Why Classical Music is Dying

EDITORIAL

June 28, 2001

For a few hours yesterday, there was a page up here with the word SYMPOSIUM under the title above. The piece involved documenting a discussion that took place over the last month on CLASSICAL@HOME.EASE.LSOFT.COM the (Moderated Classical Music List). I received notice today from the message board's moderator, Dave Lampson, that my posting of any comments by participants on his forum here, alongside my comments, was illegal and that some of his forum's members were known to be highly litigious. Therefore I have taken pains to eliminate from my website any uses of, mention of or endorsement of his forum and shall maintain this breach indefinitely.

Nevertheless, the good participants on the Moderated Classical Music List did provide me with excellent stimulus to write a few things which I have preserved and will leave here. Though I wont name them, I thank them most graciously for their inspiration. The following remarks may seem disjointed, almost aphoristic. Some are mere statements. The topic is WHY CLASSICAL MUSIC IS DYING.

The reason Classical Music may be dying is that there is nothing any classical musician is doing right now that is worth being burned at the stake for. Nobody gives a shit. Not enough people are listening to it.

I think because I think. The consciousness calling itself I, that at least once a day sits at a piano, doesn't "live" in my brain cells. Our present machines, which claim to monitor brain function, are primitive. We don't know that we don't know. We are trapped by our own egos, which inform our observations. Especially is this so of our scientists: they get paid the big bucks to behave as though they really know when in fact they don't.

Notice the effects of a materialist approach to explanation in someone's everyday conversation. Some might say that human beings are machines with parts which malfunction. Most people I trust are innocently unaware of how they have been influenced to think this way, nor can they or anyone else find these regions of the brain, remove them and show us how they are malfunctioning. It is just assumed that in some mechanistic way, we are all......just machines. Many will see no problem with this, though they should.

I may have done any number of useless things in my life but at least teaching music theory in a conservatory of music wasn't one of them.

I really don't know why people feel they have to bow to the current political ideology in order to be thought of as smart. Some may have said that the reason Classical Music is dying is that people, acting stupid and petty, are destroying it. As I already said, the reason, if classical music is really dying, is that fewer people care enough to listen to it. I find the topic interesting and revealing.

Should those of us with more life force than brains just vault over the barricades and throw these "bad" people out of Classical Music's various institutions? Maybe that has something to with the problem or the nature of the problem; institutions. Insane asylums are institutions too.

"The environment's in much worse shape than classical music," or so some people would have us believe, for their own purposes. It would seem far more likely that long before the sun expands to become a red giant and engulfs the earth, that a roving bolide the size of Manhattan or bigger will crash into the earth and cause another mass extinction event. Those who watched and waited, as they did the last time, whether it was 65 million years back or more recently, will wait long enough for things to settle down, decide whether they can reseed this planet or leave it like the planet Mars. Classical music will be just as extinct or immortal as the rest.

I know this might come as something of a shock to some classical music fanciers, but Beethoven and Mozart were NEVER mass audience material. Not until the 20th century. Most people at the end of the 18th century didn't hear much music. Somehow methinks little has changed. And Dickens and Austen have far more in common with Clancy and Steele than most snobby literature professors would have us believe. I don't know Toni Morrison but John Updike is really awful stuff. I've never been able to finish a single one of his novels and I've seriously tried to read FIVE of them. If this is what classical music is becoming, perhaps it deserves to die.

The politics of musical institutions WAS a problem in Beethoven's time. For its scale and the stakes involved, I'd even suggest it was a BIGGER problem then than now. In any case it happens when there are limited opportunities for people with similar interests to have access to the same resources. But I doubt it has much to do with the death of any music, classical or otherwise. I'm assuming that the channels for getting pop music to its audience are likewise contested. I recall in the heady days of the pop music revolution that there were partisans of the Airplane and the Dead and numerous other groups all challenging each other for space and the rights to stage this or that event around the San Francisco Bay Area. If there are no fights, there is probably no life.

