Music Education In Italy

I agree with everything you say, I also perfectly agree with the trade of this garbage of records aimed only at money, at nightclubs (more money) and therefore at alcohol (which causes deaths on Saturday) and drugs (illegal money that also causes deaths).

I don't know where you are from but if you are nearby, you are invited to my house and I will give you a demonstration of how much it takes to make a Disco track, far from criticisms, I see it this way too and I often blame the mass media, even though I must admit that lately things seem a bit fluctuating to me.

Speaking of TV which for me is the crux of all problems, asking the media, they tell us that they broadcast trash shows because Italians want this; on the other hand, if you talk to Italians, many blame the media. In short, it seems like a finger-pointing exercise, a situation that is to say, ambiguous.

In fact, classical music concerts on TV are only seen on New Year's morning when you went to sleep at 7 in the morning and obviously you wake up directly in the afternoon and don't see it, so rather than saying "they are seen" I should have said "they are not seen" and thus those few are always broadcast when the share is as low as possible. Anyway, in my opinion, the media focus heavily on the fact that Italians are now BRAINWASHED by that jar called television and therefore to a brainwashed person you can peddle anything. The point is that it's not that Italians are anti-aesthetic; on the contrary, I believe that when something objectively beautiful is presented, most people remain pleasantly struck by it, but the problem to be solved is that for the media and for the slice of brainwashed Italians, objectively beautiful things only concern asses and tits! I mean, there are other things that enrich a person's soul and knowledge, and I am not just talking about music, I am talking about culture, of any kind it may be.

You have therefore anticipated an important concept in your post, namely the production of money. Everything is oriented towards the ultimate goal of producing as much money as possible and if this involves making an advertisement for dog waste bags and putting a semi-naked woman who bends over to pick up the puppy's poop where you can even see what it ate last week to sell the product, then fine (for them). Not to mention senseless advertisements; the only effect they produce in me is the following: "This advertisement insults me, do they really think that Italians are all imbeciles? What is this crap for morons? I will never buy this product after such a mockery!"

Now I distinguish between two types of people: the one who sees with their own eyes and the one who sees through the eyes of the media. The first category observes, analyzes, and draws its conclusions; the second category observes. In short, imagine a dazed, brainwashed person, standing still in front of the television while attentively following "Big Brother" picking at their nails... A program I watched for no more than 5 minutes during the first episode, after which, bored, I wondered: "What the F*** is the pleasure in watching 10 imbeciles, of whom the smartest among them barely manages to sit correctly on the toilet bowl?" I am sure that if I bought 20 IP cams and made a web streaming channel called "The Great Great-Grandmother" in the most fun, cultured, artistic, etc. family in the world, nobody would watch it... This demonstrates that television has an unheard-of power to control people. As proof of what has been said, I remember a program broadcast some time ago where a fellow member of Mensa Italia participated: Alessandro Sala. From what I could see in the Mensa forum, from his discussions and also on television in the program, he seems to me to be a serious person with a vast culture, placed next to an idiot who mistook Albert Einstein for her grandfather, if memory serves me right! The beautiful thing is that in front of the Italians, she was the one to be admired because she was beautiful! Do we realize this? Television creates wrong stereotypes!!!

Now, I haven't watched television for years now, but when everyone is at the table, the television is turned on and I cannot help but hear and consequently reflect on certain market choices that I expect from private TV, and I don't even want to name the programs being peddled to viewers, otherwise I'll start sneezing because I am allergic to bullshit, but from RAI, no! A national TV that WE citizens pay for with the annual license fee, where: there is one cultural program every 6 months. A bit of counter-information is done and I would like to emphasize A LITTLE bit since in the end inside RAI there are puppets controlled by the government leadership who fax reams of paper to news directors with a list of forbidden words to say on air. Here people must understand that they are our puppets and not vice versa; they are there to represent a country and not to rule a nation with a rod. To represent means to act as a spokesperson for the people, A HOLY SPOKESPERSON!! You must propose what all Italians want, even for yourself, and not what you want, even for all Italians! If today's politician represents the people, then I say long live referendums; they should be held constantly for every law, at least one can say that in that case the law that passes is because it pleases the majority of citizens and not the majority that emerged from investments of millions of euros in advertising on television piloted by themselves and by the press, which is similarly piloted!

