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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (80855)	6/6/2000 1:36:00 AM
From: Rambi	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

You and I have different thoughts on this subject, not necessarily right or wrong, just -- different. You seem to see things as very clearly defined, while I think they are extremely fluid in terms of categorical boundaries. I don't see what superior art erudition has to do with someone's placing a Manet where he enjoys it. I may have excellent taste in art and just like Rembrandt in my laundry room. Is it fitting or respectful? Why would it be less so than a Gloria, poorly performed, but satisfying to the performers? What about a Mozart aria sung loudly in the shower (which I do frequently)? Is it really less fitting than when I don an evening gown, hire an accompanist, and stand in the curve of a grand piano? Barry Manilow was a classically trained pianist, who stole chord progressions unapologetically from the greats and turned them into things like Mandy. Wendy Carlos recorded Bach on a Moog synthesizer..I'm sure some saw that as a travesty, but it reawakened a huge interest in Bach in younger people. There seems to me to be a tremendous potential for crossing over-- it may not be pure, but it is alive. I've studied classical music all my life, piano, organ, composition and voice, but I don't have the same feeling as you that purism is always a virtue. I can listen happily to Yanni or John Tesh on occasion. For me it all combines in a wonderful,motley, rich musical tapestry with a lot of areas bleeding into each other. You somehow give the impression, perhaps mistakenly, that you are protecting "real art" from us dirty, uneducated masses, that your studying and erudition (which is wonderful, I'm sure, I don't mean to demean it at all) somehow qualifies you as an arbiter elegantiarium, deciding what is good and what isn't for the rest of us. But there are musicians who can study all their lives without ever understanding the soul of a piece. And there are musical novices who can hear a Te Kanawa sing Mozart and weep. When Maria Callas was a young ignorant girl, she sang for a great teacher. She had learned the words and melodies from a recording and so they bore only a passing resemblance to the real thing-- but the teacher knew immediately that this was a great instrument, a great heart. Maria didn't know WHAT she was singing, but she recognized the genius of it. She couldn't have translated it, or analyzed it, but she had the soul. I think we who may have some expertise in an area need to be careful not to get so carried away with our own qualifications that we lose the reason art (in any form) exists, and that it doesn't belong only to those who can define it.