“You could argue Beethoven is a remix of his own creativity of Mozart,”-Alan Khalfin, director of music at MixMatchMusic, quoted in Wired. [Editor: the second 'of' should be 'with,' yes?]
The point of the story linked to above is that musicians and bands are starting to view video games as a means of getting their music in front of more consumers (or, more accurately, that they’re doing this more and more). Khalfin’s point is that the ability to remix music is going to be the way forward, giving music consumers a more tactile feel of engagement with the music rather than passively listening.
There’s a Ph.D dissertation waiting to be written on tracing the 19th-century tradition of parlor music and everyone learning to play piano so as to be able to take part in music, through the 20th century when everyone stopped playing an instrument and started buying records, and now how kids with cool glasses and asymmetrical haircuts aren’t learning an instrument but remix the raw materials that someone else already played and mastered.
(Deep breath as I come up for air) But the notion that Beethoven was somehow remixing Mozart is going to require a little more contemplation on my part before I’ll take it. I mean, when I listen to Simon Bookish’s remix of Grizzly Bear’s “Eavesdropping,” the point is that I can hear the original in there, a little. When the “Tempest” sonata is being played…I’m not sure that’s the “Turkish” Rondo echoing in my eardrums.
I’m not gonna give away music the creators don’t give away themselves, so if you want “Eavesdropping,” the original is here, and the remix is here.
