[LUTE] Re: general public Lute awareness (but re guitar exams)
On Aug 5, 2013, at 4:37 PM, Mark Seifert seifertm...@att.net wrote: Are you a piano player as well as a lute enthusiast? No, and my guitarist's repertoire of derogatory comments about the piano is now used only to annoy my keyboard-playing wife. There's an upright piano and a Flemish double-manual harpsichord in our front room. Over the years, I've written a good number of program notes for piano recitals, and the first thing a professional writer has to do is take the music on its terms. The annotator has to appreciate the music he writes about. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: general public Lute awareness (but re guitar exams)
On Aug 5, 2013, at 4:37 PM, Mark Seifert seifertm...@att.net wrote: I think it was Greenberg who said in his Bach course that Bach didn't like Silbermann's pianos, though he loved Silbermann's organs and harpsichords. Bach was the heaviest hitter I could think of for help in politically attacking the modern piano Goliath. Your point is well taken that those old pianos weren't like the newer ones. But I doubt the interesting archival hearsay that Bach provided his complete approval The only source is Agricola's account, and I'd be hard pressed to come up with a reason to believe the part about Bach saying the bass was weak while not believing the part about his later approval. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: general public Lute awareness (but re guitar exams)
On Aug 4, 2013, at 9:11 PM, Mark Seifert seifertm...@att.net wrote: 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. When I was in college I somehow passed the piano exam. A friend of mine lobbied heavily and eventually got the administration to accept guitar instead of keyboard skills. I see his point, but I didn't care so much. The standards were low enough that I could pass. I do find it useful, though, particularly when I've had an injury say, to be able to play things on the keyboard. I find it a real test of knowing a piece to be able to read the tab on the keyboard. Dombois used to do that routinely in my lessons. Ed Durbrow Saitama, Japan http://www.youtube.com/user/edurbrow?feature=watch https://soundcloud.com/ed-durbrow http://www9.plala.or.jp/edurbrow/ -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: general public Lute awareness (but re guitar exams)
From: Martyn Hodgson hodgsonmar...@yahoo.co.uk To: Stephen Kenyon s...@jacaranda-music.com Sent: Monday, 5 August 2013, 7:12 Subject: Re: [LUTE] Re: general public Lute awareness (but re guitar exams) Dear Stephen Kenyon, Whilst I can see, and agree, with much of your position, attributing to pianists generally a level of 'musical stature' is undeserved. Clearly many may know bits of the keyboard repertoire from, say, 1800 onwards reasonably well but I wonder how many can realise a decent basso continuo accompaniment on sight, or improvise suitable and stylish divisions, or read a score with unusual (for these modern times) clefs.. And I very much doubt your assertion that the most skilled guitarists play the keyboard too! Martyn Hodgson __ From: Stephen Kenyon s...@jacaranda-music.com To: William Samson willsam...@yahoo.co.uk Cc: Christopher Wilke chriswi...@yahoo.com; Mark Seifert seifertm...@att.net; gary magg...@sonic.net; lutelist lute@cs.dartmouth.edu Sent: Sunday, 4 August 2013, 13:16 Subject: [LUTE] Re: general public Lute awareness (but re guitar exams) I just think its about the practicality of deliverying literally umpteen thousands of exams three times a year in short bursts in a tight and competative timetable. The examiner is appointed after a quite intensive application and training process, and they are tightly moderated for their first exam periods, and continue to be over their examining career. What the system is looking for is a person who can deliver an exam over the whole range. The system has not arbitrarily decided that players of one kind of instrument are not acceptable to exam players of another kind of instrument. Moreover I would be very surprised to find a guitar player of the kind of musical stature associated with an examiner, who had not at least dabbled a bit with piano, certainly they would I think have an extensive experience of hearing it played, including following scores and understanding the mechanics and performance issues. That though would not make them useful as examiners because they would not from that be able to perform the aural tests adequately. As I find each time I try knock out a few notes on piano in a lesson, its not to helpful the 'candidate' (student preparing for exam in this case) if you fumble and mess up. (I use the CDs with the aural tests books mostly). And while numbers of players of each instrument may be statistically listed somewhere I don't know about, I would assert that at least as far as UK is concerned, the sheer numbers of guitar players with proper musical educations, able to play at least one other instrument competently, is seriously dwarfed by most of the other instrument groups. This is my observation among teaching and playing colleagues. I would very much like to see a large increase in the numbers of guitar players employed as examiners. It may partly be that most of us are employed in teaching positions and cannot get time off for 6 weeks a term to go examining. Stephen On 4 Aug 2013, at 12:49, William Samson wrote: ' - and obviously also very good pianists - '. Why 'obviously'? I think this is getting close to the point I am trying to make. I might accept that 'never' is a bit strong, but I was in fact referring to guitarists with no experience of piano ( - Some very fine guitarists do fit this description). Would 'at least some training in the quirks of' the piano make such a person acceptable? I accept that the great majority of instruments examined are orchestral along with piano. I am sure, however, that there are at least as many guitarists around in the general population as there are players of any of these other instruments. I wonder why so few of them become part of a system where they work their way through the grades? Bill From: Stephen Kenyon [1]s...