OK, I'll state it bluntly. Arnold Schoenberg lost his way. He was able to save his own life, but musically he lost his way and led a whole bunch of talented people down the dead end of useless atavism to system. Much of his "music" is dead on arrival. You can't even enjoy it without something to guide you and even then the reward isn't worth the trouble. Most of his output after Verklärte Nacht is emotionally and spiritually stillborn and you know furthermore I don't give a rat's ass if anyone thinks otherwise!

Ah let's hear it for schizophrenic society! All any schizophrenic ever needed, so as not to feel bad, was more like minded company. The basis for making rational decisions is a frame of reference which is eternal by any stretch of one's uses for it. Something that is true or right or good will be so whether anyone thinks so or not, whether one has the force to make people say or think otherwise or not. Adapted to music making of any kind or the enjoyment of same, one either enjoys or does not. It is either worth the effort or it is not.

People have emotions which music can cause to resonate. The great composers knew what they were doing in this regard and did it successfully.

Why do people always have to bow to the supposed scientific explanation of the day? I suppose that in his day, Haydn made numerous references to phrenology, the study of the conformation of the skull based on the belief that it is indicative of mental faculties and character, something he devoutly believed in. It would have been just as useless.

If there was no limit on time or musical resources, everything could be composed, which would by no means guarantee that most of it would be any good. I doubt supporters of modern music have any malicious intents nor can they be destroying anything by supporting "modern music."

Columbus was supposedly not looking for another continent (America) but India and China, or at least that's what he told the Spanish monarchs who supposedly underwrote his enterprises. But there are some people who have looked into Columbus' voyages more closely and have theorized that his knowledge of the circumference of the globe may have been greater than we suppose. Perhaps Columbus knew there was something in between Europe and Asia and was looking for something else. If so, I think the analogy is interesting. but I hardly think those who favor chance operations or the like in the creation of music are deserving of the appellation "composer" or even "musician."

Somehow if enough "modernist" music gets accepted, nobody will want to listen to the old classics anymore and that will kill classical music. Well, that's already happening, but it isn't "modernist" music that's the culprit, since practically speaking, nobody listens to it. It's stuff like rap and pop that's a more likely the cause.

Well, I happen to think that it is flat out wrong to dispense with the idea that music is a language. Of course it is, by any definition of the use of symbols to represent something else.

There are natural pearls and "cultured" pearls. (There's even an opera called The Pearl Fishers, but that's off the analogy.) There have been a few attempts to produce "cultured" music by various systems. Nothing works as well as nature.

Compared with Plato, Aristotle was a dolt.

I'll show my cards early: Classical Music ain't dead and ain't dying. Those who have positions in some of the less lively institutions, who neither have the talent or brains to make it elsewhere, may be concerned that few people out there give them the respect they think they deserve, and hence generalize that their entire field of expertise may be dying when all that is happening is that they themselves are dying, by inches, and nobody seems to care. This is one reason why threads of this kind interest me; they show up quite a lot of human folly.

Well for one thing, the appreciation of great art takes TIME. We're supposed to have more of it, but do we? Anyone who is reading this had better consider the time they are wasting. They could be spending "quality time" elsewhere. Of course anyone who wants to try and "soak up" as much of the great arts as they can might try "piling on"; reading a great novel while listening to classical CD's. I wonder how many people out there actually spend their spare time this way? And to what end? Nobody bothers to ask. What are the signs that someone has truly BENEFITED from exposure to great art? Does it show? If it is supposedly "good for you" like taking vitamins, then there should be some outward signs that derive from the investment of the TIME and money. Are there?

This is a trend I believe we can see continuing in every area of our lives. In our personal and professional lives it is sometimes called techno-tribalism. People who are interested in the fine arts will have more to share with each other than they will with others who are disinterested in fine arts.

There may be certain very large organizations which survive only to the degree that their, by comparison, infinitesimally small divisions survive, each of these earning a fraction of the profit of the whole. Some large companies are already organized this way. If the larger organizations don't take advantage of this "federalized" approach to marketing their products and services, then obviously there will be room for quite small operations to fill niches.

