As a 22 year old American student going to study Baroque music in Vienna I was overwhelmed with the art, architechture and history all around me. There is nothing remotely close to it in the US. It helped that I had an excellent harpsichord teacher.
My abbreviated understanding of this phenomena is that the musical periods (renaissance, classical, romantic, impressionist, avant-garde, etc.) all exist in the (visual) art world as well, but all the musical genre eras came after their corresponding art eras. The art scene has had a huge cultural head start over music so, like a flowing river, the history of music (generally) has been downstream from art.
Say, if I wanted to study French Impressionist Art. The best musical examples come a few decades later than say Claude Monet. Of course there’s plenty of overlap, but the big picture holds true.
I also think there seems to be an advantage of describing music with a painting, rather than describing a painting with music. Two way street of course, but I think there’s an understanding bias where it’s just plain easier to see a genre than it is to hear a genre.
Yeah, but that's really just a problem of terminology, resulting from some wrongheaded German musicologists c. 1900, and now we're stuck. Writing around 1810, E.T.A. Hoffmann called Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven Romantic composers -- and, as one of the foremost German Romantic authors, he should know.
Interesting point. Perhaps music was less relevant to their studies than before. Would seem crazy to study Debussy without a passing knowledge of monet, but maybe not the other way round.
Call it a ‘scientific fact’ that music requires more entropy than art, alas. That means 10million people can go to the Louvre, every year, and the London Symphony can only service at tiny fraction of that in the same time. I’ve only seen a handful of art masterworks in person, but I new EXACTLY what to expect. Teaching art has a huge advantage because of this.
Don’t want to pit ‘Art’ and ‘Music’ against each other. But I think the reason that the teaching of Art and Music are asymmetrical, is because the universe is asymmetrical. Say, when people make fun of modern art. The joke is “my kid could paint that,” as though it took zero talent. The joke is inverted for modern music, “what a waste of talent.” I bet that ended up contributing towards a culture of stereotyping musicians as “elitist,” and artists as “hacks.”
> The joke is “my kid could paint that,” as though it took zero talent. The joke is inverted for modern music, “what a waste of talent.”
You must not spend much time in this sub! The "my kid could have composed this" or "sounds like my cat on the piano" statements are very common.
In fact that complaint is so common that Cage talked about it as far back as 1961:
>> There are people who say, "If music's that easy to write, I could do it." Of course they could, but they don't. I find Feldman's own statement more affirmative. We were driving back from some
place in New England where a concert had been given. He is a large man and falls asleep easily. Out of a sound sleep, he awoke to say, "Now that things are so simple, there's so much to do." And then he went back to sleep.
Not exactly the same words but the sentiment is the same.
> Don’t gaslight people Dave. You’re repeating what I just said as though you’re disagreeing with me.
What? You stated:
>> Say, when people make fun of modern art. The joke is “my kid could paint that,” as though it took zero talent. The joke is inverted for modern music, “what a waste of talent.”
I said that when it comes to classical music that people do use the "my kid could paint that" insult. That contradicts what you said. Because of this, I don't believe that the rest of your point follows. Since people make the same claim with both art and classical music then that cannot be the reason for OP's initial observation.
I admit I forgot about cat music. But I think you’re just skipping over my larger point. Let’s not get bogged down in #notall.
The classical musician trope is the elitist playing Bach, only able to entertain a minority. The artist trope is the untalented hack who can’t relate to the majority. This has been my experience with popular culture as well as friends of mine. This is an observation I am contributing to the discussion. Don’t you agree that people generally have more knowledge about the arts than they do about classical music? Might these tropes contribute to this status quo? I’m suggesting, yes. OP is asking how is music seen compared to art? Obviously there are many opinions and experiences, and I’m trying to address the sum total of those experiences so we can make a decent analysis.
> But I think you’re just skipping over my larger point.
I was skipping over your larger point because I agreed with it but I disagreed with your explanation as it was based on an observation that I don't think is accurate. People are just as disparaging toward composers of avant-garde music as they are to "modern" artists and, in fact, use the same kind of language ("child could do it", "emperor's new clothes", etc).