@jacaranda-music.com To: William Samson [2]willsam...@yahoo.co.uk Cc: Christopher Wilke [3]chriswi...@yahoo.com; Mark Seifert [4]seifertm...@att.net; gary [5]magg...@sonic.net; lutelist [6]lute@cs.dartmouth.edu Sent: Sunday, 4 August 2013, 12:12 Subject: [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
[LUTE] Re: general public Lute awareness (but re guitar exams)
Thank you for the exceptionally deep and interesting info, Howard. I haven't yet listened to or opened my Teaching Co. Goldberg course on the Beethoven Piano Concertos, so I'm reserving judgement. Didn't list Lizst because that peripatetic peacock pianist is supposedly the originator of the awful tradition known as the master class, and he was close to that creator of overblown events Wagner, whose operas are better than they sound according to Sam Clemens. I think it was Greenberg who said in his Bach course that Bach didn't like Silbermann's pianos, though he loved Silbermann's organs and harpsichords. Bach was the heaviest hitter I could think of for help in politically attacking the modern piano Goliath. Your point is well taken that those old pianos weren't like the newer ones. But I doubt the interesting archival hearsay that Bach provided his complete approval (how conveenient for piano lovers and Mr. Gould). My concern is that requiring young potential guitar or lute players to learn piano first could severely thin the ranks to the vanishing point. I think classical Guitar and lute are difficult instruments requiring for success almost total commitment, unlike many other instruments. Also, only well-to-do folks had pianos where/when I grew up--my piano playing mother gave hers up to aid the purchase of a house. It was painful and pathetic later watching her nostalgically play a toy 16?-key plastic piano provided to the kids. Are you a piano player as well as a lute enthusiast? Mark Seifert From: howard posner howardpos...@ca.rr.com To: lutelist lute@cs.dartmouth.edu Sent: Sunday, August 4, 2013 9:54 AM Subject: [LUTE] Re: general public Lute awareness (but re guitar exams) On Aug 4, 2013, at 5:11 AM, Mark Seifert [1]seifertm...@att.net wrote: Why the piano chauvinism in modern music? I don't like piano (except maybe Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Hummel, Schumann, Tim Story) You might want to check out this dude named Beethoven. 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. Both inaccurate and irrelevant, I think. Re inaccurate, here's my recycled response to a similar comment last year: Johann Friedrich Agricola related in a 1768 treatise on keyboard instruments that Bach once tried a Silbermann pianoforte (didn't say when or where), and liked its tone but said the bass was weak and the action was too heavy. Silbermann sulked, but spent years improving the instrument, and Bach later expressed complete approval of his pianos It's on page 259 of the 1966 revised edition of the Bach Reader. The Piano (by four authors including fortepiano builders Philip Belt and Derek Adlam), on page 8, connects the complete approval that Agricola mentions with Bach's 1747 visit to Frederick the Great in Berlin, which resulted in the Musical Offering. Big Fred had a few Silbermann pianos. The Piano says they are reported [by whom? Agricola?] to have met Bach's complete approval on that occasion [which is probably speculation], and the composer served as a sales agent for Silbermann in 1749 (see C. Wolff: 'New Research on Bach's Musical Offering', MQ, lvii (1971), 403). Of course, Silbermann was famous for his organs and harpsichords, and Bach's admiration for Silbermann's organs is well documented. Re irrelevant: 1) The mid-eighteenth-century piano is about as closely related to the modern one as the renaissance lute is to the modern guitar, and 2) why would Bach's view of the piano be important now? -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- References 1. mailto:seifertm...@att.net
[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
[LUTE] Re: general public Lute awareness (but re guitar exams)
' - and obviously also very good pianists - '. Why 'obviously'? I think this is getting close to the point I am trying to make. I might accept that 'never' is a bit strong, but I was in fact referring to guitarists with no experience of piano ( - Some very fine guitarists do fit this description). Would 'at least some training in the quirks of' the piano make such a person acceptable? I accept that the great majority of instruments examined are orchestral along with piano. I am sure, however, that there are at least as many guitarists around in the general population as there are players of any of these other instruments. I wonder why so few of them become part of a system where they work their way through the grades? Bill From: Stephen Kenyon s...@jacaranda-music.com To: William Samson willsam...@yahoo.co.uk Cc: Christopher Wilke chriswi...@yahoo.com; Mark Seifert seifertm...@att.net; gary magg...@sonic.net; lutelist lute@cs.dartmouth.edu Sent: Sunday, 4 August 2013, 12:12 Subject: [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 [1]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- References 1. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: general public Lute awareness (but re guitar exams)
