Classical Music (and the other Arts) in Today’s Environment?

This discussion will be hosted by Michael & Doug.

Max Richter is a contemporary British classical musician and composer, but also highly eclectic in his musical taste and abilities. Let’s listen to Sean Carroll (physicist) interview Richter about the current state of classical music on his podcast series Mindscape. They also discuss some of the technical nuts & bolts and theories involved in making successful or meaningful modern classical music, but watered-down enough to terms a layman can understand. The podcast is about an hour long but it’s perfectly okay to skip around and just sample parts you’re interested in:

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/09/09/288-max-richter-on-the-meaning-of-classical-music-today/

Classical music has comprised a large chunk of our culture as well as the edifice of Art in the Western world for many hundreds of years, but we know that fewer average people still want to listen to it. The downstream consequence is that the number of orchestras and smaller classical formats have been slowly decreasing. However, many younger composers & musicians are now attempting to make music that is more accessible to their peers.

Do you think this is possible, and does it even matter, given all the other music that is available in the world today?

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Other questions we could consider (but there are many others):

Do you have any thoughts or opinions about the arts (in general) in relation to our current culture and zeitgeist?

Progress may be a misguided or irrelevant concept when it comes to the arts. Because the experience of art is so subjective it would be hard to say that it gets better or worse. But the arts do evolve and change their style over time - the only thing that is certain is that they will always change. But as far as you’re concerned, are there any rights or wrongs when it comes to the arts - or is it all totally arbitrary?

As we know, music is the form of Art that is the most abstract, being composed (pardon the pun) only of sounds. At one point, Max Richter makes the interesting observation that music is paradoxical: that even though the composer may construct a piece of music using concepts & formulas, specific structures & technical components, in the end for the listener “it’s a feeling thing” that comes across, an experience that largely has to do with emotions. This may be one of the characteristics that ties music to the other arts, from the abstract to the more concrete. In your opinion, what are the broader purposes & connections between the various arts?

~Michael