Thanks for this very insightful and clear presentation of Bordieu. It puts a magnifying lens to his contributions, something I think we need right now to understand our confusion in these times of creative destruction.
one more thing I must add: yes, there ARE those who mention classical music, not because they really understand or know much about it, but to appear sophisticated to others. These pathetic snobs display their insecurity through their pitiful affectations because they are insecure and vain. Schopenhauer was the first who mocked 'the bon-ton society....' with derision and sarcasm.. So Bordieau was certainly right about this ridiculous part of society. But that classical music seems elitist and high-standing is not its own fault. In fact, almost all the greatest composers were born and raised poor.
Haydn, Beethoven, Paganini, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, the list is endless. Most of them struggled to pay the rent because they put music above all else. In fact, in most of music history the musician has been a servant, patronized by princes and queens for their artistic talents alone, and often discarded as soon as convenient.
PS. another famous example is Haydn, 'the father of the symphony'. When he heard Mozart as a child, he took his father aside and said to him: 'Sir, your son is the very greatest composer I know of, either in person, or by name.'.
Here was a god of music in his own realm, readily conceding the crown to a child. And all these composers were VERY reluctant to concede anything to anyone; most of them were rivals to one another. Haydn didn't say this to please someone, even less a child.
'' ..why is classical music often considered more “refined” than pop? ''. I can try to explain that as a musician for 33 years who studied classical music, who chose to be a pop and rock musician. Music is my life.
Classical music IS - the - most refined type of music, simply because all the famous composers who created it, were freaks of nature. It's impossible to explain , except in an incredibly dumbed down way here why, but here's some examples and reasons:
-Most people with some kind of musical ability, can create and play pop (popular) music. This is not particularly difficult IF the musician has something to say. It's popular because it IS easier than classical music. But classical music cannot be created or even played by most musicians, except the ones with the highest level of natural talent (for composers; and yes, talent is very real and demonstrable, but that's a subject for another discussion). And for performers, I can give assurance that no one can even PLAY classical music to a standard that would be accepted by experienced performers or composers, unless they have been trained for many years.
Let me make an example, let's take some very good, solid pop songs, such as 'Yesterday' by the Beatles, or 'Hotel California' by the Eagles.
These are very nice songs. They speak to most of us and they could be called even 'works of art' - in the contest of pop music -.
These are songs that would be written by some talented pop musicians who can play an instrument just above basic level. Even intermediate playing skills would be sufficient. However, the VISION and MAIN IDEAS, the ESSENCE and SUBSTANCE of the songs, such as the main motifs and the creation of the lyrics, go BEYOND a basic level of 'pop musicianship': that one can play a musical instrument above basic level, says nothing about their CREATIVE POWERS, which in the case of the songs mentioned, are absolutely essential.
In other words: anyone can learn to play guitar at a basic level, but very few can write a song like Paul McCartney, and he wrote many of his best songs when he was just a teenager and didn't really have a lot of musical experience at all (as oppose as the modern, half baked books about how talent is supposedly a myth, explain).
But now let's land on 'Classical Planet'. Take ANY fugue by Bach. To the casual listener, it seems 'nice' but doesn't really seem that much nicer than 'Hotel California'. But this is like talking astrophysics to someone who has only basic literacy skills.
The Bach fugue, first of all, is not homophonic music like popular music, it's polyphonic. I can't explain here succintly how the two worlds are so different, but basically in homophonic music you have a main melody on top of some chords. In polyphonic music you have no chords, only melodies.
So what's so special, you say? Here's what. As a solid musician, I can create you a bunch of chords with a melody on top rather easily.
But if you asked me to write a FUGUE, I would have absolutely no idea where to start. Writing fugues isn't something natural, writing songs is (for people with some kind of musical ability, i.e. musicians, since even good, musically solid, attractive-sounding pop songs, that is not MEDIOCRE songs, certainly cannot be created just by anyone, and that is already a demonstration of the existence of talent).
