"It is so characteristic, that just when the mechanics of reproduction are so vastly improved, there are fewer and fewer people who know how the music should be played"
About this Quote
A philosopher famous for distrusting grand theories is, here, quietly skewering a modern religion: the faith that better technology automatically means better culture. Wittgenstein’s jab lands because it’s framed as an observation about “mechanics,” not morals. The sentence sounds like a shrug, but the irony is sharpened to a point: the age that perfects reproduction (recordings, broadcasting, mass distribution) is the same age that forgets what’s worth reproducing.
“Mechanics of reproduction” is doing double duty. On the surface it’s about phonographs, radio, and the early 20th century’s accelerating ability to copy performances. Underneath, it names a whole stance toward art: if you can capture it, preserve it, and play it back flawlessly, you start to treat the artwork as a product with specs rather than a practice with standards. “How the music should be played” isn’t nostalgia for scratchy authenticity; it’s an attack on the collapse of shared judgment. When everything can be replayed, fewer people feel authorized - or obligated - to know the difference between interpretation and mere output.
The context is Wittgenstein’s broader suspicion that technique can outpace understanding. He worried about forms of life thinning into procedures: we learn to operate systems without inhabiting the sensibility that gave them meaning. So the line isn’t just about classical music pedagogy. It’s about modernity’s talent for making powerful tools, then outsourcing taste to the tool itself - confusing access with literacy, fidelity with insight, and perfect copies with the cultivated ear needed to recognize what a performance is supposed to be.
“Mechanics of reproduction” is doing double duty. On the surface it’s about phonographs, radio, and the early 20th century’s accelerating ability to copy performances. Underneath, it names a whole stance toward art: if you can capture it, preserve it, and play it back flawlessly, you start to treat the artwork as a product with specs rather than a practice with standards. “How the music should be played” isn’t nostalgia for scratchy authenticity; it’s an attack on the collapse of shared judgment. When everything can be replayed, fewer people feel authorized - or obligated - to know the difference between interpretation and mere output.
The context is Wittgenstein’s broader suspicion that technique can outpace understanding. He worried about forms of life thinning into procedures: we learn to operate systems without inhabiting the sensibility that gave them meaning. So the line isn’t just about classical music pedagogy. It’s about modernity’s talent for making powerful tools, then outsourcing taste to the tool itself - confusing access with literacy, fidelity with insight, and perfect copies with the cultivated ear needed to recognize what a performance is supposed to be.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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