Functionalism is a product of a world population boom. You are confusing two sparate issues here. Plus, if you researched the topic you are discussing, you would know that in many early tribal societies the dwelling houses were purely functional rather than being designed with aesthetics in mind.
Gee just because functionalism is a product of the population boom it doesn't exist?
You missed my point so I'll put it here again. 1-200 years ago, people were not materially rich as today. But they had more time (with the exception of a few really boliao people who nitpick on my every other sentence). So once they had the opportunity to make a piece of music (and this did not come easy at all) they would make it as creatively and ornately as they could. Now, every Tom Dick and Harry can form a punk band, so it's so easy to produce stacks of CD with 90% filler in them.
When you say classical music, do you specfically mean the classical era i.e. the era that ended roughly in the 1830's?
Once again, you are contradicting yourself. You gave the example of CD's above. Classical music is readily available on CD format - at the same price as other CD's. Not 'rich man's stuff' then, as today it is just as accessible as any other genre of music. If not cheaper, with labels such as Naxos releasing budget CD's of classical music - even contemporary classical music, making the whoe spectrum of classical music available to all who can afford to buy a CD.
Why bother asking when you already know what the answer is?
In those days you know as well as I do that classical music was the sole domain of the aristocracy. It was written for the rich, of the rich, though not necessarily by the rich. The fact that it can be bought cheaply by everybody hundreds of years later does not change that.
Define 'pop'. 'Pop' just means 'popular'. If the majority of the world listened to classical music, then classical music would be pop.
Any and every style is and can be 'pop'.
Well you just answered yourself again. I only neglected to mention that it is pop music of today. The fact is that pop music does have a character and not just any music gets to the top of the pop charts, so it is also meaningful to talk of it as a genre. In this day and age we will never see the majority of the world listening to classical music, although classical music gold records do exist. But let me know the next time Dumitrescu gets a gold record, yah?
I'll talk a bit about the Clash here.
Also, define 'simple'. Neurologically, any process of creating music is vastly complex, so in this respect there is no such thing as 'simple' music.
You should state whether you mean harmonically/melodically simple etc etc. And if you do mean this, then aren't these very terms relativistic?
Well there you go again, pretending to be confused but you know exactly what I meant, melodically simple.
But I'll illustrate with an example. When I first heard Beethoven's 5th, I knew it was a great piece. The first movement, it's incredible that you can wring so many ideas out of that same 1 motif. You hear musical ideas elaborated upon each other.
When I first heard the Clash, I didn't really appreciate how great it was. It's not easy, when you have simple song A and simple song B, to understand why song A is great and song B is "meh". But eventually I understood. And together with that, you have to understand why some earwigs are extremely powerful and others are just - blah.
Anybody can say that music that has been handed down from generation to generation is great, although some atrocities like Pachelbel's canon gets through. If you want to appreciate pop music, you actually need to seperate the chaff from the wheat, something you may not be accustomed to if you're into classical music.
I've come to believe that to say that you truly understand music, you have to be able to judge the merits of a simple song. So why is the Clash / Wire great but, Blink 182 / 311 less so? I'll leave you to find that out for yourself.
Who is looking down on pop music?
Aren't you showing your own bias against classical music in this comment?
My classical music teachers looked down on pop music. But I'll ask you the question instead, who's looking down on pop music? You're a sensitive guy, sensitive enough to detect a bias that doesn't exist.
Now let's get to the heart of the matter. You and I are answering different questions. I am asking, is today's music simpler? I say yes. You are asking, is there the possibility of making extremely complex music today, the answer is also yes.
I don't believe in calling contemporary classical music "today's music" or "our music" if it's only heard by a few. Suppose somebody 50 years from now were to make a movie of us. What would he put as a backdrop? Punk music? R+B / hip hop? Or would he put avant garde music? Well maybe the avant garde stuff will be put on when a burglar is coming in through the bedroom window but it's not "my music" for a lot of people today.
If you believe that music is not only about the producer / performer but also about the audience, then in order to call it "today's music", it has to exist in a vibrant enough scene, and there's a lot of exchange of ideas going on among a lot of people. Suffice to say, the communities where music is complex are not really large.
Maybe during the classical era, when the musical community was a small percentage of the population, you had a community made of a concentration of musical talent, did you have more complicated stuff running the show. As the musical audience and the group of musicians widen, then music just had to dumb down a little and follow the crowd.
Not having a market does not devalue music but it makes it more difficult to call that music "today's music".
Like I said, music space is becoming more and more crowded. If you confine yourself to the simpler music, the one that finds a larger audience, then the music space becomes smaller. If you write a song that's similar enough to something else being written, you aren't really adding anything significant to the canon.
If you go for the music that's so bewilderingly complex that nobody listens to, you could add something vital and fresh. But you'd be in a small minority, it's just your beetle in a box.
I could write a piece of music that asks for a note to be played once a year ad infinitum. The possibilities could then never be exhausted, as my piece of music isn't finished yet. And never will be.
You could do that, but is it useful? Is it something already written? Because if it's not written yet it's not written. Suppose I were to write something else with some other note being played once a year, that's too close to your piece of real estate in the music space, therefore hardly original. I used to think that it was absurd that people could be sued for infringing on the copyright of John Cage's 4'33. But he has the claim on the main idea - that so much of music is the silence, and what the brain fills in during the silence, so that idea is really his.
And in case you're unaware, punk bands have also been listening to 20th century classical music and incorporating them into their music. Like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Igs7l4rr7I
And while I can appreciate the music of Messiaen and stuff like that, sometimes I listen to what's coming out of avant garde, and I think that 3 chords is still better than no chords.