Try asking any solid pop and rock musician to write a fugue, in the best of case, and only after hearing Bach, only a kind of joke would come out, because it's easy enough to put a melody on top of some chords, but incredibly difficult to make multiple melodies sound well together, for they very easily create clashes and dissonances that are absolutely disagreeable to the ear. They make music sound very bad.
Instead, Bach had a sort of magic touch. And, he knew NOTHING about music theory. He just did it all naturally, which is the case with EVERY famous composer. They ALL did something VERY special that NO ONE did before, or even after, and with the highest level of skill, which mostly was NATURAL rather than acquired.
The thing about Bach's fugues is that they have baffled musicians, even all the major composers such as Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Schumann, you name them. And here's the other thing: they were ALL freaks of nature; each of them are rightfully famous because of their highly individual and innovative things they did with their music, but the average listener has no idea what that is, for how can one find something, if that something is unknown to them?
One can only understand what he knows.
In a fugue, you must be capable of interweaving MULTIPLE melodies with ONE ANOTHER, in a perfect way. By the way, Bach did EVERYTHING perfectly, no matter what he tried.
This is what baffles even today very experienced musicians, composers, musicologists.
Another major example: Beethoven. The man arrived in Vienna when he was 20 or so and became an instant megastar because of his pianistic virtuosity.
But then he became DEAF. Yet, incredibly, not only he continued to create music, he became the FOREMOST composer in the WORLD, writing his 32 piano sonatas, the INDUSTRY STANDARD of the 'serious' piano repertory today. He started writing music that literally shocked and rocked the music world.
Or take Wagner: he didn't even play ANY instruments. At 16, he just 'decided' to become a composer, and ended up crafting operas that went on for five hours, that again, rocked the musical world and influenced 90 per cent of all the major musicians that came after, including film music.
The influence of these composers is STILL felt today by many composers in their music. That they don't talk about it doesn't mean it's not there, only that most people don't understand it, and even they struggle to do so.
I can continue for another month and a half, there's a whole universe there, but I'll say one more thing: all these things said, 'the foremost this', 'so and so is a genius', etc etc, in relation to these famous composers, was not said by anyone, but by OTHER geniuses.
So Rossini said to Beethoven, in person, that he was the best composer in the world.
Paganini said the same, although not to Beethoven.
Schumann said Brahms was the 'new god of music' and that Chopin was ' an absolute genius'.
The next, lower level, is musicologists who say these things: they are the 'scientists' of music, that is, they know music from a technical and intellectual level, but they have no creative powers themselves. Nothing wrong with that. They aren't idiots, they know their onions about music. They can tell you why the 5th Symphony by Beethoven is such an influential and highly revered work by any other major composer, be it Tchaikovsky or John Williams.
I just wrote what came to mind, but really, this is a huge universe. As I wrote before, one can understand only what he knows and understand. It's natural to assume that 'there's nothing, or nothing much better' in Bach than in the Eagles, but that could not be farther from the truth. This is absolutely not subjective.
In short: there's good music, and there's the GREATEST music. This applies to all art.
Sure, in other arts it can get ridiculous, so you see a boulder being classed as a work of art. I don't know about that, but I can see a dumb boulder there and I really don't think one has to be a boulder expert to figure that out.
But with music and musicians, that's a very different game. I know this for myself, after several years of studying classical piano, I became a pop pianist. Nothing wrong with that, many others have done the same, take the great Hiromi Uehara: she's not really a 'jazz pianist', but a classical musician (even a classical composer) who chose to dwell in the 'pop' (popular) music world, even though she has enormous musical talents.
Why? Here's why, it's EASIER, and more gratifying, to be a pop musician, than to be a classical one. You don't have to feel like a microbe compared to Bach or Beethoven. As Jerome Cardan said:
''You can be a minnow amongst giants, or a giant amongst minnows.''.
The pop musician is still required to have real musical ability; has to be able to create something that sounds attractive in some ways.
