 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2006-03-21 18:22
Reading a recent thread reminded me of how narrow clarinetists' taste tends to be. Jury members of two international clarinet competitions told me how they argued heatedly with other jury memebrs about the contestants. What sounds excellent for one jury member sounds like a bad amateur for another, and what sounds exciting for one sounds like extreme bad taste to another. We're living in an age where clarinet playing is allegedly becoming less "individual", but there still seem to be irreconcileable differences of taste.
Why would this be? Are players of other instruments so narrow in their tastes?
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Author: David Spiegelthal ★2017
Date: 2006-03-21 18:44
Perhaps the reason is that nowadays there are so many technically proficient clarinetists (for so few gigs, needless to say) that judges have little to choose from in terms of technical excellence -- as all the contestants are fantastic technicians -- so the judges must resort to exaggerated 'stylistic' nitpicking on which to base their rankings. If someone is paid to criticize and there's actually precious little to criticize, then it's human nature for that person to invent artificial criteria in order to arrive at a 'considered judgement', n'est-ce-pas?
Just a theory. Probably bogus. Oh, well. ![[frown]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/smilie2.gif)
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2006-03-22 00:17
There are some very different schools of thought out there in regards to musical performance. The more you delve into one of them, the more you realize how different they all are.
There are people who focus almost completely on note and rhythmic accuracy, and people who give an impression of absolute precision on that front score well with them. There are others who make a much bigger fuss about forward energy and shaping of notes. Still others consider dynamic contrast and exaggerated dynamics to be key. Others still favor a certain tone quality, which varies by region and personal taste. There are tons more categories, and lots of subgroups of people prefer certain combinations and variations of factors.
There are many, many players who are technically proficient and do very well in one particular "beyond just playing the notes" area.
I wouldn't say it's a matter of precious little to criticize. Rather, it's that the more time a person spends with music, the more tuned they become to it, and likely to a particular aspect of it. I'm picky now about aspects of musicianship I didn't know existed 5 years ago. It could well be that, to your ears, there is little to criticize. Give yourself 5 years.
And besides, it's all subjective.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: Vic
Date: 2006-03-22 17:50
"A critic is someone who knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing."
Wish I could remember who said that so I could give them their proper due. Wasn't me, I know that.
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Author: george
Date: 2006-03-22 17:55
“What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
Oscar Wilde
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2006-03-22 18:40
There's no possible assessment of quality -- actually no possible assessment of meaning -- without a context. So because people differ about what players should be trying to do, which is the context in which you assess their success in doing it, they differ about how good they are.
Some players have a rich enough context -- what they want is sufficiently multilevelled to be in accordance with a possible view of the complexity of the music -- that it's possible, even if you don't agree entirely with their aims, to appreciate their response.
Other players are superficial, and even if they are technically able, they're not up to what's required.
To appreciate this requires quite a large familiarity with the music, and it has to be said that many judges themselves have deficiencies in that regard. You don't want to take too seriously that some member of the jury is famous, or take too seriously that you don't succeed in a particular competition.
If you're a judge, that some player has a view of the music that you don't appreciate doesn't necessarily need to be discounted in your judgement. For example, if someone is a lesser player, it makes a difference for me that in playing the Mozart concerto they have no idea of the style of the period.
On the other hand, I might decide that that view of my own has no importance if they are sufficiently convincing.
Competitions are artificial situations. The proper arena is concert performance. What your colleagues think of you -- they are colleagues, after all -- is less important than your relationship with the music. Try to develop that, in an honest way.
Tony
Post Edited (2006-03-22 19:32)
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2006-03-22 20:48
>>Other players are superficial, and even if they are technically able, they're not up to what's required.>>
I agree with that, and I've criticized musicians for what I consider to be superficiality, but the more I think about it, the more I realize I don't quite know what I mean by "superficiality." I think I know it when I hear it, but what is it that gives it away? Superficiality must have some sort of empirical, definable quality (otherwise I have to suspect me of not knowing what I'm talking about).
I think superficiality resides in something other than simply playing the notes and rests without much phrasing--I don't think I've ever heard a professional player play expressionlessly, and in fact some performances that seem superficial to me also seem sentimentalized: too much goopy expression that seems somehow dishonest, with the player putting on a big show of feeling without really feeling anything. Liberace playing a Rachmaninoff etude on TV comes to mind--he really was a technically skilled pianist, but his theatrical rendition of a difficult etude, though note-perfect, was swooping, smarmy muck.
