Quote:
Originally Posted by Farfisa
In my music appreciation class we had this old classical nut. John Cage had a brief mention in out text books, and I asked if we would be mentioning him at all. He told me that John Cage "Was just some idiot that sat at a piano and did nothing for 5 minutes.", I was pretty offended.
It always makes me a bit sad that music history professors can't see that the line has blurred when it comes to music and sounds. Of the various definitions I've seen, the only common description of music I've seen is "an arrangement of sounds". People always moan about nothing has changed music wise in the last century, but I call BS. The very definition of music (and art) has changed.
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What sort of annoyed me about this guy's list was his categorizations. He categorized World music with some genres underneath it... so far so good, then he had a category called POP, with everything from Punk to Acid Jazz and everything in between... And then there was a category called "Serious Art Music", which contained stuff like Classical, Baroque, Minimal and Avant-garde. (after I corrected his spelling error)
At first glance, it would seem that he categorized them in that manner for a purely structural and musically relevant reason, but as he was talking, I realized he really doesn't take anything else as seriously as his Serious Art Music, and considers Pop to be what "uneducated high schoolers probably listen to".
As an aside, I'm pretty sure that he simply stockpiles different styles of music for some misguided sense of diversity in which to mock inevitable just-out-of-highschool kids' tendencies to like rock, pop or rap. I'm fairly certain he doesn't have an appreciative history with any one particular band or group based on their own merits as music artists.
I guess it's the path a teacher would take in this scenario, but it's going to be hard to identify with those of us who have a sentimental attachment to the music we like without mistaking it for narrow horizons and insulting us in the process.