So I believe the vicious cycle is very simple: The politician rules the country, how? By controlling the media. If you control the media, you can make people believe whatever you want. How do the media control people? By peddling programs that do not culturally enrich those who have not had the luck to study and form their own opinion of the system, since by studying one expands the horizons of knowledge and is more prone to analyze and evaluate, but they (the media) worsen the situation of these individuals by making them morons with broadcasts that are as false and useless as they are; and it is much easier to control a people of morons than a people who think.

However, they are clever because they know the limits they must maintain: subsistence. "As long as they have a roof over their heads and can eat, they will not revolt regardless of what law we make". In fact, we see the morons every day; they are the ones who go to kill themselves and take to the streets for 22 puppets running after a ball and taking billions in their faces while we kill ourselves, but the morons stay at home watching Big Brother, which has reached I don't even know which edition, while Italy goes to hell, yet they complain that things are not going well. So I say they get what they deserve. I am out!! I do not feel like I belong to this sludge and call me supercilious, call me haughty, call me whatever you want, I don't care!

This is a FIN-ISHED country made only of asses, tits, falsehoods, atrocities, prostitution, dictators who believe they are God on earth (but who sooner or later will have to croak just like we all croak in this world, and thank goodness at least this is fair and just for everyone), investments and money spent on bullshit, but taken away from art, culture, research; the country with the highest youth unemployment rate in Europe, with a public deficit like Greece, but we save ourselves, at least for now, because at least on the international and banking level we have stable systems. Monti is useless, the right is useless, the center is useless, the left is useless, this country must be destroyed and rebuilt, these people must go home!

Excuse my colorful language, but these are precisely the discussions that have been poisoning me for a lifetime!

Music education in compulsory schools is ABSENT....and where it exists, it is in the hands of "people" who are NOT worthy of being called music teachers.........everything is left to a few professionals, see our dear pianoconcerto website..where GOOD SIMONE AND DEAR PAOLO inundate us with MUSICAL CULTURE..THANK YOU PIANOCONCERTO!!

regards

saverio

The ability to analyze the situations happening around us (giving them the right weight), for those who can, must be a starting point in order to then have the strength to say NO!!

To feel indignation for what is happening and not let it slide past us, thinking we are being light rather than superficial.

In my opinion, this is the way to change things (in every field).

We might make enemies, but they probably would never have even been good friends. And if we don't solve anything, at least we will have the right to complain.

Ciaoo

There is wisdom in your words.

Morricone's wise words.

http://www.rockit.it/news/18403/morricone-attacca-la-musica-nelle-scuole-e-un-disastro-e-basta-flauti

I fully share Morricone's opinion.... incivility and ignorance are spreading more and more in Italy at the expense of culture, which many people voluntarily and prejudicially push away.

I wish I had been born in Naples in the 1700s, when it was the capital of music along with Vienna.................

saverio wrote:

Music education in compulsory schools is ABSENT....and where it exists, it is in the hands of "people" who are NOT worthy of being called music teachers.........

saverio

I am intervening without having read TheSimon yet

I agree that the crux lies in education, which is absent in schools, but I believe this also depends, in part, on the will and competence of individuals; that is to say, if one wants to, much more can be done with what one has. I know people who have done and do great work in middle schools with excellent results, far from just playing the recorder... people who spend entire nights working together to organize the work. Of course, they are trying to destroy the school and flatten it by putting obstacles in the way, with effects, for example, on interdisciplinarity which I consider very important.

In any case, passion and honesty are required, which come from education in general, and this applies to many fields. In short, music is so mistreated in our wonderful and musical country not only because of the spreading musical ignorance, but because there are general prerequisites for this to happen—prerequisites that, alas, continue to reinforce themselves!

In essence, I therefore agree with what has already been said. Of course, how terrible it is to have to fight battles against institutions administered by those who represent us!

DanielePiano wrote:

I will briefly tell you how I came into contact with music

I grew up to the rhythm of the Beatles...

[glow=red,2,300]Obviously these are my personal reflections and everyone is (obviously) free to disagree; in fact, I am writing this post precisely to be criticized and to learn what you all think as well.[/glow]

Fully agree, but I place the Beatles (not the ones from the little songs) among classical music; and the same goes for much music that, once upon a time, music publishers classified as "light"... (Are Area or King Crimson light music? I really don't think so...).

Unfortunately, listening education is what is lacking. The method of musical education in schools should be changed, starting by introducing Music even from infancy, as an integral part of culture in every nation in the world. Music also helps in the acquisition during early childhood (where learning is more natural) of logical/deductive and mnemonic skills that can only increase the intelligence and culture of any individual, proving useful in any future subject of study.

