|
I would just like to say...
..that I feel really sorry for classical musicians who seem to hate all kinds of music except for about 100ish years between 1789 and 1912. I have a friend who plans on playing the trumpet professionally (in orchestras) who thinks DEBUSSY is too much, too "weird". Debussy!! If it isn't Beethoven or Strauss or Bach etc she doesn't like it and is pretty snide when it even comes to a lot of "conservative" modern music. She hates jazz. She even threw a fit when I was trying to explain how I don't think Beethoven's even numbered symphonies weigh up to the odd numbered ones at all (except for No. 6, a favorite). She acted as if questioning the merit of any of Beethoven's work was violating some kind of Cardinal oath.
It's very frustrating, I couldn't imagine not listening to, well, every kind of music imaginable. Who has time to hate music? When are we as classical musicians going to drop the pretense and just relax and enjoy sounds. You know, I may listen to The Producers one minute, then some Brahms, then maybe A Tribe Called Quest. I haven't died yet. I have contracted some sort of fatal illness. I haven't coughed up one of my vital organs. It's okay to open your mind a bit, a promise you! I know I may be preaching to the choir a little bit on this board (even though I've even experience some of it here).
I think the one thing we as a society need to get over is this rather blatantly egotistical mantra of, "If I don't like something then it sucks". Let me tell you something, I can't stand the sound of country music, but you will never hear me bash it. What's the point? Country music has a very large fan base and has touched people for years, who am I to try and take that away from them. I can see the obvious merit in it, and I'm not about to question anyone's "talent" or the emotional effect of the music. Of course some of it is of questionable quality, but what music doesn't.
The mind set of musicians like the friend I described in the first couple of paragraphs unfortunately is not an isolated incident. I come across too many musicians with their heads up their ass. As an aspiring composer coming up through the American higher-learning system, the most important thing to me as I begin to write more and more, and get one step closer to entering the professional world is this..."How am I going to stay relevant as a composer/conductor/whatever in 21st century America". Because to be honest folks, I'm not interested in just waxing pretentious, because all that does is get you a dead end job at a no name university teaching Music Theory and running a "new music ensemble", and the cycle of pretentious academia continues. A lot of composers have learned from this. They work in different medias, whether it be concert hall, film or television, or theatre. Something tells me that our society is much more familiar with the music of John Williams or the music from the broadway production Wicked than Brahms, Mahler, or Ligeti.
I'm going to end this here before I start crossing into a world that is bigger than I, but I just wanted to express the concern about my trumpet player friend and the many classical musicians I've come across like that. Of course, jazz musicians are at fault too, but they are no where near as closed minded.
As a side note: I've always found it funny how the extremes of classical music seem to almost be at war. You have the "experimentalists" who think a concerto for cellphone and orchestra is a good idea, then you have the people like my friend who think music died with Brahms (who as history can now show us, was quite an arrogant ass, go figure?). Almost like our own little musical Democrats and Republicans, and in the middle we have the independents. People that embrace BOTH sides and don't belabor themselves with vitrol towards certain sounds. The composers who embrace this mentality nowadays are not surprisingly the most successful ones (ie: Corigliano)
|
Jan 5 2008, 9:29 AM
Linear Mode
