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In Praise of Commercial Culture QUOTES

In Praise of Commercial Culture QUOTES

1 " The Christian right, which trumpets the theme of family values, damns contemporary culture for undermining older traditions. Yet many individuals from this camp are not concerned first and foremost about family values per se. Family is a codeword for constraint; families and family values place constraints on individuals more effectively than any other institution, including government. The Christian right seeks a society in which all are constrained; they reject big government for failing at constraint, and for undermining those institutions, like the family, that have a chance at succeeding. "

― Tyler Cowen , In Praise of Commercial Culture

2 " Composing for money was held in no shame, and the public concert spread throughout Europe. Wealthy countries that did not groom their own composers, such as England, imported them from outside with lucrative offers. Handel and Haydn were their two most notable imports. British conductor Roger Norrington said of Handel: "[the Messiah] was written for money ... he was a commercial composer; if he were alive today, he'd be doing jingles for "

― Tyler Cowen , In Praise of Commercial Culture

3 " Karlheinz Stockhausen. "

― Tyler Cowen , In Praise of Commercial Culture

4 " Many individuals do not buy many books or go to many art museums, but the passion for music is widespread and nearly universal. "

― Tyler Cowen , In Praise of Commercial Culture

5 " Many compositions cannot be comprehended without special training or many hours of repeated listening. Even highly educated consumers who enjoy modern art and read James Joyce often find Elliott Carter and Pierre Boulez to be puzzling or perhaps even painful to listen to. Composers of contemporary "classical" music have not made the headway that their peers in literature or painting have enjoyed. Contemporary music, depending on genre, is either the most or the least popular of the these three arts. "

― Tyler Cowen , In Praise of Commercial Culture

6 " Unfortunately for the composers of the time, wealthy Renaissance merchants were more likely to commission a painting than a composition. The painting could be owned, repeatedly shown off, and later resold, unlike the music. The financial incentive to commission a composition, which can be enjoyed by any audience member, was weaker. Paintings were closer to private goods, and musical performances were closer to public goods. "

― Tyler Cowen , In Praise of Commercial Culture

7 " The influence of the Lutheran religion, which favored music as a source of religious edification, also gave musicians higher status and influence in Germany than they found elsewhere.5 "

― Tyler Cowen , In Praise of Commercial Culture

8 " Twentieth-century music has brought new complexity into rhythms, studio production, instrumentation, and a variety of other features that were uniform, less varied, or nonexistent in previous music. Modern compositions, even in narrow musicological terms, do not necessarily provide less depth than their predecessors. The songs of Jerome Kern, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, or the Beatles are arguably no less compositionally complex (and perhaps more complex) than the lieder of Schubert. Schubert wrote about 700 songs, most of which no one ever listens to or analyzes. Many of these songs are technically and compositionally undistinguished, and tend to be formulaic in their melodic treatment. Are "Bill," "Take the A Train," "Crepuscule with Nellie," and "A Day in the Life" really inferior or lesser products? "

― Tyler Cowen , In Praise of Commercial Culture