rfg@hound.UUCP (R.GRANTGES) (02/24/85)
Some years ago, like 1/3 century, a friend of mine was a music major at the University of Pennsylvania. She was taught that as a musical person it was her duty to avoid phonograph records and artificially reproduced music. Of course she should attend live music performances as her means allowed. Pianos and other real instruments in the home were ok, but phonographs must be stamped out before they stamped out musicians. My question is (music majors please note), do they still teach that sort of s*it in music schools today? -- "It's the thought, if any, that counts!" Dick Grantges hound!rfg
herbie@watdcsu.UUCP (Herb Chong [DCS]) (02/24/85)
In article <949@hound.UUCP> rfg@hound.UUCP (R.GRANTGES) writes: >Some years ago, like 1/3 century, a friend of mine was a music major >at the University of Pennsylvania. She was taught that as a musical >person it was her duty to avoid phonograph records and artificially >reproduced music. Of course she should attend live music performances >as her means allowed. Pianos and other real instruments in the home >were ok, but phonographs must be stamped out before they stamped out >musicians. >My question is (music majors please note), do they still teach that >sort of s*it in music schools today? >-- > >"It's the thought, if any, that counts!" Dick Grantges hound!rfg in a similar vein, those of you interested in this might want to look up the "Audio, Etc." column of Audio for the last few years. in this column are miscellaneous ramblings of Edward Tatnall Canby, Editor of Audio and his experiences of trying to teach music in various colleges in the 30's and 40's. a random thing i remember from the articles: it seems that almost all music teachers of the time were ignorant of electronics and other things as phonographs (and they had every reason to be; phonographs were unnatural). they tended to turn the volume all the way up and leave it there while do such things as hunting for the right track. for those of you who don't know, turning a stereo "all the way up" is about as wrong a way as possible to get high volume and intelligible sound. suffice it to say the distortion was horrible and it was truly amazing that people thought this was the way "electronic" reproduction of music was fated to be. needless to say, this idea has persisted for quite a while and may even now be propogated. Herb Chong... I'm user-friendly -- I don't byte, I nybble.... UUCP: {decvax|utzoo|ihnp4|allegra|clyde}!watmath!water!watdcsu!herbie CSNET: herbie%watdcsu@waterloo.csnet ARPA: herbie%watdcsu%waterloo.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa NETNORTH, BITNET, EARN: herbie@watdcs, herbie@watdcsu
shor@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Melinda Shore) (02/25/85)
> From: rfg@hound.UUCP (R.GRANTGES) Message-ID: <949@hound.UUCP> > She was taught that as a musical > person it was her duty to avoid phonograph records and artificially > reproduced music. My question is (music majors please note), do they > still teach that sort of s*it in music schools today? No, at least not when I was in a music (theory) major ten years ago. We were strongly encouraged to listen to as much music as possible, live or otherwise. Live music was preferred, but not to the exclusion of all else. This was in Ithaca, NY, so there wasn't much live professional music, though there was lots of good amateur and student music. Given the difficulty of making a living as a professional musician, I'm not surprised that your friend's professors were encouraging her to support live music, though it certainly sounds like they went a bit overboard. -- Melinda Shore University of Chicago Computation Center uucp: ...!ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!shor Mailnet: staff.melinda@uchicago.mailnet Bitnet: shor%sphinx@uchicago.bitnet ARPA: staff.melinda%uchicago.mailnet@mit-multics.arpa
peter@soph.UUCP (Peter Torvik) (02/27/85)
(about a music major friend who was taught to eschew records for live performance) > My question is (music majors please note), do they still teach that > sort of s*it in music schools today? > This idea, although I suspect that you have just a *little* bit exxagerated it, is not "s*it". Live music performance is important and irreplaceable and I am glad that your friend had a teacher who cared about the subject at all. Here is the reason why I believe that it is very important that serious music students, particularly, avoid leaning on phonographs. A significant influence of most of my thought which follows, besides my own teachers at the New England Conservatory of Music, was Eric Leinsdorf, who wrote a magnificent and readable book called "The Composer's Advocate" which you might look at. If a musician learns music from recordings, he/she is learning by imitation of some other interpreter. It is conceivable that that musician could come up with a performance as close to the intention of the composer as the one being imitated. It won't be any closer. The composer didn't make that record (and in the few cases where he did, like the recordings by Stravinsky, that is no guarantee that that composer was such a consummate performer that he himself did not mean for others who are better (and mere) performers to do EXACTLY what he called for in his composing; Stravinsky was a much better composer than he was a conductor and when we listen to composers doing their own work we know that we are hearing someone who understands what is in the music better than anyone else, whether or not he/she can perform it better or not). What the composer did was carefully and painstakingly create a written score which contains EVERYTHING which he/she wanted the performer to know. Look at that written score, add the best that you have to offer in intelligence, knowledge of the composer and the time, the style and the practices of the time (reading between the lines) and you will be doing exactly what you should be doing. Learn the piece from someone else's record and you will, first of all, not understand what is going on because you have not done the thinking, feeling and learning the composer expected of you (which will give us a performance without conviction or feeling) and, second of all, be completely at the mercy of whoever made that record (and "virtuosi" are permitted to perpetrate incredible amounts of garbage on the record buying public because we don't buy artists, we buy brand name recognized performers the same as we buy toothpaste). I am glad that music students somewhere are hearing these ideas. What about just listeners?, you might ask. It is FINE for lovers of music to listen to records as much as they want. But, they should still know and think about these things, and they ought to go to live concerts, too. Von Karajan didn't write the symphonies, Beethoven did. Etc., etc., etc. You owe it to yourself to hear lots of interpretations and not just the brand name ones that are sanctioned for you by the big record labels. Record companies are big money, conservative beasts and they should not be dictating your taste. Think for yourself, please. Music is an art for thinking, sensitive people, not chimpanzees. These thoughts were contributed by a conductor and composer.
