Chuck Israels wrote:
On Mar 30, 2006, at 9:27 AM, Phil Daley wrote:
"the general level of music literacy has declined"
In my experience, in my lifetime, this is an understatement.
and since I grew up listening to Chuck (no offense meant!) the fact that
it has got worse in my performing lifetime is doubly bad. An example, if
I may:
I was waiting for my 5 year old to finish her Violin lesson and I was
listening to the teaching room next door (This is in a largish college
here in Calgary). A youngish boy of about 15 had entered the room a half
an hour before and had ripped through some pretty (technically)
impressive stuff - Liszt in parallel min 6ths, some Rach Prelude etc
etc. I realised that he was preparing for the local music competition
and then heard a truly terrible performance of a Bach prelude and fugue
with lots of pedal (which I think is unnecessary in Bach - shoot me!).
The boy came out and I said: "May I talk to you about your Bach".
"Who is Bach", he replied.
"The fugue that you just finished."
"Oh. What _is_ a fugue anyway? I have had to play that rubbish before,
and I have no idea what it means. Is it a tempo sign" (verbatim).
I could not reply to that, and walked off shaking my head and knowing
that I had to adjudicate a number of these children all who don't know
how the composers are, nor what the musical forms are that they are playing.
Sad, Sad.
On another point, more in tune with the subject line, there are copies
of the Real Book floating around in Australia with some quite different
changes than the Boston book. These changes were used by a number of
very good Australian jazz musicians in the 60s and then added to the
Boston book when it became available. As we (Australians) often didn't
have media copies of the original tunes due to the lack of recordings,
these changes became the standard(s). I need to lug a Real Book with me
when playing jazz gigs, just to remember what the standard changes are
here, and not the ones that I was brought up on (and think are better
anyway!)
Bruce Petherick
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