legionnaire

Interesting. Now I seem to be able to access SG from work again. I'm not entirely sure what this means, but I'm not going to argue with it, I guess.

Last night I went to see opera in the park with some friends from the lab. The opera was Puccini's Madame Butterfly, which is one of my favorite non-Wagner operas, and even though the singing was just sort of OK and the fact that they don't actually do a stage performance of the piece is kind of a bummer, it was a lot of fun. There's nothing quite like sitting in the middle of central park on a warm summer night with a lot of beer and wine and good food, just hanging out listening to music.

I wonder about the opera though. I love opera, don't get me wrong, especially Wagner. The scores to some of his pieces are incredible works of music in their own right, and that they tell a story is icing on the cake. But in their own way, opera and classical music were the music of their time. It's clearly not their time anymore, as in indicated by continually smaller audiences for classical works, especially outside of cultural centers like New York, Paris, Berlin, etc. Is our dedication to "canonical" creative works (which is clearly the case, whenever someone mentions "culture" or "high art" it's often in the same breath as classical music, opera, ballet, etc.) coming at the cost of recognizing interesting works of art that are being created today? There is an enormous number of people who are making new music, new paintings and drawings, new performance art and dance, and it feels to me like they're unappreciated by comparison. Maybe it's always been like this, but I don't think so. "Modern art" and "modern dance" and (the somewhat paradoxical) "modern classical music" are often lumped together and stuck in a corner somewhere for people to make rude comments about, or explain how inscrutable they are for the common person.

The issue is that today artists have different things to say than they did 150 years ago, because we live in a very different world. For the better artists (the ones we won't consider to be "derivative" in the worst sense of the word) that comes through in what they create, and is a reflection on all of us, since we make up what the world is. To deride modern artwork as a whole then is to deride who and what we are. By enshrining classical artists as being the pinnacle of their chosen form is to say that it is impossible for anyone currently working to ever hope to approach that level. Which isn't fair.

I'm not saying we should cast aside the past achievements of our society, in fact I consider Beethoven's 9th symphony to be one of the crown jewels of western civilization. But while acknowledging the masters of the past, we should also be looking for the ones of today. They're out there, but without the proper support they won't be able to do what they want most - create.