snap, classical and pop

Darcy weighs in on the current "is pop good or bad for the contemporary composer?" debate over at NewMusicBox. The Seth Gordon reply in the comments section of the second post titled "incest, peppermints, color of time..." is absolutely hilarious. Mark Nowakowski's comment (currently at the bottom of the page) is more serious in tone, but also interesting.

Interestingly, both Darcy and Colin Holter highlight the influence of peer pressure on musical choices. I wonder if now, as fans of less-mainstream music can easily congregate online, the burden of being a musical loner has lightened. Jonah Weiner touches on this in his article "Tila Tequila, the first star of MySpace:"

"[David Hadju's] dismissal [which is no longer available online for free, but its first page is in Google's cache] of the site's word-of-mouth musical recommendations—he says they reflect 'social expectations as much as, perhaps more than, musical passions'—is an impossible fantasy: When is 'musical passion' ever so pure that it exists in a vacuum, sealed off from 'social expectation'?"