RE: [F_minor]http://archives.radio-canada.ca/arts_culture/musique/dossiers/309/

["Houpt, Fred" <fred.houpt@rbc.com>]

Beautiful.  Mind you, how Bach could alter the dynamics in a harpsichord
is, well, almost not possible. Maybe there was a primitive damper pedal
thing going on?  But yes, I am glad that this line of thought has come
here.  In giving acknowledgement to the artist we learn to expand our
own narrow palette of recognizable human behavior to include the
"artistic high" for lack of a better way of saying it. I am big fan of
Jack Kerouac and much of his writing refers to the wild jazz scenes of
be-bop and the like.  Well, to read his impressions is to envision not
just the artists but the room full of revelers and jazz lovers all
getting higher than on drugs, just on the zapping hot vibes.  

We "modern" folk, I think, are just way too cut off from our more basic
ancestral roots.  No matter where you come from, go back a few hundred
years (if necessary) and you will see in the traditional folk musical
idioms a more relaxed and primal relationship of both the listeners and
the artists.  After having come through the compressing energies of the
Victorian Age with all its artificial notions of prim and proper, much
of the legacy it has left in its wake is the type of disengaged manner
in which we enjoy "joy".  We are, in a word, repressed.  

We look at the uncorked types like GG, like Oscar Peterson, like the
wild jazz fans and we snicker, say that they are just getting carried
away and say to ourselves, oh, how uncouth, how uncivilized.  That is
the way my parents reacted to me being blown away by the Beatles when
they burst on the scene.  And finishing up on my riff for now is this:
I saw the Beatles here in Toronto when they came by the first time at
Maple Leaf Gardens. I was way up in nose-bleed sections nearer to the
roof.  The place was totally crammed.  When they were announced to come
on stage this is what I experienced: Thousands of flashbulbs from Kodak
Brownie Instamatic cameras went off and off and off.  A sudden wall of
tens of thousands of people all shrieking in unison.  People were
jumping up and down.  Girls were passing out in the aisles, being
carried away unconscious.  This all took place within the first 5
minutes.

This was my first experience of group consciousness (see: "The Crowd" by
Gustave le Bon) http://www.amazon.com/Crowd-Gustave-Bon/dp/0486419568

This was my first experience with mass pandemonium (a word coined by
John Milton).  We all left utterly transformed and of course when my
parents saw on the news of what happened they were very worried of the
effect this type of "art" had on their children.  The world has not been
quite the same since then.  Or, we might argue, as GG might, that all we
did was re-connect to what we all lost before Queen Victoria mightily
said "We are not amused".

Cheers,

Fred Beatlmaniac Houpt



-----Original Message-----
From: Brad Lehman [mailto:bpl@umich.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 12:23 PM
To: Houpt, Fred
Cc: f_minor@email.rutgers.edu
Subject: Re:
[F_minor]http://archives.radio-canada.ca/arts_culture/musique/dossiers/3
09/

Houpt, Fred wrote:
> I think so called experts make much too much of how artists sway and 
> move and bop at their instrument.  Did these same experts decide that 
> Oscar Peterson must have had a problem with his mind because he hummed

> like a buzz saw, all throughout his career?  Who cares if they do
that?
> Listen to how he rips up the keys and gives you goosebumps.  That's 
> what is important.  Who cares if they drool, have their eyes roll up 
> into their skulls.  They just might be caught in an updraft of 
> creative power?

This is reminiscent of Dr Burney's report of hearing CPE Bach play in
1772.

"M. Bach was so obliging as to sit down to his Silbermann clavichord and
favourite instrument, upon which he played three or four of his choicest
and most difficult compositions... In the pathetic and slow movements,
whenever he had a long note to express, he absolutely contrived to
produce, from his instrument, a cry of sorrow and complaint, such as can
only be effected on the clavichord, and perhaps by himself."

"After dinner... I prevailed upon him to sit down again to a clavichord,
and he played, with little intermission, till near eleven o'clock at
night. During this time, he grew so animated and possessed, that he not
only played, but looked like one inspired.  His eyes were fixed, his
under lip fell, and drops of effervescence distilled from his
countenance. He said, if he were to be set to work frequently, in this
manner, he should grow young again."


Brad Lehman
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