Is music going downhill?

xfwm4 said:
no. and to those who think otherwise; listen to more music. please. this thought never lasts anyways.

JustOscar said:
The spreading of the idea that the quality of a work of art is "subjective",

and of the idea that art ultimately consists in "expressing yourself".

The disappearance of an authentic intellectual elite, and its substitution by ordinary people with university degrees.

Music being said that "it's a banger", or that "it slaps", and the like.

The excessive prestige and wealth that can be obtained by a singer, which seduces many who weren't born for music into wanting to become one.

Sad said:
Someone at work today told me Billie Eilish was the best artist of this century so far. How do you feel about this?

JustOscar said:
With all due respect, SmugSatoko, but only 20 minutes passed since I published my reply and you replied to me. I don't think you have spent enough time thinking about what I said. Maybe that's why you misunderstood me. That's understandable; it's your time, after all. But understand that I don't want to spend too much of my time talking with a person who has no intention of listening attentively to what I say. To be honest with you, I have no intention of listening to you either. You are not interested in what I have to say; I am not interested in what you have to say. We can spare ourselves a fruitless conversation.

PS: If you want (I hope you don't) to interpret this as a "concession of defeat", I won't stop you.

xfwm4 said:
no. and to those who think otherwise; listen to more music. please. this thought never lasts anyways.

JustOscar said:
Music being said that "it's a banger", or that "it slaps", and the like.

Noboru said:
432Hz is also part of the Solfeggio frequencies. C being somewhat close to it in the 432Hz tuning is the whole point, as mentioned in the link of my previous posting

Moreover, not all music around the world has since been tuned to A=440Hz, as the meme claims.

“I remember being in Japan in the '80s on tour with Prince and our pianos had been tuned differently,” Rogers said, also noting that “Cuban music tunes to A-436.”

In an interview with NPR in 2016, classical pianist Simone Dinnerstein mentioned how the National Cuban Orchestra was tuned to A-436 ( here ).
Cross concurred that “some orchestras have from time to time flirted with an increase up to A=450 Hz, which has the effect of making their sound seem brighter”. Audition documents by the New York Philharmonic, for example, state the orchestra tunes to A442

ANCIENT INSTRUMENTS
Reuters found no documented evidence that ancient cultures tuned their music to A=432Hz, as the meme alleges.

Armand D'Angour ( here ), professor at Jesus College at the University of Oxford, whose research has focused on ancient Greek music ( here ) told Reuters the claim is unfounded.

“We don’t know the absolute pitches of ancient strings, which in any case would have been variable depending on resources, location, circumstances etc. It is a fantasy to suggest that we know that any tuning was pinpointed as A=432Hz,” D’Angour said.

Heidi Köpp-Junk, Assistant Professor in Egyptian Archaeology at the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures, Polish Academy of Sciences Warsaw ( here ) also said “there is no evidence” that instruments in ancient Egypt were tuned to A=432Hz.

JustOscar said:
On average, yes. Or more accurately, it has gone downhill. Long ago.

Music being listened to less from love of it than from unability to bear silence. Religious festivals degenerating into profane parties. The spreading of the idea that the quality of a work of art is "subjective", and of the idea that art ultimately consists in "expressing yourself". The disappearance of an authentic intellectual elite, and its substitution by ordinary people with university degrees. Music being said that "it's a banger", or that "it slaps", and the like. The excessive prestige and wealth that can be obtained by a singer, which seduces many who weren't born for music into wanting to become one.

Thankfully, exceptions are many.

To give a quick background of how 432 Hz came into the picture, we turn to Joseph Sauveur, a French physicist who, in 1713, came up with the concept of a scientific or philosophical pitch. Basically, this system doesn’t follow the A440 tuning reference, and instead places A4 at 430.54 Hz and middle C—C4—at 256 Hz.

He explained that, by placing middle C at 256 Hz, you can create a system where each octave—or factor—of C lands on an even integer, instead of containing "dreadful" decimals.

Giuseppe Verdi, an Italian composer of the 19th century, advocated heavily for the use of this tuning, as does the Schiller Institute.
By using Twelve True Fifths tuning, created by author Maria Renold, there’s a way for C256 to fit on the same scale as A432. This website does a much better job of explaining the math than I would ever be able to. If you’re into some slightly nerdier math, it’s an excellent place to start learning about Maria Renold’s 12T5 tuning, or how our A440 equal temperament system works in general.

Noboru said:
There is more to the topic than meets the eye or the ear. Form follows frequency, see Chladini figures, church windows and cymatics.
Music can have healing aspects, like Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major (K448).
Every major celestial body including our own planet has its own frequency, known as "music of the spheres" or "musica universalis".
I wouldn't be surprised if frequency was used in the ancient past for precision carvings and for moving heavy blocks around.

Anyway, I have no issues with even contemporary modern music and with the 440Hz myself. I'm just over-saturated with music, so I barely look for new music and keep playing the same mostly older tunes in a change, until I hear newer titles at the radio or at the place of someone else. But the push for more "excitement" explains how music has become like fast food and some people have become so used to a particular taste that they don't want further experiments. Also, just wanted to highlight again that "modern music" is more than a century old, so unless the OP meant newer creations of classical music as well, this topic would be about comparing contemporary modern music of the 21st century with modern music of the 20th century

JaniSIr said:
Most quotes attributed to Einstein he never actually said, and the things he did say involved something along the lines of "quantum mechanics is stupid lol" which turned out to be exceptionally wrong. You shouldn't take at face value even the words of a genius.

traed said:
Chladini figures and cymatics if I understsnd correctly from resonant frequencies of the materials themselves. Im not sure but if you change the material or it's shape you change what frequencies patterns emerge.