Music Formats Change But Passion Remains
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday January 21, 2006
AUSTRIA is poised to rock out next Friday, as a year's worth of concerts and celebrations begin around the country to mark the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth.
Despite the impending idolatry, if he'd heard what's been in the paper lately, Wolfgang Amadeus would be rolling in his pauper's grave. And not just because the Austrians have merchandised everything from yoghurt and sausages ("Mozartwurst"), to a bra that plays Eine Kleine Nachtmusik in his honour.Recent research has found that a whole generation of people have become apathetic about music, thanks to downloading.The study, headed by a University of Leicester psychologist, Dr Adrian North, followed 346 music listeners for two weeks. After quizzing them daily about how they related to music, it concluded that the internet, MP3 players and other portable music players have made listening to music too easy and too much.The "deep emotional investment" people once had in everything from Wagner to Van Halen has been replaced with a "rather passive attitude," says North. Music has "lost its aura".Of course, some 150 years before Mozart wrote his first note and way before there was such a thing as psychologists, the Bard saw it all coming in Twelfth Night:"If music be the food of love, play on;Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,the appetite may sicken, and so die."Speaking of surfeits, last week Apple was proud to announce that 14 million iPods were sold in the fourth quarter of 2005, up from 4.5 million in the same period of 2004. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, $790 million was spent legally downloading music in the first half of last year; a huge increase from the $220 million spent in the first half of 2004. At the same time, recent Australian Record Industry Association figures show that interest in tangible music is waning. Sales of CDs, cassettes and music DVDs fell by 7.5 per cent in the first half of 2005.And yet, given that so many of us can't get through the day without an accompanying soundtrack, the idea that we've sickened of music is about as convincing as Bob Dylan is cheerful.According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics' Year Book Australia 2004, listening to the radio - in conjunction with watching the television - is Australia's most popular "free time" activity, either by itself (131 minutes per day) or in combination with other activities (257 minutes per day). Blame the decline of organised religion, but with the notable exception of sport, music performances are among the few activities that people can still be bothered to congregate for. And unlike the football, fans at a concert are all cheering for the same team. Sell-out music festivals characterise the Sydney summer, from Homebake in December to the Big Day Out in January.It's not just the moshers and ravers who are crazy enough about their music to brave the elements. Grey clouds might mean the antipasto platter stays under the poncho at Symphony in the Domain tonight, but if past performances are anything to go by, concert-goers won't be missing a beat of Rhapsody in Blue. In 2005, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra had a big year of its own, with a 6 per cent increase in paid audience attendance.The ABC trivia program Spicks and Specks is testament to the fact that we even care about music when we're not listening to it. Last year Spicks won a serious cult following with a format that was essentially a motley crew of musicians playing parlour games. Meanwhile there was room in the pre-Christmas book market for not one but two tomes dedicated to making us feel inadequate about our knowledge of popular music trivia, namely 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die and 1001 Songs: The Great Songs of All Time. As for the cultural wellbeing of our internet-addicted kids, enrolments in HSC Music 1 have risen by more than 12 per cent since 2001, while the chief executive of the Australian Music Examinations Board, Paul Morgan, reports no damage to classical music exams, with annual numbers remaining steady at 100,000 in recent years.When it comes to discussions about technology, it's always the same riff - new inventions automatically render the old ones, or the old experiences, obsolete. Alan Jones is living proof that predictions about video killing the radio star didn't quite pan out.Sure, the way we hunt and gather music is a-changin'. But that doesn't necessarily mean we have replaced our emotional investment with a financial one. Our non-stop consumption of songs and symphonies indicates our active enjoyment of, and need for, music, not a diminuendo in care factor.As that other bard boy, H.G. Nelson, likes to remind us, sometimes too much is barely enough.
© 2006 Sydney Morning Herald