The question being, if you have the freedom to choose
between a few things that are, for all practical purposes, the same, do you
really have a freedom of choice? Once upon a time, there was but one Catholic
Church and the service was in Latin and there was NO music.
No freedom of choice there. One couldn’t say ‘honey, let’s
pop down to the new church on the corner and hear the service in German, so
we’d know what the hell their saying, and maybe they’ll have some nice lute
music.’
No, there was none of that. Of course, we’re talking about
the Dark Ages.
Then Martin Luther thought he’d just translate the service
into German, not change anything, mind you, and for that he was excommunicated.
So, as far as music went first you had the Church
controlling things and then it sort of shifted over to Royalty and such,
supporting music, so they had control and wanted mostly party music.
So, all the while the composers dreamt of being free and
letting the public decide, so they began to publish the music and sell tickets
to their concerts.
It wasn’t long before the music business reared its head and
started deciding what the ‘public’ liked.
And today, the music business thinks it has this down to a
science. They aren’t worried about what the public will like because that’s for
them to decide.
They decide and call the tune. The media uses propaganda;
thinly disguised as news to create whatever scene they choose.
This is why the music scene has not changed appreciably in
the last forty years or so. I daresay this is probably why the classical
tradition, which was barreling along, producing musical genius after musical
genius came to a grinding halt not long after Beethoven. Some attribute it to
the Age of Reason but a Beethoven surely could not function under the constraints
of ‘popular demand,’ as defined by the business.
The composer Hector Berlioz literally ‘dumbed himself down’
enough to win a competition in France that would give him enough money to go
off and write as he pleased.
So the ones that have been consistently bypassed in all of
this is the public and the question remains; how do you like it?