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 s...@jacaranda-music.com To: William Samson willsam...@yahoo.co.uk Cc: Christopher Wilke chriswi...@yahoo.com; Mark Seifert seifertm...@att.net; gary magg...@sonic.net; lutelist lute@cs.dartmouth.edu 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
[LUTE] Re: general public Lute awareness (but re guitar exams)
I just think its about the practicality of deliverying literally umpteen thousands of exams three times a year in short bursts in a tight and competative timetable. The examiner is appointed after a quite intensive application and training process, and they are tightly moderated for their first exam periods, and continue to be over their examining career. What the system is looking for is a person who can deliver an exam over the whole range. The system has not arbitrarily decided that players of one kind of instrument are not acceptable to exam players of another kind of instrument. Moreover I would be very surprised to find a guitar player of the kind of musical stature associated with an examiner, who had not at least dabbled a bit with piano, certainly they would I think have an extensive experience of hearing it played, including following scores and understanding the mechanics and performance issues. That though would not make them useful as examiners because they would not from that be able to perform the aural tests adequately. As I find each time I try knock out a few notes on piano in a lesson, its not to helpful the 'candidate' (student preparing for exam in this case) if you fumble and mess up. (I use the CDs with the aural tests books mostly). And while numbers of players of each instrument may be statistically listed somewhere I don't know about, I would assert that at least as far as UK is concerned, the sheer numbers of guitar players with proper musical educations, able to play at least one other instrument competently, is seriously dwarfed by most of the other instrument groups. This is my observation among teaching and playing colleagues. I would very much like to see a large increase in the numbers of guitar players employed as examiners. It may partly be that most of us are employed in teaching positions and cannot get time off for 6 weeks a term to go examining. Stephen On 4 Aug 2013, at 12:49, William Samson wrote: ' - and obviously also very good pianists - '. Why 'obviously'? I think this is getting close to the point I am trying to make. I might accept that 'never' is a bit strong, but I was in fact referring to guitarists with no experience of piano ( - Some very fine guitarists do fit this description). Would 'at least some training in the quirks of' the piano make such a person acceptable? I accept that the great majority of instruments examined are orchestral along with piano. I am sure, however, that there are at least as many guitarists around in the general population as there are players of any of these other instruments. I wonder why so few of them become part of a system where they work their way through the grades? Bill From: Stephen Kenyon s...@jacaranda-music.com To: William Samson willsam...@yahoo.co.uk Cc: Christopher Wilke chriswi...@yahoo.com; Mark Seifert seifertm...@att.net; gary magg...@sonic.net; lutelist lute@cs.dartmouth.edu Sent: Sunday, 4 August 2013, 12:12 Subject: [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
[LUTE] Re: general public Lute awareness (but re guitar exams)
On Aug 4, 2013, at 5:11 AM, Mark Seifert seifertm...@att.net wrote: Why the piano chauvinism in modern music? I don't like piano (except maybe Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Hummel, Schumann, Tim Story) You might want to check out this dude named Beethoven. 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. Both inaccurate and irrelevant, I think. Re inaccurate, here's my recycled response to a similar comment last year: Johann Friedrich Agricola related in a 1768 treatise on keyboard instruments that Bach once tried a Silbermann pianoforte (didn't say when or where), and liked its tone but said the bass was weak and the action was too heavy. Silbermann sulked, but spent years improving the instrument, and Bach later expressed complete approval of his pianos It's on page 259 of the 1966 revised edition of the Bach Reader. The Piano (by four authors including fortepiano builders Philip Belt and Derek Adlam), on page 8, connects the complete approval that Agricola mentions with Bach's 1747 visit to Frederick the Great in Berlin, which resulted in the Musical Offering. Big Fred had a few Silbermann pianos. The Piano says they are reported [by whom? Agricola?] to have met Bach's complete approval on that occasion [which is probably speculation], and the composer served as a sales agent for Silbermann in 1749 (see C. Wolff: 'New Research on Bach's Musical Offering', MQ, lvii (1971), 403). Of course, Silbermann was famous for his organs and harpsichords, and Bach's admiration for Silbermann's organs is well documented. Re irrelevant: 1) The mid-eighteenth-century piano is about as closely related to the modern one as the renaissance lute is to the modern guitar, and 2) why would Bach's view of the piano be important now? -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
