Barring classical music, why do music tastes seem more generation-sensitive than film tastes?

For example, with a few exceptions, you’d be hard pressed to find someone over the age of 70 who’s a fan of Dylan or The Beatles. However, Godard, Antonioni, Tarkovsky, et al, had admirers from older generations and younger generarions alike. Basically, the new music of the sixties, with the exception of some jazz, only appealed to ‘young people’, whereas the groundbreaking “art films” appealed to younger and older people alike, provided such works appealed to the sensibility of the individual in question. I don’t have published facts to back this up, but simply mere observation. In any case, I’m sure today even a filmmaker like Joe has an easier time transcending the generational barrier than do artists like Animal Collective, Wilco, Arcade Fire, and even Radiohead. I’m not huge fans of any of the bands I just listed, but I don’t think that really matters with respect to my argument.

Means of dissemination.

I’m not sure it’s about music versus film, I think it’s a little more about the culture behind the art. Indie music is in the same vein as grunge or new wave. It’s off-key, off-beat, sarcastic and countercultural. It’s designed to be hated by the older generation.

Whereas a lot of people who grew up with Dylan and the Beatles are really into the White Stripes.

So you can find older people who appreciate Godard and Tarkovsky who make films to be quiet and philosophical, but can you find older people who would like Children of Men or Fight Club?

It has to do with the expectations from art you form when you’re young, and your entrenchment in the cultural values of that art. The older you get, the harder it is to adjust your values and expectations, and the harder it is to accept art that attacks your values.

Conversely, have you noticed that younger people have an easier time enjoying older art? Younger kids who listen to dance music about people partying and screwing around easily enjoy the Beatles.

You asked the question in the wrong place.People on sites such as this love all sorts of films from different times.The users here are more obsessed with movies than they are with music.Go to sites like rateyourmusic.com etc you’ll find younger people who like Beatles or Dylan.So its a matter of interest,I don’t think there’s a generational barrier.

Well I meant in the sense that Dylan and The Beatles don’t really appeal to people over the age of 70 but appeal to plenty of people below that age up to and including the Millenials. People like Godard and Tarkovsky, on the other hand, appealed to people both older and younger.

re “I’m not sure it’s about music versus film”

One of my composition professors would definitely disagree. I guess if you think about the sheer volume of popular music that has been produced, and the number of permutations of notes and chord progressions and rhythms that have been used already, it’s hard to argue that we need or like new songs because we need new tunes. And yet new songs keep getting produced, and the public has a seemingly insatiable appetite for them. My prof held that pop music wasn’t really about melody and rhythm at all – it’s about the quest for new sound. Most new pop music genres that have emerged (grunge, punk, whatever) distinguish themselves from past pop music because they sound different, not because they use different melodies or rhythms. I’m not sure if you could make a similar argument about film, or at least not one that was as compelling.

I also think there’s this massive kind of social identification around music that doesn’t exist to nearly the same degree with film. I think people generally hold the view that you learn a lot about a person just by finding out what kind of music they like. Anyone young who wants to be ‘cutting edge’ or ‘underground’ or whatever needs to find musical tastes to suit their identity, and if they want to rebel against their parents, they can’t like Dylan or the Beatles – they have to like someone their parents have never heard of.

Hang on.

People over the age of 70 are exactly the people who would get into Dylan and The Beatles — they’re of that generation. Hell, Dylan and the remaining two Beatles are 70! Your argument may have held water in 1965, but do the math.

And, for the record, I know a 78-year-old woman who already has her tix to Jimmy Buffet _and_Bonaroo this summer.

Nowadays, kids listen to what their parents listened to. Generational divides in music have more or less been bridged so I don’t think the premise of this thread is true any longer.

@Flip

I agree that a lot of what determines your taste in pop music is about finding your cultural identity. I would add that pop music is driven by charisma, not composition. The melodies and rhythms don’t matter because they’re being performed in an emotionally engaging way.

When you perform a classical masterpiece the goal is to hit every note perfectly. When you perform a rock classic the goal is to inject your personality into the performance and make it your own.

What you say is true, but I think a lot of it is also about the way younger people love to see their parents values get attacked, and older people hate to see their own values get attacked. At some point when you’re young you pick up ideas about what music is and what music should be. The older you get, the less flexible you are to adjust that expectation you’ve built up.

