The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #145227   Message #3364137
Posted By: GUEST,josepp
16-Jun-12 - 09:10 AM
Thread Name: Damned bloody depressing
Subject: RE: Damned bloody depressing
Naylor doesn't get it but that's not surprising. I berated no one. My point is that younger people today are not being educated in music sppreciation today to the point that stuff that should be easily known by them is something they are not even aware of. The quiz was very general and an attempt to see if they were educated in music properly or by pop culture. Not many people would know Salieri taught Schubert but I was trying to see how many people really think he murdered Mozart because of the Amadeus movie. Some people here suspected it wasn't true and chose something else and that's all I was really looking for. But some respondents under 30 really do think Salieri confessed to killing Mozart (actually two thought it and the rest never answered it).

Beyond that question, none of the others should have been hard. Asking about diddley-bows is a bunch of diddley-shit. The questions were general and deal with our culture and therefore have some importance and should not have required any serious amount of study. No American under 30 should have any trouble knowing who wrote of the Gettysburg Address (although I assure you many Americans don't know). No American should have to admit to not knowing the first verse of the National Anthem but many don't. People today think culture is an island unconnected to what came before and with no concern of what is to come next.

I don't believe I should have stumped anyone by asking them to name a Holland-Dozier-Holland song but I did. I mean, christ, they wrote some of the most well-known music of the 20th century and we're already forgetting who they are. Do you really think most Americans have the tiniest interest in Beethoven or Bach when music written 40 years ago in their own country has already been forgotten?