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Televised Music Is a Pointless Rigmarole (1968)

theparisreview.org

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Re: Televised Music Is a Pointless Rigmarole (1968)

#31

Post by ds_opseeker »

vikramkr wrote: post #13
coldtea wrote: post #8

For his cultural goals he wasn't wrong. His aim wasn't to just give more people access to classical music with whatever means (a la "worse is better"), but to give more people the appreciation of classical music that refined educated listeners had. To treat them as capable for that, as opposed to needing "dumbing down". Part of that was maintaining the primacy of music over unrelated attached things, like the televis…

Given songs could be made hits because of their videos - that's arguably the opposite of prescient, because it turned out that the televised image was not actually unrelated but in fact a new core integral aspect of a new art form, the music video!

which killed the ...

Re: Televised Music Is a Pointless Rigmarole (1968)

#32

Post by xwolfi »

musha68k wrote: post #12
unraveller wrote: post #11

It's a fools errand to put elitist classical music and opera on TV to compete with the slop when mass TV dispersion is anti-elitism to the core, operating over the work week schedule not the broadway season. Any one who cares about experiencing art as a pastime can see that government subsidies of culture performances could be better spent anywhere else than TV. Surely the TV station will just game it so whatever app…

Unless it's outright public broadcasting itself e.g. check fantastic European arte.tv as probably best of class (?) example.

But arte is clearly not good because of music. They do some,but what we watch it for are their mindblowing and regular documentaries they either produce or purchase. As well as their debate shows (I can spend a month watching their daily debates show C dans l'air).

But there is something I learned eventually: I work deep in finance now, on a trading floor in HK, and all their cool documentaries about Finance feel to me, now, very populist and not very honest: so they probably have an agenda trending left wing at least in France. Which is fine, just need to know.

I think AI is BS, but if it could voice-translate to English most of Arte, maybe that'd be interesting enough.

Re: Televised Music Is a Pointless Rigmarole (1968)

#33

Post by cheema33 »

Almondsetat wrote: post #21
LiquidSky wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except in the opening question Adorno also dismisses radio music. This is just snobbish idiocy. Clearly the only REAL way to experience music is in your private box at a grand symphony hall dressed in full evening wear.

>clearly You are being disingenuous and setting up a false dichotomy

> You are being disingenuous and setting up a false dichotomy

Or he is taking the argument to an extreme to highlight the absurdity of its trajectory.

Re: Televised Music Is a Pointless Rigmarole (1968)

#34

Post by empath75 »

Adorno is someone who frequently mistook his personal preferences for universal truths, but he is a very smart and observant person who is worth engaging with seriously.

> On the whole I believe that the very act of performing music on television entails a certain displacement that is detrimental to musical concentration and the meaningful experience of music.

I think this is largely correct, and I'd go further -- that even concert settings can be detrimental to the meaningful experience of music. Forget classical or pop music or jazz or whatever other style of music Adorno thought everyone should listen to. It's a frequent complaint of dance music enthusiasts and just music fans in general that crowds focus to much on looking at what the DJ is doing or taking pictures with their phone instead of _dancing_ and living in the moment. I mean everyone is free to take what enjoyment they want out of whatever experience they want, but I do think that music is primarily meant to be enjoyed through listening and (often) dancing, and anything that distracts from that makes the experience less about music as music and more about something else -- music as a mere soundtrack for spectacle or celebrity or whatever rather than something to be enjoyed on its own terms.

Re: Televised Music Is a Pointless Rigmarole (1968)

#35

Post by solardev »

cafard wrote: post #22
rpdillon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the fault of the sound engineers, who subsequently engage in fundamentally quite unmusical procedures by surgically extracting these voices, which is quite in keeping with their—if I may say this—unartistic intuitions and is also congenial to the highly problematic taste of the public. I've never been a fan of the word 'problematic' because it says so little about what the problem actually is. Regardless, h…

A quibble: A 1983 Webster's Collegiate gives the definition of problematic as "1: a. difficult to settle or decide b. not definite or settled c. open to question or debate 2: expressing or supporting a possibility". (Bold type, proffered synonyms, and examples omitted.) The sense of "problematic" as in "you've got a problem" developed after 1968, perhaps after 1990.

I think the common modern usage of that word is kinda an euphemism for "yucky because they're not woke enough". I've never seen it used outside that context, personally...

Re: Televised Music Is a Pointless Rigmarole (1968)

#36

Post by [deleted] »

Almondsetat wrote: post #21
LiquidSky wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except in the opening question Adorno also dismisses radio music. This is just snobbish idiocy. Clearly the only REAL way to experience music is in your private box at a grand symphony hall dressed in full evening wear.

>clearly You are being disingenuous and setting up a false dichotomy

[deleted]

Re: Televised Music Is a Pointless Rigmarole (1968)

#37

Post by ysofunny »

rpdillon wrote: post #19
coldtea wrote: post #8

For his cultural goals he wasn't wrong. His aim wasn't to just give more people access to classical music with whatever means (a la "worse is better"), but to give more people the appreciation of classical music that refined educated listeners had. To treat them as capable for that, as opposed to needing "dumbing down". Part of that was maintaining the primacy of music over unrelated attached things, like the televis…

> This is the fault of the sound engineers, who subsequently engage in fundamentally quite unmusical procedures by surgically extracting these voices, which is quite in keeping with their—if I may say this—unartistic intuitions and is also congenial to the highly problematic taste of the public. I've never been a fan of the word 'problematic' because it says so little about what the problem actually is. Regardless, h…

the way I've dealt with semi-related issues is to regard 'engineered music' as it's own artform distinct from live music

the archetype I'm trying to follow is painting. when the camera was invented photorealistic paintings became usless and what followed was impressionism, which focused on what the cameras cannot do.

however I do not think music has reacted to reccording technology in the same way painting did (pretending for one sentence that 'music' and 'painting' are entities with agency). I don't think there's an "impressionistic" movement within music that arose as a response to reccording technology, at least not yet.

Re: Televised Music Is a Pointless Rigmarole (1968)

#38

Post by bryanrasmussen »

Almondsetat wrote: post #20
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #2

Evidently before television people used to go to classical musical concerts blindfolded - who knew!?

That's like saying that spending hours of your day stuck between two lanes of traffic in a gray highway is not bad because people went outside before cars.

it seems to me that for that analogy to hold you must be assuming that being inside a car is a form of being outside?

Which is an assumption I would not make, and I suppose most people would not think that being inside their car was being outside, but I haven't surveyed for responses.

Re: Televised Music Is a Pointless Rigmarole (1968)

#39

Post by empath75 »

rpdillon wrote: post #19
coldtea wrote: post #8

For his cultural goals he wasn't wrong. His aim wasn't to just give more people access to classical music with whatever means (a la "worse is better"), but to give more people the appreciation of classical music that refined educated listeners had. To treat them as capable for that, as opposed to needing "dumbing down". Part of that was maintaining the primacy of music over unrelated attached things, like the televis…

> This is the fault of the sound engineers, who subsequently engage in fundamentally quite unmusical procedures by surgically extracting these voices, which is quite in keeping with their—if I may say this—unartistic intuitions and is also congenial to the highly problematic taste of the public. I've never been a fan of the word 'problematic' because it says so little about what the problem actually is. Regardless, h…

Would he have been out of place on any audiophile forum today?

This is just one of these things where he wants to find some deep philosophical basis for his personal preferences.

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