shirling & neueweise wrote:
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 -- holy crap can you believe it!? -- there are the people who really
like the music and decide they want to play it, whatever it takes...
again, the rachmaninoff example is another similar case in point.
i've met performers who really enjoy playing ferneyhough.
and i would never deny that there could be composers who simply write
difficult things for the sake of difficulty. but how about some
real-world examples instead of vacuous accusations?
What vacuous accusations? I'm just pleading for allowing those who
don't like a particular piece or composer to be allowed not to like it,
without any disparagement to them.
I'm just as ready to let people who like certain pieces or composers to
like them without wondering why in the world they would like them, no
matter what I think of the music or the composer.
What in my post was an accusation? I have no problems with anybody
enjoying Ferneyhough, nor do I have any problems with people who don't
like either playing or hearing his music.
sure there is a lot of crap out there; there was a lot of crap written
in mozart's time too (and from his own hand), of the thousands of
symphonies written up to the mid-late 1800s, how many still survive?
part of this reason has to do wioth economics and politics, but part of
it is because they were just shit and not worth preserving :-P . but i
You get no argument from me about that, except that by your argument, if
it's shit it's because nobody bothered to master it. Isn't that your
contention in this thread -- that most people who dismiss the modernists
like Ferneyhough have mostly failed to learn how to master it and
dismiss it as unplayable for that very reason? Or is it okay to dismiss
music of the past as crap yet not to be allowed to make a personal
decision on recent music using the same criteria?
How do you know that the symphonies which were lost were real crap, and
not just stuff that the musicians of the day couldn't be bothered
mastering and so they dismissed it as unplayable.
wouldn't simply state that mozart was a cheeseball composer because of
some fluffy things he wrote early on, and i would expect the same kind
of treatment of the music of today from professionally-trained musicians
(regardless of their interest in the music), rather than flatulent
arguments founded on nothing but hot air... random claims that X music
is not playable only shows the limits of musical experiences the person
saying it has had the chance to participate in. i'm not saying everyone
should play this stuff, but don't accuse it of being unplayable just
because you have no interest in the music and remain consciously
ignorant of just how much this music really is being played.
I haven't accused anybody's music of being unplayable. It's all
playable, given the proper impetus on the part of a musician to dig
deeply enough to learn how to play it. My point is that, for me, there
has to be something other than "It's been written, therefore I have to
master it before I can pass judgement on it" to compel me to investigate
further. There's too much music around to be able to do that for every
composer and every composition. For some (many?) the music of
Ferneyhough is compelling enough to put that sort of effort into it, and
that's fine. I have no problem with that and certainly don't dismiss
any composer's music for anybody other than myself. I have limited time
and have already spent too much of it on music which turned out to be
worthless for me. Walter Hartley's music is one such body of work.
Admittedly I haven't played nor listened to all of his music, but the
pieces I have investigated have proven to do nothing for me. So I won't
investigate further. Tracey Rush's music moves me from the first note,
so I will play every one of her works which I can. Elizabeth Pizer is
another composer whose music moves me from the start and so I will
investigate as much of her music as I can, but her husband's music,
while well crafted, leaves me emotionally unmoved. So I won't be
investigating his music further. Henry Cowell is a composer whose music
I find interesting and so have investigated it further. It doesn't move
me as much emotionally as other composers but I find something in the
craftmanship that is very interesting and compelling. Persichetti's
music is a body of work which moves me yet I am constantly running into
people who don't find much of value in it. I'm puzzled by it, since I
find much to love in his music, but it's like pulling teeth to get some
people to want to play his music.
Anything which can be written can be figured out by somebody how to be
played. Whether the effort in the end proves worthwhile or not is a
decision many of us have to make in advance since we can't play every
piece by every composer and need some sort of filtering mechanism for
ourselves.
the argument has been too focussed on a single contention and with
virtually no clear examples to back up the argument for any meaningful
discussion to possibly arise out of it.
I'm sorry you don't think this thread has been a meaningful discussion.
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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