Some thoughts on the progress of music

DEAR EDITOR:

How did the word “old” come to have a pejorative connotation? I’m guessing by way of the reprehensible Big Media, advertising and entertainment conglomerates. Actually, I’m asserting it. Old used to go hand in glove with “venerable,” and “wise.” No longer. It now seems to be partnered with “stodgy,” “out-dated,” along with a litany of other unfavorable stigmas.

Being old myself, I much prefer the “venerable” appellation; especially when it comes to music, my identity and my life-long pursuit. Over the last 2000 years, music was a slow, steady crescendo of progress. Newer and better instruments, ever brighter composers using those instruments to the fullest, and intelligent and informed followers of music taking piano lessons and thus learning about music theory, composition, harmony, and technical skills made for a highly advanced civilization. Music enhances all the other learning endeavors. It’s central to an advanced society. There is nothing in the world better than a symphony concert, or an opera. Both embody the combined brilliance of composer and musicians, architecture, and nowadays sound and recording engineers, along with decorators and lighting specialists. And most of those events are centered around music that is old! And it moves people in ways that new and young music most often does not.

I’m left to contend that that very long, slow crescendo of progress in art and music I mentioned earlier reached a climax some time ago, and that it has since turned into a rather abrupt and deeply disappointing decrescendo. I wonder what the exact date was. As far as classical music, I’d say circa 1950; Shostakovich excepted. With popular music, I’d say, come to think of it, about the same time, not that there weren’t a few good songs created afterwards. Hey! Isn’t that about when television first appeared? I would also say, and get mostly boos for my trouble, that the inception of Rock n Roll was like a D-11 bulldozer, leveling and destroying almost all of the great beauty that went before it. Kern, Porter, Berlin, Gershwin, and so many more, with songs like, In the Still of the Night, So in Love, All the Things You Are, All Alone, and all the other 400 or so in the Great American Songbook. One of those fabulous songs is titled I’m Old Fashioned, and that’s where I’ll leave it. Let’s hear it for old!

Harry Hagan

Powder Springs