WHat makes music good?

[ERCougar]

Interesting that you would bring up Beethoven as an example of loftier interests in music. In Beethoven's time, he was Hansen making MMMmmm Bop. The Romantic Period saw the democratization of the music listening experience. Beethoven appealed to the masses. He, for the most part, did not rely on patronage, but would instead stage concerts and charge admittance fees. His music was very much tied to the emotion of the listeners, the uneducated public. Prior to his time, music was often evaluated and appreciated on its technical merits and abilities and how perfectly it fit certain forms.

Of course, now it has been shoved into the "classical" mode and people ignore it for this, among other, reasons. It is no mistake, however, that children's and other musically uneducated people's first introduction and taking to "classical" music is through Romantic composers, esp. Beethoven.

Now wait a second...Beethoven was Hansen? No way. I could maybe go with Mozart being Hansen-like, but Beethoven was revolutionary. Mozart was pumping out hundreds of sonatas, Beethoven was shocking the public with his ridiculously long Eroica symphony and breaking piano strings with the Hammerklavier and the like. While he was popular, he was far from a conformist. He singlehandedly ushered in the Romantic Era of music. How many composers can you say that about? The only composer that I can think of that would rival him in terms of innovation would be Bach. When I think Hansen, I think catchy pop tunes; if anything, Beethoven was weak on melody (but a master of form).

Uneducated people are introduced to "classical music" through the Romantic era? I'm guessing more Mozart is running around the masses' heads than Beethoven. It may be true that more movie scores involve Romantic music than Classical, but that's not a matter of simplicity--it's one of the combination of the greater number of tools available to the Romantic composer and the increased emphasis on broad sweeping emotion. In any case, it's tough to call Beethoven a purely Romantic composer anyway.