Is Culture Really Dead? – The Atlantic

The Day the Music Died

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Spencer Kornhaber completely articulates the ersatz nature of popular culture in the present day. One thing I feel he missed about trendy pop music, although, is the comparatively rare use of devices. The listener can really feel the emotion of a tune created utilizing precise devices. It’s the distinction between quick meals and a home-cooked meal. I feel this helps clarify the second nation music is having; hearken to nation, and also you’ll hear an actual guitar or violin. It makes me surprise if music can survive in any other case.

Andrew Brown
Wilmington, Del.

I used to be delighted to see my native radio station, KMUN, talked about in Spencer Kornhaber’s article. A community-supported station in a rural space of the Pacific Northwest, KMUN is itself an establishment combating in opposition to the decline of standard tradition. The station has a small employees, and lots of applications are offered by volunteers. There’s plenty of folks music, but every present has distinct music and artists. The identical is true of the station’s classical applications. Just a few reveals often have musicians within the studio acting on air. Native residents focus on present occasions and points and might even suggest their very own applications to current, after taking a category in radio expertise.

Kornhaber’s article focuses on cultural conformity, and but right here’s good previous KMUN doing radio with selection, objective, eccentricity, and group. I hope The Atlantic’s readers will give it a pay attention!

Laurie Caplan
Astoria, Ore.

I’m sincerely grateful to Spencer Kornhaber for speaking with Ted Gioia. I do know the headline of Kornhaber’s article calls to thoughts the 12 months 1971, however the nice fragmentation of our tradition dates even additional again. Early-Twentieth-century philosophers warned that the “mechanization of tradition” would undermine the that means and objective of life. ChatGPT and different AI applied sciences appear to be the end result of that pattern.

David Thomas
Rockville, Md.

As I reviewed the checklist of the artists talked about in Spencer Kornhaber’s article, I wasn’t shocked that so many individuals assume up to date music is in decline.

To these individuals I say: Cécile McLorin Salvant, Waxahatchee, Black Pumas, St. Paul & the Damaged Bones, boygenius and its particular person members, Lianne La Havas, Samara Pleasure, Moist Leg, Indigo Sparks, Joan Shelley, Lake Road Dive, Lucius, Sierra Ferrell, Dana Gavanski, Khruangbin, Leon Bridges (or Khruangbin and Leon Bridges), Bahamas, Amyl and the Sniffers, Nels Cline, I’m With Her, Rufus Wainwright, Laura Marling, Molly Tuttle, Billy Strings, and, and, and …

Anybody who thinks that the world is just not awash in nice music is just not trying in the proper locations.

William Rogers
Washington, D.C.

Spencer Kornhaber replies:

William Rogers factors out a reassuring truth: Should you search for it, you may nonetheless discover most something you search in tradition—together with rock and folks musicians who faithfully adhere to Twentieth-century requirements for excellence. However I wish to push again in opposition to the notion, embedded within the different letters, that sustaining cultural well being is generally a matter of preservation. We must always after all champion expert instrumentalists and scrappy radio stations, and we should always assume critically about what’s gained and misplaced in each technological transition. It’s as vital, and tougher, to nurture greatness that’s flourishing in new varieties, utilizing new strategies. We want maximalist, forward-charging artwork that may compete with, not merely present refuge from, the attention-scrambling trendy forces that may in any other case drive us right into a darkish age.

What Is Classical Music?

The time period is utilized to radically totally different compositions throughout greater than 1,000 years of historical past, Matthew Aucoin wrote within the Might situation. We want a greater definition.

In his article about what he calls “written music,” Matthew Aucoin rightly laments the lack of cash-strapped public faculties to show musical literacy. Not so way back, city public faculties had been at occasions websites of world-class music training. Aucoin mentions Miles Davis in his article, so it’s value remembering that Davis typically heaped reward in interviews on his first trumpet instructor, Elwood Buchanan, who labored for the general public faculties of his hometown, East St. Louis, Illinois. It was Mr. Buchanan, Davis stated, who inspired him to play gentle, quick, and with out vibrato—three issues that will quickly turn out to be synonymous with the Miles Davis model. Elvin Jones, one of the vital influential drummers in jazz historical past, had solely a ninth-grade training however credited his musical growth to his middle-school music instructor in Pontiac, Michigan. In the meantime, in Chicago, a succession of jazz greats—Nat King Cole, Dinah Washington, and Gene Ammons, to call only a few—studied beneath the identical inspiring instructor, Walter Dyett, who ran the music program at DuSable Excessive College. The same testimony seems within the biography of the legendary multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy.

This legacy of musical training reminds us of the ability of public faculties to nurture the following era of expertise. As Aucoin suggests, ensuring these applications are totally funded in the present day is a strong funding in the way forward for written music on this nation.

Seth Kershner
Hadley, Mass.

Bravo to Matthew Aucoin for his splendidly insightful and enlightening article. I’m a specialist within the subject of musical notation, with the majority of my profession behind me. I used to be, as Aucoin places it, the “modern-day equal of medieval monks laboriously copying out illuminated manuscripts.” It’s true—I spent a number of years in apprenticeship beneath knowledgeable copyist after which went on to arrange music for Broadway reveals, movies, symphony orchestras, operas, nightclub acts, commercials. All with pen and ink.

Partly for that reason, I feel it’s value writing an addendum to Aucoin’s proposed description of classical music. His article offers principally with music as an expression of the artist. I submit, nonetheless, that the necessity for music-notation literacy contains the world of economic music, too. This might prolong the advantages of musical literacy past the live performance corridor and into most of the people; maybe it may even make college music applications extra related and fewer inclined to price range cuts. Simply as architects want building employees to understand their expressive ideas, composers and songwriters want arrangers, orchestrators, and copyists.

Robert Nowak
Tonawanda, NY

As somebody who has no musical aptitude however appreciates those that do, I loved Matthew Aucoin’s “What Is Classical Music?” However I’ve to disagree along with his assertion that “the written phrase is as prevalent in the present day because it ever was.”

Northwestern’s Medill College reviews that previously 20 years, america has misplaced greater than one-third of its print newspapers. As a former president of my native library’s board of trustees, I noticed CDs, DVDs, paintings, and maker areas take over flooring areas that beforehand had been stuffed with books.

For a lot of, the rise in time spent on social media and watching streaming leisure correlates with a decline in time spent studying. Aucoin rightfully needs that we People would spend extra time listening. However we additionally must spend extra time studying.

Jay Fisher
Lisle, In poor health.

Behind the Cowl

This situation incorporates a assortment of tales marking 80 years of life within the Atomic Age. Amongst these are Ross Andersen’s reporting from South Korea and Japan, two international locations that will pursue nuclear weapons; Tom Nichols’s evaluation of America’s system of command and management; and Noah Hawley’s essay on Kurt Vonnegut and the bomb. For our cowl picture, we chosen {a photograph} of a 1954 bomb take a look at at Bikini Atoll. The picture was present in a authorities archive by the photographer Michael Gentle. The so-called Yankee take a look at launched an explosive yield equal to 13.5 million tons of TNT, about 900 occasions that of Little Boy.

— Lucy Murray Willis, Photograph Editor

This text seems within the August 2025 print version with the headline “The Commons.”