It is the same with film, it’s just that critically acclaimed films are designed for the tastes of an older audience than critically acclaimed music.

But couldn’t we potentially conclude that songwriting and instrumental composition are perhaps two separate mediums that share similarities, such as utilizing musical notes, but in each case to slightly different ends. The talent of someone like Thelonious Monk or Schubert is merely their ability to create intricate musical compositions, whereas with someone like Neil Young or Bob Dylan it’s creating lyrics and musical notes that are in sync with each other, regardless of the intricacy of the music on its own without the lyrics. Is one set of artists necessarily artistically inferior to the other?

Also, I think someone can inject their personality into the performance of a classical symphony. Just compare Von Karajan’s performance of Mozart’s 40th Symphony to Karl Bohm’s. There are definitely differences between each conductor’s interpretation of a work of classical music.

What I meant by “means of dissemination” is that, basically, for most of its history, music has relied on scores for it’s transmission, so therefore the characteristics that can be best captured via musical notation have traditionally been deemed the most important. With the advent of recording and broadcasting technology, and particularly with rock, which didn’t fully develop as a style until AFTER relatively sophisticated verisons of these technologies existed, it recorded versions of performances that are deemed most important, because these become the primary texts of the work.

Don’t know, folks, if music is generation-specific…If that were the case, why is it I hear more Jim Croce tunes like “Time in a Bottle” piped in to Malls and other gathering spots than almost any other music? (That man, tho’ he died you, appears hugely prolific and lives forever.)

Then, too, there’s always a hearkening back to the 60’s music whenever fun times are referenced…So, I think that period unleashed music that corssed over generations and still does…

The difference between POP and classical is found in one’s spatial understanding of a self. Classical expands one’s understanding beyond the self. POP narrows it down to the personal ‘me’.
Generational acceptance is based on the level of self realization: younger people like the personal attributes of POP – i.e. the song is about me or the song is not about me.

@ Matt means of dissemination

I thought you meant music can be background to an experience, which is much more difficult for a film to do.
Thus an experience can relate to a time in ones life by way of music.

“background to an experience”

In regard to music vs. film, yeah. I have an old friend that I still see occasionally who uses music almost exclusively this way. Just about any old song is immediately and intimately connected to a memory or set of memories, so the songs have a sort of mnemonic value that’s almost entirely separate from musical and lyrical content of the songs.

Matt and Robert make some great points. :-)

> “When you perform a classical masterpiece the goal is to hit every note perfectly.”

I don’t think of classical performance in those terms at all. The ‘goal’ in classical music interpretation is much broader – it has to do with conveying something about the overall form of the work. And while you might need to ‘hit every note perfectly’ to do that, that’s just a byproduct of the real goal.

> “The talent of someone like Thelonious Monk or Schubert is merely their ability to create intricate musical compositions”

Monk seems like an odd example to me, but in any case, ‘intricacy’ is hardly a defining characteristic of a lot of classical music. I’d never describe the work of Satie or Bruckner or Cage as ‘intricate’.

I agree with the spirit of part of what Jirin said insofar as I think one can fairly say that generally speaking, historically, virtuosity is more highly regarded in classical performance than it is in pop, I do also think that there is certainly still room for interpretation in classical performances (I had a prof in college who told me that, though he loved classical music, he refused to buy classical recordings because he didn’t want one particular interpretation to drown out his openness to all the various possibilities a piece presented).

“Is one set of artists necessarily artistically inferior to the other?”

’Course not . . . anymore than lyric poets are inferior to epic poets.

“Also, I think someone can inject their personality into the performance of a classical symphony. Just compare Von Karajan’s performance of Mozart’s 40th Symphony to Karl Bohm’s. There are definitely differences between each conductor’s interpretation of a work of classical music.”

Karajan’s is better by the way.

The difference between POP and classical is found in one’s spatial understanding of a self. Classical expands one’s understanding beyond the self. POP narrows it down to the personal ‘me’.
Generational acceptance is based on the level of self realization: younger people like the personal attributes of POP – i.e. the song is about me or the song is not about me.

I have to call BS on that. Strawberry Fields Forever has nothing to do with me. You’re summing up all pop music by Katy Perry. Classical is about the composition and pop is about the performance, and much of pop music expands your understanding beyond the self. It just does so concretely, whereas classical does it more abstractly and transcendently.

