Category: Music

Does Money Affect Creativity in the History of Western Classical Music?

by  Tyler Cowen in

That is the subtitle of a new paper by Karol J. Borowiecki, Yichu Wang, and Marc T. Law.  Here is the abstract:

How do financial constraints affect individual innovation and creativity? Understanding this relationship is essential, especially when innovation and creativity rely on the capacity to take risks. To investigate this, we focus on Western classical composers, a unique group of innovators whose lives offer a rich historical case study. Drawing on biographical data from a large sample of composers who lived between 1750 and 2005, we conduct the first systematic empirical exploration of how composers’ annual incomes correlate with measures of the popularity (as viewed from posterity), significance, and stylistic originality of their music. A key contribution is the development of novel measures of composers’ financial circumstances, derived from their entries within Grove Music Online, a widely used music encyclopedia. We find that financial insecurity is associated with reduced creativity: relative to the sample mean, in low income years, composers’ output is 15.7 percent lower, 50 percent less popular (based on Spotify’s index), and generates 13.9 percent fewer Google search results. These correlations are robust to controlling for factors influencing both income and creativity, with no evidence of pre-trends in creativity prior to low-income years, suggesting that reverse causality is unlikely. Case studies of Mozart, Beethoven, and Liszt show that low income periods coincide with declines in stylistic originality. Notably, the negative impact of low income is concentrated among composers from less privileged backgrounds, implying that financial support is crucial for fostering creativity and innovation. While we cannot make definitive causal claims, the consistency of our findings underscores the importance of financial stability for fostering innovation and risk-taking in creative fields.

Of course those results remind me of my own earlier book In Praise of Commercial Culture.  Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.

Classical music listening for the year

by  Tyler Cowen in

Overall it has been a very good listening year for me.  I spent a good bit of time relearning the Shostakovich String Quartets in various recordings, most of all the Fitzwilliam String Quartet.  I made more of a concerted attempt to learn the musics of Carl Nielsen and Kalevi Aho and Kurt Weill.  Here are some particular recordings that got more than their share of listening time, most but not all of them new releases:

Johann Sebastian Bach, complete cantatas, Masaaki Suzuki.

Beethoven, Complete Trios for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Weiss Kaplan Stumpf Trio.  Another example of “the best set of these pieces I ever have heard, and who the heck are these people?”  And the same works by the van Baerle Trio.

Mishka Rushdie Momen, Reformation, keyboard works by Byrd, Gibbons, Bull, and Sweelinck.

Debussy Images, by Saskia Giorgini.

Galina Grigorjeva, Nature Morte, by Paul Hillier and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir.

Georg Friedrich Handel, Eternal Heaven, music director Thomas Dunford.

Handel, 8 Great Suites for Harpischord, by Asako Ogawa.

Bruce Liu, Waves, music by Rameau, Ravel, and Alkan.

Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns, Symphonic Poems, Le Carnaval des Animaux, other works.  That I actually like this music is one of the year’s bigger surprises for me.

Schubert piano trios and assorted works, by Tetzlaff, Tetzlaff, and the now departed Lars Vogt.

Stravinsky, The Soldier’s Tale, with Isabelle Faust and Dominique Horwitz.

Tchaikovsky, symphonies four and six, and orchestral music, conducted by Carlos Paita.

The best recordings of classical music — ever — are being created now.  That is not what I would have expected, and it is a good counter to excessively negative cultural generalizations.

Addendum: Here is a Spotify playlist for many of those selections.

My Russian classical music podcast with Rick Rubin

by  Tyler Cowen in

You will find it here.  Rick asked me to give him my account of Russian classical music, “standing on one foot” as you might say.  With musical clips as well, played on Rick’s sound system.  So we started with Rimsky and Mussorgsky, and the European and folk/peasant music traditions as contrasting influences in Russian music.  There is then plenty of Tchaikovsky, Scriabin, and Stravinsky followinig, with perhaps Stravinsky as the organizing figure of the presentation.

It is never easy to do such things off the top of one’s head.  Nonetheless recommended.

