One of the latest ideas in the psychology of music is that with any music, the distinction between subject and object is much more blurred than with experiencing traditional art objects (paintings, sculptures). People often imagine versions of themselves reflected in or enacting the music, so with music the psychological stakes are higher.
That's why I say that music is a socio-cultural ritual and not an art object. In a lot of 'world music' music is something you DO, not something you listen to. You sing it, perform it or dance to it. This was still the case in Western classical music up until the beginning of the nineteenth century, when suddenly music was an artistic object you contemplated in silent reverence - but the ritual still applies psychologically even if physical participation was diminished. The illusion that music is an autonomous object is a very recent one particular to our culture. Music is a different game to art - it involves and possesses us in a way that art doesn't.
good stuff: music is indeed ritual, and art, sacred objects.
i dont know why i hadnt connected those dots before, but of course art and music played different roles in the initiation of modern humans to the symbolic order via shamens and the first warriar-artist-priests. and surely the ways these practices have evolved bears traces of their original functions. also i think no early social history of these disciplines can exist without also examining the rise of organized religion and centralized government as they were all connected...
"recorded music is canned music" - another quote i dont remember the author of... a jazz musician...
Just saw this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/02/classical-music-children which would seem to offer a different analysis to Stubbs at least as far as 'new music' goes.
his account of younger people getting into 20th Avant-C is only one side of the story of what is happening to "new music" these days... i witnessed first hand New Music programs get shut down due to limited funding, so that the symphony can play the Magic Fucking Flute for the 50 millionth time.
yes i blame the bourgeois death-philes who uphold bullshit outdated heirarchies through their suffocating cultural programs for... basically everything.
i want to shout at my girlfriend's sister who is a concert cellist: that Top 40 Classical BULLSHIT was created as entertainment for the obscenely rich, and you think it is "serious" music whereas everything else is frivolous?!?!?!