And that "interesting stuff" [referring to motion pictures] only appeals to a small fraction of the entire viewing audience, some of it becoming "cult films."

I dare say that no matter what is done to bring up the consciousness of the whole of humanity, something I fervently believe in as a moral good, nevertheless there is a bell curve in operation everywhere and by whatever standards of measurement we use, most people will not fall into the upper end of it.

Theory, sociology, HERMENEUTICS? Oh God! We're angling pretty close to the "theology of music" it seems to me. If say the Well-tempered Clavier is the music of the angels, what might the infernal music be? Oh, dare I ask?

Others may be depressed, but I'll continue to listen to and play my Bach, Beethoven, Brahms or what have you, til my last breath, and so will others scattered around the world who find a solace in Classical Music that can be found nowhere else. I have maintained that the internet was capable of bridging the tremendous physical distances between those who, to use a religious turn of speech, "believe in" Classical Music, closer together. And none of the arts deserves to be linked more closely with religion than Classical Music. I hope that more and more people who "have the faith" will find each other. Then we may see fewer of these threads.

I really don't like the analogy of Classical Music to an aging physical body which has turned gangrenous. If the analogy were apt, one would have to ask just where the surgery should be performed? It's not that Classical Music is dying. What has always been a pipe dream is dying: that Classical Music or any of the other fine arts can be massified; made palatable to a vast majority of humanity. They can't. One does not cast pearls before swine. Liberal social idealism never worked even during the years it was termed most successful, during the 1930's and 1940's. There was always the resentment of those in the middle and below toward their intellectual betters. It is not that Classical Music is dying, it is that Classical Music used as a sop to the ideology of social equality is quite honestly very dead. So all of you just face reality: if you are interested in Classical Music AT ALL, you are automatically in a special, and I dare say, higher class of people, culturally, socially and perhaps economically as well. I'll pass on whether I think we're more intelligent than average. There has to be something left to discuss.

Some schools are privileged to have some extremely talented young people.

There may be some advantages to having the Queen as Canada's head of state. One may disagree with what she's about, but after all she's still the Queen. Certainly great art tended to flourish better under a monarchical system than under a fully democratic one. Artists have often fancied themselves the equals of, or at least the decorations of royalty. Even a few jazz musicians have styled themselves "Count" or "Duke." It certainly beats the exaggerated appreciation of some of today's pop stars who act as though they are on temporary furlough from prison or a whorehouse. Of course a greater number of our celebrities than ever before behave the same way, so...

Frankly, until we find out more of what we REALLY are as beings, we won't know the real usage of Classical Music, or any other great art for that matter.

It would be more helpful if philosophers took themselves less seriously and became about the same as poets. The best poets after all, in my opinion, are very often philosophers; Blake, Spinoza, Nietzsche, Whitehead, others.

I spent many fairly happy years working for corporations. It could have been worse. I could have worked for a university.

I prefer my own slogan: the best conspiracies are those that have already succeeded.

Rossini, as is somewhat well known, was a notorious gourmand, later preferring food so much to music that he temporarily abandoned a successful opera composing career to become a chef.

Avant-garde, a rather time warn term, advertises itself as "music of the future." Was it? Is it? If not, then maybe we should try another term for it.

Rossini wrote perfect music for eating vast quantities of spaghetti.

I rather think that Rossini quit writing operas because he preferred to eat.

Rossini wrote A LOT of operas! I dare say few have ever heard them all. No, he wasn't so lazy. He feverishly wrote the Overture to the Barber just before it opened. It might be more correct to say that as time has passed composers have usually grown MORE lazy than Rossini ever was.

We can talk about meaning whether or not we think music is a language. There are other means of conveying meaning than language; of Classical Music, whether or not the container is capable of holding meaning or whether once delivered the recipient is capable of getting the meaning.