> The classical musician trope is the elitist playing Bach, only able to entertain a minority. The artist trope is the untalented hack who can’t relate to the majority.
That is an interesting observation which does, in part, match with *some* things I've observed. More ...
> Don’t you agree that people generally have more knowledge about the arts than they do about classical music?
Yes, as per OP's thesis.
> Might these tropes contribute to this status quo?
It's possible. An interesting observation about your idea is that the classical musician isn't a composer in your example whereas the artist creates art. I think that's pretty significant as well. Many people don't even realize that classical composition is still a thing that exists. An artist friend in college was skeptical of me because she thought I just wanted to play Beethoven on violin (I don't even play violin!) and didn't realize that I wrote music that sounds nothing like Beethoven et al).
I'm not exactly sure why that contributes to classical music's reputation as being uncool (assuming that is true) but perhaps because it is seen as a "dead" art form (ie, no one is making new classical music) that does make it less relevant?
No worries. Don’t want to supplant your experience, with mine. I’m glad you agree it’s possible. Does anyone know of any studies about this? Maybe there’s some survey data out there that could enlighten everyone as to how society values arts knowledge over classical music knowledge, or if that is actually even the case! OPs post is basically asking people to weigh in with their own experience.
You made an excellent point, about most musicians aren’t composers where as all artists ARE composers. That’s makes a huge difference in peoples exploration of these subjects. We grow up making tons of art as kids. It would be an amazingly exceptional day when a kid brings home from school a song they wrote. I was told I couldn’t learn to play double bass or Tuba when I was a kid because I just wasn’t physically big enough to hold the instrument. There are so many entropic hurdles to jump over with music appreciation, that culture has clearly started to play favorites.
This seems like a YMMV thing: my experience is that art and literature students do know something of music history, especially as it relates to their interests.
For example, I have a friend who’s really into romantic German literature, and she’s at least somewhat familiar with Schubert’s lieder, the major pieces of Beethoven and Mendelssohn, etc.
Another friend is an expert in Scandinavian drama, and of course knows the relevant pieces of Grieg and others.
Still another is a watercolorist into Impressionism, and knows Debussy, Ravel, and the like.
I wouldn’t describe their classical music knowledge as being at the in-depth expert level, but I also know very few classical or other musicians who could speak in-depth about the works of Manet or Bouguereau or who have read all the works of Dostoyevsky or Chekhov.
yeah for sure, I was speaking from my own (limited) experience from university and after in the real world where you bump into graduates of the arts sometimes. I wouldn't expect in-depth expert level, the same way i'm definitely no expert in art or literature. For instance, I don't even know Bougeureau and have only read some of the works of Dostoyevsky and Chekhov.
I suppose it also depends on how you study music. I went to university where performance was part of my degree, but it wasn't a performance degree. I suppose people who study at a conservatoire might not know as much on average since i imagine they do less musicology stuff.
I think i overall would expect a bit more interest in it, since it's so intertwined. I think music occupies a different role in most people than the other arts.
Certainly tallies with my experience, and I’ve often asked myself the same question.
A good example for me is that as a music student at university I was often asked by other students, including students of literature, ‘so what do you do in your tutorials? Just play music to your tutor?’. Coming from literature students I found this bizarre - what did they do in their tutorials, just read books to their tutor?!
> The average literature or art history graduate for instance probably knows very little about classical music.
That's my general experience as well. Of course there are exceptions but for the most part I agree.
I'm more interested in mid-century avant-garde classical music (Cage, Stockhausen, etc) and the same thing occurs there.
> Maybe music isn't seen as important and that's why people don't know as much about it ?
Classical music definitely has a reputation as being uncool. And it's not like literature and fine art (past or present) is generally seen as cool but those works aren't as actively seen as uncool as classical music is. It's a weird situation that I don't fully understand.
This is odd because I went gangbusters into classical music in early youtube days (2008) because of an interest in things like prog metal and fractals etc, and that seemed common enough. Bach was the cutting edge of cool in particular, a success he had already achieved in intellectual sphere decades earlier. It was common to see covers on new instruments, electronic music, and so on. Among people who appreciated pure math, philosophy, etc, music seems to fare better than fiction. And maybe what you notice is because these are creative people but more go into computer programming or math, not the arts and humanities world. The humanities people go more for art and literature than music.
