Music Banter - View Single Post - Is the pop music paradigm going to die someday?

innerspaceboy · 12-31-2020, 10:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DriveYourCarDownToTheSea

Technically you're right about the term "popular" music. Whatever you want to call what I described is fine with me.

I was thinking, I'm wondering if you could trace the dominance of the paradigm I was talking about to the advent of recorded music? Prior to that, to enjoy music you had to either play it yourself or go to some sort of concert to see professional musicians (or at least good amateurs) play it. That is, all music was live. I would think that would largely leave the composition and performance of music to people who had some modicum of music skill and education. But once recorded music came along, some person or group of people could record something once, and that one performance then got listened to thousands or millions of times. This made it easier for amateurs to make their own music, so you could call this whole paradigm "the amateurization of music." It's kinda like other things: Once it becomes mass-produced it also become democratized and more consumable by the masses. Like, the McDonald's of music. The shorter and simple format is simply more palatable to the masses whose musical skills, education and sophistication mostly aren't on the level of the professional musicians of yore.

But I think I'd have to think that through some more ...

I'm reminded of a related fun musical fact shared by an old friend of mine. He stated:

Quote:

Miserere mei, Deus, was composed in the 1630's by Gregorio Allegri for use on special occasions in the Sistine Chapel.

Prior to 1770, only 3 copies were authorized to leave the Sistine Chapel: 1 to the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold the 1st, the King of Portugal at that time, and to a Padre Martini. Beyond those 3, the music was forbidden to be circulated.

Until a 14 year old boy attended service in 1771-ish. He thought the piece was very beautiful, and promptly went home and wrote the music out from memory. He attended services again once more so he could make minor corrections.

That juvenile pirate delinquent was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Miserere was arguably the world's first pirated song.