[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I do recall Raymond Lewenthal's "Romantic Revival" that went through at least three record labels before sputtering out. An Indiana-based pianist named Frank Cooper did find some good stuff--IIRC he recorded the Ignaz Brüll 2nd piano concert. But as a whole, the 19th century did produce it's share of stuff that deserves to be forgotten, as has every time period.
Indeed, but it's good every now and again, should anybody wish to investigate further or actually perform a lot of random stuff, to be reminded of that fact.
Most music appreciation classes leave the class members with the impression that the historical music history periods all produced only masterworks by superior composers and fail to address the fact that much of what was written during those periods is no different from much which is written during our own lifetimes -- Crap.
I think that every course, middle school, high school or college level, should be required to begin with the statement of Sturgeon's Law. And that it should be asked time and again on exams so that people have a more realistic image of any historical time period, whether music, literature, dance, or the plastic arts (painting, sculpture, architecture).
I think I would begin such a class with the statement "90% of anything is crap. That includes the Baroque Era of music history, which we will be studying in this class. You're lucky in that we will be studying the 10% of Baroque music which isn't crap, but I want you all to remember that while these composers we will be studying were creating these masterworks, there were many more composers turning out efficient but hardly worthwhile music that we won't be studying."
-- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
