 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Fuzzy
Date: 2023-10-22 00:29
In another thread, I made an overstatement, characterizing classical music as, Quote:
playing...the exact notes in the exact style that everyone else does/has - and mostly on the same music that has been played exactly the same way for decades/centuries
To this statement, the following reply was made: Quote:
Well, that is NOT at all what classical playing is or should be, it's really sad to think that someone actually believes THAT.
As mentioned in that other thread, Seabreeze had been helping me regain a very small foothold back into "classical" music appreciation, and Craig Hill's "Kuffner" post (and the links shared by folks there) helped me further along. So I really am on the verge of finding some amount of enjoyment in classical music again.
Please understand that my characterization of rigidity in classical music was not made with any disdain for those who produce the music professionally. I simply went through decades of boredom with the music to the point I'd really flinch when I'd hear it. So much sameness.
I'd like to understand where my original quote is wrong vs just a difference in opinion. This is why I appreciated Paul's response, where he seemed to understand what I meant - and that the degree of freedom provided for in (say) jazz might make the degree of freedom in classical rather constricted in comparison.
Still, I'd appreciate any further explanations/opinions on why what I said was "wrong" or "sad" - I'm trying to regain my appreciation for classical, and would be thankful for any direction toward (re?) gaining that understanding. I apologize for any offense my statement might have caused the professional classical players among us - it was not intended.
Fuzzy
;^)>>>
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Author: SunnyDaze
Date: 2023-10-22 00:56
Hi Fuzzy,
I understood what you meant. If you've been steeped in classical music for years to the point where you find it a bit dull, I think it's okay to feel like that and okay to say it. It doesn't mean that other people should, or do, feel the same.
I think I heard D'Arcy Bussell say something very similar once about the standard repertoire of classical ballet, and she certainly has nothing to prove or explain to anybody.
I find the same with genetics sometimes, because I just know too much and find it a bit dull now.
I'm the opposite of you for classical music, because I never paid a blind bit of attention to it until I was about 45. I still only know about 8 pieces of classical orchestral music, and they are the 8 that I have heard my friend's orchestra play. I can listen to them endlessly and hear something new every time, but it's just because I never really listened to anything classical before now.
I suppose the great question is what you do love now, and what you find exciting. I think you're fine though, tbh.
Jennifer
Adult learner, Grade 3
Equipment: Yamaha Custom CX Bb, Fobes 10K CF mp,
Legere Soprano Sax American Cut #2, Vandoren Optimum German Lig.
Post Edited (2023-10-22 00:57)
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Author: Tony F
Date: 2023-10-22 02:44
Perhaps you have been listening to the same arrangements or recordings for too long. In my library I can find multiple recordings and/or arrangements of the same pieces and they will all offer a different insight to the piece.
Tony F.
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2023-10-22 02:45
The broader appreciation is with the structure itself of more complex music. Simpler musical forms (and by their nature, shorter in length) feature limited harmonic variance. There are a lot of creative and delightful ways to express limited harmonic development found in a 3-5 minute pop song, country song, jazz number etc. That isn't to say it is any less valid as music, just that it is less complex. I would contrast that against a symphony of Bruckner's where you travel through a very complicated series of keys that themselves have their own meaning before the elliptical journey comes to a conclusion back to where it started an hour prior. Or there is Wagner's ability to constantly have you "standing on one leg" for twenty minutes as overture of his seems to be on the "fifth of....." some key at any given moment.
I find more that more complicated and wonderous things can happen within longer and more thoughtful structures. Of course you don't need a long work to encapsulate the human condition. I was listening to Eric Satie's 6 Gnossiesnnes the other day and was blown away at how much can be said with so few notes in such a short time (each by itself of course).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3c_RU2NcJ9c
...............Paul Aviles
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Author: clarnibass
Date: 2023-10-22 10:27
There are two important and in a way "semantic" distinctions.
First, what does classical mean? It can mean the classical period, but in this case I assume it means the broader sense of "Western composed music" and even that is a bit of a generalization. In that case, this can indlude a lot of new composed music that almost no one played yet, or more obscure old music, etc. so they weren't played the same way before because they weren't played before, much or at all.
Second, there is a huge difference between classical music and playing classical music. Someone might like to listen a thousand times to the same piece, same notes, played the same way, appreciate it as much as anything, but have no interest at all in playing it. The same as e.g. a current painter of ultra realistic paintings who likes Picasso.
