Arranged classical music reduces cultural goods to hit-song entertainment

Evidence

The practice of arrangement comes from salon music. It is the practice of refined entertainment which borrows its pretensions from the niveau of cultural goods, but transforms these into entertainment material of the type of hit songs. Such entertainment, formerly reserved as an accompaniment to people’s humming, today spreads over the whole of musical life, which is basically not taken seriously by anyone anymore and in all discussion of culture retreats further and further into the background. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 88

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Precision on where ‘arrangement’ comes from and what it converts: high culture becomes ambient, humming-along material — the exact genealogy of today’s lo-fi classical, seductive elevator versions, and flex-your-entitlement ‘covers’.