XAVER VARNUS PLAYS BACH'S TOCCATA & FUGUE

I always have this strange experience of out-of-timeness with that music referred to as 'classical' when compared to all music deemed not 'classical' e.g. pop, jazz, rock, disco, bop, rap or whatever else you would want to throw into the mix.

This out-of-timeness has to do with: That when I listen to this kind of music (Bach Toccata), I always experience it as music that humans will create in about a 1000, 2000 or 10000 years from now. Mankind has not yet reached that stage where it is capable of generating such music. We are still only at the level of pop, jazz, rock, disco, bop, rap or whatever else you would want to throw into the mix. The music of Bach, Mahler, Debussy, Wagner and so forth is, as I experience it, massively futuristic. We are not yet capable of it.

I generally wonder how this came about, why do I experience these composers as futuristic, rather than as composers of the past - and the main reason I can come up with is that these fellows were invariably of genius level intelligence - I'd say 160/180 range IQ at a minimum. These are people intellectually equivalent to Newton, Einstein, Gauss, Maxwell - dedicating their lives to creating music.

Popular contemporary music clearly does not come close to requiring that level of ability. In fact, that level of sophistication is totally beyond the capacity of the average populace and, I suspect, induces extreme levels of a Dunning-Kruger like experience. It is firmly rooted in mediocrity, because mediocrity is what the vast majority of people feel comfortable with.