Re: Control in classical music

[Douglas Tate <douglas.tate@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>  yet still that slight sense that its not
> > entirely "controlled". Which I think is essential to most music, 
> (classical
> > music with its faithful reproduction ofcompositions perhaps being the
> > primary exception),

It seems to be a basic misconception that a classical musician goes on 
stage... turns on a switch and produces a copybook reproduction of what he 
has done for the last 3000 performances.

Making a comment like this is just like saying jazz is just a lot of notes 
which are somewhere around a melody... Blues is just the same wails and 
skreeks whatever the tune is meant to be.

Any, call it classical if you like, musician who reproduces a 
performance  is exactly in the mould of the two comments above...   A true 
MUSICIAN is a person who makes music... makes a performance different and 
exciting whatever genre is being worked in. Each genre gives different 
opportunities for exploring and 'improvisation' and in order to appreciate 
what is going on you actually have to LISTEN to a particular style of music 
for quite a length of time.

You can fool some of the people some of the time... you can't fool people 
who know your genre!

As a classical musician I am grateful for having been invited by Jack Ely 
to perform at the Buckeye Fest (April 15-17 Columbus OH   this year) in 
1996... it presented me with a wealth of new music and ideas to listen 
to... and over the years since, with repeated visits to the festivals, I've 
come to appreciate some of the subtleties of styles of music I hated 
before. There are still things I don't like... but that doesn't mean they 
are not musical, improvisational and a superb example of a particular genre 
it just means they are not within a range I have time to concentrate on.

Hey... Classical musicians work on a knife edge too :))

Douglas t