'150 years ago everyone had a guitar, or a piano, or was at least singing'.
I suspect that 150 years ago the majority of people had neither a guitar nor a paino. That most people sang in the bath 150 years ago I don't doubt, but they do that today, too.
Sheet music for the public was one of the main income methods, from Beethoven to Scott Joplin. Even the great composers often sold sheet music with simplified versions.
Even poorer people had string instruments, and also cheaper versions of keyboard instruments (e.g. accordion)
The greatest composer for classical songs (Lieder), Schubert, also published them in easier versions, so that simple people can sing them as well.
(And some of his songs became folk songs here in Germany everybody knows, but even that is now dying out)
From Wikipedia:
He argued to a congressional hearing in 1906:
"These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy... in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape."
(You can see that i feel strongly about that subject, because I hate the decline of active music making, or even reciting of poetry and stories)
No you are mistaken unfortunately. 150 years ago most people could not afford a guitar or piano. Those instruments and skills were cultivated among the learned, ie the ruling classes. Most people barely read the news papers 150 years ago, business people and men of high social and economic standing read the papers.
150 years ago most people just worked, socialised a lot with friends and family and probably read little compared to now, let alone write music or listen to music, good or bad. The tech was not there yet and what existed was expensive at the time if not already limited in supply AND demand.
To put this into perspective for you, the television was only available for about 100 years to those with high economic status, in first world countries of Europe. The united states is 250 years old lol.
Here in Germany we have a long tradition of singing groups and bands where ,much of the village participated. The tradition still exists in many places. Guitars and wood instruments were never limited to the rich. Those are instruments which the working class could easily afford. There were also always cheap versions of keyboard instruments, accordion, harmonium.
Every little village had a little church with an organ or harmonium, , and I still can remember that churches were always open and people could play or listen. (Only in the last decades did they start to close, as trust in society vanished).
Even the very poor people in the US had gutars, there is a long traditionof blues and country music. We still have recordings from the 1920s were they sung songs handed down for generations.
And if they had no money even for a little guitar, they could just sing and clap and play the spoons.
There was little of a working class to behind with from 1920s. As a matter of historical fact, Germany lost world war 1 recently and was put into an economic death spiral with hyper inflation exacerbating poverty. What working class? Lol. Most of the well to do were jewish Germans or Germans living in Weimar at the time.
The ones in the countryside who were self sufficient would not have known what was going on. There was no music to listen to, only make, mostly by voice and what they had around, you even admit this yourself, fortifying my point.
My grandparents family, who were subsistence farmers in the parts of Germany that are now Poland, were poor and made music, and also had a piano. My grandmother went to the big city (Berlin) as a servant and piano teacher.
Not only that, music sets the "mental atmosphere" for the mind. What you open your ears to is what you're going to try to emulate. Much like TV/media where what one sees is what one tries to emulate. That in itself isn't a bad thing. It's bad when what's beamed into your head is bad to begin with.
Hard to escape how? Just get some decent monitor ear buds for like 50 USD equivalent with a 10hr stamina after full charge, use one side or both. I get music sucks nowadays but the tech that's available allows for drowning it out and gravitating towards your own playlist. It just takes some agency and the right social circles making good recommendations.
I dislike listening to music when I'm doing something else e.g. walking, working, shopping, travelling etc. but there is so much background music nowadays that it's almost impossible to avoid. Generally I either want silence or the natural soundtrack of wherever I happen to be: birds in the countryside, noise of bustle in the streets. The only time I put my headphones on is when I'm at home doing nothing, either just sitting in a chair or lying in bed.
Just out of interest What and Andreas, what kind of music do you like?
I like classical piano music, my favourite are Schubert, Bach, Beethoven, Mendelsohn, Brahms, Bill Evans (in that order). Orchestral music can also be great, but often too overwhelming. I like the more chamber music, again Schuber and Beethoven and also Haydn.
I like synth music from the 80/90, like New Order, OMD
And the guitar music from the 60/70 which then branched into country rock, like Dylan, Stones, Gram Parsons, and became the Eagles and Black Crowes and the Avett Brothers and Ryan Bingham. Also love the Beatles. And the old blues guitarists, like Elisabeth Cotton or Leadbelly, and the weird ones like John Fahey. And great pop music is also good, always liked Prince and Anderson Paak.
---
Ah, scrap it, it is all to much to mention. I just like good music.
As they say, there is good music and there is the other kind.
Nice reply with some interesting names, some of which are new to me. I've got to say that in amongst those famous classical music composers the name Bill Evans was unknown to me. It's like listing the great authors of the world and coming across: Shakespeare, Goethe, Tolstoy and Jeffrey Archer.