Victor Deryck Cooke (1919 - 1976) a British musicologist who worked extensively for the BBC, will certainly go down in musical history as the man who completed Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 10, which fortunately has been widely performed and frequently enough recorded. It was in fact this symphony which introduced me to this composer, when I was all of about eleven years old. Thank-you Mr. Cooke!

Evolved? Into what? Why the use of this word when the word "changed" would have fit just as well if not better? Pardon me, just one of my things. I get squeamish when someone starts using the word "evolve."

See what I mean? We don't know, so rather than admit the mystery, we fill it with another mystery defined by a quack named Charlie Darwin, who over there in merry old, a hundred years ago and more, came up with a kooky theory he had insufficient proof for, which a scientific community, chafing under the supposed "repressiveness" of ecclesiastical and other authority, adopted as central to their system and have hotly defended at every opportunity ever since. Why on earth don't we get over him? His theory is more dead than Classical Music is ever likely to be. The universe is NOT expanding either, but that's another myth that dies hard. Oh well...

it may be that we are made to feel less shocked upon second or third exposures to some dreadful experience, musical or otherwise. But using words like "understand" or "speak to" seem to me misplaced. I feel the same about some gruesomely horrible movie I might have seen a few times, which doesn't render the movie any bit better for my having become "accustomed" to it.

What the facts of history show are that Webern was an accidental gunshot victim and little more and Heidegger was a NAZI. I find the incidence of the former a sort of Divine irony, of the latter's acceptance by so many, a human irony.

OK, we seem to be hooked on this "music as language" business. This explains much about why corporations succeeded universities as vehicles for human activity. The former cannot get too bogged down in minutia lest they cease to exist. Most universities, especially the older more prestigious ones, can afford this intellectual babbling bereft of instrumental significance far longer. (some call it claptrap. We called it toejam in college)

Housewives, college students, active and retired music teachers, prodigious high-school instrumentalists, etc. These are among the groups one will likely find making up the techno-tribe of the future devoted to Classical Music. Just ordinary folks. So it isn't "elitist" in any traditional sense. It's "religious" in just about every sense, but not too many have made the association yet; concert as sacred ceremony. They may yet.

It's not really as terrible as some might suppose. The large houses [record labels] are probably overstaffed to begin with on many levels. Recording companies are not governments who can demand resources by force to pay for buildings full of bureaucrat flunkies by the gazillions. These companies must make money to pay their people and if they don't, then it has to get smaller and those in the business have to find other opportunities. As for the avant-guardists, if they want their music, they probably can form a company that is small enough to handle their needs.

I'd rather just listen to something and talk about what makes me like it with someone who also might like it.

I'm open minded. I'll listen to anything, once.

"Without music life would be a mistake" [Nietzsche] could relate just as easily to any music or music making. Just add interest or the passion of the doing of it and one has Nietsche's sense of it, even though I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have meant just any music.

We're focusing on record companies and CD distribution that is aimed at what is believed to be an existent audience for Classical Music in places like Argentina. But does anyone really know the size of the audience there for Classical Music? Do CM CD's sell there despite economic difficulties? What is the status and outlook of the Argentine middle classes, who might have sufficient time and resources to pursue an interest in CM? And how about elsewhere?

This has also happened in a number of other areas; the old familiar faces are replaced by new entrants. It happened in American broadcasting. It may happen in pianos too. Steinway has plenty of good competition at the top.

The market will be a GOOD indicator of the health of this art form.

Classical music isn't dead, but it's high time for more of those interested in it to find each other and socialize because the society of interest does tend to promote a presence for a performing art. I'm certain that the internet can help facilitate this. Maybe if more people got together who share this strong interest there would be far less worry about whether the art form is dying.

Minnesota has a reputation for favoring the fine arts, not just Classical Music, but theatre and the visual arts as well. A lot of other places around the country have similar community commitments. For those of us interested in Classical Music, these places might be preferred places in which to live.

