[Table of Contents]


[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [ARSCLIST] Recording rates for musicians.



Nonsense!

Smolian

----- Original Message ----- From: "phillip holmes" <insuranceman@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2006 11:17 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Recording rates for musicians.



That brings to mind a truly great song that surely will go down the in the annals of songdom with the likes of any Schubert Lieder: "A Country Boy Can Survive". And there's the "we'll put a boot in their ***, it's the American way" song. But seriously, I don't disagree with you. I'd place great jazz and blue grass musicians on a pedestal with great classically trained musicians. Many "popular" and "folk" musicians don't have "chops". They are creative. Yes, you are correct that there is an elitism to "classical" music and musicians, but they work a hell of a lot harder than most popular musicians. I think that's why the boys (and girls) don't get stoned before playing Le Sacre or Zarathustra.
Phillip


Steven Barr wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "phillip holmes" <insuranceman@xxxxxxxxxx>

Agreed, and most musicians (speaking of classically trained instrumentalists and vocalists) have already made adjustments. Most are teachers first, professional musicians second. This is the way it was for most of recorded history anyway. Bach didn't make a living playing organ and harpsichord, and he didn't get paid union scale. Musicians had a pretty cushy deal going while there were wealthy benefactors who cared, but the world's tastes have changed for the worse (IMO--not a humble opinion either). Also, I don't think that recording contracts kept these orchestras going. Most didn't have contracts. It was local community involvement, the chamber of commerce types, wealthy people with time on their hand, etc.....


Interestingly, this approach seems to depend on one important social
opinion...that, somehow, "classical" music is innately superior (at
least in the sense of the "elite" preferring it) to other forms of
music. This means that a community, in order to be a "respectable"
community (in the sense of upper-class = respectability) must have
classical musicians, classical performances, and if at all possible
a classical ("symphony") orchestra!

One result was that, at least in the late-nineteenth/early-
twentieth centuries, classical artists were spared the sort
of social-class demotion that applied to most other musicians
and stage performers (and that still seems to be true, though
less noticeable, in this day and age!).

It is also interesting to note an opposite development! In this
day and age, particularly in the USA, country & western music has
been adopted as what might be called "the official 'working class'
musical genre!"

Steven C. Barr







[Subject index] [Index for current month] [Table of Contents]