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Vaniver comments on Helpless Individuals - Less Wrong
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Sure. Do you think The Beatles will be any less memorable than Beethoven?
First mover advantage is huge, but it only works for one field. It is strongly unlikely that there will ever be a classical composer comparable to Beethoven, simply because of Beethoven's name recognition and his impact on the field. But whenever a new field is invented, that's opening the gate on a new orchard with a bunch of low-hanging fruit. In 100 years, the early chipmusic composers will probably be comparable in name recognition to jazz greats today.
How well do you know Beethoven's work?
Not very? I know about 6 pieces (and have heard probably 20-30), and comparable amounts from ~6 other classical composers from his time plus/minus a century.
Since I'm not terribly into music, my sense of "Beethoven's level" is cultural impact + name recognition + durability; I understand that someone whose interest in music stems from technical appreciation may have very different standards. But it seems hard to compare, say, Beyonce's work with Beethoven's work at the same age without personal preference coming into play.
Did you enjoy what you heard? If so, consider trying out more. My own experience has been that his best known works make less of an impression than his lesser known works (on account of the fact that the best known ones have been repeated and imitated to the point of becoming cliched). I listened to most of Beethoven's works many times back in college and found doing so very worthwhile - an eye opening experience.
Would be happy to give a list of my favorite recordings and pieces but only if solicited.
I think that while aesthetic preferences do vary from person to person, there is a notion of aesthetic quality that emerges across large numbers of people (partially picked up in the "durability" variable) which is much less subjective than one might initially suppose. Of course, it would take a lot to detail and support my position. I'll think about making some top level posts about aesthetics.
Some quick points:
To put a positivist spin on the question, one could pick a randomly chosen collection of 100 college students, have half of them listen to Beyonce for three months and then listen to Beethoven's early works for three months and the other half listen to the two artists in the reverse order and have them record their preferences between the two.
I find Beethoven's early quartets among the least compelling of his works (favoring his early piano sonatas over his quartets).
The comparison of Beyonce with Beethoven at the same age is misleading as an indicator of the relative stature of the two artists. Many people who know classical music well have the impression that Beethoven's quality improved considerably with time whereas as far as I know, few fans of contemporary popular music have a similar impression of their favorite contemporary popular artists.