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marbleflugel
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« Reply #15 on: 07:27:46, 08-03-2008 » |
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My hunch is that the score is exactly the right size to prop up a bit of ikea flatpack, in that that's the value system composer and audience are processing. What has happened to the man since the innovations of soft machine? The Henley citation also unknowingly-since he seems unaware of its provenance- abuses the word 'entertain', where the emotions depicted by say a chanteuse or chansonnier are real and in some sense narrative. And a Stabat Mater-eg on what Reiner reminds me is International Womens' Day 'entertaining'? Well, Rossini's is but in an authentic way -he has a point ofview, wheras Jenkins is cruising the aisles in Tesco. The only hope for an epiphany and a bit of decent dodecophony is one of Anty's risottos, preceded by a `pie in the face.
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'...A celebrity is someone who didn't get the attention they needed as an adult'
Arnold Brown
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #16 on: 08:43:46, 08-03-2008 » |
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My own feeling is that Karl Jenkins serves a useful purpose in opening the door to more serious music (than his own, by association) for people willing to listen. It's up to the listeners who decide to go through the door to decide how many, and which, musical rooms they choose to explore after that. Is there any evidence whatsoever of this actually happening? |
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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ahinton
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« Reply #17 on: 09:00:08, 08-03-2008 » |
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My own feeling is that Karl Jenkins serves a useful purpose in opening the door to more serious music (than his own, by association) for people willing to listen. It's up to the listeners who decide to go through the door to decide how many, and which, musical rooms they choose to explore after that. Is there any evidence whatsoever of this actually happening? If there is, I for one have yet to encounter it. Much the same kind of argument has been put forward in support of the Classic FM principle of playing bite-size chunks of pieces in order not to exceed the limits imposed by the widespread paucity of concentration span; yes, I am prepared to accept in principle that there may be someone out there who got to music through hearing just one movement of Le Sacre or a movement of Tchaikovsky's final symphony in the sense that, having heard something exciting, an unquenchable desire for further discovery was the inevitable result, but I would be very surprised if such a case was anything other than exceptional. |
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Milly Jones
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« Reply #18 on: 09:12:36, 08-03-2008 » |
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I like Mr Jenkin's Armed Man and found it very powerful in performance and I expect that I would like other pieces of his. Surely there's plenty of room for different musical styles. Having heard The Armed Man performed by amateur and professional forces it seems to me to do rather better in the hands and voices of amateur performers, stretched by its demands. There again I often enjoy amateur as much as professional musical performance - just as well as I live in an area where there its Hobson's Choice.
One of our local choirs (both of which have my mum as a member) is performing the Armed Man next month. I find it quite a disturbing and powerful piece. Mum is finding it more difficult than most, not because of any technical difficulty but because it is so different to the usual fare. She doesn't read music and has to send away for vocal tapes of her alto parts. She just learns them by ear then. Great idea by the way! This guy - with the most amazing name on the planet - performs all the choral vocal parts separately for any of the works, so you can just listen and learn. They're not expensive either. If anyone is interested in knowing more, let me know and I'll post details. |
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We pass this way but once. This is not a rehearsal!
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richard barrett
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« Reply #19 on: 09:15:12, 08-03-2008 » |
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What has happened to the man since the innovations of soft machine? Soft Machine had seen its best days IMO before KJ joined, and his effect on it was to drive the group towards blandness and "fusion", so I don't think that much has changed. Milly, what is this guy's name? |
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Kittybriton
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« Reply #20 on: 14:56:58, 08-03-2008 » |
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My own feeling is that Karl Jenkins serves a useful purpose in opening the door to more serious music (than his own, by association) for people willing to listen. It's up to the listeners who decide to go through the door to decide how many, and which, musical rooms they choose to explore after that. Is there any evidence whatsoever of this actually happening? do I have to give chapter and verse? There probably isn't any (evidence), but I share this rosy dream-world with Annie and Professor Pangloss believing that in this best of all possible worlds Yoof wif no interest in anything that doesn't involve lots of bloody violence and creative use of pharmaceutical products are driven by their curiosity to learn just what does go on in classical concerts. |
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Click me -> About meor me -> my handmade storeNo, I'm not a complete idiot. I'm only a halfwit. In fact I'm actually a catfish. |
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ahinton
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« Reply #21 on: 17:11:07, 08-03-2008 » |
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There must be people out there whose first experience of serious music is something edgy and avant-garde, and who get hooked as a result, but I think they are probably in the minority.
