Tessellated blooms with the voids at their centers...

Today I have to teach a lesson to a very smart young piano player, and then I hope to see The Richmond Philharmonic concert today at 6 pm, which is free...and outdoors.  Hoping the weather holds out. ("Just for Fun: A Free Summer Family Concert" - The Gardens at Sunday Park in Brandermill, 4602 Millridge Parkway Midlothian, VA).  The saxophone player in the E-Street Band has died, and too young--sad.


I am furiously updating my concert calendar, which I hope will be a useful resource to Richmond-area music lovers and students.  But as the curator of yet another calendar of the arts, I am forced back on the same old question--what is classical?  The Modlin series has an eclectic mix of genre-defying performers.  For example, writer, songsmith, guitarist and all-around genius Josh Ritter is coming to Modlin this fall.  I know very little about him, so I listened to his song "Remnant" which is posted on the Modlin website.  
I'll admit--I'm under-impressed by the music itself.  It is spare and reminds me of the "White Stripes," (whose disbanding broke my heart), but doesn't strike me as startlingly original.  
Ritter's lyric-making, however, is a splash of cold water in the face.  If Cormac McCarthy wrote songs, they would sound like this:


"And the ground will open out into a mouth below us
And the mouth will open out into the empty sky
And the whistle as we hurtle through the halls of onyx
The only sound around us as we go by
And I'll follow you out through the wells of charcoal
Moonlit stones around the cones of a black hole
Through the fields where grow the ever and forever
The tessellated blooms with the voids at their centers
Through the million rooms in a bead of luminescence
The filaments on the looms of dimension
The pillars of creation where they make the planets
The billion tiny teeth that tear the charge from your atoms
In a trillion tiny bites they'll eat the meat from the pearl
And throw your soul away a cold grey little world
And nothing that is hidden will be revealed
And nothing that is hidden will be revealed
And nothing that is hidden will be revealed" [Josh Ritter, Remnant]


Think about that for five million years.  Now, contrast that which just blew your mind with the magnum opus of one Rebecca Black: 


"...Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday 
Today i-is Friday, Friday (Partyin') 
We-we-we so excited 
We so excited 
We gonna have a ball today 

Tomorrow is Saturday 
And Sunday comes after ... wards 
I don't want this weekend to end..." [Friday, authorship disputed]


***
Within 21st century pop music--which I define as very short form (7 minutes or less), using a limited chord palette and very particular instrumentation--there can be genius.  Whether the genius is manifested in text-setting or composition is enough for a Phd thesis.  
Even Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Fallon's re-mix of Friday, backed up by The Roots, Taylor Hicks, and the Abominable Snowman has a joie de vivre that's hard to ignore.  What is meant as a joke, a parody, becomes a gauntlet thrown down--See! even what has become universally acclaimed as "the worst song ever" can be entertaining if executed with skill and attention to detail!