Friday, November 30, 2007

Another Must-Read from Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn has a piece in The New Criterion on the effects of "popular" music on the culture at large (hopefully it won't disappear behind a firewall). Steyn's is that the rise of rock, rap and the other various styles of "popular" music, leading to their ubiquity in society at large has had the effect of unmooring music from its long and rich tradition in Western society so that we no longer have any barometer for judging what is actually good and worth preserving, causing us to reach out for the latest fad and undermining the foundations of culture.

As someone who very much enjoys a fair amount of "popular" music, indeed grew up listening to mostly rock music, but has of late come to a greater and greater appreciation of classical music, I'd have to say that he's right. What I find most interesting about the phenomenon, though, is how I've come to view the various forms of "popular" music in light of having developed something of a taste for classical music. I still enjoy a lot of what I used to enjoy both in terms of specific groups and songs, as well as styles of music, but listening to classical music has caused me to draw a distinction between what I like and what is actually good. I also find myself drawing the conclusion that songs are good as far as they go. That is, while Stairway to Heaven may not measure up to Beethoven's Fifth, within the constraints imposed by the genre of rock music, it is an excellent song, and I will listen to it if I run across it on the radio.

Interestingly, I seem to be in the same place with classical music as I was when I first started listening to rock music. There are pieces I recognize instantly, but mostly its all just classical music, and I'm not at the point where, beyond a few well-known pieces (e.g. Ride of the Valkyries), I cannot readily differentiate between composers and pieces. Maybe as I listen to more and more of it, I will be able to better distinguish between composers and styles and maybe even learn some of the terminology (I have no idea what the difference between an adagio and a libretto is, for instance). But as things stand now, all I can really say is that there's much more to music than "popular" music, and it is worth investigating because it is the foundation of the western musical tradition, and the more we ignore it, the more vapid "popular" music becomes.

Well This Settles It, Then

On balance, Republicans are sane, and Democrats are crazy. Well, maybe not, but the poll is at least as credible as all those studies claiming conservatives are somehow inherently mentally defective. Still, the Kossacks and their ilk serve as anecdotal support that more Democrats are mentally unbalanced than Republicans, but the independents are nuttiest of all. Probably being unable to make up their minds drives them over the edge.