VI семестр For and Against Classical Music

1. For: Classical music gives the listener a keen sensual delight. This music creates a special mood. It is wonderful to dream and medi­tate to this music. The metallic monotonous beat of jazz or the shrill shouts of pop singers: what are they in comparison with this special miraculous world created by sensitive talented men?

Against: Classical music is a complicated art: it is difficult to find one's way in it.

2. For: Classical music has a deep intellectual appeal.

Against: Classical music is also an exclusive art: most people don't like or understand it; that's why it is not popular. The very length of most classical pieces can send any listener to sleep. People want the kind of music to which they can dance or just talk to friends. It should be simple, cheerful and up-to-date.

3. For: Classical music creates a special spiritual world for the listener which immensely enriches his inner life and makes him happy.

Against: Pop music and jazz also create a special spiritual world for the listener, and this world is full of dynamism, harmony, sensua­lity. Jazz music, for example, has the advantage of extreme sincerity.

For and Against Pop Music

1. For: Pop music is the music of the young who search for new rhythms and new styles and reject the music of the past that is forced on them by the older generation.

Against: Before rejecting the old rhythms and styles, one should know something about them. Most pop-music fans don't.

2. For: The new rhythms are full of vigour and force: just what appeals to young people. The tunes are snappy and easily caught.

Against: The rhythms may be new and vigorous, but they lack variety. The tunes are mostly primitive and as easily forgotten as caught.

3. For: The words of the songs deal with the young people's world: their hopes, dreams, disappointments and joys.

Against: The words of some of the songs are absolutely sense­less, sometimes verging on the idiotic.

4. For: The very popularity of the genre speaks in its favour. It attracts great masses of young people. Why should we deprive them of the joy they obviously get from this music?

Against: Medical research has proved that the volume of sound produced by powerful amplifiers at some pop concerts does great da­mage both to the sense of hearing and to the nervous system. Indeed, cases of mass hysteria are not at all unusual at pop concerts. Are we bringing up a generation of half-deaf neurotics?

Music in Britain

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries English musicians had a great reputation in Europe, both for their talent and for their originality. It was their experiments in keyboard music which helped to form the base from which grew most of the great harpsi­chord and piano music. William Byrd was the most distinguished English composer of this time, and his name is still widely known.

In the centuries which followed, England produced no composers of world rank except for Purcell in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and Elgar in the twentieth century. Today, however, many people believe that there has been a reflowering of English music, and that the compositions of some contemporary compos­ers will live on after their deaths. The music of Michael Tippett, Benjamin Britten and William Walton is performed all over the world.

Benjamin Britten was not modern in the musical sense of the word, but he was modern in his attitude towards his public. He has been called a 'people's composer' because he composed music, particularly operas and choral works, that can be sung by ordinary people and by children. Some of his operas, such as Noyes Fludde (Noah's Flood) are performed in churches every year, and people from the surrounding area sing and act in them. The festival which he started in his little home town, Aldeburg, on the North Sea coast of Suffolk, has become one of the most important musical festivals in Europe. Benjamin Britten's music, however, is traditionally compared with the works of many of the younger generation of composers. The music of composers like Peter Maxwell Davies, Richard Rodney Benett, John Tavener, and Andrew Lloyd Webber are having considerable influence and popularity abroad. It is significant that Richard Rodney Benett is a very fine trumpeter and once played the piano in a jazz band. The dividing lines between serious music on the one hand and jazz, pop and folk music on the other, are becoming less and less clear, and the influence that they are having on one another is increasing. Many twentieth-century British composers, including Vaughan Williams, Tipett and Britten have been attracted and influenced by old English folk songs. Most musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber, like Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, Evita, Sunset Boulevard are still hits staged in the best theatres of England, the United States and other countries.