Classical music performers are sort of messengers or transmitters in a way. It is fine if that is what you feel you want to do. It doesn't take less or more effort than playing other types of music, it's just a specific approach. Some players might do that but also do other things (there are quite a few who play traditional classical music, modern music, their own music, improvised music, etc.).
If someone realizes that playing this music if not for them that is a good thing. It is simply a matter of knowing yourself. Someone like this might like, appreciate and understand classical music, but those are not mutually exclusive. For example there are absolutely cases of people who somehow got a playing position similar to this, but they don't necessarily really enjoy it. There are a lot of reasons to do what you do, and "being the most true to yourself" can't always be in front of anything else. There is the opposite too.
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Author: Julian ibiza
Date: 2023-10-22 14:10
Hi Fuzzy,
I appreciate the maverick angle of Nigel Kennedy to playing and perceiving classical music. Both in his image, his advocating of interpretation and intention of presenting classical to a broader section of society by changing set ideas about it. He defines " Classical music" as any music that endures the tests of time....Hence he says the Beatles are classical. Vivaldi's Four Seaonsn he described as " An animal work", and performs it in that spirit, saying he likes it because it gives him space for interpretation and energizes an orchestra ( See videos on YouTube).
I think that above all he's tried to break the idea that Classical music is somehow for culturally refined intellectuals only.
I'm not a big listener of Classical myself and I think it's the conservative element in a lot of performances that leaves me cold , yet when I hear a performance where the initiative of interpretation has been seized by the horns, then I'm deeply moved and enchanted .
As for Bach, I think that his work is nothing without masterful interpretation.
It's as if to play Back you have to be both the player and the dancer....or maybe a cinematographer.
Written music is like DNA ...it is of itself a dead thing. It's one thing to give it its form , but another to give it the spark of vitality . Something which can only come from the living in that moment.
Julian Griffiths
Tel. 34 696 798 853
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Author: donald
Date: 2023-10-22 16:36
Fuzzy, I actually appreciated the point you were making and should have said so.
However, here's an experiment....
- Enter the first 16 bars of the solo part to the Mozart clarinet concerto in sib (or another music file) and listen to it back as a midi file
- listen to any/all other recordings of those 16 bars and see if you can find one that sounds the same as the midi
I'll let you do the rest of the thinking on this one.
Chris- you make a good point about the different eras of music... of course in the Baroque era much was left to the performer, in the modern era some composers try desperately to dictate every nuance.
But... listen to two performances of Linoi (Birtwistle) or the A. Goehr Paraphrases and you will find, as with Bach and Telemann, that these two performances may have some quite different interpretations. Probably not as different as some of the Baroque repertoire, that's true
Thinking of my record collection... my first recording of the Telemann concerto for 2 chalumeau was Dieter Kloeker- and this is radically different from the Eric Hoeprich recording I would later buy (with Musica Antiqua) So much so that you might initially not realise it's the same piece (though, you'd work it out pretty quickly)
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Author: hans
Date: 2023-10-22 22:08
Fuzzy,
I agree with your comment: "..the degree of freedom provided for in (say) jazz might make the degree of freedom in classical rather constricted in comparison."
In Jazz or Swing, performers must be able to play solos that are not written - the ultimate freedom - and I don't believe that is the case in Classical music.
Regards,
Hans
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Author: Julian ibiza
Date: 2023-10-23 10:28
I think that music is similar to paintings inasmuch as, although having a deeper knowledge of paintings tends to enhance the appreciation of a work of art, it's true test of greatness lies in its discrete ability to touch all.
There is a lot of hoity-toity in the world of art.
Julian Griffiths
Tel. 34 696 798 853
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Author: SecondTry
Date: 2023-10-23 19:48
Fuzzy:
Sure, jazz allows for more variation than Classical music, which is to not say that the interpretation of Classical works isn't subject to "22 opinions by 4 artists."
Drucker said he kept things fresh by approaching the same (classical) pieces, somewhat differently each time.
Of course if you think variation of how one plays a classical piece is limited, if variability is your thing there's always 1000s of classical pieces to pick from, or simply play the genre that makes you happy.
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Author: brycon
Date: 2023-10-24 03:55
Quote:
I'd like to understand where my original quote is wrong vs just a difference in opinion. This is why I appreciated Paul's response, where he seemed to understand what I meant - and that the degree of freedom provided for in (say) jazz might make the degree of freedom in classical rather constricted in comparison.
