home and music

until very recently in human history music was an activity
that took place largely in the home
it was considered an essential aspect of
what it meant to be cultivated
and it also transcended social class
even while I think it safe to say that wealthy people had more leisure time
to pursue the sonic beauty which is man made musical sound
poorer people when given the chance took the time to entertain themselves
with song and dance and simply listening to musical artistry
that existed in many homes


I'm thinking of the Bach Cello Suites but also most guitar music before the 20th century
and the countless trios and sonatas which weren't necessarily meant for the stage
they were written on and for the aficiandos of music which existed
plentifully in European towns from the middle ages onward n the homes
and in celtic society the existence of fiddle music and song and dance
has long been considered an essential part of daily living




the stage-- the concert hall--- recorded performance
these are all rather modern social arrangements
and I wish only to address the dark negative aspects
of such activity....they exist as means of distortion
while one could argue that the modern orchestra is the brainchild of stage performance
and practically inseparable from the notion of social music making for the last 300 years
it is safe to say that only in very wealth driven circumstances has the orchestra been able to sustain
any sort of prominence

while the solo guitar or the solo fiddle can exist quite well in utter poverty




what we know as folk music is the fundamental music of home life


now we know there's train songs and rambling songs and mining songs
tragedy songs all of which point to the realities of humans living in the world as we know it
yet the performance and the sustaining of the performances of these songs
is something that happens primarily in the home
and home is the proper place for these songs
I would even go so far as to argue that the stage is a means of taking the folksong
out of its typical place and stretching it beyond its aesthetic limits
that's why you had all those opera trained singers doing folk music in the 50s and 60s
trying to make them sound like stage songs...which they were not


this overemphasis on commercial music making has driven someone like pascal quignard to proclaim his utter hatred of music


now you could argue that the nightclub is a place for the music of the people
and for certain the nightclub has its place
but most of those songs and that music defies the principle of folk music anyway
it is music designed to have some commercial appeal and one could even say some monetary value


but folk music is not meant to make money


it is true that very few homes are conducive to music making as an essential part of every day life
and this is a tragedy of great proportion
for somehow the emphasis of music has been yanked out of domestic life and into the market place
and has left most homes rather sterile and places unadorned with beautiful sound


and one could argue that the phonograph and the sound system in general have taken over the role
of providing for musical life in the home but this is a terrible illusion for recorded music is not music at all and the fact that the contraptions of electrical musical propulsion have completely overrun our daily lives it has resulted in the most abhorrent depletion of aesthetic values and thus an undermining of cultivated values which are necessary for human survival...well at least we have strong pharmaceuticals as antidotes to the horrid state of affairs


there is no reason whatsoever to think that music has only a personal formation or merely educational aspect to it...that a person must aspire to the symphony or a perfect recital or a recording date...when it is even more true that real music can and should happen on almost any given day in any given home...for it is in the home where the primitive intuition for music making can be protected and cultivated...and it is in the home where the songs we need to hear should be easily sung and in the home where dance might have a rather natural expression


of course this should then translate to a wider social importance
music being the stuff of which happy people really pull together and weave
the demands of civilization with one another...these days it seems more likely to be sports
or exaggerated expressions of popular art rather than the humble sounds cultivated in homes that is given social priority
and that is rather pathetic


music is the medium of refinement for the finest sensibilities known to mankind
and these sensibilities find their clearest and dearest expression In the strong values
that tie families together and hold the walls of home inevitably up












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