The case why culture is not stuck

by  Tyler Cowen in

From the excellent Katherine Dee, here is just one excerpt:

TikTok sketch comedy is in the same lineage of theater. It invites a suspension of disbelief from the audience, creators often play multiple characters, rapidly switching between roles with nothing more than a change in voice, facial expression, or camera angle. And importantly, it’s funny. When the whole feed is taken together, it’s almost digital vaudeville: a song, a short sketch, a physical feat, slapstick, animal acts and satire, one after another, in a personalized variety show on your phone.

And:

It’s a spectrum. At one end, we have Internet Personalities, with their cults of devotion. In the middle, we find fan culture, where some fans become prominent figures within their fandoms, stars in their own right. These Big Name Fans occasionally break out to create their own media kingdoms, as was the case with E.L. James, who authored Fifty Shades of Grey, itself originally Twilight fanfiction, and Cassandra Clare, who began in the Harry Potter fan community, before going on to write several popular fantasy series. At the other end of the spectrum are anonymous creators, whose approach to authorship is almost medieval: their projects are not about them as individuals, but the meme, the project, the aesthetic, the vision. They are less like the expressive individualists of Modern art, than the cathedral builders of the Middle Ages.

Much has been said about memes as art and the collective labor and imagination that goes into their creation, but it extends further than that. It’s not just memes. Creating mood boards on Pinterest or curating aesthetics on TikTok are evolving art forms, too. Constructing an atmosphere, or “vibe,” through images and sounds, is itself a form of storytelling, one that’s been woefully misunderstood and even undermined as shallow. Many of these aesthetics have staying power, like “coquette” and “cottagecore.” They’re not passing fads or stand-ins for personalities or subcultures. They are more than ever-evolving vectors for consumerism. They’re a type of immersive art that we don’t yet have the language to fully describe.

But that is the case with so much of what’s new. We won’t understand it until it’s in the rearview mirror.

Interesting throughout.  Of course AI-aided creations will be the next step in this process.  Maybe you don’t like a lot of these new forms, perhaps because they do not have the nobility and grandeur of say Bach.  One simple point is that it is not optimal for every period in culture to focus on exactly what you want from it.  This point is rarely recognized.  Diversity across time is valuable as well!

How weird will AI culture get?

by  Tyler Cowen in

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column.  Here is one excerpt:

To the extent there is a lot of slack [with cost and energy], AIs themselves will create wild products of the imagination, especially as they improve in computing power and skill. AIs will sing to each other, write for each other, talk to each other — as they already do — trade with each other, and come up with further alternatives we humans have not yet pondered. Evolutionary pressures within AI’s cultural worlds will determine which of these practices spread.

If you own some rights flows to AI usage, you might just turn them on and let them “do their thing.” Many people may give their AIs initial instructions for their culture-building: “Take your inspiration from 1960s hippies,” for example, or “try some Victorian poetry.” But most of the work will be done by the AIs themselves. It is easy to imagine how these productions might quickly become far more numerous than human-directed ones.

With a lot of slack, expect more movies and video, which consume a lot of computational energy. With less slack, text and poetry will be relatively cheaper and thus more plentiful.

In other words: In the not-too-distant future, what kind of culture the world produces could depend on the price of electricity.

It remains to be seen how much humans will be interested in these AI cultural productions. Perhaps some of them will fascinate us, but most are likely to bore us, just as few people sit around listening to whale songs. But even if the AI culture skeptics are largely correct, the sheer volume will make an impact, especially when combined with evolutionary refinement and more human-directed efforts. Humans may even like some of these productions, which will then be sold for a profit. That money could then be used to finance more AI cultural production, pushing the evolutionary process in a more popular direction.

With high energy prices, AI production will more likely fit into popular culture modes, if only to pay the bills. With lower energy prices, there will be more room for the avant-garde, for better or worse. Perhaps we would learn a lot more about the possibilities for 12-tone rows in music.