During the 1980's I also liked synth music but I now dislike it. Things I never noticed at the time, e.g. that the singer from New Order can't sing, have started to grate on me. Also there are far too many whistles and bells in there, clearly thrown in by the sound engineer to mask the fact that there isn't a tune in amongst the all noise. Like you, I really liked some of OMD's stuff. For me, 'Messages' has stood the test of time better than 'Enola Gay', which like many instantly-lovable tunes has become too familiar.
I can acknowledge the fact that the guitar greats from the 1960's and 1970's were talented but somehow my nervous system just HATES electric guitars. I suppose I might like 'All Along the Watchtower' or 'Smoke on the Water' if they were played on the Harpsichord.
My own taste was shaped by a family life that listened exclusively to pop. Not Rock, not classical, not Country (though some of dad's Jim Reeves) but pop. Somehow, even after leaving home, I never broke out of that narrow confines of pop, despite TRYING HARD to like classical more. It was like someone who has only ever read comics being asked to read The Brothers Karamazov. I dislike trying to like things.
In a nutshell, I like Motown, Bubble Gum pop, Elvis Costello or anything tuneful and whistle-able. I like singers with an appealing 'pop voice', like Paul McCartney, Simon Fowler from Ocean Colour Scene, Glenn Tilbrook from Squeeze and the singer from the reggae band Steel Pulse.
I like the sounds of the real world. Today is the first sunny day here, and I love the sounds of the first birds coming back. I don't want to be forced to drown out loud music I hate with louder music I like but don't want to listen right now.
Experience and age would only come into play if the hardware (intellect) is already there. Short of the high hard cap on the intellectual ability, experience and age won't factor in as much if at all. Experience (which comes with age) is gained always, what matters is how that information is interpreted, which is why intellect and mindset are the biggest factors which determines someone's successes and the scale of such.
A normal person that would have average of below average intellect and physical capacity or one with average or high physical capacity will hardly if at all get caught up with introspecting that hard on what they experienced, that takes intellect.
It seems that anything you like and would miss is 'a drug'. The solution to addiction then is to only do those things you dislike and therefore wouldn't miss, which is hardly a recipe for a happy life.
Ok, think this fixation on asceticism is you projecting your lack of sexual encounters, less than one, on everyone else. Everyone can't be you, everyone can't be a monk in the monastery else nothing would get done. Literally nothing, besides endless pages of treatises on any given topic with little real world action equivalent or greater to it.
Mussolini was both, hitler was both, gaddafi was both. Most people are one or the other by your own admission; a brain or a brawn and most are the latter, the muscle, the labor. If you're as gifted as you let on, organize them.
Both intellectua (brain)l and practical (brawn, grunt work)
Benito was a pilot, served in the military tho not as distinguished, a polyglot, business man and also very, very well read and well travelled. Extremely high libido and extremely savage in his methods of obtaining power for the sake of order.
He was also, before he became fascist, a die hard socialist, a liberal. So there's that. He got tired of, his words not mine, of the socialists talking and writing while doing nothing but agitating others to go do the grunt work for them, which fortifies your point of intelligent people manipulating social environment to gain resources since they lack the skill to manipulate the physical environment.
Benito Mussolini was both but only because he started off as an intellectual on the left. You hardly ever see this shift from the right to the left for a person to become both brain and brawn so to speak. It never happens.
If one has intellect, they can always condition their mind further and their body. Intellect is innate, brawn can be trained even with bad genetics.
Interesting. You're right that you rarely see people move from the political right to left, though often the other way. This has something to do with experience and age making you more realistic, less utopian in your thinking.
Yes, the shift from 'brain' to 'brain + brawn' can be done whereas a brawn-monster trying to acquire a good brain is a non-starter.
No it doesnt have much to do with experience. Experience only matters if one does introspection/reflection and both these tasks take intellect.
An brawn with experience is just that, a brawn with experience. An intellect with experience can become anything he wills himself to be because of how well he interpreted the information he's accumulated overtime, good information interpretation takes intellect and only intellect.
One can become the other the other or both, the other cannot do the same. Non starter, there is no motivation to reflect or interpret nuances in information if one can just brute force it, path of least resistance.
A tall or high status man doesn't have to be as smart or cunning with his approach to women compared to a short or low status man. Why bother?
Same logic applies when it comes to introspection and information analysis; intellects have to do introspection and analyse information more closely because their personal success or appeal to others depends on it
Will also add that an intellect is very good at synthesizing information from different sources. That is to say they don't take information from any one source or faction, as it becomes rigid and stale. Intellects are also very, very good at transfering something they've learned that seems completely unrelated in one field, to any other field they engage in; they are capable of "thinking in dialects not restricted to any orthodoxy" as John kozy junior put it.
Music helps a lot when you do it yourself.
150 years ago everyone had a guitar, or a piano, or was at least singing.
'150 years ago everyone had a guitar, or a piano, or was at least singing'.