purtell@reed.UUCP (Elizabeth Purtell) (02/27/85)
In article <949@hound.UUCP> rfg@hound.UUCP (R.GRANTGES) writes: >Some years ago, like 1/3 century, a friend of mine was a music major >at the University of Pennsylvania. She was taught that as a musical >person it was her duty to avoid phonograph records and artificially >reproduced music. Of course she should attend live music performances >as her means allowed. Pianos and other real instruments in the home >were ok, but phonographs must be stamped out before they stamped out >musicians. >My question is (music majors please note), do they still teach that >sort of s*it in music schools today? >-- > >"It's the thought, if any, that counts!" Dick Grantges hound!rfg Although I am not attending a strictly music school, I am taking advanced theory classes, and although I am not a music major, I do have an active interest in the subject and have friends who are music majors. I don't know about anyplace else, but here we are encouraged to listen to recordings, and the professors will recommend which ones they believe to be the best. Of course live performances are also encouraged, and I consider them preferable, but finances do not always permit. I do find the idea of stamping out recordings to be intersting as well as horrible, and if there is a college that does recommend that I would like to know about it so I can avoid it, since I am considering a music minor in graduate school "So little to do and so much time to do it in..." Elizabeth Purtell (Lady Godiva) Reed college...
vange@stolaf.UUCP (E. Vang) (02/28/85)
> From: rfg@hound.UUCP (R.GRANTGES) Message-ID: <949@hound.UUCP> > She was taught that as a musical > person it was her duty to avoid phonograph records and artificially > reproduced music. My question is (music majors please note), do they > still teach that sort of s*it in music schools today? No, they don't teach that sort of dr*ck in music schools today. I am a student at St. Olaf College pursuing a horn performance major with a Bachelor of Music degree (a math major also, but that's beside the point). We are not only required to listen to hours and hours of recordings for music history classes, but it's also even required for theory courses. Also, my horn and piano teachers both encourage lots of listening. Furthermore, music majors are required to meet a recital attendance quota; in fact, anyone taking music lessons has a recital quota. Of course, I cannot speak for other music schools, but I daresay the music department of St. Olaf College (long-reknowned for the St. Olaf Choir, and more recently for the band and orchestra as well) is probably pretty typical. -- Erin Vang @ St. Olaf College ...ihnp4!stolaf!vange P.O. 1350 St. Olaf College in the real world==>> Northfield, MN 55057
hen@bu-cs.UUCP (Bill Henneman) (03/04/85)
Back in the late 40's and early 50's, I was being taught music at the Peabody institute in Baltimore. While recorded music wasn't forbidden (in fact, they made very good use of an extensive Edisonphone collection of cylinders in some advanced classes), it was *strongly* discouraged. The party line was that recorded performances were pastiches of the best bars of several tries by the performer: listening to such ersatz performances would lead the student to be overly critical of live performances. Upon reflection (and a soft probe at some contemporary composers), I think there was an element of fear that people would rather spend their money on recordings of the "golden oldies" of the 19th century than invest the effort to follow a modern performance. Their fears were probably justified.
mouli@cavell.UUCP (Bopsi Chandramouli) (03/06/85)
I am auditing a course in the music department and it is an introductory(and ambitious too) course covering music of the midieval period to music of the 20th century. The course is entirely based on a collection of 25 records. Most of the selections are from the book Music - Ways of listening by Schwartz. We have a music resources centre where they provide all the records and the equipment to play them. Even in the class, the instructor spends 50% of the time playing these records to demonstrate certain elements of music and characteristics of particular composers and of particular periods. 60% of questions in the exams( we have three) test our listening abilities and we listen to recordings to answer the questions. But the instructor frequently mentions the limitations of the recordings and the finer aspects of music that they cannot bring out. She talks about the memorable and sour-stirring experiences she had when she visited Vienna recently and attended a performance in a famous Baroque period Church. She says that the architecture of the Church creates some special musical effects that cannot be reproduced even in Concert Halls. May be that some composers of that period wrote music to take advantage of such effects produced by the building in which the music was played. Bopsi Chandramouli.