Call it "classical" if "serious" offends you. Neil Young doesn't write or play or sing classical music, and he most likely didn't take many years of voice lessons and practice for many hours to perfect his singing technique. To equate Young's or Timberlake's singing with Jaroussky's in the present context is inapposite, to say the least. Apples and kiwi fruit.
I assume by "diligently copies Mozart" you mean "performs a piece Mozart wrote." But painting, of course, is not a performance art, so "diligently copies Rembrandt" means something entirely different--apples and Ping-Pong balls. (Also, someone performing a piece Mozart wrote would most likely not be "hailed as a prodigy" unless he or she was either very young or a previously unknown extraordinary virtuoso. For that matter, someone who "diligently copies Rembrandt" wouldn't be called a forger unless he or she tried to pass the copy off as an original Rembrandt, as opposed to copying Rembrandt's techniques for the purpose of improving his or her own.) "Neal" Young plays very serious music - It is an interesting distinction that some people make, between serious, and 'not serious' music. Someone recently told me that electronic and/or sampled music, is not real music. On the one hand, I can see that musicians like Neil Young, do not try to master the classical works, or play music with a lot of tradition behind it. On the other, I've been a fan of his sound, since, "After the Gold Rush". He has inspired me in a lot of ways - far more than any classical music. Music is said to be the most abstract of the arts. I find it amusing that someone who diligently copies Mozart, for example, is hailed as a prodigy, yet someone doing the same thing with a Rembrandt, is labeled a forger. ---In [email protected], <authfriend@...> wrote: Yeah, not quite the same thing. I'm talking about serious music and highly trained singers. Justin Timberlake, for one, sings in a much higher voice than his regular voice. Same for Neal Young I believe. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSVHoHyErBQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSVHoHyErBQ ---In [email protected], <authfriend@...> wrote: I'm not a big fan of countertenors myself; the voices always sound a little strained to me. But this dude is special, not just the voice but the musicality. The ear is more important than any musical knowledge (for the listener, at any rate). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmyLkjxKCNo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmyLkjxKCNo Phew! And this is not generally my kind of "thing" but it certainly evokes all sorts of primal, albeit refined primal, sensations. His voice and those instruments and the light and the setting and the crystal hanging from the ceiling. All of these things transported me to a long-ago time. Thank you for that. I am an ignoramus when it comes to knowing about music but my ear seems to make up for what I lack in theoretical musical knowledge.
