Is the decline in use of counterpoint during the Classical era responsible for the lacking in complexity of today's...

ok

counterpoint is a texture that's been used by at least some composers throughout every era.
>...responsible for the lacking in complexity of today's mainstream music?
no, as musical instruments became more accessible to the common person the overall level of proficiency necessary to perform plummeted. If you wanted to be a performing musician in the 1700's you would study from the time you were 5, attend a conservatory by 12, and have spent tens of thousands of hours studying/writing/absorbing music by the time you were in your 20's. Same thing if you wanted to compose your own material.

Now the prerequisites to start are buy a low quality instrument (or download a DAW), learn a handful of basic concepts, and get marketed by labels targeting the 95% of listeners who don't give half a fuck about musicianship and just want familiar sounds.

counterpoint was mainstream at any point in history, popular music during the baroque was folk music

was not* mainstream

>now all we get to listen are dirt eating ape music
you can still listen too classical music, buddy.
no one's stopping you.

>Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler, Scriabin, Schoenberg etc.
I like these composers but their Counterpoint game is the equivalent of a B-tier Baroque composer

mainstream music is not lacking in complexity and if you think it is you are retarded
also if you think complexity is inherently good you are also retarded

Awful opinion.

pretty much. it's why Bach and Mozart were the peak of music

Can we just all admit Edison killed music by inventing recording technology which led to popular music being industrialized thus making a majority of music into a meaningless product for the proles to enjoy

Recording and production killed music

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Counterpoint was dead in the Baroque era too. Bach wasn't famous and doesn't count

Bach is more of a freak exception rather than them being shit.

>Mozart
>Good

Mozart is Musak

yikes

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"Pip squilddly diddly I did a poo" is literally one of his pieces.

Mahler is many things exceptionally even, but a contrapuntalist is not one of them.

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He's not brief either.

He's shit.

yeah sure. why not.

I really think it was the advent of recording that lead to the lack of complexity in modern music. It was much harder to record a chamber orchestra than it was to record a single singer with a guitar, so much of early recording was based on that principal. By the time recording technology had progressed, people were used to listening to that type of music and classical records never sold as much as folk records. Blues grew out of folk, rock grew out of blues. Rock dominated the scene with people only making innovations in that field, and all pop can be regarded as a descendant of those early folk music.
Not to mention, modern classical went entirely up its own ass as it tried to create weird artsy crap instead of making beautiful melodies like the earlier composers. There's a reason everyone knows Beethoven's Ninth symphony, but nobody knows this:
youtube.com/watch?v=71hNl_skTZQ
Had recording technology been focused on classical since the beginning and attempting to accommodate the wide range of sounds in a symphony orchestra, had modern composers not gone so avant-garde, (and of course, had rich people continued to patron the high arts) classical would still be the norm

>those early folk music
That should be "that early folk music," sorry I didn't get that typo

Romantic music still is the norm in movies. John Williams made a career out of plagiarising Shostakovich's symphonies.

Early works literal Wagner copy and paste works and this is supposedly to rival the Baroque Counterpoint masters
lmao

Handel's entire career was built on reusing his old works over and over again.

What does the fucking Chamber Symphony have to do with Wagner? Its bordering on atonality.

This cute boy invented jazz

Yeah but there's a huge difference between a single giant work like a symphony, a concerto, a sonata, or an opera vs incidental music for a film

I wish more work was put into studying and understand the vast change in music taste that occurred during the 20th century

Romantic and 20th century classical music were still full of counterpoint.

mainstream / "popular" music never used counterpoint - it existed parallel to classical music the whole time, focusing on steady rhythms and simple chords / melodies that plebs could get drunk to.

Every composer in the Baroque era used counterpoint heavily. Also in the Classical, romantic and 20th century periods, but it was no longer the absolute focus.

Don't post unless you actually know what you're talking about

Mahler has lots of superb counterpoint though. look at any of his symphonies

to my brothers in apollo

I'd rather not

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How the fuck is Schoenberg's chamber symphony cut and paste Wagner? They could not be more different.

Why didn't you post atonal Schoenberg???
What are trying to hide here

are you**

i think counterpoint is harder to pick out in atonal works, probably gets easier once you study it

frankfurt school