Cynthia Cathcart wrote:
> 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?
My theory is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Opinions about
music reflect the biases of who's making the statement. If you judge
classical musicians by the standards that are appropriate for
traditional music, they can't help but come out second-best. As one
with roots in both classical music and traditional music, it's my own
opinion that there are plenty of good and bad musicians on both sides
of the divide.
> 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.
I don't know what technology was used for the recording I heard, but I'm
guessing that it was the kind that does not reproduce dynamics, and I
strongly suspect that the recording does not fairly represent how
Joplin played.
And Scott Joplin *was* classically trained. He studied classical piano
as a child. He studied music theory at the George R. Smith College for
Negroes in Sedalia, Missouri. Initially it had been his ambition to
become a classical pianist and composer.
Jerry Agin
Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music & Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
