Museum of Music: Part 2

In Part 1 of this post, I described and criticized the sorry state of public collections of music as compared to other prominent arts. Continuing with that thought below, I outline ideas for the creation of a modern multimedia driven Museum of Music (MoM).


Unlike paintings or sculpture, presenting music en mass is hard. If you walk into a good-sized room of an art gallery, you might see as many as a dozen paintings in close proximity, perhaps with a few statues filling the void between walls. Tourists can dart through the room, taking only passing glances at the modest and masterful alike; and art aficionados can dissect little known works, brush stroke by brush stroke. Part of the fun of art museums is that you can experience the art at the speed and level of depth that you want.


Music needs a solution to the same problem. Average listeners can't stay awake through an entire symphony, and even if they could, without modest training, they wouldn't appreciate what they were hearing. On the other hand, a former cellist who has season tickets to the Philharmonic, wouldn't enjoy being told that Beethoven's 9th symphony can be summed up by a snippet of the Ode to Joy melody.

Museum of Music: Part 1

Art is a very broad term. Art can be paintings, architecture, or upholstery. Artists can be sculptors, chefs, or auto detailers. Anything that is made or done can be made or done artfully and thus become art if the viewer and/or artist deem it so. The most widely practiced and well establish art forms such as literature, painting, sculpture, and music are often displayed in the largest and grandest buildings in cities around the world.

Any book you could hope to read can likely be found at your local library, free of charge, or bought used on Amazon for dirt cheap. Thanks to projects like Google Books, even out of print titles can be found online, for free no less. The greatest paintings, sculptures, and photographs from around the world are collected and periodically circulated in regional museums such as the Louvre, the MoMA, and the Getty. At even the largest museums, the entrance fee is either voluntary or waved on certain days, so as not to keep anyone from enjoying the collections. And if you're not near a museum, you can at least find a high-definition rendering for free with a simple search online.

But what about music? There are museums for physical artworks and libraries for books but there are very few public access centers for the enjoyment or history of music.

Christmas Music in October! [gasp]

I am well known for listening to Christmas music as soon as is publicly acceptable each year. I love reminiscing about winters past, family gatherings, all that jazz. But, like most people, I find that 2 months is about all I can take of nearly nonstop Christmas music before I get jaded. All the same, if holiday music shows up sporadically on my Pandora station in October or February, I'm fine with it.

But I am very aware that other people have strong opinions about when it is and is not acceptable to begin playing holiday tunes in a public setting. I had one gentleman approach me when I worked at the movie theatre absolutely livid that there was Christmas music playing on October 29th, which is way before the universal Christmas music ok-day of Halloween...

The trouble was that the CD targeted for November 1st had arrived early and we were contractually obliged to play the most recent MovieTunes as soon as it arrived. I explained this and he was still upset. He demanded to file a complaint with whoever made the music selections. I explained that it was a separate company and that frankly (fyi: never, ever be frank with customers, no good will come of it), I doubt any good will come of it, since it is only a two day difference from the acceptable day, which is when they had intended to start playing this music anyways. At this point the gentleman starts cursing, demands to speak to the manager, who is not in, and then leaves the building with steam streaking out his ears and profanity streaming out his mouth.

Anyways, today I was in the local Borders and a subtle but discernible saxophone rendition of Silent Night was playing over the speakers. Now again, I love Christmas music and would not object to easing into the holiday season a few weeks early. But in this busy bookstore I realized that I was annoyed. This warranted some introspection. I discovered that I was not annoyed by the music itself, which was actually quite pleasant, but that I was annoyed that I needed to appear annoyed to fit in with the crowd around me. And that's just dumb. Spent the remainder of my stay in the store tapping my foot and humming through a smile.

Speaking Words of Wisdom

I was introduced to The Beatles in 2000 by the album 1. My parents played it over and over again in the car for years. As I grew, my favorite songs changed from "Eight Days a Week" and "A Hard Day's Night" to the ones further through the album (which is organized chronologically) such as "Hey Jude" and "Let it Be." Though I liked the music and I appreciated the apparent significance given to The Beatles by their fans, I didn't understand the what the big deal was; I had heard music just like this by countless other people on the radio. In fact, it was probably because I had listened to so much popular music as a kid that I liked The Beatles at all.

It wasn't until college, when I had most of a minor in music under my belt that I realized why The Beatles were so extraordinary.  The year The Beatles played on the Ed Sullivan Show (1963), the biggest hits were songs like "Louie, Louie" and "It's My Party" that you'd find on oldies stations nowadays. In 1966, when Sgt. Pepper's came out (think "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and the tambura-laden "Within You Without You"), the top of the charts were Frank Sinatra and the Beach Boys.

The Beatles' music defined the course of popular music, then reinvented it before the rest of the industry had time to catch-up. More than this, they inspired musicians in every genre of music. This is wonderfully illustrated in the performances by other legendary artists at the presentation ceremony of the Gershwin Prize to Sir Paul McCartney which aired on PBS tonight.