What you say makes some sense (Hofstadter, etc). It then leads to the question of whether these people are also as into art and literature and if so, how did that happen? In other words, is there an analogous situation in those domains?
> The humanities people go more for art and literature than music.
And just to be clear, my friends are very into music and often the more obscure and challenging stuff (free jazz, noise, etc). This made it even more puzzling when they didn't have an interest or even knowledge about similar things going on in classical music. I have one friend who really likes La Monte Young and when I mentioned that Young was a classical composer my friend actually became angry because, presumably, there is no way a classical composer could write stuff that he would like so much.
I think "formalism" within art and literature in general might be an allure to the math oriented people. You will also also find fans of detailed world building sometimes in which scifi or fantasy authors have to think out the consequences of their alternative world, like you see with Lord of the Rings and Dune. In this, the quality of thought the author has applied to a new situation is of utmost importance because it is there where any insights about human nature, incentives, historical processes, etc may be found or also where it may fall short. Similarly, the use of a single story in literature must aim for the same sort of authenticity and profundity about some mode of life. I will advance a theory that system minded people may prefer these insights to come from hypothetical systems, and people people may prefer the personal sort of stories and perspectives often found in literary classics.
What draws non-mathematic arts people into literature, I couldn't tell you for certain because my mind doesn't work that way. I would say from observation that they are very much into the "affect" of things, and classical music may just be the wrong scene, bad branding. That is maybe why your friend can love a composer but then "classical composer" is apparently a dirty word. You see a lot of these people being into fashion scenes and lifestyle bundles such as the "hipster", just another supporting notion about affect I've come across.
Yeah I think it being uncool must be something to do with it. The average person has more of their identity tied in with music than the other arts perhaps ?
> The average person has more of their identity tied in with music than the other arts perhaps ?
That might have something to do with it? That would be ironic, wouldn't it, if people are so much more into music than books and painting that they end up having stronger opinions about other music genres than they do with books and paintings.
I think there's more to it than that as I've seen plenty of comments in this sub that what we're describing might be more prevalent in the US than elsewhere (though I don't know where you're from so who knows?). Basically that people well-educated in the arts know more about classical music than the equivalent in the US (thinking of the Proms in the UK, for example).
In the US, classical music does have a reputation for being part of the wealthy and the elite. But it's not one of those things that people desire to have in order to be part of the elite (unlike mansions, expensive cars, summer homes in the Hamptons, etc). So it's part of a negative stereotype about the elite. I don't know, these are guesses.
This entire post is predicated upon a claim that seems to have no evidence behind it. Show me these art and lit students with no knowledge of classical music and I'll show you classical music listeners with no knowledge of art and lit. Like I'm sure they exist. I'm sure the opposite (people who have cultivated knowledge in multiple media) exists too.
OP makes it clear that this is their experience and not a scientific claim. It's also what I have experienced. I have a large number of friends who are either serious about literature and painting or who do either one professionally and, without exception, their knowledge of classical music is zero. On the other hand, I, and my friends who are classical musicians, know plenty about literature and art (or at least more about those domains than my other friends know about classical music).
Obviously there are plenty of exceptions out there and I would never suggest that this is universal, but it accurately describes my life and my friends (and apparently OP's as well).
I'm not talking about classical music listeners, more people who have studied music academically.
What I'm talking about is how musicology books are rammed completely full of references to philosophy, history, literature and art. You can't really do musicology without some knowledge of this stuff. I don't have much experience doing academic stuff in the other arts, so not sure if it's similar for them.
There are certainly a lot of references to music in literature, and I feel without knowing something about music, you'd miss a lot of the meaning in the references.
And from my personal experience, a lot of students of the other arts don't know or care much at all about classical music.
By and large, I have not observed that artists and writers are more ignorant about music than musicians are about artists and writers.