I wonder how many people would agree that this "private communication" conveying any meaning that the individual cares to impart to the music, forms part of the experience of listening to music, not just hearing it, but actively listening, as while sitting in a live concert or listening to a CD for the first time? In a very real sense of the word, this experience of active "private" listening is ceremonial in nature, especially when the music is already well known, and where it matters to the listener as well as the performer, it is also religious in nature.

We live in a profoundly anti-spiritual [anti-religious] time as regards the public forum for debate on most issues. Philosophical materialism is the reigning spirit of this age, which explains much about why many feel that they have to intellectually bend their knee to this philosophy, despite its irrelevance. We do not live in our brains. We are not machines, or at least not just machines. Aristotle, the dolt, has triumphed over Plato, his master. Nevertheless, Music is, in a profound sense, a protest against and an active refutation of everything Aristotle's philosophy and those built upon it stand for. Man is NOT a mere mortal being and Classical Music is among the greatest proofs that this is so.

There was always a profoundly religious significance ascribed to music by the ancients. There were secret societies formed to preserve its mysteries from the corruption of the outside world. It is in this sense that Classical Music has life in abundance. If it were to die out completely as a public interest, somewhere, in some far off hidden corner of the world, some hermetic Pythagorean group would keep it alive as what it is, both as a ceremonial vehicle and religious expression of that which is infinite, timeless and forever.

Classical Music is Music itself far more than any other music in the world. It has become an international trans-cultural success. Its greatest composers have become its saints. It is most accessible to the widest audience. It is played, ceremonially played, all over the world. If Classical Music were ever to really die out, then music itself, in all other forms would begin to die with it. To the extent this is true, just consider how "un-musical" much pop music has become as the influence of Classical Music has receded. Classical Music may not be dying, but it might be pretty sick and need some rejuvenation, some rekindling of the spark. If we get bogged down in tedious and for the most part irrelevant issues such as whether music is a language or not, then we are wasting our time and losing our opportunities.

I suppose one would have to know the Koreans as a people and understand what they value. Clearly I would suggest that a nation which values Classical Music as a social good is clearly proceeding with what I would consider to be positive values which will tend to enhance their continued national success.

Lean and mean is the way to succeed. Far too many corporations and other institutions are unaware of the size rule. They want their perks; empty, formal and costly as they may be, rather than their profits.

Yes, England has a goodly number of popular yet mostly unplayed composers of surprising musical significance, a veritable treasury of good music just waiting to make a comeback.

There IS a difference between the experience of attending a live concert with many other people milling about to talk to and look at and the experience which might be quite solitary and private of listening to music at home. At home, one feels more inclined to experiment, test one's faculties against new material, etc.

I would like to suggest that there needs to be far more amateur performing venues in the United States than are available at present, not just for aspiring children and young people but for talented serious adults too. Since the piano is an important instrument in Classical Music with a huge repertoire, I advocate "Classical Piano Clubs" be formed around the country to share and promote Classical Piano Music. I'm sure the idea would go over big in Korea.

I do not believe in forcing anyone to be a musician if they haven't got at least some basic musical talent. There are any number of people who have been ruined by being forced to do things when they were children. However, and this may seem contradictory although it isn't, there are plenty of people who have also been ruined by NOT being forced to do things they should have been forced to do when they were young. Discipline is something that is in short supply around the world. Where it is coupled with a willing spirit, then true genius has an opportunity to form.

This is a real downside to any ceremonial or religious experience; there are those who are made to go who later in life will form a rebellious attitude toward it. Classical Music concerts are a lot like going to church for some people.

On the future of Classical Music being in Asia: I've often speculated what might have happened if Mozart or Haydn had been able to travel to Japan or Korea and had taken their music and the whole apparatus, other musicians, instruments, singers, everything with them, what might have happened? For one thing, we might have had Asian piano sonatas, symphonies, concertos and other manifestations of Classical Music from Asia far earlier. We still await some great flowering of indigenous music from Asia on Classical Music forms that can succeed worldwide.

