles one (oh, and the Ozymendias now I look back on it)), I want to suggest how the lesson could be less disturbing. (Aside from the excuse I can give myself that when I was in school we focused on Irish poets, my schooling being in Ireland.) <br /><br />The alternative explanation is this: that youngins are more interested in songs than poems, and that this is, if partly to do with the ubiquity of music relative to poetry (what with portable music players and the like), also to do with the fact that black people, women, 'people like the listener' more broadly, are better-represented in music (both contemporary and pop-canon) than in the poetry canon. I can't compare how people listened to music and whether they memorised or could recognise lyrics in earlier times, but it's my experience that most of my peers are able to recite large chunks of plenty of songs. Most of the lyrics, to be sure, are rubbish; but that's another issue, and in any case, some songwriters' lyrics are frankly brilliant.<br /><br />It's not, then, by this hypothesis, that the space in youngins' minds for poetry has been filled by rubbish; but that it's been filled by lyrics. This seems acceptable.<br /><br />I put this out more in hope than in belief. Really, though, I wish that I knew my poetry better.James Camien McGuigganhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08323424421768387480noreply@blogger.com