{"id":1450,"date":"2013-03-31T14:09:07","date_gmt":"2013-03-31T18:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/?p=1450"},"modified":"2013-03-31T14:09:07","modified_gmt":"2013-03-31T18:09:07","slug":"its-easy-to-pick-on-dead-people-v-krenek-no-234362","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/?p=1450","title":{"rendered":"It’s Easy to Pick on Dead People (v. Krenek No. 234362)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m combing my way through Krenek’s set of essays Exploring Music,\u00a0<\/i>and it’s providing some great insight into the man and his beliefs. \u00a0His vignette on Milhaud<\/a> that I wrote about before was really cool. \u00a0I’m currently digesting ‘New Humanity and Old Objectivity’ and some of his views on vernacular forms of art (pop music in this case) are astonishingly backwards. \u00a0The genre or medium of a work should not be taken as a way to blanket judgement of quality. \u00a0I turn it over to Krenek to show you what I mean:<\/p>\n

Now in music the age has found the art that satisfies all its needs–popular music. \u00a0As far as its production and consumption are concerned it corresponds perfectly to the other present-day principles of creation and running. \u00a0Production takes on a conveyor-belt system–wach of the numerous operatives taking part in the process carries out only one ‘repeated, thoroughly leaned action’ as they say in the collective contracts for a given category of industrial workers. \u00a0We hear that there are refrain-specialists, verse-specialists, specialists in\u00a0harmonizing\u00a0the half-finished product, others specially skilled in producing witty or imposing titles; there are others who do the rhymes and specialists in radio, salon, jazz and other orchestration who then put the finished project into its normal commercial package. \u00a0It is rather like a cloth factory where at one end the wool is taken off the sheep and at the other the finished material emerges. \u00a0But in this case the part of the fleeced lamb is played by the unconscious consumer.<\/p>\n

This art is, of course, adjusted to the conditions of a large turnover; the goods are mass-produced, so that production costs are\u00a0lowered\u00a0the articles are almost interchangeable types so that you can get away with an unsubtle, dull feeling for the type and are not disturbed or surprised by individual traits; the material is easy to understand and the words satisfy the hunger for scraps of information in a particularly accessible field half-way between sex and sentiment.<\/p>\n

But of course it must not be thought that this art is deliberately produced because there is a need for it, \u00a0and that its creators could write differently if they chose. \u00a0On the contrary, here as elsewhere the demand is created by the producers, for at bottom the public is indiscriminate, ready for anything. \u00a0The writers cannot do anything else because they themselves cannot rise above this sphere and one cannot but be convinced that they are doing the best they can, for no artist can deliberately write below his real level. \u00a0If anybody says he could just as well write symphonies as pop songs and only writes the songs because they pay better, he is lying, perhaps unconsciously, and ruining his character without improving his talent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Seething through this passage is condescension for writers of pop songs, and popular forms themselves. \u00a0Krenek states that, “if anybody says he could just as well write symphonies as pop songs and only writes the songs because they pay better, he is lying,” but is the inverse true at all? \u00a0Could Krenek have written a single song out of Exile on Mainstreet<\/a>? \u00a0Additionally, the idea that multiple parties coming together to produce a musical track “fleeces the unconscious consumer” is utterly false. \u00a0Does the help Al Green, The Supremes, Beyonc\u00e9, and so many more artists\u00a0receive\u00a0over the course of producing their albums inherently reduce the value of their music? \u00a0There is remarkable depth to some popular songs, this is not a new idea.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Couldn’t write a symphony.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m combing my way through Krenek’s set of essays Exploring Music, and it’s providing some great insight into the man and his beliefs. His vignette on Milhaud that I wrote about before was really cool. I’m currently digesting ‘New Humanity and Old Objectivity’ and some of his views on vernacular forms of art (pop music […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20001,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,61],"tags":[139],"class_list":["post-1450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-philosophy","category-thoughts-on-music","tag-ernst-krenek","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20001"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1450"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1453,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1450\/revisions\/1453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}