bill > it occurs to me that formally trained musicians and composers like > yourself have always been at odds with "musicians" like me who will > gleefully murder a tune and disregard learned opinion if it "feels" ok > to do so. > > this must be very irritating. > > the only consolation i can offer you is that this haughty disdain, on > one part and "don't care" obstinacy, on the other, is probably very > much in keeping with the hip ethos. your lot were probably slagging > off my lot, centuries ago.
I can't speak to who was "slagging off" whom, since I don't know what the expression means, but I think musicians who approach earlier music from an uneducated or semi-educated, folk or pop direction aren't particularly irritating, and indeed occasionally offer a useful perspective about music composed when the concept of "classical" music didn't really exist. What's far more irritating are the illiterate sort of remarks you get from old-line classical musicians (Perlman and Zuckerman, for example) who call HIP "ridiculous" because they think, like a lot of musicians before them, that the way they were taught to play is the only correct way. They say this out of irritation, since the very existence of HIP is an attack on their claim to offer "fidelity to the score" (a concept popularized by Toscanini, I suppose). Of course, HIP musicians say unkind things about the way non-HIP musicians play and sing, but they feel they've earned the right: unlike the old guard, HIP musicians have learned how to do it both ways and thus can claim to have an informed opinion, regarding the Perlmans and Zuckermans as being like the cleric who refused to believe in the moons of Jupiter even after he saw them through Galileo's telescope. BTW, there certainly was a historical divide between music from the street and music expensive places (probably much more important than any divide between city and country) but it was often bridged. Broadside tunes and folk tunes are found in high art music, and even Bach quoted popular tunes; it's obvious that some music was common to everyone. Dowland listened to the radio just like you do.
