Writes Alex Ross in "Apple Again Fails to Save Classical Music/As classical listeners shift to streaming, Apple’s bespoke app falls short of its smaller-scale competitors" (The New Yorker). Much more at the link.
August 1, 2023
"I can’t put myself in the unisex Crocs of a young person exploring classical music for the first time, but Apple Classical strikes me as an oddly clumsy point of entry."
"An array of playlists called Composer Essentials is adorned with dour, sickly portraits that, according to Apple, were 'commissioned from a diverse group of artists.' (I envisioned a studio of talented girls and boys at an orphanage in rural Romania.) Composer Essentials are greatest-hits assemblages of movements and arias—rush-hour classical radio without traffic and weather. This approach defeats the point of listening to, say, Gustav Mahler: if you have time only for the Adagietto of his Fifth Symphony or for the last seven minutes of his Eighth, you might as well skip him altogether. And who qualifies as essential? Apple Classical gestures toward an expanded canon, with Clara Schumann and Florence Price prominently featured. At the same time, it promotes white-male purveyors of soothing sub-minimalist noodling.... Music history is more than a procession of names and faces: it’s a multiplicitous stream of styles, forms, and techniques with an ever-shifting social and political context... I couldn’t decide whether a section titled Music by Mood was generated by humans or machines. Is it an arcane joke that Meredith Monk’s 'Early Morning Melody' appears on the Classical Late Night list? Why does Classical Dinner Party feature Branford Marsalis playing a saxophone arrangement of Mahler’s 'Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen' ('I Am Lost to the World')? I couldn’t argue, though, when I saw Classical Commute fleshed out with a movement from Adès’s 'Dante': 'The Thieves—devoured by reptiles.'"
Writes Alex Ross in "Apple Again Fails to Save Classical Music/As classical listeners shift to streaming, Apple’s bespoke app falls short of its smaller-scale competitors" (The New Yorker). Much more at the link.
Writes Alex Ross in "Apple Again Fails to Save Classical Music/As classical listeners shift to streaming, Apple’s bespoke app falls short of its smaller-scale competitors" (The New Yorker). Much more at the link.
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Seems a bit of a mess, when one can have a noncurated list of anything one wants to listen to while driving. When I'm in heavy traffic, give me Rock Lobster by the B-52s or give me death.
Jean Kerr in Penny Candy wrote about her and her (NY theater critic) husband's efforts to introduce poetry and classical music to their four boys. Once a week, the family gathered in the living room and each boy had to recite a poem, and then they all listened to a classical work on the record player, often from Bernstein's Young People's Concerts collection. She says it was torture to get the kids to choose a poem, to study and memorize and understand it, and to corral everyone every Sunday night, but she ended up glad that they did it because at least the boys got some exposure to and appreciation of these canons.
My parents did less; we had a couple of books of poetry in the house that I eventually looked at and then got into, and we had Peter and the Wolf and some liturgical music (which is my great musical love). We did even less with our kids, to my shame. (Though my daughter listened to classical music while studying, which surprised me.)
Sure. I agree with the author that a desultory listening to a complex work is not as good as careful listening, re-listening, mulling over, and meditation on it. But it's better than nothing, and can spark greater interest.
Also - when I ask Spotify to play classical Christmas music when that feeling comes upon me, I don't get classical (religious) music, I get "Christmas classics" like the execrable Sleigh Ride.
Someone get this man to a fainting couch, stat!
Snob asshole. If Vivaldi's Spring and Beethoven's Ode to Joy are gateway drugs to Mahler, let's celebrate, not condemn. The greatest class I took in all of high school was a required class called World of Music, which, though I dreaded the thought of having to listen to anything that wasn't rock, very quickly becames my portal into worlds of music I love to this day.
I went to college with Alex Ross. He's an idiot savant genius when it comes to classical music. The problem is that it's difficult for someone like this to evaluate how a novice should approach the subject. He's too perfectionist.
IF we Really Wanted, to listen to great classical music..
Why wouldn't we listen to Actually GREAT classical music like Britney Spears "Hit me Baby, Back behind"?
I've been fortunate enough to have lived the last almost-40 years in a city with a broadcast classical music station, KING in Seattle and KBAQ in Phoenix. Both went non-profit of the PBS/NPR variety: no commercials, but the inevitable pledge drives. And they stream.
I don't know how to get anyone interested in anything. My parents had a set of those "Best Loved Classical Music" collection of LPs, and I listened to them, but never got interested until I started working for a prof at the UW (Aidan Southall in the Anthro dept.). I'd catalog his photocopied journal articles for a couple hours in the morning and had my Walkman and listened to whatever the local public radio station was that played classical. I developed an absolute love for Baroque.
Who knows, maybe this would get someone more interested. Once you get hooked, however, you're not going to want to hear little bits and pieces.