I suspect that 150 years ago the majority of people had neither a guitar nor a paino. That most people sang in the bath 150 years ago I don't doubt, but they do that today, too.
I suspect you are mistaken.
Sheet music for the public was one of the main income methods, from Beethoven to Scott Joplin. Even the great composers often sold sheet music with simplified versions.
Even poorer people had string instruments, and also cheaper versions of keyboard instruments (e.g. accordion)
The greatest composer for classical songs (Lieder), Schubert, also published them in easier versions, so that simple people can sing them as well.
(And some of his songs became folk songs here in Germany everybody knows, but even that is now dying out)
From Wikipedia:
He argued to a congressional hearing in 1906:
"These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy... in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape."
(You can see that i feel strongly about that subject, because I hate the decline of active music making, or even reciting of poetry and stories)
No you are mistaken unfortunately. 150 years ago most people could not afford a guitar or piano. Those instruments and skills were cultivated among the learned, ie the ruling classes. Most people barely read the news papers 150 years ago, business people and men of high social and economic standing read the papers.
150 years ago most people just worked, socialised a lot with friends and family and probably read little compared to now, let alone write music or listen to music, good or bad. The tech was not there yet and what existed was expensive at the time if not already limited in supply AND demand.
To put this into perspective for you, the television was only available for about 100 years to those with high economic status, in first world countries of Europe. The united states is 250 years old lol.
It may depend where you are from.
Here in Germany we have a long tradition of singing groups and bands where ,much of the village participated. The tradition still exists in many places. Guitars and wood instruments were never limited to the rich. Those are instruments which the working class could easily afford. There were also always cheap versions of keyboard instruments, accordion, harmonium.
Every little village had a little church with an organ or harmonium, , and I still can remember that churches were always open and people could play or listen. (Only in the last decades did they start to close, as trust in society vanished).
Even the very poor people in the US had gutars, there is a long traditionof blues and country music. We still have recordings from the 1920s were they sung songs handed down for generations.
And if they had no money even for a little guitar, they could just sing and clap and play the spoons.
There was little of a working class to behind with from 1920s. As a matter of historical fact, Germany lost world war 1 recently and was put into an economic death spiral with hyper inflation exacerbating poverty. What working class? Lol. Most of the well to do were jewish Germans or Germans living in Weimar at the time.
The ones in the countryside who were self sufficient would not have known what was going on. There was no music to listen to, only make, mostly by voice and what they had around, you even admit this yourself, fortifying my point.
My grandparents family, who were subsistence farmers in the parts of Germany that are now Poland, were poor and made music, and also had a piano. My grandmother went to the big city (Berlin) as a servant and piano teacher.
Not only that, music sets the "mental atmosphere" for the mind. What you open your ears to is what you're going to try to emulate. Much like TV/media where what one sees is what one tries to emulate. That in itself isn't a bad thing. It's bad when what's beamed into your head is bad to begin with.
Yes, and there is very awful, destructive music around.
And these days all around you, hard to escape.
And I agree with Windsor Swan, that the music of Sheeran should be a criminal offence.
Hard to escape how? Just get some decent monitor ear buds for like 50 USD equivalent with a 10hr stamina after full charge, use one side or both. I get music sucks nowadays but the tech that's available allows for drowning it out and gravitating towards your own playlist. It just takes some agency and the right social circles making good recommendations.
I dislike listening to music when I'm doing something else e.g. walking, working, shopping, travelling etc. but there is so much background music nowadays that it's almost impossible to avoid. Generally I either want silence or the natural soundtrack of wherever I happen to be: birds in the countryside, noise of bustle in the streets. The only time I put my headphones on is when I'm at home doing nothing, either just sitting in a chair or lying in bed.
Just out of interest What and Andreas, what kind of music do you like?
I like classical piano music, my favourite are Schubert, Bach, Beethoven, Mendelsohn, Brahms, Bill Evans (in that order). Orchestral music can also be great, but often too overwhelming. I like the more chamber music, again Schuber and Beethoven and also Haydn.
I like synth music from the 80/90, like New Order, OMD
And the guitar music from the 60/70 which then branched into country rock, like Dylan, Stones, Gram Parsons, and became the Eagles and Black Crowes and the Avett Brothers and Ryan Bingham. Also love the Beatles. And the old blues guitarists, like Elisabeth Cotton or Leadbelly, and the weird ones like John Fahey. And great pop music is also good, always liked Prince and Anderson Paak.
---
Ah, scrap it, it is all to much to mention. I just like good music.
As they say, there is good music and there is the other kind.
Do you have favourites?
Nice reply with some interesting names, some of which are new to me. I've got to say that in amongst those famous classical music composers the name Bill Evans was unknown to me. It's like listing the great authors of the world and coming across: Shakespeare, Goethe, Tolstoy and Jeffrey Archer.
