Sometimes things just fall into place. I’ve mentioned before that I have been slowly
working my way through Richard Taruskin’s Oxford
History of Western Music over the past few years. I’m sort of in Volume 5, Music in the Late Twentieth Century. “Sort of” because back when I was trying to
read and keep up with my music history classes, I had to skip bits of volumes
two and three that I will get to eventually.
So here I am reading about Elvis and the Beatles as assessed
by Taruskin. His big point about rock is
that the rock composers like the Beatles, who used electronic music were more successful
in getting the public to listen to it than the academics who were writing very
similar electronic music. I had never
thought about that aspect until I came across Radiohead several decades
later. Not only that, I’d never looked
for Karlheinz Stockhausen on the record jacket of Sgt. Pepper. I have now.
Meanwhile this weekend, my son finally had an opportunity to
get me to sit down and listen to Pink Floyd’s The Wall. I thought it was
quite an interesting song cycle though a bit heavy on the existential angst,
and I was glad of the more or less happy ending. At least I understand now why it was such an
important work to so many of those younger than I. Continuing education is a good thing.