But the turning eastward of Classical Music has already been going on for a long time. It's first big success outside Western Europe was the interest it created in Russia and the tremendous national schools of composition and performance that resulted there and began to spread from Russia throughout the world. Indeed the Russian contribution to pianism has been astounding. What's far less easy to understand is why the craft of piano making never really got going there. Pianos were made in countries with more of an industrial capacity, many with far less serious interest in Classical Music, such as England before 1850.

We cannot help but note that the Japanese, specifically Yamaha, have made a tremendous impact on the piano business over the last 50 years. It is my opinion that the piano making baton is being passed from the Japanese to the Koreans.

Language is subject to interpretation, therefore it is unreliable. Were it not so there would be NO misunderstandings, unless people are occasionally lying about their true motives and aspirations, which also happens. The only place I am aware of where a "language" is reliable is a computer language, and it usually needs to be an assembler rather than compiler language, as these are more subject to interpretation and hence do not guarantee bug free code. I still maintain that this whole line of discussion is way off topic, which also happens to be true of human language, that it allows people to get off the track.

I guess that means me and my cat too. She meows and I understand basically what she wants from me and do it. She purrs or does whatever cats do. Is this a "language"? We ARE communicating.

Poetry was considered the highest art form in the 18th Century, so that politeness could cover more deceit between people. This worked only so long as enough people didn't start to go hungry. When that happened, there was revolution and poetry was dethroned. We can witness much of the same going on today, but haven't reached the revolution stage yet nor are we likely to in the foreseeable future. Other measures are being taken.

Reading all this gives me the feeling of sailing off the edge of the world.

Want some deep insight into what music is? I'd recommend Rosalyn Tureck's remarkable interpretations of Bach's Well Tempered Clavier Books 1 and 2.

Obviously even to the most decrepit dolt, MUSIC IS A LANGUAGE, not metaphorically at all, but ACTUALLY; a system of symbols which are manipulated. As a written language, music's scope of meaning is only the music that can be performed from following the instructions. Whether it carries any more freight than the music itself (meaning) is an irrelevant consideration. As a system of symbols it performs enough of the functions usually associated with a written language so well that this longwinded and astounding argument that has gone on here LONG ENOUGH should have been over and done with before it got started. Indeed music AS A LANGUAGE is capable of being understood by people who don't even speak each other's oral languages and yet can pick up the music and with their instruments play a piece together. Thus, music is capable of conveying a mutual understanding. And wonder of wonders, music can be performed as I have said by two or more people who otherwise cannot communicate orally and they can each come away with different experiences from it without this vitiating at all against the idea of music as a language. If I have a copy of the first prelude from the Well tempered Clavier Book 1, I know that it's in C major and so on, it's written right there in front of me. Not secret to anyone who can get a copy and an instrument to play it on.

For those of us who live reasonably far from access to piano recitals and chamber music concerts, both of which I often prefer to orchestral concerts, obtaining CD's is, as obtaining LP's was before that, the unparalleled means.

If one compared a concert to a religious ceremony one would have few grounds for thinking of attending a live Mass as the same as seeing one on TV. Concerts also have that level of immediacy. You are there and so are the performers and they can play well or not, make mistakes or not, have a good night or not and the audience can even help them or hinder them in their attempts depending on the situation or the music.

The older music is in fact difficult enough. One problem for the avant-garde composer as well as the intended performers and audiences, everybody connected with the experience of music making, is that to purposely load their music with extra difficulty just for the sake of novelty is frequently counter-productive.

Anything is possible given sponsorship. In fact, were a consortium of seriously interested "angels" to do so in any country today, as they did in pre-revolutionary Russia, a Renaissance of interest in Classical Music complete with a host of national composers could be launched, if anyone's listening.

It's not really the fault of America that Classical Music has not been given a push in the educational systems in English speaking countries. It's no mystery. Music has been assiduously weeded out of society in the English speaking world beginning with England itself for close to 300 years, leaving music there pretty much in the hands of foreigners. This longstanding tradition, that goes back to the Roundhead Rebellion in the 17th Century, regarded making a career of music as either a waste of a young man's efforts and ambition or an effeminate preoccupation. The emphasis on sport, on the other hand, goes hand in hand with the English educational system, especially for the upper classes. It's not that the English aren't musical, far from it. In fact they may be getting their revenge on their ancestors for having such a negative view of music in that Classical Music seems to be positively flourishing there now.

