John Howell wrote:
[snip]> I can agree with that, certainly, but it isn't really the right
starting
point. That starting point has to be the simple question, "what is
there about this music that will make it worth the time and effort to
learn to play it?" (Or sing it, which is an order of magnitude more
difficult than playing instruments where you just have to push the
buttons at the right times!) Some people seem to believe that making
music impossibly difficult equates to creating great music. I don't
think it's that simple at all.
I think you've hit the nail on the head here, John.
But the problem lies deep, because for far too many people the "I can't
play it right off the bat" equates to "there's nothing there to warrant
further study and practice."
With the difficult-but-easy-to-recognize masterworks, one can easily say
"I can't play it right off the bat but my teacher played it for me and I
love it so I'm going to work on it night and day until I can play it."
And one can also run out and buy a Cd and start imitating that and
internalizing recorded performances (for good or ill, that's a whole
other discussion) and eventually play it.
For a lot of the newer music under discussion, it's not easy to find
recordings to listen to in order to find the way with the difficult
notational elements and one's teacher quite often simply can't play it
even if they wanted to because they've never put the effort in (see my
paragraph number 2 above).
But at the heart of any music, new or old, complicated or simple, lies
John's question. For some, the music of Ferneyhough is just such a
music that makes them say "Wow, that's a challenge and I love a
challenge and I'm going to master this and show the old farts that it's
nothing to be afraid of" while for others even after working at it for a
while there's a feeling of "why am I doing this?"
And what's really horrible in all of this is that the moment anybody
says "I can't see anything worthwhile in this so I'm not going to work
on it anymore" defenders say they haven't tried hard enough and they're
lousy musicians for not wanting to put more effort into it, which is
just as bad, in my opinion, as people who have never tried it (either as
performer or as listener) who call it junk or worthless or something
akin to "the end of civilization as we know it."
One has to be allowed to walk away from it if one finds it lacking
without being labelled a philistine or worse, just as one has to be
allowed to work at it and perform it without being labeled pejoratively
and feeling the need to program some Brahms or Bach in atonement.
If someone doesn't like it, that's their right, for whatever reason --
lack of interest, lack of ability. Do we fault people who don't like
the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto? I hope not.
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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