A weirder scenario is that AIs bid for the cultural products of humans, perhaps paying with crypto. But will they be able to tolerate our incessant noodling and narcissism? There might even be a columnist or two who makes a living writing for AIs, if only to give them a better idea what we humans are thinking.

The possibilities are limitless, and we are just beginning to wrap our minds around them. The truth is, we are on the verge of one of the most significant cultural revolutions the world has ever seen.

I urge the skeptics to wait and see.  Of course most of it is going to be junk!

How do musical artists end up getting cancelled?

by  Tyler Cowen in

There is a new paper on that topic by Daniel Winkler, Nils Wlömert, and Jura Liaukonyte. Here is the abstract:

This paper investigates how the consumption of an artist’s creative work is impacted when there’s a movement to “cancel” the artist on social media due to their misconduct. Unlike product brands, human brands are particularly vulnerable to reputation risks, yet how misconduct affects their consumption remains poorly understood. Using R. Kelly’s case, we examine the demand for his music following interrelated publicity and platform sanction shocks-specifically, the removal of his songs from major playlists on the largest global streaming platform. A cursory examination of music consumption after these scandals would lead to the erroneous conclusion that consumers are intentionally boycotting the disgraced artist. We propose an identification strategy to disentangle platform curation and intentional listening effects, leveraging variation in song removal status and geographic demand. Our findings show that the decrease in music consumption is primarily driven by supply-side factors due to playlist removals rather than changes in intentional listening. Media coverage and calls for boycott have promotional effects, suggesting that social media boycotts can inadvertently increase music demand. The analysis of other cancellation cases involving Morgan Wallen and Rammstein shows no long-term decline in music demand, reinforcing the potential promotional effects of scandals in the absence of supply-side sanctions.

Here is a very useful tweet storm on the paper.

Sam Mendelsohn’s Travel Blog

by  Alex Tabarrok in

When I travel abroad, I will often get recommendations of where to eat, what to do and what to read and watch from Sam Mendelsohn. Not just a few sentences, as if from a travel guide, but pages of unique and original material. I often have time to pick only one or two recommended items but invariably they are excellent. When I stayed in the Devigarh palace outside of Udaipur, for example, Sam pointed me to the movie Eklavya: The Royal Guard which is set in the palace. Watching the movie added to the stay. Not your usual material.

Sam is now formalizing his notes into a travel blog. He’s starting with some of lesser known places in India but will soon add more. He is also an expert on Thailand. Email him for some out-of-the-ordinary tips.

Every place is its own distinctive world: some combination of intellectual, literary, culinary, musical, sonic, linguistic, spiritual, philosophical, visual, architectural, geographic, botanic, olfactory, and cinematic worlds, and etc, brought together by different cultural and historical currents, and that’s all only a small part of the story of any given place. That such worlds of worlds actually exist, and the planet is full of them, seems underappreciated. Few people have the time or background knowledge to give anything more than a very superficial exploration of any of these while traveling, and I won’t claim to either. Despite my ambitions, I’m quite mediocre. Nonetheless, attempting to get lost in these worlds, however briefly and incompletely, is incredibly stimulating and meaningful for me. I like cities more than most people because they contain more worlds to get lost in, but on a short trip less can be more.

The French Olympic opening ceremony

by  Tyler Cowen in

I’ve only seen excerpts, but many people are upset.  I can vouch “this is not what I would have done,” but perhaps the over the top, deviance-drenched modes of presentation are reflecting some longer-running strands in French culture.  La Cage aux Folles?  Le Bal des Folles?  The whole Moulin Rouge direction?  How about Gustave Moreau, not to mention his lower-quality followers?  Jean Paul Gaultier? (NYT, “Fashion Freak Show”)  Pierre et Gilles?

Zaza Fournier?  Even Rabelais.

In my view, these styles work best on the painted canvas, thus Moreau is the one creator on the list I truly like.  But please note these Olympics may be less of a break from traditional French culture — or some of its strands — than you may think at first.

Why don’t they compose music like Bach any more?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Well, they do, or at least they did once.  I am thinking of a recent recording by Nikolaus Matthes, namely Markus Passion, which fills 3 compact discs and sounds remarkably like a Passion from Bach’s time.  It could even be by Bach.  The text is from the time of Bach.  Yet Matthes was born in 1981.

