Scalzi on Music

For his recent "Reader Suggestion Week", I posed the following question to John Scalzi:

"Will things like iTunes destroy the way we used to allow songs to 'grow' on us, as we tilt toward buying songs that are immediately pleasing? And will the fact that apparently the individual song is increasingly the atomic entity with respect to music distribution, will this kill the idea of the album? And what place classical music in the grand world of downloading, when the paradigm of 'Hey, bands, just record your music in your basement!' doesn't really scale to symphony orchestras?"

He offered the following answer in the middle of a "grab-bag" post of all the questions that didn't inspire a full-length post of its own:

"Well, it's not like orchestras ever fit into basements. Didn't stop hundreds of years of symphonies from being written. And when you have the capability of being able to replicate an entire orchestra from a synth, what's to stop some ambitious person from composing a symphonic score?

Yes, I think iTunes et al will change how we approach music, but it'll change it back to what it was, say, in 1903, when most music was sold as songs (through sheet music). Albums are a fairly late development in terms of being the accepted basic unit of musical currency. Also, I think we've all always tilted toward songs -- it's why even in the era of albums bands always released singles. I've mentioned before that I do think the idea of an album meaning "a set number of songs determined by the physical limitations of the recording media" is going out the door, but I think musically ambitious bands will always release suites of thematically-linked songs. Would it be so bad to live in a world where Radiohead or Wilco could release album-length works and Britney and Justin simply released singles? Digital distribution allows for both."

I wish I could put my finger on it, but this answer just doesn't seem right to me, and I'm not sure why. I can cite a number of places where I diverge with John, but I'm not sure they add up to him being wrong. So, I'll just respond to a few items here.

:: First, I think he totally missed my fear, expressed in the opening of my question, that downloads will hasten the compression of our attention span, which is already alarmingly diminished. If we assume that most people who buy music by the song will only buy those songs whose first few seconds immediately appeal to them, have we lost something as a musical culture? I mean, if you bail out on Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique after the first four minutes, you still won't even have heard the idee fixe, the theme which ties together the entire work. That's an extreme example, to be sure, but I think it helps illustrate what I'm getting at.

:: I think John's a bit flip about dismissing my concerns about classical music in general in the age of downloading. No, composers didn't write symphonies and record them in their own basements, but there were a lot more orchestras then, as well. And I mean, a lot more orchestras. Every town had its own orchestra, many nobles even had their own orchestras, et cetera. Since the era we're talking about was mostly the pre-recording era, the premium was on performance, which no longer seems to be the case at all. Live music was music, whereas now recording has become so entrenched that we constantly have to remind ourselves that live music even exists. Some commentators I've seen (and I'm not sure if John would fit in this category) seem to think that the demise of Big Recording (assuming the demise of Big Recording) will lead to some grand rebirth of live music, which I'm not at all convinced will be the case. And the problem to classical music, in particular, seems to me to be potentially pernicious: as fewer recordings get made, fewer ensembles will exists in the first place, which means fewer opportunities for the composers to get their works performed at all. And besides, those hundreds of years of symphonies were largely written before the rise of the synth, electric guitar, and drumset.

:: I'm a bit dismayed at John's suggestion that the synthesizer can replicate a symphony orchestra. Approximate, yes. Replicate, no. I don't want to dismiss the possibilities of electronic music -- a lot of my favorite music is electronic in nature -- but I don't want to downplay its limitations. If we reach a point where there are only a handful of orchestras left, I really can't imagine that the fact that a synthesizer can simulate one will really inspire too much creation of new symphonic music.

:: John says that the musical culture will revert to that of 1903, when the song was the chief means of musical distribution, in the form of sheet music. This analogy troubles me, because the only point of convergence is in the song-as-musical-atom. Sheet music dominated, firstly, in the era prior to widespread recording; and second, more importantly, sheet music's popularity depended on widespread musical literacy to a degree that I regret to say I find unlikely to ever exist again. For sheet music to be of any use, someone has to be able to play the piano, and not just plink out a tune or two, but actually play the thing. Song-as-atom or no, music was a participatory thing to the people of 1903. Not so now. The song, back then, was still seen as just a first-step into music. Now, it seems as though the song is the only thing that matters. Witness, today, the track list of a mix CD John made for his daughter. It's all songs, and rock or pop songs to boot. Not an iota of orchestral music there, no suggestion of longer forms.

:: Finally, John says that digital distribution still allows for the concept of the album. I don't disagree, but that's not what I'm getting at. What can be done with digital distribution is one thing; what is likely to be done with it is something else. If Radiohead releases an "album", in the classic sense of the word, online, but people are able to buy either a song or two from it up to the whole thing, what's the point of the "album" in the first place? Can the "album" even be said to exist? It seems to me that the idea of artistic context that is inherent in the album concept would suffer dramatically in such a scheme.

(Postscript: I don't want this to sound like a big attack on John Scalzi, because I love the guy's blogs in general and his thoughts on writing in particular. But there's just something that bothers me about today's music talk: it's entirely about songs. Song this and song that, and here's a great song, and here's the ecletic bunch of songs on my iPod, et cetera. The word "music" now seems to be a singular plural for "songs". I really do worry that longer forms will no longer exist with any kind of true vibrancy.)