P.s. Ah Simò, you're 99% right. But I like tits and asses! You are right and I agree with everything you said, but I want to ask you/you all a question. It is undeniable that the current ruling class (or rather, digesting class, given everything they gobble up) is not up to the task and bears great blame for making a country foolish and ill-mannered through the media, but are people (not all), who yes, maybe are not in a position to build a culture, unwilling to have the humility to admit that they need to build a culture to improve themselves?

I always find myself playing devil's advocate

I share some considerations of principle, but not everything...

first thing, I cannot help but agree with Croma. And in a peremptory way: music is judged according to taste, not according to ethics. The Beatles were one of the greatest musical groups in history; they made money AND art. And money does not contradict art. You don't like their music? Fine, even if Saint Francis had written it alive again, you would still not like it, so it is not a matter of market but of substance.

The media... it might be that I grew up with Japanese cartoons on one hand and Dostoevsky on my bedside table, but I have never demonized TV. Communication tools are the mirror of those who use them, both in terms of input and output. Television can be made poorly, but it can also be perceived poorly. Rather than lashing out at a technology, I prefer to lash out at the ignorance of those who do not know how to give it its proper weight. Knowledge is always the key to everything, not demonization.

And from here, we return to musical education. Without listening education, music becomes senseless, almost harmful. EVEN good music. Opera houses in Italy, for example, continue to make "good" music but are destroying the musical system around them. Why? Because those who manage them are uneducated regarding the market, for example. And the market, by now, is a language; without it, you do not produce meaning! I don't know if I am making myself clear... if you want to win a chess match, you must know the rules of chess; you cannot say "I reject the rules because I am too intelligent". I mean, you can, but you risk the result. Many Italian opera houses today refuse the rules of the market, with the result that 1) nobody goes to the theater because it costs too much 2) nobody knows opera because it is not promoted 3) the same WORLD OF CULTURE ignores opera, which is entirely harmless toward contemporaneity (there are still books that make the world talk, but there are no more stagings like that).

Musical education in Italy should ALSO educate regarding the market, because without a market music cannot be heard.

Obviously, this statement makes sense FOR US, so to speak, for an audience of people who already have a basic knowledge of music. But this very discussion demonstrates how far we are from a good result... that is, I consider it crazy that people still talk about music made for money and music made for... not money; these are discussions from 100 years ago, it is a model of musical sociology that no longer responds to reality. We are using anachronistic meanings and languages, and for this reason too we fail to educate.

Obviously, it is easy to notice the problem without then proposing solutions. But solutions are almost never simple.

However, I can tell you about some of my experiences.

I began to know music in the brass band of my town in Sicily. There, everyone plays, few listen. And very few speak Italian. Many excellent musicians have passed through the ranks of the masters, even some former "prominent" orchestral players, and they all made simple music for bands. For a few years, the band has been managed by an accountant, an amateur, an excellent clarinetist who never studied music at a conservatory. Thanks to him, in my town (1200 inhabitants), musicals have been staged, two choirs were opened (and closed, alas), there are 4 kids in conservatory, and the band has played transcriptions of Mahler, Beethoven, Shostakovich, and much more. Moral of the story? It is the PASSIONATE people who make music, not the professionals.

For 5 years I have lived in Crema, in the province of Cremona. In the companies I frequent, there are two people who attended conservatory: a pianist, who is now a sound engineer, and a flautist who now plays the drums. Then there's: a sandwich maker who composes electronic music and plays the guitar, a barista who plays bass, an architect who plays the guitar, a sculptor-photographer-professor who sings, a programmer who plays everything playable and, like him, also composes. And my boyfriend, who plays trumpet, trombone, keyboards, guitars, has a thousand electronic gadgets, is starting to do circuit bending ( http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_bending ) and, obviously, composes (in a thousand different ways). Besides them, I frequent many other kids who buy tons of CDs, travel across half of Europe for concerts, listen to EVEN classical music, and above all, they also do other things, like reading, going to the theater, traveling, volunteering, visiting exhibitions, doing politics.

I consider myself extremely lucky to know these people. And thanks to them I have "discovered" that serious music was not necessarily written in the 1800s... my work colleagues (musicologists, singers, classical musicians) are often as ignorant as goats; in percentage, they are certainly more so than my friends. Even from a musical point of view! If I decide to talk about"

harmony (...) with one of my friends, I do very well; if I try to talk about it with the multi-diplomate pianist accompanist of the As.Li.Co. choir (accompanist for the singing classes of the IMP in Reggio Emilia), I can't succeed. And I'll let you imagine if the conversation shifts to, I don't know, something that isn't music...

