Klarinet Archive - Posting 000436.txt from 2001/11
From: "Robert Moody" <LetsReason@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Beethoven "tango" and "jazz"
Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2001 22:01:25 -0500
<<If you like this, then you might also like the "Jazz
Variation" in the Beethoven (Last) Piano Sonata No.
32, Second Movement "Theme and Variations". It
uses "Dotted Rhythms" which causes many people
who hear it, to think it is just Standard "Honky
Tonk" or "Boogey Woogey" Jazz, until you show
them who wrote it, and when!>>
I know I did until someone showed me the date just the other day. Boy, was
I shocked!
<<Of course the fact that 99% of all Popular Music
is still using brain-dead Simple Chord Progressions,
that could just as easily have been written in the year
1650, doesn't help.>>
And people still build houses with brick and mortar. Won't they ever
progress? Sure, SOME people go out on a limb and buy these contemporary
buildings with kewl, modern materials and structures. But those brick and
mortar houses just keep sticking their outdated noses in every neighborhood!
Could it be...the population here sees some inherent value in these brick
and mortar houses? I dunno...just a guess.
<<As a Music Theorist and a Modern Classical Com-
poser who writes in the rarely known Chromatic Func-
tional Modality System, I find it strange....>>
That's cool as long as you keep in mind that someone WITHOUT those
descriptors concerning their hobby/job may think just the opposite with just
as much validity to their reasons. This happens to be the case...I think.
<<I find it strange that the same
people who sit down and cry like babies, that demand
the latest Technology for their Medicine, Communica-
tions, Transportation and Computations,....>>
I think the primary difference I see in this request for "technology" in the
fields of Medicine, Communications, Transportation and Computations with
that of Music is somehow...the creators of the former seem to come up with
something useful and rewarding. ;-)
[I'm being facetious. I absolutely LOVE what Michael Lowenstern has done
with technology in creating music. LOVE it!]
Of course, I absolutely LOVE to dance and enjoy immensely the paltry
three-chord dance music in clubs. I like to boogie. }:-D I was the
"hippest" teacher in my middle school not only because COULD I dance the
current dances, I WOULD dance with the kids! The point being, while I can
enjoy, and be fulfilled in, playing a WW Quintet recital of Neilsen, Barber,
Ibert & Danzi, I can still get "my fill" by going to the club with the same
performers less than an hour after the last chord (and WE DID!...I was the
only guy in the quintet!...the same group that made it to the finals of a
national chamber music competition.)
To me...music is expression and people listen in order to not only "share"
in that expression--to share something with the composer and performers--but
to explore and discover new thoughts and ideas that speak to their emotions.
Some of the music that came out in the last century may have expressed what
the composer wanted to say...but did not relate to everyday people who would
pay for the performance of it.
The kewl thing about today and technology is that composers who somehow feel
the need to create a composition that is "music" to them but "noise" to
others can compose all they want and have pretty decent performances of it
by computers. It works out great...the composer can create all day and
night and clarinet players don't have to rumage through piles of nonsense to
find contemporary music that will appeal to today's listener. Hence, I can
program a completely delightful "Twentieth Century" recital with Sir Malcom
Arnold's "Fantasy" or "Quintet", Stravinsky's "Three Pieces", Nielsen's
"Quintet", Barber's "Summer Music", Eric Ewazen's "Ballade" for Clarinet and
String Orchestra and Michael Lowenstern's "King Friday".
<< The public just loves nurturing the lie, that the same
4 Primary Chords of Tonality, that have been in daily
use for 500 years, were Invented yesterday, when the
most recent piece of Rock Music was played.>>
I think they just "like them more". Maybe Daniel, Tony or Stan can explain
it better than me. But I like the gist of my answer..."they like it
better".
Moving to remixes of Nelly, Destiny's Child and Toni Brakston,
Robert
[Note: I'm the other side of that "paranoia" wherein some composers seem to
think that unless "you 'understand and appreciate' what *I* think is music,
you, somehow, are uneducated or of some lower level of musical development.
I might as well like houses made of tissue paper because someone insisted it
had more "value"...or ANY.]
Teehee...waiting for responses. LOL.
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