In fact, modern pop music is based on rock music, and rock music is a fusion of two traditions: The storytelling tradition of country and folk music, and the rhythmic tradition of African music.

Lennon talked about the song in 1980: "I was different all my life. The second verse goes, ‘No one I think is in my tree.’ Well, I was too shy and self-doubting. Nobody seems to be as hip as me is what I was saying. Therefore, I must be crazy or a genius—’I mean it must be high or low’ ",and explaining that the song was “psycho-analysis set to music” -wiki

Thar ya go….

“In any case, I’m sure today even a filmmaker like Joe has an easier time transcending the generational barrier

Joe Who?

“Strawberry Fields Forever has nothing to do with me. "

You personally? No of course not, but you could incorporate it into your sense of who you are without it having any “real” connection to you. In fact, that’s almost a definition of pop culture. I think part of what Robert’s saying is that people can identify with what Lennon is expressing in the song in a specific emotional way with out necessarily needing to have been to the Salvation Army Children’s Home in Woolton, or having been alive in February of 1967, etc.

Everytime I listen to Ligeti’s Atmosphers I find it to be part of me. And Varese’s Electronic poem.

Partly… but when you listen to Jennifer Lopez talk about her core Latina audience and then listen to the tweenies talk about the music, it is not transcendence that is occurring.

Unlike listening to Ralph Vaughan Williams ’ The Lark Ascending, where one might find a piece of themselves in part of the whole.

What I really hate in POP music is how sincere tand personal it usually pretends to be . Maybe that is part of your argument. JLo’s or Huey Lewis “just down home with my pals” kind of garbage Not to mention Country Western music Give me The Fall’s or Bowie’s gossolalia anyday.

I wonder what Mozart directing his own music sounded like; would it have been much more different than modern interpretations of it?

Also, Jirin, I thought country music was itself based on the Blues tradition stemming from the south, itself originating from African-American musical practices and so on—or am I wrong?

“I thought country music was itself based on the Blues tradition stemming from the south, itself originating from African-American musical practices and so on—or am I wrong?”

Partly yes and partly no. It’s generally accepted to have been jointed derived from the blues and from a variety of traditional folk music styles imported from abroad by Europeans who came to the US and settled in the Appalachian Mountains and elsewhere in the rural American South.

Dismissing country music out of hand is, to my mind, akin to dismissing the folk music tradition of any culture out of hand. Maybe it seems acceptable to dismiss country music because we’re talking about the folk music tradition of white Americans, but I often have the impression that people who dismiss country music don’t even know what it really is.

And it’s interesting to bring up Ligeti in a discussion of whether classical music addresses concerns beyond the personal. After all, Ligeti composed Atmospheres, and Lux Aeterna, and the titles of those pieces alone indicate at least that he had something extra-personal in mind. And his compositional innovations (micropolyphony, say) or even some of his pieces (0’00’’) can only really be appreciated in the context of music history – they definitely take at least some of their meaning from how they relate to earlier music. I’d say mostly the same things about Varese, actually.

Of course, Ligeti’s music can speak to individuals on a very personal level as well – I’d probably defend the position that almost all worthwhile music does – but it certainly does more than just that.

@RWP

I’m not objecting to your statements about tweeny-pop, I’m objecting to your generalization of tweeny-pop to all music that would fall under the umbrella of pop. Yeah, Justin Bieber is all about how the music relates to yourself, but you can’t apply that to Bob Dylan, or Jimi Hendrix, or Radiohead, or Elvis Costello, or any of the bands along that line.

It’s true they’re not as ‘transcendent’ as classical music, because they’re more concrete. They’re stories told with a melody and beat.

Also, if you think there’s no worthwhile country music, try listening to Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Gram Parsons, Loretta Lynn, etc. Ignore those cowboy hat posers.

@Darvish

You’re absolutely right, all evolutions of music are influenced by all previous evolutions of music. Rock, for instance, was more directly influenced by R&B, which was very influenced by country. And there’s a lot of bluegrass in rock.

> Also, if you think there’s no worthwhile country music, try listening to Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Gram Parsons, Loretta Lynn

And Townes Van Zandt!