Far from classical music falling behind this brave new, digital world, Tom Service wonders if technology is finally catching up with the endless possibilities of classical musical culture.
Some aperçus and soupçons based on those of Paul Morley, with whom I was talking recently for a film I’m making for BBC4 on Mozart. As well as Paul’s Mozartian epiphany – thanks to a darkened room and a Google-lottery of K numbers, but you’ll have to wait until the autumn for more on that – Morley suggested something that got me thinking: that today’s era of technological fluidity, flexibility, and almost-instant access to an entire world of musical possibility suits classical musical culture better, potentially, than it does rock and pop.
Morley has a bigger thesis about how we still don’t have a language for whatever the musical product or experience might be today; that musical statistics are still wedded to models that come from the era of the CD, or even the 7-inch and the LP – of charts, of singles, of albums; all categories that don’t really mean much today. But his specific point about classical music is that it never really belonged in the strait-jacket of the recording industry and its fetishised objects of fixity; that there’s something inherently resistant in the art-form to the idea that a performance can be solidified for eternity in the form of glossy vinyl or glossier silver disc... Keep reading on The Guardian
Some aperçus and soupçons based on those of Paul Morley, with whom I was talking recently for a film I’m making for BBC4 on Mozart. As well as Paul’s Mozartian epiphany – thanks to a darkened room and a Google-lottery of K numbers, but you’ll have to wait until the autumn for more on that – Morley suggested something that got me thinking: that today’s era of technological fluidity, flexibility, and almost-instant access to an entire world of musical possibility suits classical musical culture better, potentially, than it does rock and pop.
Morley has a bigger thesis about how we still don’t have a language for whatever the musical product or experience might be today; that musical statistics are still wedded to models that come from the era of the CD, or even the 7-inch and the LP – of charts, of singles, of albums; all categories that don’t really mean much today. But his specific point about classical music is that it never really belonged in the strait-jacket of the recording industry and its fetishised objects of fixity; that there’s something inherently resistant in the art-form to the idea that a performance can be solidified for eternity in the form of glossy vinyl or glossier silver disc... Keep reading on The Guardian