Re: The Listener as Artist

[Lindsey Orcutt <lindseyo@aracnet.com>]

On Wed, 3 Feb 1999, Duncan Basson wrote:

> expression, just as the rest of my generation believes.  For 18 years, I
> was an active and happy participant in the dreck which Americans fondly
> term music; a scant three years later, the prospect of living without an
> intimate knowledge of the Shostakovich string quartets, for instance, seems
> to me to be a fate worse than death.

With all due respect, and I don't mean to be rude (just throwing out some
thoughts which occurred as I read this), I think there's a very *real*
place in our culture for a lot of what might be termed "dreck" in American
pop culture and music. I, certainly, am a lover of classical music - I
have a degree in it for Gawd's sake - and it is my deepest love, if not my
first. But I do think there's a place for pop music because much of it
touches me in a place classical music simply doesn't. Aside from Yanni or
John Tesh, I think it's a bigger tragedy when people don't have *any* kind
of music in their lives to relate to. 

But I digress...

> performance.  Above all, music is a joyous experience, and I believe that
> no matter how many mistakes might exist within the music, the overall
> output is far, far more brilliant than it is flawed.  
> 
> Now, granted, I'm all for striving for perfection and I strongly believe
> that the repetoire must be both replayed and revised often as well as
> expanded; but when I look around my environment, I get an acute picture of
> just how rare and extraordinary a treasure this music is, and it seems
> almost criminal to focus one's attention on finding fault with it.

Agreed, to a point. But, and I've said this here and in other places
before, criticism and self-examination and other forms of study are what
bring music, and art and writing, and *life* to a higher plane, a higher
experience. Just think: if the only thing ever to have been thought great
was the emergence of the Renaissance style, no one would have moved
beyond that. We'd still be listening to Palestrina and those guys. (NOt 
that Palestrina is bad...but there's been SO much more!) And have missed
out on Bach and Beethoven and Shostakovich and etc. 

To a certain degree, I think it's human nature to seek out the obvious (or
obscure, in some cases) next step, to seek out the best life has to offer,
to take things to a higher level. Wouldn't we all die of boredom if we
didn't?

In terms of different versions of recordings, I think Allen MacLeod has a
very good point: whether they're all the same or not, the recordings we
listen to on a regular basis *do* something for us. I used to have 11
different recordings of the Goldberg Variations. I liked (almost) all of
them because of each pianist's different perspective. Isn't this what it's
all about, and not just "right versus wrong" or "orthodox versus
unorthodox." I don't even know what "unorthodox" means when pertaining to
music, especially if you're talking about _humans_ playing it!

-Lindsey Orcutt
lindseyo@aracnet.com