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America's Lost Musical Culture
America's musical culture is being lost in an avalanche of cheap television, movies and music. America's proving ground is the marketplace. We have the music we do today because that is what people buy.
But what about our cultural heritage? We should not sell it to the highest bidder. Unfortunately, it already has been.
Piano Is Easy
Classical Music Is Not Popular
The marketplace in America has determined that classical music is not popular. Thus all the classical radio stations suddenly disappeared a few years ago. Talk and other more lucrative formats replaced classical stations. Americans allowed that musical heritage to pass practically without a fight.
The New York Times abandoned the largest classical music station is the USA. And why did the New York Times sell WQXR? Because the location on the radio dial had become worth millions. The greedy folks at the New York Times sold out your musical heritage for a cheap, quick dollar.
No One Is Preserving Your Musical Heritage
How's that for preserving your heritage? The very corporation who claims to be the conservator and benefactor of American culture jettisoned the bastion of western culture. Remember the above in case you think anyone is looking out for your culture, America.
The huge corporations are the ones selling and buying. They have left you out of the picture. Eventually, there will be only the culture the corporations allow you.
Commercialization Of Culture
The symphony orchestras are all underwritten by huge corporations now. They will pull the plug when it doesn't make money. Thus you can expect the symphony orchestra to go the way of the classical radio station. Ever visited the Metropolitan Opera in New York?
Have you taken your child to see what was entertainment before television? I'll bet not. And here's why: it costs $200 a ticket. In Europe, where culture is not left up to the highest bidder, a ticket to the opera can cost as little as $5.
Subsidizing Culture
In America, we can subsidize poisonous medicines, rotten food, killing machines and destructive energy policies, but culture is out of luck. There's no money left for culture after buying all those bombs. And don't whine about all the money spent by the National Endowment for the Arts. That money is earmarked for the cronies of the Art Power Elite.
No one ever gets an NEA grant based on merit. It is 100% dirty politics. I predict that the New York Philharmonic will become the Burger King Symphonic Ensemble in the year 2062, if not sooner. Now get me an NEA grant to study that.
REFERENCES
Music History
What Killed the Golden Age of the Piano
Carl Tausig Cooks His Cat
I Meet Aaron Copland
George Sand Killed Chopin
Why Brahms Must Have Been Fat
Artur Rubinstein Was A Vampire
Igor Stravinsky Loses His Cool
Vladimir Horowitz Goes To The Racetrack
Beethoven Was No Beauty
The World’s Largest Blue Danube Waltz
Was Mozart Murdered?
Beethoven’s Rage Over A Lost Penny
Franz Schubert, The First Bohemian
Chopin’s Singing Piano Tone
Stravinsky’s Good Luck
Tchaikovsky’s Greatest Fan
Hector Berlioz and the Orchestral Train Wreck
Piano Lessons with Papa Bach
Piano Lessons with Frederic Chopin
The Great Piano Craze of 1910
The American Piano Wars
Why Hugo Wolf Went Insane
Rachmaninoff and the Evolution of Pop Songs
Musical Feuds
Piano In The Past Was Better
The Master’s Hands
Einstein’s Piano
Einstein’s Violin Improvisations In Gypsy Style
A History of Piano and Numbers
Ryan Seacrest’s Piano Concerto #2
