----- Original Message ----- From: Keith Hudson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: Ray Evans Harrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2001 12:16 PM Subject: My heart doesn't sink
> Hi Ray, > > (REH) > <<<< > How about a 98% unemployment of highly trained professionals? Would your > heart sink upon hearing a magnificently trained concert pianist who makes > his living working in a bank, an insurance company or the U.S. Customs? > >>>> > > My heart doesn't sink, actually. I'm certainly sad, but no more than for my > ex-brother-in-law who was a superbly trained pattern-maker, whose life was > wrapped up in engineering, but who had to change his job completely because > of changing technology. He had to adjust to reality. This example doesn't make sense to me at all. Engineering isn't operating at a 98% or even 10% unemployment amongst qualified professionals. On the other hand when time passes a style artists also adjust or leave. But we aren't even in the same ring for this. > > I think that the aim of producing perfection of performance is very boring. Truth and Beauty. The rawness of truth and the Ideal of Beauty. Perfection of performance is the beginning of both. Maybe I should just substitute correct for perfect. In Art perfect is correct and the beginning of insight. But the goal of correctness is because you end up in the wrong world if you aren't correct. What is incorrect can also become correct if the world changes. It is the function of Art to teach these things. When I observe any performance I immediately choose to hear the performance as if everything was deliberate and therefore correct for that time and place. That is the joy of live performance and the development of imagination and insight into all of the possibilities. Art says that everything from yes to no is just one of the possibilities. Perfection simply means that the world is created in an integrated manner that makes sense and given coherence. Do you have something against coherance? > Perhaps this is why the sales of classic CDs with all their perfect > performances are now declining steeply with no end in sight. There is no such thing. People just get tired of the same thing over and over again. As do I. I like the > music of earlier eras when music was more fun -- when the composers of even > the most solemn sung Masses often based their tunes on popular songs so > that the congregations would enjoy the music. How about Oh Sacred Head Now Wounded? Based on a hymn to who? But the double entendre doesn't work in German! > > If perfection of performance had been such a high aim of mankind, then > Neolithic men would still be sitting in their caves comparing the relative > degree of burnishing between one flint axehead or the other. Nonsense, if you miss the deer you don't eat. > > Surely Ray, it's the performing of the music that's important, not the > ultimate performance. "To travel hopefully is a better thing than to > arrive." (R.L.S.) > I certainly didn't mean to imply that the pursuit of one ideal was my goal. I don't believe that. On the other hand there is a limit to how many times I will enjoy the same type of performance of even a Bach Passion. REH