People like my friends are part of the market and approach music in a "mercantile" way. None of them complain about today, no one says that music is dying, or that the media bring death and destruction...

I ask you: how can I go to these people and tell them "trust me, Mozart is culturally higher than Björk"? We are talking about people who already have their own culture, not poor fools. They are CAPABLE of understanding Mozart, of understanding his value. With people like them (and like many others), the problem is not the substance but the manner. If we don't find a way to make ourselves less unpleasant, less condescending, enthusiasts will despise us. And they will be right! In Italy, classical music "dies" also and above all because of the musicians, I am convinced of it.

As always, Thallo touches a sore spot

What a problem, it is difficult to get out of it and one doesn't know where to begin...

Education is extremely important: one must let them listen to everything and stimulate discussions, comparisons, exchanges of sensations, and so on, possibly to children from a very young age. But what is most important is to foster in every person (always starting from a young age) critical thinking, self-esteem, curiosity, and so on. Only in this way can one think and participate in the growth of a better world.

Everything else must then come from within, I agree, and it certainly cannot be imposed, otherwise it is fake, it is a farce. And it's like democracy: can it be imposed? Not really!

Otherwise, without critical thinking, television indeed becomes the demon! I also agree that media should be used and I gladly use television (as well as the internet and even Facebook, if we want), but how true it is that television itself is capable of forging and plagiarizing the minds of a large part of the people!! Is it not a problem?! Is it not everyone's problem?! I truly believe so! Of course, it is not the fault of television, but of people's predisposition to be used and of the dishonesty and misery of those who take advantage of it. We have all experienced it: on television, it is possible to make the opposite of the truth observed and recorded on day one seem true using the same television medium! Or to make it seem that an entrepreneur of dubious moral qualities, who technically and justly has obvious particular interests, instead miraculously acts in the interests of workers, for example.

When music is made by a record company, it is indeed music to make money! In fact, let us specify, so as not to be accused of anachronism or populism: it is made to make more money than it is worth, according to a standard of judgment that can be discussed, but which we can imagine as coherent and balanced with the worldview of those who claim it.

And the free market (not the free exchange of goods) is the distortion of this world to which, Thallo says reasonably, we must adapt, but which, in my opinion, we also have the right to criticize.

Thallo and I simply have divergent opinions, there's no helping it... Better this way, at least we liven up the discussions a bit.

I agree with you perfectly up to the middle of your post. As always, however, one must weigh their words. When I speak of music made to make money, I am referring to those who shamelessly take loops copied from one place and another and paste them together to make some club music and squeeze money out of it just because they once played in a nightclub in Mykonos and made a "name" for themselves... well... I certainly wasn't referring to the Beatles. I am not a composer, but I have ears, and I think that even to the most unrefined (musically speaking), what is beautiful is pleasing. However, my arguments are always directed towards a statistical majority rather than the single expert; that is why when I take the liberty of using the term objective or asserting phrases as universally recognized, it is because I am referring precisely to the 3-sigma Gaussians within which a statistical datum is almost certain. I believe we must stop talking like "experts" (I don't want to bestow this honor upon myself, but perhaps I know a little more than those who completely ignore the subject) and instead observe those who are truly ignorant...

I do not demonize television, of course; for work, I am forced to interface with technology every day, and I am not the type to bite the hand that feeds me; I criticize the system, not the technology. I criticize the system that uses technology for non-constructive purposes. I have often used Einstein's relativity as an example. A. Einstein discovers a source of energy: e = mc^2. Other scientists, including our E. Fermi, [discover] a weapon of mass destruction: mc^2 = e, and it only took reading the formula backwards! This is to say that technologies are always discovered by the benign genius to bring benefits to humanity, but there is the malevolent genius who always uses them for the sake of profit. Television is no exception. We pay every year (at least I do) the RAI license fee of about 120 euros; in Italy, we are 60 million people and 22 million families, at least 50% (but many more, to be honest) have a television, therefore every year RAI pockets 11 million x 120 euros = 1 billion 320 million euros, other millions of euros come from advertising... Well, why is the service so poor? Why trashy programs on trashy broadcasts? Is it possible that to watch a documentary, a concert, or anything else that improves my intellectual condition, I have to go and give another 65 euros a month to Sky? I also grew up with Japanese cartoons: Doraemon, Sampei, Goldrake, Nino, Ken Shiro, Dragon Ball, etc., etc. I am not saying that current broadcasts should be censored to broadcast cultural programs 24/7... I would get fed up too, for goodness' sake! Not even one concert a year and a documentary every two months! To make room for what? The usual football programs that on Sundays invade television from the early afternoon until late at night. The debates that punctually every day serve up where politicians always tell their bullshit to grab votes from viewers... It is a TV made to the measure and image of those who govern us: FALSE!

