I tried to listen, but hardly made it through the first two excerpts. The lutenist reminds me of all these classical guitarrists who show-off whith embarassingly romantic playing in slow movements and fast-forward in the vivid pieces. And the singer, oh well... I don't think I'm going to buy this CD.
Regards, Stephan. Am 22 Sep 2006 um 8:51 hat Howard Posner geschrieben: > Here's a link to samples of the Sting Dowland CD: > > http://www.wom.de/classic/detail/-/hnum/4504071/rk/classic/rsk/charts > > Fascinating stuff. There are spots where I have no idea what language > he's singing in. It kind of gives the impression that every syllable > is a new challenge, encountered for the first time, and he's sort of > guessing how to form the vowel (which is a remarkably long process in > spots -- it reminds me of a Tibetan humi singer rolling the vowel > around in search of the harmonic) and when to go the next consonant, > as as he goes along. Perhaps I'd hear less of the nuts and bolts and > be more at home with the performance if I were hearing the complete > performances instead of online excerpts. > > On Friday, Sep 22, 2006, at 01:35 America/Los_Angeles, LGS-Europe > wrote: > > >> I prefer to look to the closest thing we have to a living serious > >> musical culture - alternative rock music. > > > > I don't think rock has any serious influence on modern day hip > > playing. > > Oddly enough, I think Taruskin wrote in that same essay (if it's the > one that was in Early Music a few years earlier) that Emma Kirkby's > vocal style (or the vocal style that Kirkby had come to epitomize) had > a lot to do with the singing of Joan Baez -- part of his meandering > attempt to trace HIP to 20th-century influences rather than to > historical ones. Like many of Taruskin's thoughts, it's interesting > but half-formed -- he doesn't ask why, if the vocal model is being > taken from a 20th-century source, it's Baez instead of Elvis Presley, > Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Mick Jagger, Jerry Lee Lewis or Jussi > Bjoerling. Once you ask that question, the obvious answer is that the > singers are looking for a vocal approach that suits the music. > > Baez was certainly an odd choice for Taruskin to pick as the vocal > model for HIP, since her singing was always (at least in the 1960's, > when she, and folk music generally, were current popular music) marked > by a vibrato that was far more intense and persistent than any other > pop singer I can think of. I heard her a lot when I was a child and > remember being put off by it. I suspect Taruskin saw some similarity > because Baez was the only non-classical singer who sounded anything > like a classical soprano. > > The notion that HIP was ever "non-emotional" is silly and unfair. > It's like saying that modern movie actors are unemotional because they > avoid the sweeping movements and flailing arms of earlier stage or > silent movie actors. The scale and the gesture is smaller, but the > emotional range is there. In all the conversations I had with HIP > performers in the 1980's, I never heard anyone say that emotion had to > be removed from performance, and Stravinsky never came up. > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html >
