I've said a few times that pop music these days is an industrial product, coming out of music factories so here is some evidence for that. First the New York Times: How Big Is Taylor Swift? It's a very long article, impossible to summarize, but it looks as if the Beatles still hold the record for no 1 hits and top 10 hits--and they did it in an amazingly short time. Rick Beato has an interesting take on this:
What we learn from that is that behind Taylor Swift is a whole musical production line with a dozen writers, a host of musicians and god only knows how many producers and engineers. Taylor Swift is more of a corporate brand than a solo artist. The Beatles, in comparison, were a cottage industry. Three people wrote all the songs, four people with a few guests did all the playing and there was one producer and one engineer. I'll leave you to speculate on the possible effects of this on the aesthetics of the final product, the songs.
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Why is Slipped Disc the only place I saw this news? RATTLE, MUTTER, ARGERICH AND BYCHKOV SHOUT OUT AGAINST CULTURAL BULLYING
We, the undersigned, wish to express our strongest indignation at the decision to cancel the Jerusalem String Quartet’s two performances at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. The Hall’s management has yielded to the threats of the demonstrators for fear that the performances might be disrupted and potentially endanger the public, staff, and artists. The rationale behind this is fundamentally flawed. The responsibility for public safety lies with the police and security services and is not then remit of a cultural venue.
We are fortunate to live in a world where freedom of speech and expression exist; where plurality of views are not only tolerated but encouraged. These freedoms are not selective and, must be applied to all and respected by everyone in totality.
It is not the Jerusalem String Quartet’s performances that put our freedom in danger, but those who threaten public order unless their demands are met. Surrendering to those threats is not only an act of weakness, but a clear signal that we are not willing or prepared to defend our democratic values and our way of life. This is not acceptable and is highly dangerous for it undermines the very foundations of our society.
Is this how our security and protection will be achieved? By appeasing the bullies? By not wanting to be disturbed? By hoping that this will blow over and we can get on with building bridges to a better world?
The freedoms that so many lost their lives for are not guaranteed forever unless we protect them and continue to fight for them.
SEMYON BYCHKOV, SIMON RATTLE, MARTHA ARGERICH, ANNE-SOPHIE MUTTER, MISCHA MAISKY, LAHAV SHANI
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The music biz: How copyright is killing creativity — except Taylor Swift’s
After peaking in 1999, record sales revenue had fallen to only $8.6 billion in the United States by 2015 a level not seen since the 1960s and less than a third of its peak. Pundits proclaimed the death of the music industry.
Yet, precisely the opposite happened. Less money meant more and better music. From the late 1990s, when music revenue peaked, to the early 2010s, when music revenue was at its lowest in decades, the number of albums released in the United States annually more than doubled. And if we measure music quality by how often people choose to listen to a song, quality increased significantly as well.
It is easy to mistake copyright for a system designed to support musical artists. From that perspective, more copyright means more money, and if more money is the whole point of the system, then more copyright is always the right answer.
But now, with streaming revenue creating another peak in industry profits, many musicians are — quite rationally — making less music. Since Taylor Swift released her first of 11 entirely new albums in 2006, Justin Timberlake has managed a measly four. Lorde has produced only three albums since 2013 to Swift’s seven new albums.
To get the whole argument you should probably follow the link and read the whole thing.
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Why Corruption Plagues Chinese Conservatories
In April, Xue Wei, a former professor of violin at the Central Conservatory of Music (CCOM) in Beijing, posted on Weibo, a popular Chinese social media channel, to accuse Tong Weidong, the current dean of the orchestral instrument department at the same conservatory, of sexual abuse toward students and corruption in the entrance examination process. Xue, who wrote that he learned how to use Weibo “in order to collect allegations from others supporting his accusation,” offered 500,000 yuan—approximately $70,000—for victims of the alleged abuses to come forward. Tong denies the allegations.
The CCOM is China’s flagship conservatory: Lang Lang and Yuja Wang both graduated from its affiliate Middle School, while Tan Dun graduated from its composition department.
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Wow, times really have changed: ROYAL COLLEGE REPLACES HEAD OF STRINGS WITH GUITARIST
The Royal College of Music this morning named Gary Ryan as Head of Strings.
He has been acting head of department since Mark Messenger was suspended seven months ago.
Gary Ryan joined the RCM in 1996 as a guitar and academic professor.
There was a time, decades ago, when the Royal College refused to allow Julian Bream to bring his guitar into the building. (Or was it the Royal Academy?)