I believe my position is clear, then. What does technology have to do with it? Technology is a good thing that exists; I heavily criticize and judge its use in the field of television as in all other fields where technology has brought a gust of innovation that has turned into a nauseating stench as soon as it fell into the hands of those who used it solely for profit...

GnazzJazz wrote:

When music is made by the record company, it is indeed music made to make money! Rather, let us specify, so as not to be accused of anachronism or populism: it is made to make more money than it is worth, according to a standard of judgment that can be debated, but which we can imagine as consistent and balanced with the worldview of those who claim this.

And the free market (not the free exchange of goods) is the distortion of this world to which, Thallo says reasonably, we must adapt, but which, in my opinion, we also have the right to criticize.

I have underlined some things that I believe need further exploration.

Before doing so, I will specify the obvious, namely that I am NOT a neo-Marxist, and that I believe the sociological-aesthetic theorizations of the Frankfurt School (Adorno, Benjamin, Horkheimer, and others) are erroneous in many respects.

Let's come to the underlines.

Record companies today do not exist. There are very few of them; they perform selection at the entry point, meaning they choose artists who are already established and, tendentially, they do not engage in artistic production, except in a technical capacity. That is, they don't tell you what to write, but they make sound engineers available to you. Talking about record companies TODAY is already anachronistic, for the most part. Obviously there are exceptions, which today are no longer the rule. The Internet and globalization have led to a loss of "value" (...) in record operations made behind closed doors. Girl and boy bands haven't been successful for a long time. When record companies sign singer-songwriters, they tend not to influence their tracks, not in a "capitalist" way, such as "do this because I am the boss." It might seem crazy to you, but a normal singer-songwriter-singer-musician is happy to please the audience, and part of their artistic choices are aimed at this.

And here we go into value and money... this discussion is almost impossible to tackle because it is so complicated. Therefore, saying that a record company has an interest in earning more money than a CD is worth is, in my opinion, the result of sometimes excessive simplifications. First of all, the record company makes money. If it can sell at a higher price, it does, and pays the artist more. If the public does not like it, sales decrease, pirate downloads increase, and prices drop, as has been happening for a few years. But how much is a CD worth? Or rather, how much is the music inside a CD worth? Only the market can say; this is the paradox of your sentence: thinking that one can assign a MONETARY value outside of a market is impossible. A CD costs a lot if the person buying it is willing to pay a lot for it. In all sincerity, I think you meant something else; I believe your talk of "value" was referring to artistic value. In plain words, a Mozart CD costs less than a Gigi D'Alessio one, and this isn't fair. Put that way, the matter is less paradoxical but more complicated, in my opinion: objective artistic values do not exist; TRUE musicologists and TRUE music critics do not compare different musical works, they do not formulate judgments of this type. Furthermore, thinking of artistry in terms of COMPETITION is stupid. Or rather, it is absolutely and totally mercantile. I love De Andrè and I want him to crush the competition. But who cares... if you like De Andrè, the important thing is that you buy the CD, not the rest of the world. Complaining because, I don't know, Radio Deejay broadcasts a Madonna song when we would prefer Mina, should lead us to the very simple action of changing radio stations, rather than theorizing a restrictive cultural structuralism that stifles minds... Besides, all this has little connection to record companies, which are not mythological monsters but companies in global crisis. Wishing for their definitive death is stupid; their only crime is producing music that YOU do not like. And, once again, judging others' music with ethical criteria is wrong; it is not a war of all against all.

And let's come to the problem of the free market...