Maybe so, but the point here is surely that so-called edgy avant-gardism and Jenkins are hardly the only two available options as ways into music. Some of us have been so taken with our first meaningful musical experiences that we can remember what they were. Anthony Payne says that his was Brahms's First Symphony and Elliott Carter cites Le Sacre du Printemps (of which, in a very recent interview, he said that he believes he attended the US première, though I'm not entirely sure that he's correct in that). My own happened to be Chopin's Ballade in F minor. That's only three examples to be going on with, none of which are exactly edgily avant-garde or blandly Jenkinseque. We all find our own doors, I think - and some of us do so when we're not expecting to... |
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« Last Edit: 22:51:47, 08-03-2008 by ahinton »
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Milly Jones
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« Reply #22 on: 17:58:37, 08-03-2008 » |
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What has happened to the man since the innovations of soft machine? Soft Machine had seen its best days IMO before KJ joined, and his effect on it was to drive the group towards blandness and "fusion", so I don't think that much has changed. Milly, what is this guy's name? Quintus Benziger!  |
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We pass this way but once. This is not a rehearsal!
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Milly Jones
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« Reply #23 on: 18:04:33, 08-03-2008 » |
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We pass this way but once. This is not a rehearsal!
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harmonyharmony
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« Reply #24 on: 18:08:26, 08-03-2008 » |
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Quintus Benziger! Good grief. I feel that some of us really missed out when it came to being named. With a name like that one could... well I think the mind really boggles at the sheer depth, breadth and height of the possibilities that would open up before one with a name straight out of the pages of J. K. Rowling. |
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'is this all we can do?' anonymous student of the University of Berkeley, California quoted in H. Draper, 'The new student revolt' (New York: Grove Press, 1965) http://www.myspace.com/itensemble |
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Milly Jones
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« Reply #25 on: 18:34:33, 08-03-2008 » |
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I know! You couldn't make it up could you? He's such a nice chap as well. He's provided my mum with every vocal part she's needed since she joined the choirs. He's very approachable too. It's a very good idea for non-readers who otherwise may not be accepted for choirs. |
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We pass this way but once. This is not a rehearsal!
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time_is_now
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« Reply #26 on: 20:34:00, 11-03-2008 » |
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There must be people out there whose first experience of serious music is something edgy and avant-garde, and who get hooked as a result, but I think they are probably in the minority.
Maybe so, but the point here is surely that so-called edgy avant-gardism and Jenkins are hardly the only two available options as ways into music. Some of us have been so taken with our first meaningful musical experiences that we can remember what they were. Anthony Payne says that his was Brahms's First Symphony and Elliott Carter cites Le Sacre du Printemps (of which, in a very recent interview, he said that he believes he attended the US première, though I'm not entirely sure that he's correct in that). My own happened to be Chopin's Ballade in F minor. That's only three examples to be going on with, none of which are exactly edgily avant-garde or blandly Jenkinseque. I hardly think three composers are representative of the music-loving population at large! |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #27 on: 00:48:45, 12-03-2008 » |
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do I have to give chapter and verse? There probably isn't any (evidence), but I share this rosy dream-world with Annie and Professor Pangloss believing that in this best of all possible worlds Yoof wif no interest in anything that doesn't involve lots of bloody violence and creative use of pharmaceutical products are driven by their curiosity to learn just what does go on in classical concerts.
But how does it follow from that that people will be led by their experiences of Karl Jenkins to explore more 'serious' music? |
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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marbleflugel
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« Reply #28 on: 08:16:12, 12-03-2008 » |
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If I may infer from what you say Kittie, I don't think she's suggesting that it can-the likelihood is more to do with whatever the performance itself can achieve as a human interaction. At the weekend, I was obliged to go to an x-factor style event in the shires, involving the ususal young hopefuls and some am dram stalwarts assessed by some hardened agents and the (unusually symapthetic) audience. The music was sometimes appalling grandstanding tosh, (some of it not bad when it escaped the turgid rock ballad form),plus the antidote in a sliver of Sondheim, but the effort put into it with modest resources was telling and moving on a human scale, and I think that rings true in almost any idiom. This isnt about simplicity, but the fact that the applied effort-and not just 'bids for glory', but emotional truth- was far greater than the material which paradoxically gave it leg up by its very blandness (and the presence of real music theatre peppered through the collective rehearsal/performance process). This is what I think Kittie is describing with Jenkins. If BBM will forgive me , brass band music-salvationism particularly-was traditionally explicitly about this, but got far further musically through its work ethic to the point where Birtwistle et al saw this quality.
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'...A celebrity is someone who didn't get the attention they needed as an adult'
Arnold Brown
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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #29 on: 08:56:34, 12-03-2008 » |
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I'm very grateful that my musical upbringing didn't involve this sort of anodyne stuff. I went to a performance of The Armed Man (to please a friend, who was in it) and thought it musically uninteresting and emotionally pretentious. I think it appeals to audiences and, especially, to choirs who don't want to make any effort. There are a lot of people who like the easy path. It seems such a shame when there is so much good music out there waiting for us.
I've only just found this thread, for some reason. Sorry I can't be more positive and tolerant!
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