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Finally, Apple has come out with a list of the 100 best albums of all time (popular music albums, of course, though it includes jazz, so maybe everything non-classical?): Apple Says These Are the 100 Best Albums. Even If You Think Different. I'm linking to the Wall Street Journal article because they do an interesting comparison to the Rolling Stone list a few years back. Here are the top ten:
APPLE
MUSIC RANKROLLING
STONE RANKALBUM ARTIST 1 10 The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill Lauryn Hill 2 12 Thriller Michael Jackson 3 5 Abbey Road The Beatles 4 8 Purple Rain Prince and The Revolution 5 79 Blonde Frank Ocean 6 4 Songs in the Key of Life Stevie Wonder 7 – good kid, m.A.A.d city Kendrick Lamar 8 33 Back to Black Amy Winehouse 9 6 Nevermind Nirvana 10 32 Lemonade Beyoncé
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Well, I'm really stumped to find envois that reflect the items today--because I'm not going to put up Taylor Swift, or Billie Eilish or even the Beatles. Hmm, ok, free choice then. First up a famous passacaglia by Biber played on Baroque lute by Nigel North:
We just heard the Jerusalem Quartet play the String Quartet no. 13 by Shostakovich a little while back. Let's hear them play no. 9 in E flat:
The Quintet op. 16 by Beethoven for piano and wind instruments is not heard a lot. But it is quite nice:
Re: The Taylor LLC. I strongly take issue with Beato on this. It is only the works themselves that should be evaluated. The way in which the works are produced is irrelevant except in terms of assigning credits. Would anybody say a movie is not the Director the writers and secondarily the actors because there is also an army of set workers and corporate accountants, PR meisters and personnel depts? And if an artist consistently puts out a distinctive personal product can we doubt there is an individual behind this rather than a committee?
ReplyDeleteI would add that what makes pop music excellence is the Album, as it is an extended work, the creation of which is always difficult. The reason The Beatles and Rolling Stones are considered top rate is because they put out consistently excellent pop Albums, not an occasional hit song. This is also the reason why Frank Sinatra will be considered great because of his care in creating Albums.
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As for copyright it is dead. Only outright piracy can be enforced anymore. Piracy is the illegal verbatim copying of physical product.
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All lists are clickbait.
That's a fair argument, Maury.
ReplyDeleteAgree with Maury on this. Nobody cared that Blue Eyes did not write most of the songs he was famous for singing and if Sinatra could be allowed that why not Swift? Swift and The Beatles can both be thought of as different forms of a corporate enterprises. As George Harrison put it, "There were a lot of `fifth Beatles'." Had there been no George Martin to prod hem into honing their songwriting craft would we even be talking about The Beatles at all? I personally doubt that.
ReplyDeleteMaybe rockists need their auteur theories. John or Paul was "the talented one" as though the band needed some one genius rather than the collaborations that made the songs work. Why do I think that, because separately Lennon and McCartney wrote two of the most garbage Christmas songs ever put on record and because their solo careers where both shadows of what they did while together in a band. Poptimists often seem more realistic about the collective/corporate nature of creativity in popular music. Michael Jackson "by himself" was not as great as he was working with Quincy Jones and singing songs written for him by Stevie Wonder. Off the Wall and Thriller were a peak he could only come down from, IMO. I'm not saying the later stuff was bad, just that it wasn't at the same level for me.
I don’t think the issue is simply performers not being writers. Today it’s quite common for hit songs lasting under three minutes to have maybe eight co-writers. I understand that the “Yellow River Concerto” had six co-writers as a Maoist political statement against bourgeois individualism. But even that piece lasts over 20 minutes, allowing all its co-writers to get their favourite bits into the final work.
ReplyDeleteI think the teamwork of the Beatles in the 1960s, or Quincy’s team in the 1980s, had the effect of raising the bar. There wasn’t much co-writing as such. Most later Beatle songs had only one writer, ditto most Quincy era MJ songs (usually written by Rod Temperton or MJ). What you had were excellent music critics. A Beatle bringing in a song to three other Beatles plus George Martin, or Rod or MJ to the Quincy team, had to be very sure it was a really good song, good enough to be on the album. Once a single Beatle or MJ alone made all decisions, with no possibility of being gainsaid, standards dropped.
ReplyDeleteAll four members of Queen individually wrote songs which made it to Number One. And again, if you’re going to ask Freddie Mercury to sing your song, you better be damn sure it’s good. Queen eventually decided to split all royalties four ways, regardless of which band member actually wrote the song. They did this so that they could be sure they were choosing songs strictly on merit, not on who’d get paid.
Obviously there have been great songwriting partnerships, such as Rogers and Hammerstein or Bacharach and David. There’s even a great songwriting triumvirate: Holland Dozier Holland. But eight people together in a room trying to co-write a three-minute song?