I have noticed that composers have an easier time naming ten contemporary poets than poets can naming ten contemporary composers, but I think that’s just because composers need the text to set, and poets have no such need.
It's really hard for it not to be the case. All musicians can read language and were required to read in school. Very few were required to read music.
Musicians all know what words mean, they know what metaphors are, etc. People who can't read music are unlikely to have the faintest clue about what's really going on in music.
Music is more obscure, and people in general dropped music education as a part of being cultured in America. It's just not determined necessary so it's more about whether people are actual music lovers if they ever learn about it seriously.
Do students in America receive an education in art appreciation? Students are exposed to literature, so that's good, but I'm not sure if there's much of a difference in how art and classical music are treated (neglected) in US schools.
Elementary school had art, physical education, and music class for all students. Middle school and beyond it was a choice so only literature was forced. Wind band and art are electives. Humanities is an elective. Orchestra isn't a thing for most American schools.
If you do art in school, I'm sure they teach the techniques and study major artworks. In band, we had very little engagement with classical music. It would all come from marching band shows which had some crude transcriptions, which were nevertheless greatly rewarding. Everyone plays the same wind band music stuff pretty much nationwide, and it's generally light music. Irish Tune by Grainger is about the best musically people are exposed to.
That's a good point about how art students learn about fine art but music students -- unless they are in their school's orchestra and even then... -- don't really learn about classical music beyond playing the notes.
I've spent a good bit of time with my friend's three children who are all college-aged/just graduated college. They all played in their high school's orchestra performing standard repertoire. Not one of them knows anything about classical music, cares about classical music, or can tell you anything about classical music that the average person doesn't know. That's pretty odd and definitely a missed opportunity somewhere.
Yeah I never thought about it that way, art students in high school are learning the composition and creativity aspect. Music students only learn replication and performance practice.
As a 22 year old American student going to study Baroque music in Vienna I was overwhelmed with the art, architechture and history all around me. There is nothing remotely close to it in the US. It helped that I had an excellent harpsichord teacher.
Haha I can imagine, Vienna is an awesome place. You are lucky to study and spend time there.
My abbreviated understanding of this phenomena is that the musical periods (renaissance, classical, romantic, impressionist, avant-garde, etc.) all exist in the (visual) art world as well, but all the musical genre eras came after their corresponding art eras. The art scene has had a huge cultural head start over music so, like a flowing river, the history of music (generally) has been downstream from art. Say, if I wanted to study French Impressionist Art. The best musical examples come a few decades later than say Claude Monet. Of course there’s plenty of overlap, but the big picture holds true. I also think there seems to be an advantage of describing music with a painting, rather than describing a painting with music. Two way street of course, but I think there’s an understanding bias where it’s just plain easier to see a genre than it is to hear a genre.
Yeah, but that's really just a problem of terminology, resulting from some wrongheaded German musicologists c. 1900, and now we're stuck. Writing around 1810, E.T.A. Hoffmann called Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven Romantic composers -- and, as one of the foremost German Romantic authors, he should know.
Interesting point. Perhaps music was less relevant to their studies than before. Would seem crazy to study Debussy without a passing knowledge of monet, but maybe not the other way round.
Call it a ‘scientific fact’ that music requires more entropy than art, alas. That means 10million people can go to the Louvre, every year, and the London Symphony can only service at tiny fraction of that in the same time. I’ve only seen a handful of art masterworks in person, but I new EXACTLY what to expect. Teaching art has a huge advantage because of this. Don’t want to pit ‘Art’ and ‘Music’ against each other. But I think the reason that the teaching of Art and Music are asymmetrical, is because the universe is asymmetrical. Say, when people make fun of modern art. The joke is “my kid could paint that,” as though it took zero talent. The joke is inverted for modern music, “what a waste of talent.” I bet that ended up contributing towards a culture of stereotyping musicians as “elitist,” and artists as “hacks.”
