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Hello. My daughter once asked me a question about what was ” pop ” in Vivaldi's time. It is very fortunate that she asked it in a social network, and not out loud.
As the correspondence progressed, she came up with almost the same question that you asked. It sounded a little different, but if she'd worded it the way you did, my answer wouldn't have changed much. Therefore, I give this answer in full.
The question was: “If they were so unpopular, how were they popularized?”. It was about the fact that many of the authors that everyone now knows were completely unknown to the general public at one time.
Answer:
It's a matter of idea quality and a matter of time.
Some songs hit the chart at number one. If the song is bright but shallow, it will last there for two weeks. This is usually the case. In four years, it will be forgotten. In a year's time, they won't remember at all.
If the song is a little deeper, it will last, on average, the same amount. But it will be remembered. Let's say for one generation. The next person will no longer know anything about the song, the author, or the performer.
Even deeper – for several generations, but the number of listeners will be greatly reduced.
At the same time, the audience will be quite diverse in composition.
In other words, the number of listeners will drop over time. And very significantly. It was 100% of the population of one country, after twenty or fifty years it became 1%.
Let's assume that the technical quality of Vivaldi's music and the music of a good hit writer is approximately on the same level. There are no contradictions in the texture, the theme is cleaned of unnecessary notes, all transitions are thought out and linked to each other, there are no unjustified violations of logic in any voice, the timbre composition, tessitura, etc. are well chosen.
Then the picture will be as follows: with equal technical quality, but greater depth of the idea, the number of listeners will not decrease over time, but on the contrary, accumulate. Not very intense, but constant and long-lasting.
The problem with a high-quality idea is that it is usually very poorly perceived by the author's environment. And not because it is stupid or evil, but because it is difficult to survive.
After all, in order to generate a high-quality idea, especially a concept, especially a view, and even more so a worldview, it is necessary to drop out of the survival process. To look at it from the outside.
Falling out of the survival process does not guarantee the generation of a powerful, or even just a high-quality, generalizing idea, but it is a necessary condition for its generation. School math : “the condition is sufficient, and the condition is necessary”.
The process of evaluating an idea by society has one special feature. The fact is that the most difficult part of generation is to select the right variant of connections between phenomena that were previously considered unrelated.
So-and-so happens, there must be some kind of mutual influence between them, but it is not clear what exactly it is. There are billions of options.
The most difficult part is to choose the correct one from this list. It may not be the only one, but it counts in the hundreds at best. So it's not easy to identify just one of them. Because of this, in fact, it is necessary to drop out of the survival process.
Which, in turn, creates a conflict with society and does not allow it to appreciate the idea at its true value. The proper amount of work was not done by the evaluators, and could not be done, because they were busy with survival.
But once the connection is established and shown, things get a lot easier.
It's one thing to look for one option for a hundred million, but it's quite another to think about the already proposed option. This is radically easier, and it is already quite possible to combine it with survival. Of course, not everyone can do it, but a lot of people can.
Thus, Vivaldi's powerful and accurate observation begins to slowly gather more and more listeners. It gradually ceases to be dependent on the current moment. This happens in a clear correlation with the process of mastering the feeling or idea that the masses have proposed.
Bach is even more specific. Music still uses the pedagogical developments of only a few dozen methodologists who have already died. Most of them only dealt with the technical side. Mostly by fluency.
And they wrote the appropriate exercises for their instrument. Without even trying to make sense of them. For piano, this is Czerny, for violin-Ganon and Shradyk, etc.
Some of the authors who tried to write something meaningful are preserved in modern textbooks (as the number of currently published educational works increases).: Scarlatti, Leopold Mozart (Mozart's father) and by a huge margin Johann Bach.
From this list, he is the only one whose educational works are included in the adult concert repertoire. And they log in stably.
That is, he wrote a textbook for his wife, according to which not only they still study, but also play at adult concerts.
I'm not talking about HTK at all. It is written for training, and in both volumes there is not a single number that would not be performed by venerable musicians around the world in concert programs.
Plus the colossal scale of ideas in all the works. Comparable to the Bible in scope and depth.
It is no great exaggeration to say that if it were not for J. S. Bach, Lutheranism would have remained a Pentecostal-level sect (they are also Protestants). It wouldn't look like a church.
When Mozart, being already familiar with some of Bach's works, accidentally heard one of his choirs in the church of St. Thomas, where he worked as a cantor for a long time, he simply fell out of the precipitate. There was no score, so he collected the choristers ' separately recorded voices, and did not get up from his seat until everything was sorted out. Then I made copies and kept them all my life.
I mean, I was more than impressed.
Beethoven said the most famous phrase about Johann, which is now quoted right and left: “Not the Brook's name, but the Ocean.” Brook in German – Bach.
But more importantly, Beethoven knew both volumes of the HTK by heart.
Schumann, Schubert, Brahms, and Wagner studied on the same material.
In fact, the same material was used by absolutely all musicians who began to receive education after Mendelssohn conducted “the passion of Matthew” in 1829. This marked the beginning of public interest in Bach's music, and most importantly, the beginning of work to collect all of his works and publish them.
From this point on, Bach entered the music education program. First at the conservatory and only in Germany, gradually in all phases of study – from elementary school to graduate school, and around the world. It took about 70 years.
That is, 100% of living musicians learn from his works. Someone earlier, someone later, but there is no musician who at least once in his life did not play some of his works.
And not just the living ones. Also 100% of at least five generations of their predecessors.
Therefore, Bach's teaching material provides not only a very significant share of the training of the modern generation of musicians, but also continuity. One generation after another gives recommendations to their students to play this material.
But the point is not in the pedagogy itself. It's all about the audience's quality attributes. Johann Bach is the biggest and most notable example, but not the only one. Over time, the qualitative attributes of the audience change.
Everyone listens to hits. All at once.
Bach, and all other composers who are recognized as great, are listened to first by those who can appreciate them.
And those who can appreciate them are able to lead. It's one thing when Tolyan recommends you to listen to Beethoven, with whom you have a beer on Saturdays, but it's another when the recommendation comes from a musician whose competence you have no doubts about.
Or from someone you instinctively want to follow. Who is able to make the right decision where you are lost and lost.
This is a very powerful addition to the independent value of the works of old masters. Of course, they would gradually gain an audience due to a stable interest that does not decrease over time.
But this circumstance also increases the number of people in each new generation.
In general, this is about the mechanics.
I think it is time that decides,and a rather large period of it.This is not the fault of art lovers,but the effect on the opinion of people of their modern era,and the more art differs from the accepted one for this time, the more difficult it is to solve the problem.A connoisseur of art must have rare qualities in order not to be mistaken, this is a great intuition, foresight, determination of the direction of development of a particular form. The consumer can participate indirectly in determining the longevity of art forms by constantly visiting museums, exhibitions, theaters,paying attention to the sculptures,paintings, performances that they like, etc.thus eliminating “what will be forgotten in time”.