Dear Sirs, I remember reading that Hoppy Smith encountered severe difficulty studying music theory because he did not play keyboard, but toughed it out and succeeded. I dropped out of Music Theory 2 freshman year because of not knowing keyboard at all.
Why the piano chauvinism in modern music? I don't like piano (except maybe Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Hummel, Schumann, Tim Story) and you can't even carry one around. Bach firmly rejected the newfangled 1709 piano instruments offered to him. I cringe or become nauseated by disgust whenever 16th or 17th century singing is accompanied by a piano. Maybe EM's difficulties can be blamed on piano chauvinism, which of course could never be as virtuous as lute chauvinism. Chris Wilke deserves a music chairmanship. They'd rather hire a bleeding percussionist. Rochester probably hired that Leprechaun Paul O'Dette not for his musical knowledge or skills but to get his pot of gold. Mark Seifert From: Stephen Kenyon <[email protected]> To: William Samson <[email protected]> Cc: Christopher Wilke <[email protected]>; Mark Seifert <[email protected]>; gary <[email protected]>; lutelist <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, August 4, 2013 4:12 AM Subject: Re: [LUTE] Re: general public Lute awareness (but re guitar exams) Bill, that's not an entirely complete assessment of this situation in my view. The pianist is expected to assess all other instruments, not just guitars, and one important reason for it is that part of the exam assessment consists of aural test which have to be played competently on a piano, including up to the grade 8 tests which are of course quite complex. They do get at least some training in the quirks of each instrument examined, though many through their general education will be well aware of most of the orchestral instruments for example, which along with the piano form the great majority of the instruments. As for the NEVER, this is simply uninformed, as out of the roughly 650 Associated Board examiners there to my knowledge two who are 'first study' guitarists - and obviously also very good pianists, one of whom is a notable soloist that guitar players will have heard of, the other was a member of a noted quartet. I am not aware of the situation regarding Trinity College examiners. It is also useful to note that for ABRSM post grade 8 diplomas, there are two examiners, one of whom has a specialism in each instrument examined on that day. For guitars this can be for instance (as in my first case) a composer who has written for guitar rather than a performer, and in the second case it was the second of the guitar playing examiners I listed. The Guildhall exam system did, in the 1990s, offer specialist examiners, which worked quite well in some ways, but their whole model collapsed. Both the other major boards use generalists, eg pianists, and it works overall because its also about flexibility in filling up timetables and moving examiners around the UK and indeed those parts of the world where this business is valued. Stephen On 4 Aug 2013, at 10:02, William Samson wrote: > it was pointed out to me, the other day, that although it is not > unusual for a pianist (with no experience of guitar) to assess the > performance of a guitarist in the UK grade exams, a guitarist (with > no experience of piano) would NEVER be accepted as a suitable assessor > for the performance of a pianist. > > Bill -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