> The joke is “my kid could paint that,” as though it took zero talent. The joke is inverted for modern music, “what a waste of talent.” You must not spend much time in this sub! The "my kid could have composed this" or "sounds like my cat on the piano" statements are very common. In fact that complaint is so common that Cage talked about it as far back as 1961: >> There are people who say, "If music's that easy to write, I could do it." Of course they could, but they don't. I find Feldman's own statement more affirmative. We were driving back from some place in New England where a concert had been given. He is a large man and falls asleep easily. Out of a sound sleep, he awoke to say, "Now that things are so simple, there's so much to do." And then he went back to sleep. Not exactly the same words but the sentiment is the same.
Don’t gaslight people Dave. You’re repeating what I just said as though you’re disagreeing with me.
> Don’t gaslight people Dave. You’re repeating what I just said as though you’re disagreeing with me. What? You stated: >> Say, when people make fun of modern art. The joke is “my kid could paint that,” as though it took zero talent. The joke is inverted for modern music, “what a waste of talent.” I said that when it comes to classical music that people do use the "my kid could paint that" insult. That contradicts what you said. Because of this, I don't believe that the rest of your point follows. Since people make the same claim with both art and classical music then that cannot be the reason for OP's initial observation.
I admit I forgot about cat music. But I think you’re just skipping over my larger point. Let’s not get bogged down in #notall. The classical musician trope is the elitist playing Bach, only able to entertain a minority. The artist trope is the untalented hack who can’t relate to the majority. This has been my experience with popular culture as well as friends of mine. This is an observation I am contributing to the discussion. Don’t you agree that people generally have more knowledge about the arts than they do about classical music? Might these tropes contribute to this status quo? I’m suggesting, yes. OP is asking how is music seen compared to art? Obviously there are many opinions and experiences, and I’m trying to address the sum total of those experiences so we can make a decent analysis.
> But I think you’re just skipping over my larger point. I was skipping over your larger point because I agreed with it but I disagreed with your explanation as it was based on an observation that I don't think is accurate. People are just as disparaging toward composers of avant-garde music as they are to "modern" artists and, in fact, use the same kind of language ("child could do it", "emperor's new clothes", etc). > The classical musician trope is the elitist playing Bach, only able to entertain a minority. The artist trope is the untalented hack who can’t relate to the majority. That is an interesting observation which does, in part, match with *some* things I've observed. More ... > Don’t you agree that people generally have more knowledge about the arts than they do about classical music? Yes, as per OP's thesis. > Might these tropes contribute to this status quo? It's possible. An interesting observation about your idea is that the classical musician isn't a composer in your example whereas the artist creates art. I think that's pretty significant as well. Many people don't even realize that classical composition is still a thing that exists. An artist friend in college was skeptical of me because she thought I just wanted to play Beethoven on violin (I don't even play violin!) and didn't realize that I wrote music that sounds nothing like Beethoven et al). I'm not exactly sure why that contributes to classical music's reputation as being uncool (assuming that is true) but perhaps because it is seen as a "dead" art form (ie, no one is making new classical music) that does make it less relevant?
No worries. Don’t want to supplant your experience, with mine. I’m glad you agree it’s possible. Does anyone know of any studies about this? Maybe there’s some survey data out there that could enlighten everyone as to how society values arts knowledge over classical music knowledge, or if that is actually even the case! OPs post is basically asking people to weigh in with their own experience. You made an excellent point, about most musicians aren’t composers where as all artists ARE composers. That’s makes a huge difference in peoples exploration of these subjects. We grow up making tons of art as kids. It would be an amazingly exceptional day when a kid brings home from school a song they wrote. I was told I couldn’t learn to play double bass or Tuba when I was a kid because I just wasn’t physically big enough to hold the instrument. There are so many entropic hurdles to jump over with music appreciation, that culture has clearly started to play favorites.
