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In Reply to: RE: I see where you're coming from, but still. . . posted by Analog Scott on September 16, 2014 at 11:34:52
What you don't seem to understand is that different listeners come from different backgrounds, have different experience, education and training, different natural levels of musical ability, and different tastes and values, and hear things differently for those and any number of other reasons. If someone else hears something you don't (or can't), it doesn't necessarily make you wrong, but it sure as heck doesn't make them wrong either.
Your endless cries for "proof" are tiresome. When I gave specific examples in another thread, you said it was all a matter of subjective taste. So it is, so no point going down that tortured path again. At this point I can only join David and say "yawn" to this discussion. Why don't you go back to enjoying the great music we all love and skip the childish name calling?
Follow Ups:
What you don't seem to understand is that David's assertion has nothing to do with what you hear or what I hear or what he hears. Let's actually revisit the assertion in question. David's own words...
"These days absolute note perfection is expected and is one of the highest priorities in most cases. It doesn't matter whether there's the option of taking another take of something, the perfection is the priority. A younger player is far likelier to be a precision machine, at the expense of musical choices/risks, than in earlier eras. Counterintuitive but true."
You can't know an artist's "priority" by listening to their recordings or attending their concerts. You can't know that without them telling you that. It's even worse though when one makes such a specific and damning assertion and can't cite one single example of it.
I'm going to tell you a little story. I am an artist of sorts myself. My work is out there for the public and for my piers to see and judge. I am at peace with that. One time when I was working a couple coworkers were discussing my work. One of them did not know I was the artist who did the work he was critiquing. His critique was pretty vicious but I was fine with it. I was until he made the comment that I was clearly being lazy when I did the work he was critiquing. At this point I jumped all over him and called him out. I told him in no uncertain terms that he is free to have any opinion about my work that he wishes but that if he ever questioned my work ethic again we would have some real problems. The bottom line and the moral of the story is my work is fair game. My motives are not.
The quality of any artist's performance is fair game to critique and opine about. But when it comes to an artist's motives you can't draw meaningful conclusions by your subjective opinions about the quality of the work.
Yes David is a jazz musician. But he is not a classical musician. Unless he has first hand accounts of these young musicians expressing that the priority is note perfection he simply doesn't know. I personally know many classical musicians. I have sat in on many closed rehearsals for both concerts and recordings. The discussions were pretty much completely focused on the interpretation of the music. Never, never have I seen anyone ever express an emphasis on note perfection during any of those rehearsals. I have many discussions with these artists about music and again I have never had any of them express a priority for note perfection. Quite the opposite actually. So yeah, I'd like to see some reasonable proof that David actually knows the "priorities" of these artists. Clearly he doesn't know any of them personally nor has had any meaningful discussions with any of them about their musical priorities. If he had it would quite easy to cite examples.
can you imagine for a moment what David's reaction would be if I dismissed his entire generation of jazz musicians as lazy or musically ignorant or something else along those lines based on having listened to some modern jazz recordings and/or having been to several gigs over the last few years? I bet he would take issue with me doing that.
The work is fair game. It's quality is subjective at the end of the day. The artists and their motives are not fair game. Their motives and artistic goals are not subject to the opinions of their audience.
I would also guess that the earliest exposure of kids to music might be through today's note-perfect recordings, and that a kind of technical perfection just occurs more naturally in the course of their studies these days (compared to times when recordings exposed technique that wasn't quite as ship-shape!). Again, just a guess, but my experience accompanying Jon Nakamatsu since he was nine years old is certainly in keeping with this supposition - even at that age, he just did not know how to make a mistake! ;-)
Nevertheless, actual examples might help us to understand exactly what you, Dave and Tony are getting at. To speak in broad generalities like this isn't the most helpful in getting the validity these assertions figured out. Also, I forgot what your own specific examples in the other thread were, so if you don't mind repeating. . .
OK, Chris, I'm not going to continue our debate, but here is an interesting article Jeremy Denk recently wrote for The New Yorker about his experiences recording Ives' Concord Sonata. It proves nothing, but is an excellent illustration of the profound impact modern recording technology has had on the thinking and work of a very good classical pianist.
Exactly what the overall implications are for Mr. Denk in particular or musicians generally, well, we'll just have to leave that question for another day.
Recording is very hard, there's a very good reason they're called "great" recordings.
Dave
Great article. Thanks for posting that
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