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Originally Posted by Glice
You've raised the problem that the vernacular haunting art is always aligned with a heirarchical worst > best; I think where you say 'I don't have the education' all I hear is 'I feel intimidated to talk about something I enjoy'. I don't mean this as any offence to yourself, in the slightest. But a lot of people feel alienated from certain sorts of music precisely because they feel they lack the critical faculties to describe it in the lineage 'good> best'. Again, this is as much a criticism of myself as anything else.
On the other hand, if you describe art purely in adjectives then no-one is interested, and there's no bleeding human behind it.
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When refering to the lack of education, I wasn't thinking of it in the sense of being intimidated. Although you might possibly be right. It was more just highlighting a common problem when faced with something you have little or no background in. This I suppose could be a form of intimidation, albeit a nice one - not that of being surrounded by a load of fundamentalists in a dark alley in Stepney.
Saying all that, I'm constantly fascinated by the rise of radio stations like Classic FM, which seems to transmit way beneath the radar of intimidation, appealing to an audience that I imagine has no formal background in that type of music. In so-doing it offers classical music as a mixture of wallpaper for the accompaniment of performing household chores, and an appeal to a certain type of person's liking for the idea of 'high culture'. It provides the comfort of associating oneself with an elite, complex form, but demands nothing in terms of understanding or even engaging with that complexity. The result, of course, is the enormous popularity of an artist like Einaudi - Richard Clayderman for people who dream about Schoenberg.
Unfortunately, what we have today is, I believe, a culture that provides the rather
hollow pleasure of access, without the
real pleasure of understanding.
EDIT: I'd like to second Glice's disclaimer above, that everything I've contributed so far in this thread is a load of rambling, pseudo intellectual nonsense, of which I would stand by maybe 25% - if I'm feeling generous to myself. Anyone thinking of commenting on, or taking issue with, any of it should bear this in mind.