The classical composer doesn't 'choose' anything. He has very, very uncommon abilities that 'drive' him.
Take what Vivaldi's music publisher (himself an experienced musician) said about Vivaldi:
''He's an old man possessed by a compositional FURY.''.
In short: there's good musicians (and bad ones too, but they are always short lived), and then there's the - freaks of nature-. And they are still the best musicians.
The best EVER, in fact. This is not to say one should only listen to Bach, especially for a musician. It would be like saying that a chef should only taste one type of food. A good chef knows how every food tastes. In detail.
But Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, etc etc, they were absolutely one of a kind, never in the whole history of music they have been matched by anyone else. Each in his own way, has permanently left a VERY deep mark in the musical world.
As if that weren't enough, their music is like the footnote of their lives.
Not for nothing, (as I continue to understand it) Schopenhauer held music as the very highest of all the arts: he said that while all the other arts imitate something or other, for example a basket of fruit being immortalized on a canvas (which is still a great work of art, of course), music went straight to your soul, nothing in the middle that connects you to it, not an imitation of anything that exists in 'the world of appearance', but a completely direct, powerful, 'sublime experience'.
to be honest i always thought taste was a biological thing, which would make it correlated to class but in a different way to just socioeconomic status
Not sure "true merit" is a definable, achievable, or even desirable objective. I think the objective that drives the need to deeply understand the "tyranny of merit" is recognition that social and political structures that ensure both a basic level of well-being and opportunities to increase that well-being are essential to fundamental achieving societal moral objectives such as freedom, equality, fairness and justice.
Very insightful.
Thanks for this very insightful and clear presentation of Bordieu. It puts a magnifying lens to his contributions, something I think we need right now to understand our confusion in these times of creative destruction.
why was i rickrolled?
I think you forgot to remove the Rickroll link.
"We can recognize that the playing field is rarely level, and that success is not always purely a testament to individual genius or effort."
And of course "success" itself is mostly culturally constructed
one more thing I must add: yes, there ARE those who mention classical music, not because they really understand or know much about it, but to appear sophisticated to others. These pathetic snobs display their insecurity through their pitiful affectations because they are insecure and vain. Schopenhauer was the first who mocked 'the bon-ton society....' with derision and sarcasm.. So Bordieau was certainly right about this ridiculous part of society. But that classical music seems elitist and high-standing is not its own fault. In fact, almost all the greatest composers were born and raised poor.
Haydn, Beethoven, Paganini, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, the list is endless. Most of them struggled to pay the rent because they put music above all else. In fact, in most of music history the musician has been a servant, patronized by princes and queens for their artistic talents alone, and often discarded as soon as convenient.
PS. another famous example is Haydn, 'the father of the symphony'. When he heard Mozart as a child, he took his father aside and said to him: 'Sir, your son is the very greatest composer I know of, either in person, or by name.'.
Here was a god of music in his own realm, readily conceding the crown to a child. And all these composers were VERY reluctant to concede anything to anyone; most of them were rivals to one another. Haydn didn't say this to please someone, even less a child.
'' ..why is classical music often considered more “refined” than pop? ''. I can try to explain that as a musician for 33 years who studied classical music, who chose to be a pop and rock musician. Music is my life.
Classical music IS - the - most refined type of music, simply because all the famous composers who created it, were freaks of nature. It's impossible to explain , except in an incredibly dumbed down way here why, but here's some examples and reasons:
-Most people with some kind of musical ability, can create and play pop (popular) music. This is not particularly difficult IF the musician has something to say. It's popular because it IS easier than classical music. But classical music cannot be created or even played by most musicians, except the ones with the highest level of natural talent (for composers; and yes, talent is very real and demonstrable, but that's a subject for another discussion). And for performers, I can give assurance that no one can even PLAY classical music to a standard that would be accepted by experienced performers or composers, unless they have been trained for many years.
Let me make an example, let's take some very good, solid pop songs, such as 'Yesterday' by the Beatles, or 'Hotel California' by the Eagles.
