[Audio Empire]

On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 09:03:38 -0700, Scott wrote
(in article ):

On Aug 27, 5:53am, cjt wrote:
On 08/24/2012 10:13 PM, Audio Empire wrote:
snip Too bad the speakers are $195,000/pair and another $28,000 for the
Hammer-of-Thor subwoofers. snip

Anybody with $100K for speakers should spend that money attending live
performances. =A0That would support the music, which buying the speakers
does not.

What makes you think it's an either/or proposition? Besides you get
two very different experiences from attending concerts and listening
to stereo at home. And different individuals' situations are, well,
different. Going to concerts may not be very practical for some folks
even if they can easily afford to do so.

With that said I would certainly like to see more money donated to the
various symphonic orchestras around the USA. There is a real need
there. Attendance doesn't seem to be a major issue. Plenty of people
already going to classical concerts. Classical music is a patron art.
It can not pay for itself by the live gate alone. It doesn't even come
close.


Also, I've noticed that when I attend the SF Symphony and Silicon
Vallye Symphony concerts, that the audience seems to be a sea of gray
and silver hair. There seem to be fewer and fewer young people
attracted to classical music every year. That is partially the fault
of our failing educational system. They cut music appreciation out of
most grammar and high school curricula long ago with the result that
most youngsters have never been exposed to great music. This isn't a
new thing either. It's been going on since the late 1960s in US
schools. So not only were the present generation of kids deprived of
exposure to great music, so were their parents, and so were their
grandparents! who were, for the most part, all rockers. But if you go
back a previous generation or so, and you will find pop music MADE
from classical melodies ('Tonight We Love' - Rachmaninoff's Second
Piano Concerto, 'Full moon and Empty Arms' - Tchiakovsky's Piano
Concerto #1 in B minor, etc). And pop songs where the singer likens
his lament of lost love to the plight of Verde's clown, Pagliacci. If
Snoop Dog made a reference to Pagliacci in one of his rap "songs" his
listeners wouldn't even know what he was talking about. But at one
time in this country, and not that long ago either, most people were
at least familiar enough with the character to recognize the
reference.

Why this is, in my humble opinion criminally negligent on the part of
educators is because they underestimate the importance of great music
in the education of our young. When cutting curricula to the bone to
save costs, do they cut US literature or English literature from the
program? No, but they say that few people grow-up liking classical
music. Well few people grow up being Shakespeare fans either, or
Melville fans. Few are encouraged by having to read "Silas Mariner"
or "Moby Dick" to further explore the works of Georges Sand and Herman
Mellville, but a few are, and all at least know what great literature
is about. Is being exposed to Bach, Beethoven, or Tchaikovsy any less
important to one's education? I don't think so. Neither is exposure to
Reubens, Da Vinci, or Van Gough. Yet art appreciation and music
appreciation is almost unheard of in today's schools both provate and
public. but there was a time when they were just part of going to
school. And out of every class for all of the above; literature,
music, and art, there were always two or three youngsters who found
that they LIKED culture, and from them stem the future art lovers,
symphony orchestra attendees and literature afficianados. Where do
today's young music lovers come from? (it's a rhetorical question).

Sorry for the soapbox, but our endless crops of generations of unaware
youth is a personal bee in the bonnet with me.

Audio_Empire