Who Needs Classical Music?
Subtitle: Cultural Choice and Musical Value
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: March 11, 2002
Language: eng
Number of pages: 150
ISBN-13: 9780195146813
First sentence: Perhaps nothing seems more futile than a dispute about music.
Description: "During the last few decades, most cultural critics have come to agree that the division between "high" and "low" art is an artificial one, that Beethoven's Ninth and "Blue Suede Shoes" are equally valuable as cultural texts. In Who Needs Classical Music?, Julian Johnson challenges these assumptions about the relativism of cultural judgments. The author maintains that music is more than just "a matter of taste": while some music provides entertainment, or serves as background noise, other music claims to function as art. This book considers the value of classical music in contemporary society, arguing that it remains distinctive because it works in quite different ways from most of the other music that surrounds us."--Jacket.