These are very nice songs. They speak to most of us and they could be called even 'works of art' - in the contest of pop music -.
These are songs that would be written by some talented pop musicians who can play an instrument just above basic level. Even intermediate playing skills would be sufficient. However, the VISION and MAIN IDEAS, the ESSENCE and SUBSTANCE of the songs, such as the main motifs and the creation of the lyrics, go BEYOND a basic level of 'pop musicianship': that one can play a musical instrument above basic level, says nothing about their CREATIVE POWERS, which in the case of the songs mentioned, are absolutely essential.
In other words: anyone can learn to play guitar at a basic level, but very few can write a song like Paul McCartney, and he wrote many of his best songs when he was just a teenager and didn't really have a lot of musical experience at all (as oppose as the modern, half baked books about how talent is supposedly a myth, explain).
But now let's land on 'Classical Planet'. Take ANY fugue by Bach. To the casual listener, it seems 'nice' but doesn't really seem that much nicer than 'Hotel California'. But this is like talking astrophysics to someone who has only basic literacy skills.
The Bach fugue, first of all, is not homophonic music like popular music, it's polyphonic. I can't explain here succintly how the two worlds are so different, but basically in homophonic music you have a main melody on top of some chords. In polyphonic music you have no chords, only melodies.
So what's so special, you say? Here's what. As a solid musician, I can create you a bunch of chords with a melody on top rather easily.
But if you asked me to write a FUGUE, I would have absolutely no idea where to start. Writing fugues isn't something natural, writing songs is (for people with some kind of musical ability, i.e. musicians, since even good, musically solid, attractive-sounding pop songs, that is not MEDIOCRE songs, certainly cannot be created just by anyone, and that is already a demonstration of the existence of talent).
Try asking any solid pop and rock musician to write a fugue, in the best of case, and only after hearing Bach, only a kind of joke would come out, because it's easy enough to put a melody on top of some chords, but incredibly difficult to make multiple melodies sound well together, for they very easily create clashes and dissonances that are absolutely disagreeable to the ear. They make music sound very bad.
Instead, Bach had a sort of magic touch. And, he knew NOTHING about music theory. He just did it all naturally, which is the case with EVERY famous composer. They ALL did something VERY special that NO ONE did before, or even after, and with the highest level of skill, which mostly was NATURAL rather than acquired.
The thing about Bach's fugues is that they have baffled musicians, even all the major composers such as Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Schumann, you name them. And here's the other thing: they were ALL freaks of nature; each of them are rightfully famous because of their highly individual and innovative things they did with their music, but the average listener has no idea what that is, for how can one find something, if that something is unknown to them?
One can only understand what he knows.
In a fugue, you must be capable of interweaving MULTIPLE melodies with ONE ANOTHER, in a perfect way. By the way, Bach did EVERYTHING perfectly, no matter what he tried.
This is what baffles even today very experienced musicians, composers, musicologists.
Another major example: Beethoven. The man arrived in Vienna when he was 20 or so and became an instant megastar because of his pianistic virtuosity.
But then he became DEAF. Yet, incredibly, not only he continued to create music, he became the FOREMOST composer in the WORLD, writing his 32 piano sonatas, the INDUSTRY STANDARD of the 'serious' piano repertory today. He started writing music that literally shocked and rocked the music world.
Or take Wagner: he didn't even play ANY instruments. At 16, he just 'decided' to become a composer, and ended up crafting operas that went on for five hours, that again, rocked the musical world and influenced 90 per cent of all the major musicians that came after, including film music.
The influence of these composers is STILL felt today by many composers in their music. That they don't talk about it doesn't mean it's not there, only that most people don't understand it, and even they struggle to do so.
I can continue for another month and a half, there's a whole universe there, but I'll say one more thing: all these things said, 'the foremost this', 'so and so is a genius', etc etc, in relation to these famous composers, was not said by anyone, but by OTHER geniuses.