I think the core of the creativity that the Beatles possessed came out of the crucible of their hard years in Hamburg when they became forged into a formidable performing unit. Ultimately it spun apart under the pressures of fame, but I think it was the basis of their unique productivity. They were forced into a musical intimacy that carried them a long way in terms of creative energy if not actual duration in time. In contrast, a lot of the collective collaboration behind popular music today seems rather to have the dullness of committee work.
ReplyDeleteThe issue with current pop music is not so much that it is committee work as that it is seldom under the close direction of one person and particularly the artist who has to interpret it. Most of these performers are the typical singles artists of yesteryear who put out albums with a few hits and the rest filler because they are not hammering their writers or musicians to do better. Isn't that how one conductor is better than another? That's what is required when performing artists are not sitting at their desk by themselves writing lyrics and then attaching some chords and melodies to it. It's a different skill set when you have to direct and manage the product. But again this is all irrelevant to the worth of an artistic work.
ReplyDeletein the self-promotional vein ...
ReplyDeletefilmed a prelude I finished earlier this year, part of a B minor prelude and fugue.
https://youtu.be/lZackq0R2xI
It can be played with or without shuffle (i.e. swing as often understood in theory textbooks). I was reading Jason Yust's Organized Time and the book is immensely dense but rewarding reading. Worth it just for the passing observation that in 18th century sonata forms it was fairly typical for the secondary theme to start on a not-the-tonic-of-the-new-key chord. Things you'll never, ever learn in intro theory courses.
So that got me thinking that since in blues harmonic regressions are at least as important as harmonic progressions the best place to have a harmonic regression would be to have Theme 2 in, say, D major, start on the subdominant after I'd set up a big half cadence/medial caesera drive to D major on an A chord. Repeat the process in the recapitulation with the non-modulating transition. F#7 drops down to E rather than going directly to B minor/B major.
Also made a point of using a IV-I7 where the dominant chord is the tonic in the second theme. Drew Nobile's observation that the category of the chord is never intrinsically indicative of its function was useful. That's a simple way to say that your C7 can be the tonic in C blues.
As years go by I'm more and more persuaded that theorists and partisans who say blues and rock "breaks all the rules" of classical music have literally no idea what they're talking about, same as the people who claim on the classical side of the divide that there is some inherent set of nebulous constraints in blues and rock vocabulary that precludes their use in sonatas and fugues.
" same as the people who claim on the classical side of the divide that there is some inherent set of nebulous constraints in blues and rock vocabulary that precludes their use in sonatas and fugues."
ReplyDeleteThese claims are by people ignorant of Medieval and Renaissance music. Missa L'Homme Arme in its 100 versions refutes all that.
The issue as always is what is the controlling overall structure: formal or informal.
I have been renjoying work by Chiara Bertoglio and she has a few passages in her work on faberden (Sic?) and other traditions of group improvised music in medieval and renaissance musical styles and genres. Interesting stuff.
ReplyDeleteShe's got a giant door-stopper of a book on the debates and styles of sixteenth century music in Christian circles. She's covering the different views of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Bullinger, Bucer, Vermigli, Erasmus and I think Beza in chapter 3 or so.
RObert Gjerdingen's work on the partimento tradition and the use of stock bass lines and fugue subjects to encourage student improvisation was another avenue of scholarship I discovered thanks to Richard Taruskin's wide-roaming reading on music history. Dan Gooley's got a book on the 19th century process of music critics (composers, even, like MEndelssohn, Liszt and Schumann) discouraging improvisation in concert practice while being great at it in informal settings.
So, yes, the people who claim "breaks the rules" on one side or the other of classical music don't know enough history on the topics.
I think that one of the reasons that the Beatles (or David Bowie) get respected as artists compared to contemporary pop musicians, is that their immense curiosity about art is well documented. Think of McCartney’s visits to the Indica bookshop and Berio and Stockhausen performances, or George Harrison’s fascination with Indian music. With an artist like Taylor Swift or Lady Gaga, one simply doesn’t get the sense of continual discovery, and assimilating those discoveries into music. That is not to say Swift doesn’t do those things – who knows – but we don’t see any of it. I think that the pressures of maintaining privacy and carefully sculpting a brand make glimpses of the real person behind the pop artist less likely these days.
ReplyDeleteFauxbourdon.
ReplyDeleteYes, the pop industry is so huge that the whole relationship is different. I can remember running into and chatting with mildly famous artists like the Guess Who, Ravi Shankar, Karlheinz Stockhausen and a whole bunch of classical guitarists and there was never the sense of unbridgeable distance. But now?