But an overly-sentimentalized performance is not necessarily superficial. I'm thinking of a pianist again--the unfortunate David Helfgott (turned into a character in the pseudo-biographical movie, SHINE)--and Rachmaninoff again, too. I've only seen Helfgott himself (talking about the real pianist, not the actor playing the fictional character) on TV, not live. His emotion looked deep and genuine, but the playing seemed in horrible taste to me, with atrocious playing on the technical level: fistfuls of wrong notes. It wasn't superficial playing; it was just *bad* playing. (I don't criticize him for that, however. People who should have been helping him were exploiting him.)
So what do we mean when we talk about superficiality?
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
Post Edited (2006-03-22 20:52)
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2006-03-22 21:15
Lelia Loban wrote:
>> Superficiality must have some sort of empirical, definable quality (otherwise I have to suspect me of not knowing what I'm talking about)>>
I think it's a mistake to look for definability in art. All worthwhile art is partly conscious and partly unconscious, and therefore uncapturable by definition.
>> So what do we mean when we talk about superficiality?>>
I'd say, as I did before, that meaning is related always to a context; and the required context here is in part a deep (partly conscious and partly unconscious) address to what the music consists of. The more you know, the more you can see that.
That doesn't mean to say that we don't have some partly conscious, partly unconscious intuitions that we bring to bear even on the performance of music that we don't know.
It's easy for us to recognise a performer who's insincere, for example, even if we know nothing about the content of what they are doing.
We should develop a trust of those recognitions.
Tony
Post Edited (2006-03-22 21:18)
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Author: D Dow
Date: 2006-03-24 16:06
It is pretty hard to have a conversation with just about anyone if you base it from a semantics viewpoint. Many clarinet players are no different from our neighbours, freinds, politicians and anyone else execept they play an instrument.
David Dow
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Author: Don Poulsen
Date: 2006-03-24 16:40
I strongly contend that the only competitions musicians should be involved in are auditions. Other than that, music should be a cooperative effort and competition should be limited to competing with oneself. Music appreciation is almost totally subjective; what one person likes, another reviles and there is nothing wrong with that. No one person or group of people has the moral authority to tell others what they should and shouldn't enjoy.
Why are auditions an exception? Musical groups need some mechanism of judging and selecting their members. They have the right to make those subjective judgements as to whether someone has not only the technical skills but the sound and interpretation that fits with what the group is striving to be. The audition process allows the group (or whoever is in charge of it) to decide what is best for itself; it is not a process to decide who is best outside of this context.
I also leave open the possibility of individuals or groups being judged in non-competitive, unranked manner. In this type of situation, the judges can score on subjective criteria (e.g., intonation, rhythmic accuracy, missed notes, etc.) but, on subjective criteria strictly give opinions and clearly state them as such. ("Your interpretation made me feel...", "I would have found this section more enjoyable had you...")
Let's leave the competition to sports and spelling bees.
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2006-03-24 22:12
David Dow wrote:
>> It is pretty hard to have a conversation with just about anyone if you base it from a semantics viewpoint. Many clarinet players are no different from our neighbours, freinds, politicians and anyone else execept they play an instrument.>>
I don't really know what you mean by this -- perhaps you'll explain more fully -- but it makes me want to say that actually, players are different from their normal selves when they play. They have to be able to enter into the relational aspects of being great lovers, grief-stricken lamenters, arms and legs, trees, sunsets....you name it.
When it appears that what they're actually being is someone who is trying to look good, it naturally jars.
Don Poulsen wrote:
>> Music appreciation is almost totally subjective; what one person likes, another reviles and there is nothing wrong with that.>>
As I suggested, it's sometimes possible to identify the context that makes you 'not like' something. You might then come to value that something in some circumstances and not others. The following, about vibrato/non vibrato, is a case in point:
http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/2003/06/000705.txt
Don further wrote:
>> Why are auditions an exception? Musical groups need some mechanism of judging and selecting their members. They have the right to make those subjective judgements as to whether someone has not only the technical skills but the sound and interpretation that fits with what the group is striving to be. The audition process allows the group (or whoever is in charge of it) to decide what is best for itself; it is not a process to decide who is best outside of this context.>>
I couldn't agree more.
Tony
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Author: Markael
Date: 2006-03-25 11:54
Don Poulsen made an interesting point about reserving competition for auditions, and trying to keep music, as much as possible, a collaborative thing.
I half agree, but competition is so much a part of human nature that this is a bit unrealistic, and perhaps not even desirable.
If we didn't have formal competitions informal competitions would happen naturally. Consider the "cutting sessions" of jazz, such as the all night tenor sax fest between Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young.
And then there's the classic story of Fats Waller, who interrupted his playing when he saw Art Tatum walk in the door. "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm just a piano player. God has entered the building." Extreme language it was, but an unmistakable deference to
greatness.
Our motivations and attitudes to competition are complex. Competition can be friendly, or hostile, or a mixture of the two. At its best competition is a healthy way for one person to test his or her mettle against another person.
