And there you go again, confusing "quantity" with "quality". It would help your argument a LOT if you didn't keep confusing your assumptions with your conclusions. There is no causal relationship between "complexity" and "quality", except in your belief system.
"Yesterday".
To clarify this I'd have to go into an explanation on the objective metrics of music and how they relate to quality, for which this forum isn't really a suitable medium, so I suggest we agree to disagree on this particular point, or continue in PM as you wish.
But it's still their opinion, and instead of doing your own research, you use theirs.
Well that's kind of the whole point of the academic system right? Researchers do research for other people to use.
There are an equal number of academic pieces that suggest we are in a Renaissance era all our own with the explosion of technology and communication devices. I have said now four times five different ways that you are looking at ONE sliver of culture and trying to extrapolate it across all culture without any regard for the rest. I'm no social media fan, AT ALL, but just the fact that we can communicate 1,000 times the data in a millisecond that it took a month to communicate then is all we need to know about the complexity of culture today. It's DIFFERENT, yes, but "dumbed down"? That is your OPINION, not your FACT.
It seems we're using different definitions of culture. In my first post already, I clarified that by culture I was talking about public discourse and art, i.e. music, visual arts, literature. Sure technology and science have advanced, I never disputed that.
Please do, because I am calling BS on that.
During the golden age, in a city like Amsterdam the aristocracy consisted of about 10% of the population. This may not seem like much, but it's more equal than the current US. Receiving very extensive musical training was a must for this section of society and people who weren't educated in music were poorly esteemed (source: Well-being in Amsterdam's Golden Age by Phillips). The same was true for England and Germany, though it took slightly longer for them to catch up with the Netherlands' colonial urges and economic growth (History of western music by Norton).
Yes, and much of what you consider to be the "more complex and higher quality art" was done on consignment and at the direction of others. Not that dissimilar from Diane Warren writing a song for Aerosmith, or Max Martin (over)producing the new Taylor Swift album, is it? So why is the former the standard and the latter a "dumbed down" version?
Complexity is an objective measure. There is a staggering difference in complexity between a Beethoven sonata and a pop song. Therefore, a Taylor Swift song could be considered dumbed-down compared to a Beethoven sonata. Doesn't matter if it was directed by others or not.
Yes but you're assuming that the "Shakespeare" was regaled then like it is now. Now it's a clichéd euphemism for "high art", primarily because of it's age and ubiquity. We're not at a point yet where we can even guess at who our "Shakespeare" is. Perhaps Bruce Springsteen will be the guy that two idiots on the inter-brain-webs will be arguing about in 2416. 
We indeed cannot say who our Shakespeare will be. I can however tell who our Shakespeare will
not be by looking at the top 40. Will Justin Bieber be the next Beethoven? Or Kesha the next Mahler? History has shown that pop artists, and especially those who don't break any new ground are very quickly forgotten. Case in point: let's look at the top 40 of as recently as 1960. Ever heard of Chubby Checker? Mark Dinning? Bobby Darin? These people topped the charts and are completely forgotten. Pop artists are mostly disposable products who perform disposable music. There are of course some exceptions like The Beatles, but even then: I gave some workshops in local high schools recently and most 16-year olds can't name a single song by them. A few of them knew a few songs but called them "boring" because they didn't have "a beat". I expect that in 50 years or so, bands like The Beatles will be just as marginalized as classical music, or even more so, because pop music isn't interesting enough for musicologists to write about and it is not possible to perform it since you kind of need the real Beatles for that, unlike classical music where the link between the composer and the performance is much smaller.
Topic: Why does DT not get all the respect they deserve? (Read 20459 times)