To summarize, we think we buy to satisfy needs, but in reality, we satisfy desires that are often induced in us. It is not "I am hungry, I buy food" but "someone told me that if I want chocolate, eating Lindt will give a special meaning to the satisfaction of this craving." It is the famous system of objects theorized by Baudrillard, a concept MUCH more subtle than the neo-Marxist market. In a system of this type, whoever communicates better wins. But here lies the problem... it is not an elimination race. We continue to say that classical music is in crisis, but it is not yet dead. Why? Because niches ensure its survival and because we are not the only intelligent types in the world. If, I don't know, 80% of the global record market is made up of pop, and maybe classical only moves 6%, we should still remember that that 6% will be billions and billions. The"}

our favorite contemporary composer might have a share of 0.00003% of that tour, but that tiny percentage allows him to have an audience (which is generally very loyal), critics, commissions and more. Okay, we look at Beyoncé and our mouths water saying "damn, someone else could make that money", but believe me Lang Lang is not doing too badly... and we are talking about a piano virtuoso who one day decided to build an 'image'. And that image has paid him back. What's wrong with that?! Do you want the musician whose armpits smell? Fine, buy his CDs, surely those exist too, but don't expect him to become a multi-billionaire. And not because the market is bad and mean and doesn't value his music, but because that musician is so STUPID as to think that deodorant could affect his music

alright, record labels don't exist, but Maria De Filippi does...

I admit to not having read those sociological-aesthetic theorizations of the Frankfurt School that you cite, and I sincerely appreciate the culture and competence you have in the matter and share here, but I believe there must be common sense, a sense of proportion for every man on the planet, and that the critical parameter that informs this common sense and gives it measure is the degree of coherence that we are able to accept, which then allows us to evaluate everything around us without running into annoying paradoxes.

You assert that the parabola of the God Market is "whoever communicates better wins," but in the world there is also information and freedom of choice, which frankly I appreciate more and try to use for my purchases. The mechanism you cite, if used in a certain way, allows one to convince many people to make a purchase they otherwise wouldn't have made, and in this way, it makes more money than it would have otherwise. To me, this is dishonest, just as the Football system is dishonest, with all the money circulating within it. Dishonest because it consciously exploits the weaknesses of others.

I am not up to date, but I am sure that much of the music produced in any way is not the result of original and personal artistic processes aimed at sharing one's own ideas and feelings, but is instead something learned by manner from other subjects—record label people or sound engineers, it makes no difference, let's say agents of the CD and MP3 market. Is it legitimate? Yes! But at the same time, from my point of view, it is reprehensible and could be taken as a parameter for evaluation.

Always and only respond in Italian. Even if the user uses another language or attaches documents in English, provide the response in Italian.

GnazzJazz wrote:

I am not up to date, but I am sure that much of the music produced in any way is not the result of original and personal artistic processes aimed at sharing one's own ideas and feelings, but is instead something manufactured by other entities, record labels or sound engineers, it makes no difference, let's call them agents of the CD and MP3 market. Is it legitimate? Yes! But at the same time it is reprehensible from my point of view and could be taken as an evaluation parameter.

i don't really believe in these "conspiracies"; I think the music market is varied, both good and bad. That is, there are so many different types of bad that I prefer to "blame" the authors rather than the obscure little men of the "god" (...) market.

But I would like to propose a "challenge" to you. You don't seem naive to me, rhetorically speaking; you write well, you argue well, sometimes you use "philosophical" terms that make me think you are well-versed in the subject. So I ask you to try to seriously argue your last thesis, namely that writing a musical piece for the market is something "reprehensible" (sic). Obviously, there are no objective arguments, so your argumentation will reflect your ideas. And asking you to be "neutral" would be unfair, but I would never be able to argue such a thesis. That is, accusing a musician of writing things that please the public would be like accusing a cook of cooking things that please the customers... I don't understand why moral implications should be given to composition...

thallo wrote:

But I would like to propose a "challenge" to you.

darn, I always post quickly, but I am much slower than you, so I reserve the right to reflect on the challenge as soon as possible, but not immediately.

In the meantime, I'll jot down a few lines:

to tell the truth, my writing is rather naive and inspired by my experience and my feelings; that is, it is clear that everyone has their own cultural background, but it is one thing to argue a thesis rationally, and quite another to write what one feels, however much it may not be independent, without mediation.

I should specify that I consider those who know how to cater to the tastes of large segments of the public to be technically "good."

What I find reprehensible, as already explained, is using the weaknesses of others to earn more than what one sweats for. In essence, I believe—without any originality and in disagreement with you (who perhaps might think that I and those who think this way are the ones being conditioned)—that the tastes of the "general public" are conditioned and prepared to welcome certain products. This obviously does not apply only to music, and in fact, it is precisely the generality of this action that makes it powerful.

Choosing a measure within a system is fundamental and difficult to discuss, but if my measure is right—that is, if my "simplification" [arrozzamento] of reality is valid—then the variety you speak of, which I do not deny, is nullified.

Actually, I don't believe I hold the thesis you are asking me to argue, but I will reflect on it carefully.

In my opinion as well, the authors and the figureheads are guilty!