Music.

*this is mostly a brainstorming for a potential essay topic for my Music History class.  But it's also an interesting point.  Feel free to comment, come up with your own examples. I'll re-visit and edit this thing as I continue to study.

There is a problem with the way we look at music.

We look at popular music differently than we do classical music.  Not only in the general mindset that popular music is awesome and classical music is old and stuffy, but in a deeper view than that. 

Popular music is about one person, one artist, one singer.  You single people out in the popular music group.

Like...Justin Beiber, or OneDirection, or Queen.  (ps- I love this meme).  You can say "I really like Freddie Mercury"  or "Adele is freaking awesome" and just mean Freddie Mercury or Adele.  You can take all of the One Direction people and individualize them.  "I like <insert name> more than I like <insert name>".

People don't do that for classical musicians. NSync may be my favorite band because of Justin Timberlake, but the Philadelphia Philharmonic is not my favorite orchestra because of the first chair, second violinist. 

**Cool sidenote, this post has a point.  I just googled the Philidelphia Philharmonic symphony orchestra and their webpage totally just supported my point.**

So go ahead, take a look. http://www.philorch.org/

The site will run a few adds.  One of them is advertising their performance of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" and Stokowski's Back Transcriptions.

The unfairness of this is rather striking.  Because no matter what Fun. plays, people are going to go and see it.   They may not play your favorite song, but you will pay 10s-100s of dollars to get to their concert where there is only standing room and there are drunk people everywhere.  But in order for the Symphony to get your support/attendance, they have to play something that you're familiar with.  And it doesn't matter if their soloist is the foremost Cellist in the world.  You won't go.  You don't care.

To bring this idea much closer to home:

I am part of the Brigham Young University Concert Choir.  And we went on tour to New Zealand and Australia.  And a lot of our concerts were ABSOLUTELY PACKED.  Some of them were not.  And you know what?  That's pretty typical for us.  

But you know what?  The 45 of us were the best choir that BYUH has ever seen.  We have the most talent, the most diversity, the strongest voices, the best percussionist, the most entertaining dancers, and we were united not only in unity and love, but in heart and sound.  There was ZERO drama on the entire 2-week tour.  Our Chaperons were game to continue on tour for an extra week.  (saying something)

And as downright good as the Concert Choir is, I have never been in a Choir Concert that had a full house. 

You know when the house was full? 

Last December when they, along with the Orchestra, performed Handle's Messiah.  I wasn't there, but...

You know why that is?  Because people know Handle's Messiah.

It performed for 2 nights in a row.  And the house, as far as I can tell, was full for both of those. (because I wasn't there and this is mostly hearsay from BOTH performers and audience members) (***which is pretty impressive because I rarely run into people who have been audience members at a choir concert, but this one I've run into quite a few).

Shall I use another example?  Yeah, because it's fun.

Our Show Choir performed a DISNEY Show after my first semester.  They couldn't sell tickets because of copyright law, but you had to get tickets to get in, and the house, every night, was standing room only.  It has not been that way since.  

I understand that if' it's a Disney show, community members will make an effort to bring their kids to it, and not otherwise because they're not sure that the kids will like it.  But that's somewhat the crux of the matter.

Another?

2 seasons ago, the school musical was "The Sound of Music".  If you did not buy your tickets 2 days before, you didn't get in because they were sold out.   They turned OVER 100 people away.  And they couldn't extend the performance (which is sad) because they needed to get the stage ready for some play (blah blah blah) which was ill-attended anyway.  Jack Johnson brought his family to that play.  Yeah, that was cool.

For how many classical musicians there are in this world, and how jam-packed orchestral  music libraries can be, being able to only play a certain amount of music that is profitable is absolutely laughable (because you have to have $$ to run a symphony, and to have $$ you have to have people come to the symphony).  We miss out on so much music.

All music is not created equally, neither are musicians.  And neither are our ears.