During the 1980's I also liked synth music but I now dislike it. Things I never noticed at the time, e.g. that the singer from New Order can't sing, have started to grate on me. Also there are far too many whistles and bells in there, clearly thrown in by the sound engineer to mask the fact that there isn't a tune in amongst the all noise. Like you, I really liked some of OMD's stuff. For me, 'Messages' has stood the test of time better than 'Enola Gay', which like many instantly-lovable tunes has become too familiar.
I can acknowledge the fact that the guitar greats from the 1960's and 1970's were talented but somehow my nervous system just HATES electric guitars. I suppose I might like 'All Along the Watchtower' or 'Smoke on the Water' if they were played on the Harpsichord.
My own taste was shaped by a family life that listened exclusively to pop. Not Rock, not classical, not Country (though some of dad's Jim Reeves) but pop. Somehow, even after leaving home, I never broke out of that narrow confines of pop, despite TRYING HARD to like classical more. It was like someone who has only ever read comics being asked to read The Brothers Karamazov. I dislike trying to like things.
In a nutshell, I like Motown, Bubble Gum pop, Elvis Costello or anything tuneful and whistle-able. I like singers with an appealing 'pop voice', like Paul McCartney, Simon Fowler from Ocean Colour Scene, Glenn Tilbrook from Squeeze and the singer from the reggae band Steel Pulse.
I like the sounds of the real world. Today is the first sunny day here, and I love the sounds of the first birds coming back. I don't want to be forced to drown out loud music I hate with louder music I like but don't want to listen right now.
Experience and age would only come into play if the hardware (intellect) is already there. Short of the high hard cap on the intellectual ability, experience and age won't factor in as much if at all. Experience (which comes with age) is gained always, what matters is how that information is interpreted, which is why intellect and mindset are the biggest factors which determines someone's successes and the scale of such.
A normal person that would have average of below average intellect and physical capacity or one with average or high physical capacity will hardly if at all get caught up with introspecting that hard on what they experienced, that takes intellect.
It seems that anything you like and would miss is 'a drug'. The solution to addiction then is to only do those things you dislike and therefore wouldn't miss, which is hardly a recipe for a happy life.
Ok, think this fixation on asceticism is you projecting your lack of sexual encounters, less than one, on everyone else. Everyone can't be you, everyone can't be a monk in the monastery else nothing would get done. Literally nothing, besides endless pages of treatises on any given topic with little real world action equivalent or greater to it.
Mussolini was both, hitler was both, gaddafi was both. Most people are one or the other by your own admission; a brain or a brawn and most are the latter, the muscle, the labor. If you're as gifted as you let on, organize them.
I know I know..
When you say Mussolini et all were 'both', both what? I'm guessing you're referring to something you wrote in your first paragraph, but what?
Both intellectua (brain)l and practical (brawn, grunt work)
Benito was a pilot, served in the military tho not as distinguished, a polyglot, business man and also very, very well read and well travelled. Extremely high libido and extremely savage in his methods of obtaining power for the sake of order.
He was also, before he became fascist, a die hard socialist, a liberal. So there's that. He got tired of, his words not mine, of the socialists talking and writing while doing nothing but agitating others to go do the grunt work for them, which fortifies your point of intelligent people manipulating social environment to gain resources since they lack the skill to manipulate the physical environment.
Benito Mussolini was both but only because he started off as an intellectual on the left. You hardly ever see this shift from the right to the left for a person to become both brain and brawn so to speak. It never happens.
If one has intellect, they can always condition their mind further and their body. Intellect is innate, brawn can be trained even with bad genetics.
Interesting. You're right that you rarely see people move from the political right to left, though often the other way. This has something to do with experience and age making you more realistic, less utopian in your thinking.
Yes, the shift from 'brain' to 'brain + brawn' can be done whereas a brawn-monster trying to acquire a good brain is a non-starter.
No it doesnt have much to do with experience. Experience only matters if one does introspection/reflection and both these tasks take intellect.
An brawn with experience is just that, a brawn with experience. An intellect with experience can become anything he wills himself to be because of how well he interpreted the information he's accumulated overtime, good information interpretation takes intellect and only intellect.
One can become the other the other or both, the other cannot do the same. Non starter, there is no motivation to reflect or interpret nuances in information if one can just brute force it, path of least resistance.
A tall or high status man doesn't have to be as smart or cunning with his approach to women compared to a short or low status man. Why bother?
Same logic applies when it comes to introspection and information analysis; intellects have to do introspection and analyse information more closely because their personal success or appeal to others depends on it
Will also add that an intellect is very good at synthesizing information from different sources. That is to say they don't take information from any one source or faction, as it becomes rigid and stale. Intellects are also very, very good at transfering something they've learned that seems completely unrelated in one field, to any other field they engage in; they are capable of "thinking in dialects not restricted to any orthodoxy" as John kozy junior put it.