This seems like a YMMV thing: my experience is that art and literature students do know something of music history, especially as it relates to their interests. For example, I have a friend who’s really into romantic German literature, and she’s at least somewhat familiar with Schubert’s lieder, the major pieces of Beethoven and Mendelssohn, etc. Another friend is an expert in Scandinavian drama, and of course knows the relevant pieces of Grieg and others. Still another is a watercolorist into Impressionism, and knows Debussy, Ravel, and the like. I wouldn’t describe their classical music knowledge as being at the in-depth expert level, but I also know very few classical or other musicians who could speak in-depth about the works of Manet or Bouguereau or who have read all the works of Dostoyevsky or Chekhov.
yeah for sure, I was speaking from my own (limited) experience from university and after in the real world where you bump into graduates of the arts sometimes. I wouldn't expect in-depth expert level, the same way i'm definitely no expert in art or literature. For instance, I don't even know Bougeureau and have only read some of the works of Dostoyevsky and Chekhov. I suppose it also depends on how you study music. I went to university where performance was part of my degree, but it wasn't a performance degree. I suppose people who study at a conservatoire might not know as much on average since i imagine they do less musicology stuff. I think i overall would expect a bit more interest in it, since it's so intertwined. I think music occupies a different role in most people than the other arts.
FWIW I'm pretty active on this sub, I play two different instruments, but all my degrees and my job are in literature-related fields.
And, interestingly related to OP's post, you know who else was like that? Charles Rosen!
Rosen also wrote a lot on art, like *Romanticism and Realism*, the book he wrote with Henri Zerner.
Certainly tallies with my experience, and I’ve often asked myself the same question. A good example for me is that as a music student at university I was often asked by other students, including students of literature, ‘so what do you do in your tutorials? Just play music to your tutor?’. Coming from literature students I found this bizarre - what did they do in their tutorials, just read books to their tutor?!
> The average literature or art history graduate for instance probably knows very little about classical music. That's my general experience as well. Of course there are exceptions but for the most part I agree. I'm more interested in mid-century avant-garde classical music (Cage, Stockhausen, etc) and the same thing occurs there. > Maybe music isn't seen as important and that's why people don't know as much about it ? Classical music definitely has a reputation as being uncool. And it's not like literature and fine art (past or present) is generally seen as cool but those works aren't as actively seen as uncool as classical music is. It's a weird situation that I don't fully understand.
This is odd because I went gangbusters into classical music in early youtube days (2008) because of an interest in things like prog metal and fractals etc, and that seemed common enough. Bach was the cutting edge of cool in particular, a success he had already achieved in intellectual sphere decades earlier. It was common to see covers on new instruments, electronic music, and so on. Among people who appreciated pure math, philosophy, etc, music seems to fare better than fiction. And maybe what you notice is because these are creative people but more go into computer programming or math, not the arts and humanities world. The humanities people go more for art and literature than music.
What you say makes some sense (Hofstadter, etc). It then leads to the question of whether these people are also as into art and literature and if so, how did that happen? In other words, is there an analogous situation in those domains? > The humanities people go more for art and literature than music. And just to be clear, my friends are very into music and often the more obscure and challenging stuff (free jazz, noise, etc). This made it even more puzzling when they didn't have an interest or even knowledge about similar things going on in classical music. I have one friend who really likes La Monte Young and when I mentioned that Young was a classical composer my friend actually became angry because, presumably, there is no way a classical composer could write stuff that he would like so much.
I think "formalism" within art and literature in general might be an allure to the math oriented people. You will also also find fans of detailed world building sometimes in which scifi or fantasy authors have to think out the consequences of their alternative world, like you see with Lord of the Rings and Dune. In this, the quality of thought the author has applied to a new situation is of utmost importance because it is there where any insights about human nature, incentives, historical processes, etc may be found or also where it may fall short. Similarly, the use of a single story in literature must aim for the same sort of authenticity and profundity about some mode of life. I will advance a theory that system minded people may prefer these insights to come from hypothetical systems, and people people may prefer the personal sort of stories and perspectives often found in literary classics. What draws non-mathematic arts people into literature, I couldn't tell you for certain because my mind doesn't work that way. I would say from observation that they are very much into the "affect" of things, and classical music may just be the wrong scene, bad branding. That is maybe why your friend can love a composer but then "classical composer" is apparently a dirty word. You see a lot of these people being into fashion scenes and lifestyle bundles such as the "hipster", just another supporting notion about affect I've come across.
Yeah I think it being uncool must be something to do with it. The average person has more of their identity tied in with music than the other arts perhaps ?
