Welcome to one of the most active flamenco sites on the Internet. Guests can read most posts but if you want to participate click here to register.
This site is dedicated to the memory of Paco de Lucía, Ron Mitchell, Guy Williams, Linda Elvira, Philip John Lee, Craig Eros, Ben Woods, David Serva and Tom Blackshear who went ahead of us.
We receive 12,200 visitors a month from 200 countries and 1.7 million page impressions a year. To advertise on this site please contact us.
THe whole challenge of composing is in fact THAT, working WITHIN the constraints to be original. 4:33, is original? High art? It's exploiting a compositional device...the "rest".
That's not what 4'33" is about.
I give up where is my steel spike. I live in a world of idiots.
yes it is. Unless you gonna try to argue it's "about ambient noise"...then i challenge that what music that has rests, isnt? A rest is a musical device used when you don't want MUSICAL sound, but TIME (ie rhythm) continues. THe idea that audience is forced to focus on ambient noise is the by product of the "piece" which is just a big rest.
OK I thought you meant bringing the thumb around the neck. These pieces are very beautiful and I am sure your transcriptions will be a fine addition to the repertoire.
If you guys can be condescending to me, I can condescend in spades back.
It is not being condescending to render the opinion that something like 4’33” is vacuous. It is merely rendering an opinion. If you feel that an opinion that differs from yours is condescending to you, then it is you who has made yourself the condescendee.
Dodecaphonic music is a good example of something one cannot appreciate without studying its theory first. Something you cannot truly enjoy just by listening, but get to appreciate on the intellectual level once you've studied.
Or how about the modern style of compas syncopation? It's easy to get lost and bored if you don't have a strong flamenco background.
Or baseball. Would it be enjoyable to watch a game if you don't know the rules? Compare it to obvious basketball...
This is an interesting topic. Perhaps it deserves a new thread. I'd love to jump in, but that has to wait until Monday at the earliest.
Meanwhile, can one draw parallels to mathematics somehow?
What new delights await us on monday all things going well ?
As for 'mathematics' in music well I hear a lot of geometry and arithmetic. I hear pythagoras on ,,,,the ,,, Ud (watch out for the mobile comma) but mostly just blue notes in flamenco. Maybe the fractal nature of compas and the way in which different cells can be mapped onto others using diminution or augmentatio, oops that is geometry again. Did we get to Ligeti get ?
Maybe statistics, how about giving us a few novel examples from the many many options for reharmonising the andalucian cadence Grish ? My personal favourite has to be All the Things You Are. Segovia recorded some Luis Milan didn't he but never got past the first of Rodrigos three spanish pieces.
D.
PS Ricardo,,, Breame was fond at one point of using his nose in tricky passages.
Or how about the modern style of compas syncopation? It's easy to get lost and bored if you don't have a strong flamenco background.
In Jazz too it is not possible to evaluate the intent of a soloist without being able to keep the form of the tune and hear the melody as you listen to it internally in counterpoint ( if you so choose ) with the improvisation. In flamenco too the syncopation is most powerful (for me anyway )when it is felt as an extension of the more simple 'trad' compas. Defiance is imbued with meaning only with the touchstone of reference.
For similar reasons I love tonal music.
But I can be compelled by a commanding performance of an Avante Garde work, especaially live. The concert hall with the expectations of a classical concert going crowd is a special place. Kind of like the theatre, shouts of encouragement and sporadic intercrowd conversation kill that special vibe.
It is not the only valid vibe for music making but it is a powerful and interesting one. I think Cage has commented commented powerfully on this.
Drunken karaoke at my local pub can be blinding too.
Or how about the modern style of compas syncopation? It's easy to get lost and bored if you don't have a strong flamenco background.
2 types of people in the world..... funky and un-funky
The funky are definitely in the minority with the oceans of lost and bored souls out there attempting to explain sh*t because they can't seem to find the "1"
Nice Goat Bananaman!
Images are resized automatically to a maximum width of 800px
You are a critic based on your self proclaimed title
“Self proclaimed title?” Just for the record, for five years I was the classical guitar and flamenco guitar critic for the Los Angeles Times, not exactly a local throwaway paper. Its circulation at the time was well over a million. I also reviewed other solo instrumentalists, including violinists.
At the same time I was also the flamenco guitar and flamenco dance critic for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, one of the few times that a critic has written for two major publications in the same city at the same time.
“This is why real critics like Alex Ross write for New Yorker and you do not.’
At last count the circulation for the New Yorker was 400,000. When I was a critic for the Los Angeles Times it’s circulation was three times that. And combined with the Herald-Examiner it was five times that.
“you belittle what don't understand”
And in your infinite wisdom and insight you understand what others do not. The fact is that I understand it perfectly well. I fully understand that it is – as I said – preposterous, and even worse – pretentious.
“If you are a true critic then you would study the music, ask for opinions and formulate an informed opinion based in true listening.”
Sorry, but a “true critic” doesn’t ask for other people’s opinions, and then base his review on some kind of consensus. He is paid to render his own opinion.
RE: Segovia and flamenco (in reply to Ramon Amira)
quote:
Sorry, but a “true critic” doesn’t ask for other people’s opinions, and then base his review on some kind of consensus. He is paid to render his own opinion.
