@Jos Wylin said:
Hi Jerry,
I didn't want to compair destructive behaviour with 'unusal' playing of classical instruments. It was only an example of aberrant behaviour. Moreover, these musicians or whatever they call themselves do not act with rage or frustration, but it's more part of the shocking act (they do it every time again - they obviously earn too much money...).
A second phrasing is rather out of context as well: folk music, is usually not much more than blatant plagiarism.
I don't agree with that statement at all. So many great composers have used (and inspired) folk music during all the centuries of music history. (To name a few: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Liszt, Kodaly, Bartock...). They also nourished the people's fantasy with their own sticky tunes (Mozart's opera melodies, but also Aubert's en many other's lived on for a long time in the streets with the poor people who couldn't even afford an entrance ticket.) I guess you mean another genre of folk music, the commercial sort that has no soul at all.
Further, I do agree with you on the use of more contemporary instruments in combination with traditional ones. They can complete each other and enrich the sonic orchestral world. The use of prepared pianos and the-likes don't do any harm to the instrument. But sawing a double bass in two is another matter, or playing the clarinet with a reed that must sqeak as much as possible over a hardly audible resonating open concert piano is not my taste. Using the bass bow on a vibraphone on the other hand was a smart addition to the existing possibilities.
What I actually wanted to say is this: sonic experiments are as such a very good idea, but they belong in a 'sound laboratory', in the composer's studio, not in the concert hall. Effects that work well and that have proven to be a welcome extension to the present day instrumental sounds must have their place in an auditorium. I've attended so many concerts with hardly any audience lately where experimental music was executed. As I said earlier, people want to have a pleasant evening, they don't want to be irritated and have to pay for it.
To close this topic, I like to add this: Where is music going? Where has music gone to? Good composers like yourself are prudent and wise enough to find a decent way to pliease the needs of the audience and yet to take the next step towards the evolving sonic world without disturbing the average concert visitor.
Jos
If you're going to quote someone (this time, me) be sure to include the entire quote in context, here is what I actually wrote:
Pure innovation utterly disconnected from tradition usually does not produce worthy music, and music that is so utterly tied to tradition, other than folk music, is usually not much more than blatant plagiarism.
Your argument about composers taking folk tunes and making variations on them is NOT what I was writing about. When composers do this, they generally 1) use tunes that are indigenous to their own time and place, i.e. Mozart drew upon Austrian folk hymns, Stravinsky, Russian folk tunes, Bartok, Hungarian folk music and Copland, Appalachian folk tunes, and 2) create music that is in the style of music of their own time and place, albeit more sophisticated and complex than the original folk music.
That's not what I am saying is plagiarism, not at all. Plagiarism in music is more about inauthenticity, it's about writing a piece of music that is not an expression of the composer's own personality and not an expression of the time and place in which the composer lives and works. This does NOT include film music which, by it's nature, often requires music from another time or place.
If I write a piece of music that down to the last detail, sounds like it could have been written 300 years ago, and it's not for film, or TV, that is plagiarism and inauthentic, no matter how well it is done.
It's not about quoting another work, that is not plagiarism. It's not about using pre-existing melodies, that is not plagiarism either, although it can sometimes get the composer sued in a court of law for copyright infringment as the law might consider it plagiarism although artistically it may not be.
Most composers find meaning and pleasure out of writing music that has at least some degree of originality in it, the composer is employing creative expression because that composer has something to say in music. The plagiarist does not operate this way - there is craft, but no art, the plagiarist has nothing to say. There is detail, but no sense of time or place, other than the personality and time and place of the composer whose work is being plagiarized.
Luckily, most composers are not interested in plagiarizing as it provides no creative satisfaction or meaning so they don't do it. Every one of us is a unique individual, non-duplicatable throughout the entire cosmos and, each one of us is influenced by, and reacting to, the culture and time in which we live. Music should reflect that reality, no matter the style or genre. If it cannot do that, it is plagiarism.
Jerry
www.jerrygerber.com