At 09:34 AM 2/3/03 -0800, Toby Rider wrote:
First, I agree completely with your observation, Toby, that styles change. What sounded great to contemporary audiences may sound awful to us. (Consider for just a moment our tuning systems! Pythagorean vs. our even-tempered system).I think we get into big trouble when we start applying art music standards of what is good to any kind of traditional music, whether it be Scottish trad. music or jazz.
I think one issue is that "art music" (classical music) can be played by just about anyone who can count to 4. I have heard some dead-wooden classical performances that were technically brilliant but just didn't do it...there's no soul in the music, no heart.
But then there is the example of Arthur Rubenstein. At the end of his life he was beginning to lose his technique. He was getting pretty old, and the fingers just didn't work as fluently as they once did. (Think of how old people walk.) But yet, at his last concert, despite the finger-slip-ups, he played one Schubert piece that left everyone in the audience in tears. Classical musicians can be Real Musicians, too.
Traditional musicians can sound dead-wooden as well, but luckily they tend to be fewer and farther between. Does anyone have theories on why this seems to be so?
I do want to be sure that I wasn't misunderstood: I do not suggest that Joplin was a poor musician. That would be absurd. I do allow that just as some of us might learn more naturally with early teaching strategies, our modern theories of teaching might have worked better for Joplin than what he had to work with. On the other hand, maybe modern teaching styles would have taken away his fire. Who knows? It's like wondering if Beethoven would have composed the 9th Symphony if he could have heard it.
--Cynthia Cathcart
www.cynthiacathcart.net
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