Klarinet Archive - Posting 000356.txt from 2005/08

From: Adam Michlin <amichlin@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Composers as teachers
Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2005 19:06:13 -0400

At 05:46 PM 8/19/2005, Tony Pay wrote:
>"who ARE these people?"

These people are the people who spend their hard earned money to go to your
concerts.
These people are the people who spend their hard earned money to buy your
recordings.
These people are the people who spend their hard earned money to buy your
books (or the books your work is presented in.)
In short, these are the people who at least in some small way enable you to
have a career many people only dream about.

And maybe, just maybe, these are the people from whom you might just learn
something, even if it isn't about the clarinet.

I took the time to read the Compendium article in question (score one for
Google Print). I can see how it might be confusing. I also know how
difficult it is to write anything about music in such a way as to be clear
to everyone who might read it. It is an impossible task. Someone will
always misunderstand, someone will always misinterpret, someone will always
have their own predisposition and biases. If you have a solution to this
problem, I would love to hear it.

It is unfortunate that you chose to take feedback from one of your
customers as a personal insult. Perhaps it was groundless, perhaps it was
not. Turning around and insulting him (in the context of him complimenting
you months later, no less!) adds little to no value, even if his feedback
was groundless. Doing so may make you feel better, but it makes at least
some of the people on the list think less of you. A poor tradeoff, in my
entirely subjective opinion (isn't it sad that I have to add that
disclaimer?).

There will always be people critical of your work, you can either consider
what they have to say or you can ignore them. Both are valid and rational
responses. Calling them idiots for being critical (even if they cannot
clearly articulate why they are being critical) is silly, perhaps even
irrational, why not go around telling people they are idiots for choosing
chocolate over vanilla ice cream (for the record, vanilla is the one true
ice cream and anyone who disagrees with me is an idiot!) if you feel like
wasting time and hurting people's feelings? I would shocked if you didn't
already know this, though. It is strikes me as odd that I need to remind you.

As hard as you've tried, there is nothing you can say to me on this list
which will make me consider you an enemy. I can only express sadness if you
choose to consider me an enemy. I do not expect you to like me. I do not
expect you to be nice to me. I do not expect you to be polite to me. I do
not even expect you to be civil to me. I would prefer the last two and do
think the final item is, by circular definition, a required bit if you wish
to consider your behavior civilized.

If you really wish to take your ball and go home because people aren't
playing the game the way you want it to be played that is a shame. I wish
you the best of luck in the future regardless of what you decide to do.