Still, I'd appreciate any further explanations/opinions on why what I said was "wrong" or "sad" - I'm trying to regain my appreciation for classical, and would be thankful for any direction toward (re?) gaining that understanding. I apologize for any offense my statement might have caused the professional classical players among us - it was not intended.
I don't think what you said was wrong or sad: you like what you like.
One thing to point out is that you can appreciate a piece of music, say Mozart's piano sonatas, but not appreciate particular performances, say Glenn Gould's dreadful Mozart recordings. It may help to clarify whether it's an either/or or both/and here.
Maybe it helps, maybe it doesn't. But the other day, I was having a conversation with a student about musical expression. He was asking me whether it's okay to add things, such as crescendi, ritardani, etc., that aren't explicitly written in the music (the answer, of course, is that it depends). I used with him the example of a Shakespeare play: Shakespeare doesn't tell us in the stage directions whether to whisper a line or shout a line but knows that, because we understand English, we can arrive at a suitable interpretation of our character's line.
The issue with classical music, is that mediocre teachers prescribe ways of playing that are abstracted rules not tied to real music, e.g. as a melody goes up, crescendo; as it goes down, decrescendo. Imagine performing a Shakespeare play and whenever your character spoke a compound sentence, you grew louder approaching the comma and then softer as you receded from it. Are you Iago and trying to mask your malice? Or are you Hamlet and struggling to make sense of the world? Doesn't matter, just get louder for half the sentence and softer for the other half. This way of performing Shakespeare is only marginally dumber than this way of performing music. But in music education, it's the way of doing things throughout much of the U.S. (I can't speak for the rest of the world).
To belabor the analogy, music education (again, in the U.S., at least) doesn't train actors but rather reciters. By "reciter," I'm imagining, for example, someone fluent only in French performing Shakespeare exactly as written, sounding out each word and following only his stage directions, or perhaps listening to a recording of Sir Lawrence Olivier playing King Lear, memorizing all the words and all the inflections, and delivering a weird copy of the performance but in either case having no idea what he was saying. Similarly, musicians listen to recordings and copy players they like (while having no idea why their favorite player made the interpretive decisions he or she made) or apply onto the top of their playing half-baked interpretive rules all while not understanding much about music.
I love improvising. But I also love digging into pieces I've played for years and finding new stuff. Why, for instance, does Mozart descend in bar 4 of the concerto down to C-B rather than E-D, which would be "expected" because it maintains the upper thirds with the strings? Is there something I should do with my playing to show this motion into an inner voice (pardon the Schenkerism)? Digging into Mozart is like digging into Shakespeare: as an interpreter there's always more to find. If you play music as a reciter, though, executing someone else's decisions or strictly what's written in the part, then yeah, classical music would be incredibly dull.
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Author: Fuzzy
Date: 2023-11-01 18:43
Thanks to all who responded! I appreciate the insights.
I'll continue down the road of trying to re-gain an appreciation for 'classical."
I was head-long in love with classical for my formative years, and feel a bit confused at why/where my boredom arrived at it.
I do think that part of it was due to the education I received, itself.
I notice that many of the responses pointed out differences in solo work - but what about ensemble work? Is there freedom in the second trumpet's part? The third clarinet? The second viola? Or is the freedom only in interpretation by the conductor?
Oddly enough, I can still find quite a lot of enjoyment out of playing classical in my practice - or hymns at church, etc. Just not in a larger group.
I love playing football, baseball, and golfing. However, if watching - I can only find enjoyment in football. I find baseball and golfing boring to watch.
Similarly, while I find enjoyment playing classical in certain contexts...I find listening to classical to be (mostly) boring. I don't say this to be hurtful or snide - but in a pleading way, I'd like to regain the appreciation I once had for it.
Part of it might be this: I appreciate messages that are "to the point" (I know, I see the irony too)...Yet classical music states and restates the point over and over. Perhaps that's part of my hurdle.
At any rate - thanks to all for your time and effort at helping me. I spent a good deal of time visiting various examples on YouTube listening to various examples provided here in the thread and appreciated a lot of good music. I defnitely gained a little more appreciation for some of the differences in particular performances.
Thanks to brycon, too, here at the end, for understanding my plight and giving me some things to think about.
Fuzzy
;^)>>>
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