So Rossini said to Beethoven, in person, that he was the best composer in the world.
Paganini said the same, although not to Beethoven.
Schumann said Brahms was the 'new god of music' and that Chopin was ' an absolute genius'.
The next, lower level, is musicologists who say these things: they are the 'scientists' of music, that is, they know music from a technical and intellectual level, but they have no creative powers themselves. Nothing wrong with that. They aren't idiots, they know their onions about music. They can tell you why the 5th Symphony by Beethoven is such an influential and highly revered work by any other major composer, be it Tchaikovsky or John Williams.
I just wrote what came to mind, but really, this is a huge universe. As I wrote before, one can understand only what he knows and understand. It's natural to assume that 'there's nothing, or nothing much better' in Bach than in the Eagles, but that could not be farther from the truth. This is absolutely not subjective.
In short: there's good music, and there's the GREATEST music. This applies to all art.
Sure, in other arts it can get ridiculous, so you see a boulder being classed as a work of art. I don't know about that, but I can see a dumb boulder there and I really don't think one has to be a boulder expert to figure that out.
But with music and musicians, that's a very different game. I know this for myself, after several years of studying classical piano, I became a pop pianist. Nothing wrong with that, many others have done the same, take the great Hiromi Uehara: she's not really a 'jazz pianist', but a classical musician (even a classical composer) who chose to dwell in the 'pop' (popular) music world, even though she has enormous musical talents.
Why? Here's why, it's EASIER, and more gratifying, to be a pop musician, than to be a classical one. You don't have to feel like a microbe compared to Bach or Beethoven. As Jerome Cardan said:
''You can be a minnow amongst giants, or a giant amongst minnows.''.
The pop musician is still required to have real musical ability; has to be able to create something that sounds attractive in some ways.
The classical composer doesn't 'choose' anything. He has very, very uncommon abilities that 'drive' him.
Take what Vivaldi's music publisher (himself an experienced musician) said about Vivaldi:
''He's an old man possessed by a compositional FURY.''.
In short: there's good musicians (and bad ones too, but they are always short lived), and then there's the - freaks of nature-. And they are still the best musicians.
The best EVER, in fact. This is not to say one should only listen to Bach, especially for a musician. It would be like saying that a chef should only taste one type of food. A good chef knows how every food tastes. In detail.
But Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, etc etc, they were absolutely one of a kind, never in the whole history of music they have been matched by anyone else. Each in his own way, has permanently left a VERY deep mark in the musical world.
As if that weren't enough, their music is like the footnote of their lives.
Not for nothing, (as I continue to understand it) Schopenhauer held music as the very highest of all the arts: he said that while all the other arts imitate something or other, for example a basket of fruit being immortalized on a canvas (which is still a great work of art, of course), music went straight to your soul, nothing in the middle that connects you to it, not an imitation of anything that exists in 'the world of appearance', but a completely direct, powerful, 'sublime experience'.
And I agree, of course....
to be honest i always thought taste was a biological thing, which would make it correlated to class but in a different way to just socioeconomic status
A quantitative method for calculating taste based on bourdieu: https://open.substack.com/pub/simon582972/p/from-bourdieu-to-vectors-can-an-algorithm?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=f8zwm
Not sure "true merit" is a definable, achievable, or even desirable objective. I think the objective that drives the need to deeply understand the "tyranny of merit" is recognition that social and political structures that ensure both a basic level of well-being and opportunities to increase that well-being are essential to fundamental achieving societal moral objectives such as freedom, equality, fairness and justice.
Difíceis de ver e compreender.
Sim, invisíveis para quem não quer ver, sendo a racionalidade substituída pela racionalização.
Uma história tende a ser mais leve do que a realidade...
Bourdieu’s theory radically changed the way I see things few years ago. His study on opera-goers really struck me
Great classical music IS better than even the best pop!
For a great cross reference to Bourdieu's thought try Iain McGilchrist's TheMaster and his Emissary.