Intentionally without a sarcastic sign off,

-Adam

At 05:46 PM 8/19/2005, Tony Pay wrote:
>On 19 Aug, "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net> wrote:
>
> > Tony Pay posted a thoughtful, interesting, well-written message about
> > composers as teachers.
> > Vann Joe Turner replied,
> >
> > > Tony,
> > >
> > > Though we've disagreed in the past, I applaud you writing this as you
> > > did. I've copied it and printed it. Thanks for both the acumen and the
> > > eloquence.
> >
> > That's the complete message, and to me it looks gracious and
> > straightforward. It looks like the offer of an olive branch. I remember
> > the previous fracas and I can understand that Tony Pay would still feel
> > resentful about it. However, maybe I'm being simple-minded here, but I
> > can't detect any hint of hidden meanings, sly digs or other cause for new
> > offense in the message above.
> >
> > Tony, I like you, and I've defended you in the past, but with the best will
> > in the world, I can't understand why you responded as you did, by calling
> > Van Joe Turner an idiot, among other unpleasantries, unless the catalyst
> > was something extraneous, something not apparent to readers of this list.
> > If whatever caused you to go non-linear is something that's none of our
> > business, then I don't want to know about it, but if Van Joe Turner got hit
> > by a blast that might have been better aimed elsewhere, then I think he
> > deserves to know that much, at least.
>
>You mean, that I should treat him...and Adam Michlin, and others of his
>ilk...as *people*?
>
>Or even, as *human beings*?
>
>No, I don't think I can go that far.
>
>I'm joking of course, but there's some truth in it. Let me try to say why.
>
>Why do I like you, Lelia? You say you like me, and I'm grateful for it, but
>that's not *why* I like you.
>
>I like you because you're clearly somebody other than 'yourself as a clarinet
>fan'. You're not a great clarinet player...but you don't pretend to be.
>(Actually, you're probably a much better player than you think you are:-)
>
>If you remember, I was very keen to meet you, as I wouldn't have been
>keen to meet all sorts of other people who post on this list -- and who would
>have wanted to have photos taken of me with them, and so on... (Some of the
>readers of this list will wince at that last remark. "He's not so
>famous...*I* wouldn't have wanted to meet him, or have my photo taken..!"
>they'd say. But those people are no less a part of the system that I'm
>complaining about, or will complain about.)
>
>I have posted here for people like you; and in doing that I have posted here
>also, in the abstract, for a particular notion of what it is to do what I do.
>I can't shortly define that notion, but it's something like, 'being true to
>the music', and something like 'not laying down the law about how we may do
>that' -- so that, for example, someone who says "you should use a double-lip
>embouchure" would immediately find themselves in my sights -- and something
>like 'being willing to allow other unconscious, and therefore unspecifiable
>influences to influence our playing as we play', and to speak about playing
>in a way that allows ourselves and others the room to 'grow' those
>influences.
>
>So, as I do that, I encounter objections here. Some of those I answer, and
>take in my stride, but some of them are more deeply rooted. Some of them are
>obviously so much a part of the attitude of the person voicing them that I
>come to see that person as an enemy.
>
>For example, both Roger Garrett and Neil Leupold became my enemies, here, for
>different reasons. Garrett, in his time here, was just...well, I won't go
>into it.
>
>Leupold was more interesting, if wrong. He believed that you could specify
>what constituted 'good clarinet playing', and was prepared to tell you, in
>detail, what that was. It wasn't that what he said was untrue, exactly; but
>he seemed to think that the details of what he said could be applicable to
>everyone -- which clearly, on a mailing list, they couldn't be. So he said,
>for example, that playing 'relaxed, as though it were easy -- and it is easy,
>for the best players!' was his ideal, independently of what the music
>demanded. (Moreover, he was a professional accountant, or something, so he'd
>never played for a great conductor, or with great players, or anything...)
>
>When I wrote the chapter in the Clarinet Companion, I couldn't in all honesty
>'tell people what to do' in that sort of way. (If you're giving lessons, you
>can change what you say if it doesn't work; which you can't, if you choose
>any particular instruction in a book, or on a mailing list.) You can,
>however, do something helpful, and I've done that, both here and in the book.
>
>So I did that, and was complimented on it.
>
>So then, *Vann Joe* tells me it's gobbledegoop. And, tells me that without
>any good reason -- as established by our interaction, during which he
>demonstrated his total lack of appreciation, not only of the enterprise, but
>even of the common or garden facts of clarinet playing. So he's definitely
>just a cipher; an enemy of what I'm trying to do here, and elsewhere. He
>ignores the fact that he's not a serious player, and that he has no
>experience of what playing with great players is...what does he know about
>anything? So, he pretends to be something he's not, namely an adequate judge
>of such a book.
>
>Now comes the story you know.
>
>And then, *after* all that, and without any preamble other than that saying
>we've 'disagreed', he *presumes* to congratulate me on writing something *he*
>understands! Now he wants to be treated as a normal human being!
>
>How *dare* he, is what I think. And I'm supposed to be *nice* to him?
>Bollocks I am.
>
>I was once a couple of years ago a bit upset about something that had gone on
>on the list. I explained it to a professional colleague of mine, who was
>wide-eyed.
>
>"But," she said, "who ARE these people?"
>
>At the time, I thought, well, just people, and thought that answer good
>enough. But now I'm not so sure.
>
>I don't think it does me much good being here. Perhaps I'll go and join a
>list about, I don't know, computer programming, or health management, and
>tell them what *I* think about what *they* know and care about, and see how
>*I* get on.
>
>I might learn something.

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