Sports (with sportsmanship! What's that?) are a wonderful alternative to gang violence.
The important things are: to remember that competition is a game; not to invest all your ego into whether you win a particular game; and not to take too seriously those who take the game too seriously.
It's easy to say what I just said. Living by it is hard.
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2006-03-25 12:33
Markael wrote:
>> If we didn't have formal competitions informal competitions would happen naturally.>>
I'd say that it's exactly the formality of competitions that constitutes the problem.
Informal competition -- where there isn't a winner identified by some outside party, and where one performer's striving is directly stimulated by their own perception of the excellence of another -- is an entirely different matter.
The structure of a formal competition is that someone is adjudged 'the winner', and therefore the performances of participants are skewed to maximise the probability of winning. And the danger is then that their performances retain this skew -- if ever they lacked it in the first place.
Surely we can all hear this phenomenon even in some highly regarded players. (It's most evident in simple pieces, where some of them just cannot resist foregrounding whatever they take to be 'special' about their playing, regardless of whether it makes sense in the context of the piece. Indeed, they cannot even imagine not doing so.)
>> It's easy to say what I just said. Living by it is hard.>>
...particularly when the philosophy of the outlying culture, in which music-making is after all embedded, is one of 'success at all costs' plus 'more competition is always better'.
Tony
Post Edited (2006-03-25 12:37)
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2006-03-25 15:54
This narrowness in taste is not only within competitions. I only used that as an example of how two famous clarinet soloists could so completely disagree with each other about such basics as tone, dynamics, etc.
The recent discussion of Sharon Kam's video of the Mozart Concerto is a good example of these narrow tastes. One clarinet player criticised Ms Kam saying that "I find nothing beautiful in her sound". Other people wrote "She has a beautiful sound", and "she sounds great". Our sound ideals must be pretty narrow if what sounds beautiful to one person sounds big, honky and spread to another.
And let's not even mention vibrato!
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2006-03-25 16:54
Liquorice wrote:
>> Our sound ideals must be pretty narrow if what sounds beautiful to one person sounds big, honky and spread to another.>>
Again, it depends on how the listener habitually characterises what they want the sound to be doing in the music. A sound I found acceptable in the Nielsen might seem too large in the Mozart, and vice versa.
As an aside: I remember Gervase de Peyer saying that what he wanted to do with the clarinet was to 'float' his sound. That was a bit different from what I wanted to do, which was to 'shape things'. Actually I don't think he would have disagreed with that, exactly -- we had quite an area of overlap, and successfully played and recorded the Schoenberg Suite together -- but it still wasn't the first thing he wanted to say. So he and I would sometimes have different priorities in performance.
>> And let's not even mention vibrato!>>
See "What you can say about vibrato":
http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/2001/04/000074.txt
...noting again that a context is required in order to have a professed 'liking' be meaningful or useful to others.
Tony
Post Edited (2006-03-25 16:56)
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2006-03-25 16:58
Liquorice wrote: Our sound ideals must be pretty narrow if what sounds beautiful to one person sounds big, honky and spread to another.
That's a matter of personal taste, nothing wrong with that. And we sometimes confuse the piece with how it is played (if I don't like the music, the performer stands no chance, sorry).
What bugs me more is when people state their opinion as a fact.
--
Ben
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2006-03-25 18:17
tictactux wrote:
>>..we sometimes confuse the piece with how it is played (if I don't like the music, the performer stands no chance, sorry).>>
...so, if you don't like what the program does, you can't appreciate the programming skill?
Sorry???
>> What bugs me more is when people state their opinion as a fact.>>
Grrrr!
What bugs me is when people state their isolated opinions as though they are interesting.
If they were sufficiently knowledgeable of and concerned with both music and performance, they would be able to give something like an argument as to why that music wasn't sufficiently represented by that performance.
Do we get that here?
Do we <expletive>.
Dan Leeson used to say on the Klarinet list that even if a man gives you a hundred reasons why he doesn't like asparagus, it's still nothing more than his opinion.
Whereas I say -- don't you agree with me? -- that if a man just says he doesn't like asparagus, we only learn something about his opinion. But if he gives you the hundred reasons, we stand some chance of learning something about asparagus.
One reason per opinion will do, for starters. Otherwise, IMO it's a waste of time reading opinions on this list.
Tony
Post Edited (2006-03-25 18:20)
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2006-03-25 19:21
Tony Pay wrote:
...so, if you don't like what the program does, you can't appreciate the programming skill?
Sorry???
I won't say "the piece was utter rubbish but the soloist was *great*".
When I go to a concert I look forward to something like a "happy evening package". When I find the music ghastly I probably won't comment on the artists' performance, I just sigh and think "next time no Britten".
