WHY POPULAR MUSIC?

Why has classical music steadily declined in popularity while the worst drivel imaginable has taken over the "public" airwaves? As I've been saying over and over at this cyberspace, most people enjoy hearing music that they're familiar with, and the entertainment industry makes certain that you're familiar with their product. Once again, the industry will spend up to $400000 to "break" a new song into regular airplay.

Now a study at Columbia University sheds further light on why banal, puerile music is now the norm year after year. In the study, test subjects were given a choice of 48 songs to listen to, though without knowing what the other test subjects were choosing. After the test, most subjects were found to have chosen music that was generally agreed to be of high musical and lyrical quality. But when test subjects were shown that certain songs had been frequently chosen by their peers, they chose those songs too, even if the songs were dreadful. Sociologists call this a "pile-on effect."

Thus, when the entertainment industry forces teen music on the public, a snowballing effect takes place, and suddenly everyone wants to hear a tune by Ashley Simpson or whatever [pudendum] is being marketed that month. When every time you turn on a television or radio you hear the voice of Ashley or Jessica Simpson, you'll assume that it's normal to like their music.

Science magazine quotes sociologist Duncan Watts as saying, "There's a social function to all of us liking the same thing. It's not the thing that's important, but having something to share." (Lord help me for instead enjoying the music of Arnold Bax. I may risk being deported!)

Another clue as to what is going on comes from a recent study at Stanford University in which college students were told to "pick three adjectives that best capture what the word 'choice' means to you." Those who came from a higher socioeconomic caste chose "freedom," "action" and "control" as the best synonyms, while those from a lower caste equated "choice" with "fear," "doubt" and "difficulty." (The study was discussed in the February 26, 2006 issue of The New York Times Magazine.)

Therefore, allowing the entertainment industry to limit our choices of music is actually beneficial to most citizens. Limiting the choice of music to what the industry is marketing thus eliminates "fear," "doubt" and "difficulty." By having us listen only to mass-marketed music, we have an experience in which we all can share. Of course, the lowest-common-denominator of music always works best in such a situation.

What remains puzzling, however, is how it is that at one time composers such as Brahms, Liszt, Rossini, von Weber and Verdi were extremely popular. Every Sunday, the radio broadcast the Ford Evening Concert Hour, the theme of which was the grand melody from the last movement of Brahms' first symphony. So what happened? How did we regress from Brahms being the music of the realm to all music being made by and for juveniles? That's been discussed in depth in other of these rants, and it would be inappropriate for me to begin spouting my theories of dysgenics here, so we must abandon things at this point (or, "at this point in time," as they say in Washington.)