Does modern society experience music differently than previous centuries?

That is correct, but without drugs we'd have a very different musical landscape today.

reply to post by yakuzakid


How so exactly, and in what way would it be changed if that were the case?

Yes....i still have no idea how people like heavy metal.... Playing fallout 3 i started listening to old music and they just sound beautiful

What an interesting discussion, this is a point that I have been thinking about for a while. Ever heard ‘Video killed the radio star’, by the Buggles? No doubt that music videos have changed the way the mass appreciate music. Music is an abstract thing, even sung music. Accompanying song with sight helps people relate to the song and sells records.

200 years ago music could only be heard via performance or by playing it yourself. What I think we have lost in this culture is the personal intimacy of music and the community appreciation of music.

Record labels have turned music into a business and that is why pop music is often shallow. More work goes into the image of bands and musicians than the music itself. I think this is because the youth appreciate visuals over sound. I find that a lot contemporary pop is immature, a notch up from the Wiggles.

As for the question: ‘did people appreciate the music in a different way a few hundred years ago as compared to how we allegedly appreciate it now?’

Yes and no. As already mentioned, music in the past was often played with performance. We wouldn’t have Opera or Ballet or dance in general if not. Folk music was played in pubs with people joining in, singing and dancing. If you want to go back as far as ancient Greece and Rome, symposiums hired dancers for entertainment. Performance has always been used to add an additional element to music, including passions of battle, love and sex.

In general we appreciate all art forms differently from the past, art galleries are very new as are novels. Ever since the middle class has become a majority all entertainment has become massed produced.

reply to post by goatman


Thanks for your in depth answer to the question in the op.
We are in agreement.
One thing I have always found interesting is how the mentality and vision change with the kind of music played.
For example, I may be wrong about this but I may have read some where that the kind of music that was often times played during gladiatorial combat in Ancient Rome was not nearly as rough and tumble as people may assume based on movies like gladiator and the like. But rather was very upbeat and almost comical by our current standards.

Something not unlike the Benny hill theme song.
imagine the following being played for a bloody gladiator fight.

Originally posted by snowen20
reply to post by goatman

 

Something not unlike the Benny hill theme song.
imagine the following being played for a bloody gladiator fight.

Yes! Roman and Greek music could be considered tasteless compared to our more advanced music of later times such as Beethoven or Mozart. From what we know of ancient music was mostly used as an accompaniment. To our ears their music may seem very annoying and primitive. Unfortunately I cannot use YouTube, but look up Synaulia, it is a well researched and closely reconstructed Roman music.

Also on a side note: The classical music we hear today would sound different from what Beethoven would of played in his day. It's like using a electrical guitar to play traditional flamenco. The instruments and arrangement of classical music is often changed to how it was originally intended.

reply to post by snowen20


I wonder what sort of musical accompaniment was played for the rapes, bestiality and battle re-enactments? Musicians did not enjoy any high ranking status and music was not really viewed as an art form but rather as a means of entertainment.

Gladiatorial games began with an elaborate procession that included the combatants and was led by the sponsor of the games, the editor; in Rome during the imperial period, this usually was the emperor, and in the provinces it was a high-ranking magistrate. The parade and subsequent events were often accompanied by music

The hydraulis or hydraulic organ was the first keyboard instrument in the history of world music (invented by a Roman)

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