As I study in the library, my favorite brain break is browsing the shelves on the second floor to see if anything jumps out at me while I take a stretch. Two weeks ago, An Irreverent and Thoroughly Incomplete Social History of Almost Everything caught my eye. It’s a compilation of quotes from historical figures from Ancient Greek to the late twentieth century, teaching history through colloquial, bawdy, and flippant comments. My image of historical figures can be reduced to busts of Greek philosophers and Englishmen in white wigs, but it’s refreshing to remember that humans were not the formal pictures we always see of them, especially when something ticks them off.
It’s surprising to me today to come across people who have no ear for music; with such an extensive library and immediate access to genres, I have to believe that there’s music out there for everyone. Of course, before globalization and the invention of recorded music, access was limited to the instruments that had been invented in your culture. The earliest instruments created by humans are wind instruments, with evidence of a Neanderthalian flute from 60,000 years ago. Flutes were greatly respected by Greeks and Romans, though not by everyone. One Greek proverb states, “To flute players, nature gave them brains there’s no doubt, But alas! ‘tis in vain, for they will soon blow them out” (200 CE). Instruments nevertheless continued to advance, though there were still those unreceptive. A dictionary from the late 1800s listed the following definition: “Clarionet, n. An instrument of torture operated by a person with cotton in his ears. There are two instruments worse than a clarionet—two clarionets.”
It further interests me to see people famous outside of the music world express their musical distaste. Sir Isaac Newton, inventor of calculus, was known to be the opposite of musically inclined; “[Newton] said he was never at more than one Opera. The first Act he heard with pleasure, the 2nd stretch’d his patience, at the 3rd he ran away” (1720 CE). Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria wrote to his mother asking for advice on whether to employ an up-and-coming composer named Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, to which she replied, “you do not require a composer, or other useless people” (1771 CE). Aldous Huxley, writer of Brave New World amongst others, had an aversion to newly invented jazz, and after seeing a jazz band for the first time he remarked, “I felt like a man who, having asked for wine, is offered a brimming bowl of hog-wash. And not even fresh hog-wash. Rancid hog-wash, decaying hog-wash” (1929 CE).
Hearing the crass and informal way people of times past speak about music contextualizes a lot of modern music criticism for me. It is by nature wonderfully subjective, and changes to the norm are inevitably met with both excitement and criticism. To some, hearing a piece test the limits of music, arranging rhythms in ways never heard before is a thrilling innovation, to others it’s tasteless. I think nostalgia plays a big role in people’s taste, I often hear modern people yearn for “real music” like in the 1970s and 80s. Of course, there was distaste for newfangled pop music then; according to iconic singer Bing Crosby “popular music in this country is one of the few things in the twentieth century that have made giant strides in reverse.” I wonder what he would say about mumble rap.
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