As far as which countries are going to adopt an interest in Classical Music in the future and make it an acceptable part of their educational and cultural systems, the Asians seem right now to be taking a commanding lead, with the Germanic and Russian peoples not too far behind.

American interest in Classical Music was really an affair of German immigrants more than any other group going back into the 1850's. They were heavily involved in the piano business, which was at the heart of the matter as by the turn of the century there was a piano in every middle class home and people actually played them. By the time Toscanini came along, he was able to ride the crest of the last great popular interest in Classical Music in America. Then came Rock n Roll.

I hate to tell you this, but the people at the top of society, who make decisions in America and elsewhere, concerning the role the arts have in society, have apparently decided that they prefer people to be hearing more mind numbing stuff that can and will be produced by the lowest orders of illiterates in the society. Doubtless they have their own Malthusian perspective. What do the power elites gain by promoting a decadent society of talentless celebrities? I'm not sure, but maybe they think that this makes people a lot easier to control, they don't think so much. Classical Music is for people who think, people who are introspective, people who are not necessarily interested in living life as a sporting event. The power elites don't really like that very much.

Why must everything be a "dialectical" issue? There are a few of us out here who feel keenly that both Hegel and Marx, and all their followers, were more than flat out wrong.

Albert Camus may have been correct when he said that life is absurd. Assuming that the next question is "so what?" the appropriate answer is "deal with it." The real problem precedes the realization that life is absurd: it is that an uninformed cognition expects life to be "sensible" and is revolted when it turns out not to be. The joke is on him.

A man from Germany and a woman from China get together to play a sonata for violin and piano by Beethoven. Neither can understand the other's verbal language. They each take a part and begin to play. They have shared the process of making music and have read the music in order to do so. They in fact can take their cues from each other because the piece is known beforehand so they know what's coming and can adjust to each other's changes in rhythm and dynamics. This is a language folks. Can we get off this tedious drool and back onto the topic?

Concerning the German Austrian attitude that only their people ever wrote any Classical Music, considering what short shrift other nations usually gave their music, and those who wrote it, maybe they have a point.

We could certainly use more Sir Arnold [Bax] here across the pond as well. 

Computer "languages" communicate limited information to computers and they are still called languages. Music notation communicates how to play a piece of music. If nobody wanted to hear any music, I suppose they could or would get as far from it as possible. Even doing that would be acknowledgement of a kind of communication, whether intended or not. Just because the nature of the communication cannot be precisely ascertained does not mean that we can dispense with the idea that music is a language, for it fulfills at least some of the rudimentary requirements for a language. But this is beyond dullness and not on topic unless we care to expand it into the question whether some Classical Music listeners are dying by subjection to tedious, obvious and boring discussions.

The more subtle and ambiguous music sounds, usually the better I like it.

The English preferred to import their music and musicians rather than taking it up themselves. Handel and Haydn were not exceptions to this rule, they were the rule. [Henry Purcell was the exception, or the last of the line before the attitude changed.] The English didn't want their sons to neglect trade. Maybe they made the wisest choice from a pure power perspective considering what developed over time. Now maybe they have allowed themselves more time to be musicians. But it may be too late for them to get on the billets in Germany or Austria. (said tongue in cheek).

Well, there it is. Those who read this and might have contributed to the thread in question might know who they are and the part they played in eliciting my comments, but for fear of litigation, they wont know for sure. I look forward to hearing from anyone concerning any of these statements of mine. They must understand that as a means of extending knowledge to a wider audience, I'd appreciate the opportunity of posting them here. But this is not a forum or a message board. It is my website, perhaps the largest personal ad ever conceived. Any ideas would become parts of an article that would be posted here for any and all to see and read.

My Thanks To You All