To be clear, it does not rival Bach’s best work, but I have no problems comparing it to a median Bach cantata, which still is pretty good.  It is also better than many of the works by Bach’s contemporaries, including the better-known ones.

And yet no one cares.  Have you heard of this work before?  How many times will you hear of it from now on?

Perhaps you doubt my judgment as to the quality of this work?  Well, you might check out Fanfare, the world’s number one classical music review outlet.  Fanfare gives the work six distinct reviews.

Colin Clarke for instance wrote: “But does it work?  Absolutely.  This is the most remarkable Baroque music of our time — by which I mean this does not feel like the 21st century looking back, instead, it feels as if it were written back in Bach’s time, with the exception of the odd detour forwards.  Most of the time, it could be music written by Bach himself, and I can offer no higher praise to Matthes’s achievement.”

Or from David Cutler: “…Matthes has accomplished something marvelous.  It has more than a hint of Bach, but is it Bach?  The jury must be out on that, but is that not the idea?”

James A. Altena writes: “In sum, both the work itself and this performance are a complete triumph, and do full and worthy honor to Bach.  I cannot think of higher praise than that.”

All the reviewers are very positive, as was a composer friend of mine who listened to the piece.  The home page for the work offers further positive reviews.  And no, I don’t like Prokofiev’s “Classical” Symphony.

You can buy it on German Amazon, and a few other places, streaming links here.

I feel I need to update some of my views on aesthetics, I am just not sure which ones.  And who exactly is Matthes?  Is this another Ossian thing, or rather the inverse?

My excellent Conversation with Brian Winter

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is the video, audio, and transcript.  Here is the episode summary:

It’s not just the churrasco that made him fall in love with Brazil. Brian Winter has been studying and writing about Latin America for over 20 years. He’s been tracking the struggles and triumphs of the region as it’s dealt with decades of coups, violence, and shifting economics. His work offers a nuanced perspective on Latin America’s persistent challenges and remarkable resilience.

Together Brian and Tyler discuss the politics and economics of nearly every country from the equator down. They cover the future of migration into Brazil, what it’s doing right in agriculture, the cultural shift in race politics, crime in Rio and São Paulo, the effectiveness and future consequences of Bukele’s police state in El Salvador, the economic growth of Colombia despite continued violence, the prevalence of startups and psychoanalysis in Argentina, Uruguay’s reduction in poverty levels, the beautiful ugliness of Sao Paulo, where Brian will explore next, and more.

And here is one excerpt;

COWEN: What’s the economic geography of Brazil going to look like? All the wealth near Mato Grosso and the north just very, very poor? Or the north empties out? How’s that going to work? There used to be some modest degree of balance.

WINTER: That’s true. Most of the population in Brazil and the economic center, for sure, was in the southeast. That means, really, São Paulo state, which is about a quarter of Brazil’s population but roughly a third of its GDP. Rio as well, and the state of Minas Gerais, which has a name that tells its history. That means “general mines” in Portuguese. That’s the area where a lot of the gold came out of in the 18th and 19th centuries. That’s gone now, so it’s not as much of an economic pull.

You’re right, Tyler, though, that a lot of the real boom right now, the action, is in places like Mato Grosso, which is in the region of Brazil called the Central West. That’s soy country. I’m from Texas, and Mato Grosso is virtually indistinguishable from Texas these days. It’s hot. It’s flat. The crop, like I said, is soy. There’s cattle ranching as well.

Even the music — Brazil, as others have noted, has gone from being the country of bossa nova and the samba in the 1970s to being the country of sertanejo today. Sertanejo is a Brazilian cousin of country music with accordions, but it’s sung by people — men mostly — in jeans, big belt buckles, and cowboy hats. They’re importing that — not only that economic model but that lifestyle as well.

COWEN: What is the great Brazilian music of today? MPB is dead, right? So, what should someone listen to?

Recommended, interesting throughout.