The Test of Time

Ah, the eternal popular culture vs. High Art argument. To this ridiculous piece of fogeyish drivel, Uncertain Principles has this response:

The only distinction I really see between most "high culture" music and the pop that people sneer at is what you might call the "Agyar Criterion," after the narrator in Steven Brust's Agyar, who responds to questions about the quality of art by saying "ask me again in fifty years." The main thing distinguishing pop music from classical music is age, and the filtering that comes with age.

I'm not going to attempt to claim that all pop music is the equal of Mozart-- the occasional channel-surf past MTV would make clear that that's a foolish idea. Sturgeon's Law ("90% of Everything is Crud") applies to music as well as literature. 90% of what people listen to these days is total garbage, but 90% of what people listened to in Mozart's day was also total garbage. It's just that nobody remembers the garbage from back

The thing about taste in music is that it's very personal and quite subjective; I think your appreciation of a particular piece of music is strongly influence by whatever other music you've heard. If you only ever listen to opera, or heavy metal, or jazz, or top 40 pop or whatever, it's going to be more difficult to appreciate something from a quite different musical genre. But that doesn't mean that any one musical genre is inherently superior. I take exception to those people, either classical snobs or pseudo-intellectual rock journalists, who insist that their tastes in music are not subjective opinions, but objective truth, and anyone who disagrees with them is an idiot.

As an aside, and at the possible risk of contradicting myself, I wonder if some of the classical-is-good, popular-is-bad attitude comes from the apparent fact that the first half of the 20th century seemed to be lean times for popular music. Judging by the relatively few popular songs from that era that have passed the test of time compared with those from the 50s and 60s (which is still long enough ago for the test of time factor to come into play).

I wonder. In the year 2100, which of the following is most likely to be revered as a great composer of the late 20th century?

• Harrison Birtwhisle


• Andrew Lloyd-Weber


• Roger Waters


• Pete Waterman