[Dixielandjazz] What they teach in college these days...

[Bill Gunter]

Listmates:

Ed Danielson posted (regarding an unusual piano performance):

>This can't possibly be good for the piano.

and he included the URL to share it:

http://www.coloradocollege.edu/Dept/MU/bowedpiano.html

I looked it up and gave the accompanying mp3 file a listen.

It may be harder on the ears than it is on the piano!

It's quite weird, which is in keeping with the young inquisitive/creative 
mind which tends to operate on the theory that "the weirder it is the more 
profound it is."

I'd hum a few bars of the composition for you, but I'm afraid that "melody" 
is something that tends to get dropped in such creatiions as this.

While not quite as weird as Cage's 4'33" it does capture a bit of the 
feeling of his Concerto for Prepared Piano.

Also, it isn't what you'd call particularly "danceable" - unless you're into 
ballet where virtually anything can be interpreted choreographically.

When I'm exposed to stuff like this and told that the performers are 
exploring the frontiers of music or some such whimsey I tend to get a case 
of the giggles.

I mean, after all -- if music is nothing more than the noises that may (or 
may not) be intentionally prresented to us by somebody or some thing then 
"music" has no meaning which is definable other than "something you can or 
can't hear."

Where does this leave Beethoven's symphonies, Bach's fugues. Where does this 
leave our concepts of "musicianship" - where does this leave the discipline 
of music?  It all just becomes part of the surrounding aural ambience or, in 
other words, just another form of "noise."

That means we now need a special bracket into which we can place our 
traditional concepts of music.  And woe to any ignorant peasant who, in his 
bigoted and arrogant way, regards random noises generated by arbitrary 
racket producing contraptions as "doo doo!"

If I were to be stranded on the proverbial desert island I think I'd take 
the collected works of Chopin rather than the collected works of John Cage!

What would you take?

Respectfully submitted,

Bill "Have mercy on my eardrums" Gunter
jazzboard at hotmail.com