Why does the music of our youth sound better than that of today?
[This was my weekly column for GlobalNews.ca. – AC]
If you’re beyond a certain age — and really, that age can be as low as 25 — you’ve probably muttered to yourself, “Music is no good anymore. It was so much better when I was young.” Welcome to your adult years.
You’re not the first to feel this way. Since antiquity, each generation tends to lament the musical tastes of the generations that follow. Somewhere around 400 BCE, Plato wrote:
“Forms and rhythms in music are never altered without producing changes in the entire fabric of society. It is here that we must be so careful, since these new forms creep in imperceptibly in the form of a seemingly harmless diversion. But little by little, this mischief becomes more and more familiar and spreads into our manners and pursuits. Then, with gathering force, it invades men’s dealings with one another and goes on to attack the laws and the constitution with reckless impudence until it ends by overthrowing the whole structure of public and private life!”
Now consider this: Polite society in England was outraged when a particular type of foreign music crept into the country in 1816. It was called the “waltz.” This is from The London Times:
“It is quite sufficient to cast one’s eyes on the voluptuous intertwining of the limbs and close compressure of the bodies … to see that it is far, indeed, removed from the modest reserve which has hitherto been considered distinctive of English females.
So long as this obscene display was confined to prostitutes and adulteresses, we did not think it deserving of notice; but now that it is … forced on the respectable classes of society by the evil example of their superiors, we feel it a duty to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion.”
Later in the century, the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan were considered by some to be too upbeat, too saucy and lyrically controversial, and therefore not suitable for proper music aficionados. Oddly, it was later recommended that music lovers should avoid the popular dance music (and the devil’s music that was this new American thing called “jazz”) and instead pursue something more respectable, thus leading to The Great English Waltz Revival of the 1920s.
