12-16-2021, 07:34 PM
There was no break from the Renaissance into later times. The Enlightenment is more of the same, and mostly we are here.
The standards of artistic excellence have remained continually high, so there has been no break into amateurish achievement. Even those who try "primitive" art are more sophisticated than one might expect from the simplicity of the message.
Standards remain at a level in which, as Malcolm Gladwell put it, the really-good stuff requires about 10,000 hours of dedicated refinement of art or performance. Rather few get the opportunity to dedicate themselves to such; maybe they would rather enjoy a normal life, which might be far easier for a semi-skilled laborer. After 10,000 hours (anything more is an expression of futility) the achievements of a writer, composer, or artist become deceptively easy for the creator. Appreciably less compromises one. Sure, there are one-hit wonders, but when one looks at the performers one recognizes why one hit is all that one gets.
Gladwell tells us that in no field is there such a thing as a 'natural", someone of such extreme talent that one needs little to no preparation or refinement, at least at contemporary standards of excellence.
OK, how does it go for musical performance? The Berlin Conservatory is one of the largest schools for musical performers. Gladwell relates that those who have about 2000 hours of playing time as violinists (roughly the minimum for matriculation) typically graduate to the German equivalent of American K-12 learning. They teach elementary-level music to teenagers and younger. Consider this: if one had extreme refinement as a violinist one might have great difficulty listening to kids playing notes out of tune if not wrong altogether. At 8000 hours one largely gets those violinists who play in community orchestras and somewhat-seedy pit orchestras or perhaps teach violin in the Conservatory. At 10K one has the relatively few who make the renowned orchestras such as the Philharmonic orchestras of Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Hamburg, Cologne, the Stattskapelle Dresden, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus and some well-regarded radio orchestras.
The standards of artistic excellence have remained continually high, so there has been no break into amateurish achievement. Even those who try "primitive" art are more sophisticated than one might expect from the simplicity of the message.
Standards remain at a level in which, as Malcolm Gladwell put it, the really-good stuff requires about 10,000 hours of dedicated refinement of art or performance. Rather few get the opportunity to dedicate themselves to such; maybe they would rather enjoy a normal life, which might be far easier for a semi-skilled laborer. After 10,000 hours (anything more is an expression of futility) the achievements of a writer, composer, or artist become deceptively easy for the creator. Appreciably less compromises one. Sure, there are one-hit wonders, but when one looks at the performers one recognizes why one hit is all that one gets.
Gladwell tells us that in no field is there such a thing as a 'natural", someone of such extreme talent that one needs little to no preparation or refinement, at least at contemporary standards of excellence.
OK, how does it go for musical performance? The Berlin Conservatory is one of the largest schools for musical performers. Gladwell relates that those who have about 2000 hours of playing time as violinists (roughly the minimum for matriculation) typically graduate to the German equivalent of American K-12 learning. They teach elementary-level music to teenagers and younger. Consider this: if one had extreme refinement as a violinist one might have great difficulty listening to kids playing notes out of tune if not wrong altogether. At 8000 hours one largely gets those violinists who play in community orchestras and somewhat-seedy pit orchestras or perhaps teach violin in the Conservatory. At 10K one has the relatively few who make the renowned orchestras such as the Philharmonic orchestras of Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Hamburg, Cologne, the Stattskapelle Dresden, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus and some well-regarded radio orchestras.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.