The Auditory

www.thebitingpoint.wordpress.com

Here at The Auditory, we make it our business to cover all different types of music without discrimination. I hope you agree that there is equal value to be found in every corner of the musical world, and that that is why we have you as our followers. Unfortunately, the vast majority of classical music culture and the listeners of classical music aren’t graced with this kind of scope and open-mindedness.

If you’ve spent enough time in an institution, or even reading classical music criticism in the papers, you’re bound to have recognised a hangover from Romantic aesthetics in how the majority of listeners still love to talk and think about music. It is this hangover that teaches us the canon of the ‘great’ composers, and what their works of ‘genius’ are. You may also have noticed that despite this supposed greatness, classical music occupies a pretty small place in contemporary artistic culture. Something surely doesn’t quite add up when what is supposed to be the greatest music of all time is a total niche culture. This isn’t to suggest that the music isn’t wonderful, but I honestly believe it is worth questioning the alienating ways in which we can talk, write, and promote classical music. It is marketed predominately towards those who have already been indoctrinated with classical cultural values. Unfortunately, since the majority of people have not, the majority of people miss out. 

The Biting Point is a new blog by a composer and critic working under the pseudonym eidelyn. He outlines more successfully than I have ever read before the ways in which classical culture is self-destructively swallowing itself. It also sets out the ways in which classical music can engage with the positive aspects of popular culture and popular music in order to clamber our of the hole of insularity that its devotees have dug for it. If you are at all interested in the future of art music, then read his manifesto and spread the word to all of your friends and their mothers. There are some very radical ideas that I am sure a lot of you might take issue with, but my belief is that we need this kind of radical upheaval in order for art music to reclaim its positive as a dominant force in contemporary artistic culture.

JJA