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?
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 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.
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.
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