Klarinet Archive - Posting 001357.txt from 1998/03

From: Dee Hays <deerich@-----.net>
Subj: Re: Musician?
Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 18:37:42 -0500

Shouryu Nohe wrote:

> ....Do you really think that Beethoven mastered the piano, the strings, flute,
> clarinet, horns, trumpets, and trombones? And at the same time, could
> sing all parts in chorus? Preposturous! But by your definition, unless
> he could, he isn't a musician, simply 'musical.' Nonsense!
>
> .......Musicianship has jack to do with mastering all instruments. If that were
>
> the case, no one in history has ever had the right to call themselves so -
> there are tons of nonwestern instruments that we never hear about or
> rarely see used, but they are valid, musical instruments. No one has ever
> learned to play every instrument, let alone, learn them to the point where
> they can play anything on them. That's absurd.
>
> Musicianship is a love - you don't simply read notes on a page, you feel
> them. The composer comes back to life through your playing, and what
> he/she was emoting and conveying blends with your own interpretations, and
> you become the creator of an art form.
>

Wonderfully said and this last paragraph is beautiful.

> Saying a clarinetist is strictly a clarinetist is saying that a sculptor
> is not an artist, strictly a sculptor. A poet or novelist is not a
> writer, strictly a poet or novelist.
>
> It's not the number of tools you have in your box - it's the great things
> you can do with those tools that matter. A musician is a child who sings
> in church. A musician is a marimba player in a drum corp. A musician is
> the guy who plays everything and anything for his school because he can.
> A musician is the ragged, old man with the soprano sax on the corner of
> Crescent Ave. and Bourbon Street, who plays every note from the heart, in
> the city of jazz.
>

Are you sure that you are not also a writer or a poet besides a musician? That
last sentence is so descriptive and moving.

> It's not the different ways you can wiggle your fingers that make you a
> musician. It's the different ways you love the music.

Yes!

Dee Hays
Canton, SD