I admit that the movie Dead Poet's Society got me reading poetry. Hooked me and then reeled me in it did.
Classical music has been dying since I was a boy, but here it still is. Since any discussion of classical music quickly devolves into accusations of snobbery and elitism, I'll put my cards on the table as a lifelong lover of classical music.
I was privileged, advantaged even, to be exposed to the great canon at an early age. Not due to my parents, but my father's mother (my Oma) and his sister. My father was a fine trombonist but his tastes ran to big band and Dixieland, and my mother liked whatever was popular. I like big band and such too, but my father was dead before I was ten, and I hadn't the knack or passion for the trombone I inherited from him.
Oma and Aunt Louise (until she died three years later) took me along to the Metropolitan Opera roadshows, and the Beethoven Club-sponsored concert tours of outfits like the Chicago S.O. I didn't like everything I heard, but what I did like I liked a lot.
They also had a small LP collection, and I played a lot of standards on the old Capehart radio/record player console, both for Louise as she lay dying and for myself afterwards.
The exposure gave me--or helped develop--what I am told is a very good ear, and my elective Music Appreciation class in college was a pleasure and an easy A.
My radio is tuned to the local NPR affiliate, which has just celebrated their 50th year, and 80% of my CD collection is classical (c. 1700 - 1930s). My son heard a lot of my faves when he was growing up, and likes a few of the things I do, but his ears are small.
If I had to introduce someone to classical music in 15 minutes, I'd have them watch-listen to Skrowaczjewski conducting Beethoven's "Consecration of the House," or one of Bach's "Brandenburgs" complete, or even a piano trio by Mozart or Haydn. No excerpts.
One of the things that annoyed me in Europe was the radio practice of playing single movements of large works. NPR propaganda aside, they rarely do that on WKNO.
Time Life had a similar idea in the CD era (and probably something similar for LP and tape eras): the Great Composers series. They were sets featuring popular shorter works, or the best known movements from longer symphonies. Even NPR would sometimes excerpt from longer works on their classical programs. Nothing new here.
"Listen to music I like the way I want you to!"
What a chump.
I like jazz now. Didn't always. I found out what I liked when I watched "Ken Burns' Jazx" on PBS.
I had a Chet Baker tape. And a Dave Brubeck album. Then I heard snippets of Monk on the telly and heard Burns' copy and it all became clearer--what I liked and what I didn't. This guy needs to chill.
Spotify has the same approach as Apple. Greatest hits of Beethoven sort of thing. I skip all that and go to the music of the composers which Spotify has in good supply, better than Apple. I can read a review of a new classical album and Spotify will have it. Apple rarely.
More clickbait from The New Yorker.
In my correct opinion, Idagio is the best classical streaming app. They have playlists like "Dinner party" or you can select music by mid, but it also has excellent curated lists. And the catalog of music is excellent, with your choice of multiple recordings and artists for whatever piece you'd like to listen to. I highly recommend!
As a child I wasn't exposed to a lot of classical music at home, but I had a friend whose mother was an artist and often had the local classical station on while she worked in her studio. My friend's family was from a higher socioeconomic level than mine; I assumed that listening to and enjoying classical music was what folks like that did, and so I aspired to do the same thing. I'd listen as I got ready for school and paid close attention to the radio hosts discussing the composers and various pieces. I'd make tapes of classical selections from the radio and play them in my portable tape recorder when I went to the town ice rink. And I quickly discovered that tape recorders don't operate well below 32 degrees when outside.
Speaking of class and music, one of my best friends in junior high was David B., whose parents were from rural west Tennessee. Mr. B was a plumber, and eventually owned his own company, and Mrs. B was a housewife.
She would play Beethoven symphonies on the record player, especially the mighty 5th, while she cleaned and cooked.
An array of playlists called Composer Essentials is adorned with dour, sickly portraits that, according to Apple, were 'commissioned from a diverse group of artists.' (I envisioned a studio of talented girls and boys at an orphanage in rural Romania.)
They didn't get "talented" artists", they got "diverse ones". Which is why the images are all crap
Because "diverse" and "filled with merit" are antonyms
I'll agree that one can get more from listening to a whole symphony rather than just one part of it, but it seems a bit pretentious to say that getting bite-sized pieces isn't a good way to be introduced to it. A lot of my earliest exposure to classical music came from watching cartoons like Tom and Jerry or Looney Tunes.
Actually, I don't think a beginner "can get more from listening to a whole symphony rather than just a part." My suggestion is for generally shorter or smaller works performed whole.
It's possible that the only exposure 90% of the populace has to classical music is by way of cartoons, and subliminally through movies and TV. That's fine in itself, but inevitably creates arbitrary and irrelevant cultural associations IMO.
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