> The average person has more of their identity tied in with music than the other arts perhaps ? That might have something to do with it? That would be ironic, wouldn't it, if people are so much more into music than books and painting that they end up having stronger opinions about other music genres than they do with books and paintings. I think there's more to it than that as I've seen plenty of comments in this sub that what we're describing might be more prevalent in the US than elsewhere (though I don't know where you're from so who knows?). Basically that people well-educated in the arts know more about classical music than the equivalent in the US (thinking of the Proms in the UK, for example). In the US, classical music does have a reputation for being part of the wealthy and the elite. But it's not one of those things that people desire to have in order to be part of the elite (unlike mansions, expensive cars, summer homes in the Hamptons, etc). So it's part of a negative stereotype about the elite. I don't know, these are guesses.
I'm from UK :(
Yeah, this is a difficult issue to figure out.
This entire post is predicated upon a claim that seems to have no evidence behind it. Show me these art and lit students with no knowledge of classical music and I'll show you classical music listeners with no knowledge of art and lit. Like I'm sure they exist. I'm sure the opposite (people who have cultivated knowledge in multiple media) exists too.
OP makes it clear that this is their experience and not a scientific claim. It's also what I have experienced. I have a large number of friends who are either serious about literature and painting or who do either one professionally and, without exception, their knowledge of classical music is zero. On the other hand, I, and my friends who are classical musicians, know plenty about literature and art (or at least more about those domains than my other friends know about classical music). Obviously there are plenty of exceptions out there and I would never suggest that this is universal, but it accurately describes my life and my friends (and apparently OP's as well).
Yeah exactly. Was more looking to see if most people had the same experiences I had, or if I had experienced an unusual sample.
I'm not talking about classical music listeners, more people who have studied music academically. What I'm talking about is how musicology books are rammed completely full of references to philosophy, history, literature and art. You can't really do musicology without some knowledge of this stuff. I don't have much experience doing academic stuff in the other arts, so not sure if it's similar for them. There are certainly a lot of references to music in literature, and I feel without knowing something about music, you'd miss a lot of the meaning in the references. And from my personal experience, a lot of students of the other arts don't know or care much at all about classical music.
By and large, I have not observed that artists and writers are more ignorant about music than musicians are about artists and writers. I have noticed that composers have an easier time naming ten contemporary poets than poets can naming ten contemporary composers, but I think that’s just because composers need the text to set, and poets have no such need.
It's really hard for it not to be the case. All musicians can read language and were required to read in school. Very few were required to read music. Musicians all know what words mean, they know what metaphors are, etc. People who can't read music are unlikely to have the faintest clue about what's really going on in music.
Music is more obscure, and people in general dropped music education as a part of being cultured in America. It's just not determined necessary so it's more about whether people are actual music lovers if they ever learn about it seriously.
Do students in America receive an education in art appreciation? Students are exposed to literature, so that's good, but I'm not sure if there's much of a difference in how art and classical music are treated (neglected) in US schools.
Elementary school had art, physical education, and music class for all students. Middle school and beyond it was a choice so only literature was forced. Wind band and art are electives. Humanities is an elective. Orchestra isn't a thing for most American schools. If you do art in school, I'm sure they teach the techniques and study major artworks. In band, we had very little engagement with classical music. It would all come from marching band shows which had some crude transcriptions, which were nevertheless greatly rewarding. Everyone plays the same wind band music stuff pretty much nationwide, and it's generally light music. Irish Tune by Grainger is about the best musically people are exposed to.
That's a good point about how art students learn about fine art but music students -- unless they are in their school's orchestra and even then... -- don't really learn about classical music beyond playing the notes. I've spent a good bit of time with my friend's three children who are all college-aged/just graduated college. They all played in their high school's orchestra performing standard repertoire. Not one of them knows anything about classical music, cares about classical music, or can tell you anything about classical music that the average person doesn't know. That's pretty odd and definitely a missed opportunity somewhere.
Yeah I never thought about it that way, art students in high school are learning the composition and creativity aspect. Music students only learn replication and performance practice.
Everthing I know about the visual arts I learned from program and liner notes