Re: JOYCE HATTO "A Giant in Music" ????????

I think there is also another aspect to some of the points you have
made. JH and artists like her (Sergio Fiorentino might be another
example) are of a different age of music making, quite different from
today.

Their backgrounds are quite different in many cases as well. JH, for
example, did not have a formal Conservatoire training and that was not
particularly unusual in the time we are considering. Albert Sammons,
widely regarded as one of the most musical violinists the UK produced,
was virtually self taught and he, too, did not attend a Conservatoire.
Alfredo Campoli, another widely admired musician, did not have formal
training either, so far as I recall.

When JH and others began their studies it was not too difficult to find
teachers and colleagues directly linked to some of the great composers
such as Lizst and Chopin either directly or through pupils from the
last period of their lives. It could be argued that the further away
we get from that time, the harder it may be to offer music making of
the style the composer perhaps intended and, in some cases,
demonstrated in their own playing which is, of course, completely lost
to us.

I think the noteworthy thing is that JH belongs to a period when it was
commonplace for romantic expression to be expected of performers and
their technical skill was just assumed. The music making system today,
it could also be argued, is slightly weighted against this. Very few
performers on whichever instrument will make it on the performing
platform without the obligatory Conservatoire study.

I think there is very good evidence that the Conservatoire will always
concentrate on the technical side of study and less so on musicality
which, I believe, is often merely assumed rather than assisting the
student in developing that important side of performance playing.

I am afraid this is equally true of even such a humble instrument as
the timpani. In many cases, the sound of the instrument has changed
quite a lot in my time - indeed the sound of an orchestra has similarly
changed in many cases - and the style of playing is now different from
how it was. When I studied I was encouraged to develop a sound which
sat comfortably within the orchestra harmonically rather than ride over
the top as is often the way today.
Indeed, not long ago on Percussive Arts Society a player for Mr Levine
said that the conductor had asked for a brighter and more aggressive
sound, saying that when the player attacked a roll, for example, it
should "ping" brightly rather than merge within the orchestra.

When I began it was possible to learn from and sit with players who had
played for composers such as Elgar and who knew the sound that he and
similar people wanted and liked.

In general, the sound of the timpani is brighter and more aggressive
than it was, partially because of the use of synthetic heads which are
in themselves brighter and more aggressive than natural skin although
there is good evidence that many players formerly happy with synthetics
are now returning to natural heads.

This is not a recent process for way back in the 1970's one of
America's finest players (Cloyd Duff) was so concerned at what he
thought an undesirable change (harmonically undesirable, that is) that
he penned a somewhat anguished article for Percussive Arts entitled
"Timpanist: Musician or Technician?" It was a good question then and
it remains one you might validly ask.

What I have personally noticed - and I am led in discussions with
colleagues to believe that it applies to many instruments - is that
Conservatoire students often have great technical accomplishments but
sometimes are not actually listening to the sound they are making.

Apart from the fact that we are, I suppose, all slightly nostalgic this
may be the reason why, on groups such as this, many people still find
performances of quite long ago somehow more "musically" satisfying than
some believe they experience today.

I put the question myself many years ago to Adrian Boult and asked him
if he thought that musicians today (then the 1960s) were more
accomplished than in his early days and whether they were more musical.
He thought for quite a long time and replied: "Yes, I would say that
today players are more accomplished technically but if you are asking
me if they are better musicians because of it I think that would be a
very wrong assumption indeed. There have been over the last 50 years
some very great names in music that I have encountered, both here and
elsewhere, who had no technical qualification whatsoever but whose
musicality made up for whatever shortcomings people might assume a lack
of technical training would cause."

Of course JH and musicians like her from that period often did have the
technical qualification - just not the five or six years of
Conservatoire study that people would insist upon today.

There is some pretty good evidence in old recordings of the quality of
music making (some of the Hamilton Harty recordings being very vivid
evidence of this, in my belief). In very simplistic terms what marks
JH out as a great artist to me is her touch and the fact that she never
loses sight of the fact that it's the music that matters more that
merely demonstrating technical skill in the execution of it. I think
that a quality to cherish and enjoy in an age where I believe there is
a risk of a Conservatoire producing people with wonderful technical
skills but with insufficient consideration and study offered to help
them put those wonderful skills to the very best musical use.

Kind regards,
Alan M. Watkins

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: "Grateful Dead Phenomenon" - Salons "The Well" Discussion
    ... technician in any particular style, but the breadth of styles he could ... play *while* maintaining a sound that was unmistakenly his own is the ... Well both of their approaches to fingering, articulating notes and playing scales have a very technical and precise edge to them...sort of classicist, which tends to be the approach of just about all fusion/prog musicians Jerry is the very antithesis of that approach. ...
    (rec.music.gdead)
  • Re: "Grateful Dead Phenomenon" - Salons "The Well" Discussion
    ... technician in any particular style, but the breadth of styles he could ... play *while* maintaining a sound that was unmistakenly his own is the ... just like Jerry, he had amazing breadth *and* his own distinctive ... But Jerry isn't a virtuoso? ...
    (rec.music.gdead)
  • questions on sharp tv
    ... problem was there was an intermittent sound. ... I inspected the PCB and resoldered many cold solder ... Because the other technician told me ...
    (sci.electronics.repair)
  • Re: My games are better than La Bourdonnais v. McDonnell (1834)
    ... players of this calibre could with a bit of research become even IMs ... and if the computer really is such a good technician: ... Why in the world hasn't someone tried, by database analysis, to ... somehow quantify the playing strength of players over the years (based ...
    (rec.games.chess.misc)
  • Re: Wow, recording is tough!
    ... I agree with JD that hearing your own voice is terrifying - I sound ... like Bob Dylan with a cold at the best of times. ... No technician can ...
    (rec.music.makers.guitar.acoustic)