Klarinet Archive - Posting 000002.txt from 2004/04

From: "rien stein" <rstein@-----.nl>
Subj: [kl] harry potter, and good music
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2004 04:25:29 -0500

In the beginning I decided not to participate in this HP discussion. But
when I read what Andy Raibeck

klari_1@-----.com>

wrote on this list I decided to react.

One of my nephews asked me I ever had read a HP book, a couple of years ago.
He adviced me, to read them. I have a high esteem of this nephew. Thus I got
one from our local library. Two months after I had read all four of them
(recently I got the fifth one from Sinterklaas, the dutch version of Santa
Claus). This had nothing to do with commercials: I never watch or read any
advertisements, not on TV, not in the papers. These books have nothing to do
with so-called Reality TV or celebrities. They just are! There's no
comparison with temptation island, jerry springer or dr phil. But maybe I
haven't seen enough of these to judge correctly?

The question of course boils down to what is literature and what is not.
Just as it is the question to decide upon what is, and what is not good
music. Was Bach such a great composer? I do not know. I know he did write a
lot, most of it similar to what he wrote before, and much of it is good
stuff to improve technique. But his Matheus Passion is a very artificial
piece of art in my opinion, I 'm certainly not sure it deserves all
attention it gets time and again in this time of the year. But Simon and
Garfunkel and the Beatles certainly were great composers, they renewed the
existing repertoire in a way that was unimaginable before, in an epoch where
renewal meant only too often: incomprehensability. And as dan Leeson once
stipulated, even "Yes, I got no bananas" is a masterpiece in its own virtue.

We do not know what is of value in our time. And even what was valuable in
the past is a matter of discussion. Why was Hummel a forgotten composer 40
years ago, a fashionable composer 30 years ago, and again a forgotten
composer now? Is he so much worse than some of his contemporaries, or
Mozart? I do not think so!

But it is late already, nearly 2 am, so I will go to bed. Maybe later on I
will contribute more to this discussion

greetings

Rien

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Klarinet is a service of Woodwind.Org, Inc. http://www.woodwind.org