CLASSICAL MUSIC'S LAST HOPE: Return Of The Amateur Composer
Book Details
Author(s)
Paul Breer
Publisher
Xlibris
ISBN / ASIN
143633764X
ISBN-13
9781436337649
Availability
Usually ships in 24 hours
Sales Rank
#4,632,332
Marketplace
United States 🇺🇸
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Description
MUSIC / CULTURE
CLASSICAL MUSIC’S LAST HOPE
Americans are turning away from classical music. We see evidence of this in declining ticket sales, mounting orchestral bankruptcies, shrinking CD revenues, and a cut- back in radio programming. In an attempt to explain this shift sociologist-turned-composer Paul Breer points to two recent changes in American culture ...... the rise of a new egalitarianism and the erosion of traditional Protestant Ethic values. In this anti-elitist, I-want-it-now environment popular entertainment is increasingly favored over classical music and the other fine arts.
Turning to the music itself, he cites the abandonment of tonal harmony in the early 20th C. as a major cause of classical music’s declining popularity. He argues that if classical music has any chance of winning back its audience, it must return to the harmonic idiom used by composers of the past. Given the intractability of today’s music establishment, the person most likely to do that is the independent, self-taught amateur, aided by recent advances in computer technology. The book concludes with a call for a renaissance in amateur composing.
CLASSICAL MUSIC’S LAST HOPE
Americans are turning away from classical music. We see evidence of this in declining ticket sales, mounting orchestral bankruptcies, shrinking CD revenues, and a cut- back in radio programming. In an attempt to explain this shift sociologist-turned-composer Paul Breer points to two recent changes in American culture ...... the rise of a new egalitarianism and the erosion of traditional Protestant Ethic values. In this anti-elitist, I-want-it-now environment popular entertainment is increasingly favored over classical music and the other fine arts.
Turning to the music itself, he cites the abandonment of tonal harmony in the early 20th C. as a major cause of classical music’s declining popularity. He argues that if classical music has any chance of winning back its audience, it must return to the harmonic idiom used by composers of the past. Given the intractability of today’s music establishment, the person most likely to do that is the independent, self-taught amateur, aided by recent advances in computer technology. The book concludes with a call for a renaissance in amateur composing.