This doesn't mean I'll avoid the performers in the future. But I won't dissect everything into bits and pieces. Sometimes I am a gut person.
Call me a simpleton, call me a dumb consumer barely smart enough to buy a concert ticket, but that's how it is. <shrug>
What bugs me is when people state their isolated opinions as though they are interesting.
I did not mean to attack someone in that forum - sorry if that impression came up.
(...) But if he gives you the hundred reasons, we stand some chance of learning something about asparagus.
I didn't say I weren't open to opinions and reasons. I listen to them, ponder about them and either accept or reject them, regardless of whoever uttered them. But if someone says "no sane person can like that", that someone's off my list.
BTW is it word weighing evening today?
Hmm. Okay. Guilty as charged.
--
Ben
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2006-03-25 20:47
tictactux wrote:
>> Call me a simpleton, call me a dumb consumer barely smart enough to buy a concert ticket, but that's how it is. <shrug> >>
But presumably, you're here at least in part to get beyond that. What does it serve anyone, including you, not to want to get into what lies behind your first reactions?
Suppose I said: "I don't have much of a background in computer programming, but I did some Logo: so I prefer dynamic scope to lexical scope. Therefore, I don't like that particular Pascal program. That's just how it is. <shrug>."
You'd want to tell me, surely, first that I was a bit of an idiot; and secondly, that if I wanted to do some study, there were more interesting options available to me.
You quoted me as saying:
"What bugs me is when people state their isolated opinions as though they are interesting."
...and then responded:
>> I did not mean to attack someone in that forum - sorry if that impression came up.>>
Not at all. I was talking about what a lot of other people here do...
...LISTEN, THOSE PEOPLE. YOUR ISOLATED OPINIONS AREN'T INTERESTING!
>> ...if someone says "no sane person can like that", that someone's off my list.>>
Well, I wouldn't go as far as that:-)
Tony
Post Edited (2006-03-25 20:56)
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2006-03-25 22:08
Suppose I said: "I don't have much of a background in computer programming, but I did some Logo: so I prefer dynamic scope to lexical scope. Therefore, I don't like that particular Pascal program. That's just how it is. <shrug>."
If you don't like the pattern on a carpet there's not much use telling you how diligently it was knotted - you wouldn't like it any better even if you knew or understood.
If you, on the other hand, asked "what's so great about Pascal?" then I'd be glad to explain the various bells and whistles.
You'd want to tell me, surely, first that I was a bit of an idiot; and secondly, that if I wanted to do some study, there were more interesting options available to me.
I'm not much of a salesperson or evangelist.
isolated opinions (...)
Perhaps I simply misunderstood or misinterpreted. My bad.
--
Ben
Post Edited (2006-03-25 22:10)
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2006-03-25 22:22
tictactux wrote:
>> If you don't like the pattern on a carpet there's not much use telling you how diligently...
...diligently?
...it was knotted - you wouldn't like it any better even if you knew or understood.>>
No, but I'd still be able to comment on the quality of the craftsman.
And the analogy is misleading, because in those sorts of cases, the craftsman is usually the artist too, which isn't the case in written music -- or very often in computer programming, for that matter, where I imagine you quite often are told what is required of you.
>>>...you'd want to tell me, surely, first that I was a bit of an idiot; and secondly, that if I wanted to do some study, there were more interesting options available to me.>>>
>> I'm not much of a salesperson or evangelist.>>
But I am a salesperson and an evangelist, not for a particular programming language, or a particular style of performance -- but for the promotion of intelligent argument about what a particular sort of performance does; as opposed to inane opinionation about whether or not you 'like' it.
If you're not interested in that endeavour, then I'm afraid we have nothing to say to each other.
Tony
Post Edited (2006-03-26 09:08)
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Author: Hiroshi
Date: 2006-03-26 06:44
IMHO
I think it may be one of the causes who is the king of an instrument.
While Marcel Mule was the king of classical saxophone, many players imitated his vibrato.Juries praised those parrot players since the king is sitting next to them.
However, after he is gone, some of French sax teachers dislike too much vibrato like Mule's saying his vibrato makes sense only with his tonality.(I read this in a magazine.) Now, different type of players like John Harle are esteemed.But still there seem to be many parrot players of Mule, especially in Japan. (Now,they had better not go to France or GB for a contest.)
Another cause may be internationalization.
Ex-Berlin philhalrmonic members lamented on a TV program that Berlin philharmonic players' tonality has been internationalized.It has become more and more difficult to identify the difference of players' performance characters. Then, jury's judgement becomes more and more subjective.
By the way Mr.Alfred Prinz now lives in U.S. (His tonality is by no means internationalized.) Where is he now?
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