Re: unrecorded keyboard

[Bradley Lehman <bpl@umich.edu>]

At 01:10 PM 4/16/01 -0700, Jim Morrison wrote:
> (...) My two cents worth is that harpsichord or piano are fine for the music.
> What matter most to me is if I get an, admittedly subjective, sense of soul
> from the performer.  People not use to listening to harpsichords, and until
> recently I was one, can have trouble detecting that quality because they
> need to teach themselves  to listen differently than they listen to piano
> recordings, and they need to get their hands on great harpsichord discs in
> order to get educated. (...) [snipped for space] (...) when I listen to a
> great harpsichord performance, I hear music that reminds of the opening
> images of that great French film "Time Regained." (...) I hear a greater
> sense of spontaneity and variety in the phrasing of harpsichord performers
> than I do with some famous Bach on piano
performers. That's the sort of thing you have to train yourself to listen
to, the sort of thing you have to work through the "metallic" sound and the
lack of volume dynamics to get to. (...) It seems to me that composers
work with the instruments they grew up with and the ones they are familiar
with, and that they don't spend a whole lot of time wishing they had a
different instrument and instead work with the one at hand and in mind. (...)



I nominate Jim's cogent posting (in its entirety) as one of the best
f_minor contributions of 2001.  Such good thinking about *how* to listen to
music, how to come to it as it is instead of wishing it were something
else, how to change oneself through studying it!


Bradley Lehman, Dayton VA
home: http://i.am/bpl or  http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl
clavichord CD's: http://listen.to/bpl or http://www.mp3.com/bpl
trumpet and organ: http://www.mp3.com/hlduo

"Music must cause fire to flare up from the spirit - and not only sparks
from the clavier...." - Alfred Cortot