4 ms·

The Age of Musical Amateurs

32 points by tintinnabula 4y ago

1letterunixname 4y ago
[flagged]
HillRat 4y ago
Without reading the article (because, well, paywall), I'll take a moment and instead mention a favorite amateur musician, Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-George: a Black, formerly enslaved Frenchman who was the greatest (later second-greatest) duelist in Europe, confidant to Marie Antoinette, respected violinist, Masonic initiate, influential political liberal, co-creator of the modern orchestra (and creator of its dress code), and probable influence on Mozart. Absolutely amazing figure; no idea if the recent Hollywood biopic is any good, but he's a case where the historical truth is more fantastic than any fiction could be.
neonate 4y ago
https://archive.ph/0NH5k https://archive.ph/0NH5k
noodleman 4y ago
Interesting, and a great segue into the larger criticisms of music education. When I was attending music school, I felt like there was a strong resistance to anything that wasn't easily classifiable. No matter who went in they all played a weird form of sterile funk for the next 3 years. It felt like jumping through the hoops required to pass was more of an obstruction than just going out and playing dingy gigs. So that's what people did. They were called bad students. But the only students still working as musicians were the ones who did it the hard way. The grade scorers all went to uni, then failed to do anything with their qualifications. I might be off the mark but that was my experience.
- wildrhythms 4y ago
  Can you give an example of said music that's hard to classify?
  - noodleman 4y ago
    I should clarify. By hard to classify, I mean with same tools that common practice period music is analysed with. Genres like modern rock, metal, rap, and lots of electronic genres are hard to study using those same methods. I suspect it's partly because they don't have as much harmonic complexity as CCP music and focus a lot more on timbre, but also because it's just unfamiliar to teachers.
epistemer 4y ago
[dead]

32 points by tintinnabula 4y ago

[flagged]

Without reading the article (because, well, paywall), I'll take a moment and instead mention a favorite amateur musician, Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-George: a Black, formerly enslaved Frenchman who was the greatest (later second-greatest) duelist in Europe, confidant to Marie Antoinette, respected violinist, Masonic initiate, influential political liberal, co-creator of the modern orchestra (and creator of its dress code), and probable influence on Mozart. Absolutely amazing figure; no idea if the recent Hollywood biopic is any good, but he's a case where the historical truth is more fantastic than any fiction could be.

neonate 4y ago

https://archive.ph/0NH5k https://archive.ph/0NH5k

noodleman 4y ago

Interesting, and a great segue into the larger criticisms of music education. When I was attending music school, I felt like there was a strong resistance to anything that wasn't easily classifiable. No matter who went in they all played a weird form of sterile funk for the next 3 years. It felt like jumping through the hoops required to pass was more of an obstruction than just going out and playing dingy gigs. So that's what people did. They were called bad students. But the only students still working as musicians were the ones who did it the hard way. The grade scorers all went to uni, then failed to do anything with their qualifications. I might be off the mark but that was my experience.

wildrhythms 4y ago
Can you give an example of said music that's hard to classify?
- noodleman 4y ago
  I should clarify. By hard to classify, I mean with same tools that common practice period music is analysed with. Genres like modern rock, metal, rap, and lots of electronic genres are hard to study using those same methods. I suspect it's partly because they don't have as much harmonic complexity as CCP music and focus a lot more on timbre, but also because it's just unfamiliar to teachers.

epistemer 4y ago

[dead]