Ramon
In this you are dead wrong. A critic seeks out those who create the works and strives to understand what they are doing and then goes away and sythesizes opinions based on that information you gather about the work and how it fits into the greater picture. And uses that information as a supplement to how you experience the performance of a work.
With that information the critic talks about the gulf between what the composer performer sets about to do and what they think they performer/composer accomplished. The measure of the acuity and intelligence of the critic is his or her ability to explain the merits, the edifying ideas a moments in a piece and the parts that fall short or do not express that which the composer intended.
At the very least you are lazy because you do not strive to elucidate the intentions of a composer like Glass and it is not good enough to render your opinion without that component of your critique. You shirk your responsibility as a person who's opinions are to be valued by dismissing an important figure whole sale by calling the work and the intention pretentious.
Well, Steven, there’s no point in going in circles any more, so I won’t post any further on this thread. I have perfectly well elucidated why I feel that 4’33” is pretentious – because it is pretentious. That is a clear elucidation, and requires no further elaboration, nor can it admit of any elaboration, since there is obviously no way of putting into words why you find something pretentious, except to say that a piece of “music” with no music strikes me as pretentious on the face of it, and I don’t accept that any “context” can alter that.
But in any case, in rereading some of this thread, it’s gotten somewhat more acrimonious than befits reasonable discourse. I will happily retract my characterization of Cage as a “buffoon.” Again, I was mostly referring to 4’33”. But to say that I don’t understand it is simply to say that your opinion is somehow superior to mine.
I in fact have listened to plenty of Cage and Glass, and I also will gladly concede that they are serious composers. I don’t like their music. You do. You are entitled to your opinion, and I am entitled to mine. It is my general feeling that more people agree with mine than with yours.
But who knows, your opinion might easily prove to become the prevailing opinion in time – even Chopin’s music was called radical by some in his own time.
The problem is that you guys don't get it it. You simply are not understanding that there is a difference between thinking experimentally and conceptually with no boundaries of rationality and the other side of the coin which is that you must use the nuts a bolts of music to manifest that concept as listenable music.
By saying you guys you mean me, and that "i don't get it" and am one of the many "idiots" that surround you. You condescend with that thing, but that 's ok cuz you like guys like Cage. I like it too, perhaps the ideas more than the actual thing. I hoped you would just keep trying to explain your point, but you are giving up. That's cool. Anyway, you feel Glass and Cage are conceptually "free" to compose with no boundaries, and I argue simply that I disagree, they might THINK thats what they are doing but they are in fact composing poop in a Glass-Cage. More confined than normal flying musician. No true freedom without the discipline. It's my idiot/don't get it opinion I guess, sorry. Nuts and bolts everywhere is just how I see it, and that is the beauty, down to the threads. You can't just say "composers should be able....", there are always parameters.
I composed a piece that is a guaranteed fountain of youth. All you have to do is play the notes, backwards in time.
My deal is I will fight to firing squad wall for the composer. I make the tools the composer uses and I strive to understand what they do in order to make my tools better.
A tool for 4'33'' ....? hmmm...maybe a soundhole.....
could be a very interesting line of business: "Stephen Faulk, Constructor of fine soundholes in the spanish tradition"
Sorry, could'nt resist - I actually consider your holy earnest as very entertaining
Anybody here play Elliot Carter's Changes? Starobin commissioned it and there was stretch he thought few could make but Carter refused to modify it. I didn't see anything out of the ordinary but I guess it's not a felony for the performer to modify it. The music starts just after the 2 min mark.
There is difficult and impossible. And then there is Ferneyhough. I bought a copy of his guitar pieces out of curiosity and it's in facsimile but it is indistinguishable from printing or perhaps better. He is a supreme draftsman regardless of what one thinks of his er, music.
Posts: 1809
Joined: Nov. 8 2010
From: London (living in the Bay Area)
RE: Segovia and flamenco (in reply to Ramon Amira)
quote:
there is obviously no way of putting into words why you find something pretentious, except to say that a piece of “music” with no music strikes me as pretentious on the face of it, and I don’t accept that any “context” can alter that.
IMHO this is not quite right: something or somebody is pretentious when it/they are pretending to be something they are not. Thus Manitas de Plata is pretentious because he pretends to be a competent flamenco guitarist when in fact he is not (actually, I may well be doing him an injustice: it’s probably just his publicity machine pretending for him. But you get my point. Ottmar Liebert might be a better example).
As far as I’m aware, John Cage never pretended to be other than what he was.
As for 4'33", it was joke that no doubt seemed very funny at the time, largely because the audience didn’t know what to expect. It’s probably past it’s sell-by date now.
quote:
Dodecaphonic music is a good example of something one cannot appreciate without studying its theory first. Something you cannot truly enjoy just by listening, but get to appreciate on the intellectual level once you've studied.
Or how about the modern style of compas syncopation? It's easy to get lost and bored if you don't have a strong flamenco background.
Or baseball. Would it be enjoyable to watch a game if you don't know the rules? Compare it to obvious basketball...
Excellent points, Grisha. I can certainly testify to number 3…
Printable Version
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread