Much worry and tut tutting about the way in which the younger generation just aren’t as interested in the Fine Arts as earlier generations.(Via)
Are you concerned about the future of the fine arts? New research from Norway suggests you have every right to fret.
A study just published in the journal Poetics suggests art forms such as literature and classical music “are becoming increasingly more irrelevant for most students’ cultural lives.” This points to “an increasingly precarious position for traditional highbrow culture,” according to a trio of researchers led by the University of Bergen’s Jostein Gripsrud.
I’m afraid that this is nonsense, nonsense that has been repeated since Aristotle’s grandfather first pointed out that society was going to the dogs.
The common culture has always been, well, common. An 18 th century Englishman did not wander around singing Handel arias, despite the great man being in the country and writing them at the time. The actual songs that were sung were drear things like God Save the King (originally from a musical!). Or the usual “I Had my Mangles Wurzled by the Milkmaid” common to all rural societies when drink has been taken and sex is being alluded to.
The 17 th century did not find people humming Pachelbel’s Canon: they were still fine tuning the verses of the Milkmaid Wurzled my Mangels. The 20 th century did not find hysterical crowds screaming for an encore of Sir Harrison Birtwhistle’s latest (although there have been reports of screaming hysteria at being forced to attend another performance) but they did buy up lorry loads of Drink up thy Zider by Adge Cutler and the Wurzels. Quite rightly too, good song, nothing at all to do with it being the local anthem of my home area.
As the late great Bernard Levin pointed out so often, there’s no problem with this common culture being common. Those great pieces of art, those Fine Arts, still live on in the small nooks and crannies of the society where they’ve always been. And we have one great aid to guide us to what actually is that great art.
No, not what spouts the usual lines about “the artist” and manages to get into the Opera House or art gallery: Salieri managed that. Rather, we’ve the sieve of history working in our favour. There are pieces of that fine art that are with us today because they have stood the test of time: we listen over and again to Mozart but not to Salieri. Shakespeare still stirs the heart in a way that Terence Rattigan never did. Wodehouse will be read long after Amis (fils et pere) have been forgotten about by all but crit lit studies.
Fine Art is simply the art of the past that has survived this sieving by history. It isn’t stuff done by serious people with old instruments, it’s not material that is meant to be meaningful. It’s just the good stuff that has been produced over the centuries. And yes, it’s the weekend and I am a West Country boy. So here is Sir Harrison:
And here is Adge and the boys:
Happy to take bets on which of those is going to be played and sung in a century’s time. Adge might well be described at that time as naive, folk even, art, but it will be described as art. I doubt that the other will be described as fine anything.
Don’t worry about the young of today not being interested in fine arts (or even Fine Arts). Some of what is being produced now will become that and 99% (as Theodore Sturgeon pointed out) will be forgotten as the dreck that it is. We just find out which is which about 50 years after everyone originally involved is dead.
No comments:
Post a Comment