like the classical music that everybody reveres so much today you know the music from the 16,17,1800s that they say is the really good stuff, do you know how many people were writing music during those years? Lots. Most of them you've never heard of Guess who survives? The ones who had hits. Not because they were the best. Because they were kissing ass in the court, they made a deal with the Church or they had a personal relationship with a dictator. Either that or they managed to get good reviews
>>130705447He's forgetting the one major change that makes the 20th century completely different and renders his point here wrong: recordings.
>>130705447part of this is probably genuine criticism of his but he exaggerates just to get a rise out of people. theres an interview where he says he hates everything pre 20th century and another where he says he listens to purcell and chopin on the road.
>>130706767I've only ever heard him say he didn't care for Mozart and Beethoven and "stuff like that". And yes, apparently he listened to Chopin A LOT, took cassettes on the road every tour.
>>130707041im inclined to agree with him, especially on mozart.>Moon Zappa writes in her autobiography, Earth to Moon: A Memoir that Frank Zappa once showed her his record collection, which included Bach's Goldberg Variations. atleast he secretly liked bach
>>130705447He's right>>130706751Recording has nothing to do with it. We still have retards with vicarious nostalgia praising decades they've never lived through based on a handful of popular media from the era rather than looking at the particular zeitgeist of the time as a whole. Time is a great filter that leaves out all the lame and forgotten shit and only shows us the biggest hits, and it gives us a warped perception of the past.
>>130706767>>130707041he seemed to be consistent (whether it was the truth or not) in saying he didn't like a lot of classical music. i'm sure he didn't completely hate it though, but it seems a lot of his tastes were more towards the "modern" stuff like stravinsky
>>130707240>Time is a great filter that leaves out all the lame and forgotten shit and only shows us the biggest hits But, if after rummaging through the "biggest hits" of all the decades of recorded music, a person still overwhelmingly prefers a specific one, that isn't "time being a filter" anymore, that's just hindsight, being able to compare past decades.
>>130707331>that isn't "time being a filter" anymore, that's just hindsight, being able to compare past decades.True but I don't think that's the point that Zappa was trying to make, IIRC in the original interview he was talking about how people don't actually like classical music as a whole. they just like the most well known classical music.
>>130707203I'd bet my ass it's the Gould version thoughbeit
>>130707292yeah, im just saying i think he over exaggerated sometimes how much he didnt like>>130707411me too
can't believe frank said this
>>130707411i.e the best version
>>130707993I do like it a lot that he's one of the very few people i've ever seen talk about the economics of classical music and how it influenced/dictated a lot of what was composed. You never see classicalfags talk about that.
>>130705447>>130707240>>130707993>>130708184It's not that earth-shattering. Just because something has an economic basis (artists have to survive somehow) that doesn't make it non-artistic or purely economic. Of course private tastes, whether courts or churches, and later public tastes, affected what music looked like. But that only proves that music is partly a collective, cultural thing. It doesn't prove that it isn't also deeply personal and individual.By the 19th century, the old patronage model was no longer the whole story anyway, so Zappa is talking out of his ass when he reduces the canon to court ass-kissing, church deals or "dictators" (lol). There are plenty of examples of music that was misunderstood, ignored and canonized later: Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mahler, Debussy, Scriabin, Satie, Ives, Messiaen. A lot of music was absolutely not written simply to satisfy some patron's taste or to produce "hits", but because the composer was experimenting or trying to say something unique. It's historically and musically illiterate to pretend otherwise or to act as if classical was mostly just economically dictated product.Zappa was being provocative, but a lot of this is just nonsense with little basis in reality. It's funny seeing him shit on classical music when he himself tried very hard to be taken seriously as a composer, even working with people like Boulez. The irony seems to be lost on his fanboys and on people wasting their energy trying to shit on the greatest music of all time for some reason."There are certain things composers of that period were not allowed to do" is a particularly funny line. Like what, exactly? People really do think that previously you couldn't do anything, and now you can do everything. That's silly and historically illiterate. Standards, patterns, established forms and shared taste do not mean there is no freedom. If anything, there's often more freedom inside constraint, and every serious artist knows that.
>>130709837>the old patronage model was no longer the whole story anywayWhat I mean: a lot of composers after Mozart were basically freelancers. Sorry that doesn't fit into the "le rich people (courts, churches, patrons) being evil" or "le classical is le rich people music" agenda.
>>130705447>>130707683>>130707993>>130709837OH NO NO NO
