Re: excerpts


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Posted by Jay Bertolet on April 04, 1999 at 20:41:27:

In Reply to: excerpts posted by jonathan goldsmith on April 04, 1999 at 19:35:04:

Thanks for that sermon! At least you had the courage to sign your name and I applaud your decision to do so. Now, I would like to challenge your assertion. To characterize most tubists as valuing loud playing over quality playing is offensive and not true. There are as many examples of horn players that play with no regard for musicality as tubists. The same is probably true for every other orchestral instrument as well as non-orchestral ones. Happily, such individuals will have short lived careers. The kind of attitude you describe is a sure fire recipe for unemployment. Anyone who is actively working in the music field today knows that unmusical, brute force playing is not tolerated. Conductors will simply dismiss such players even if they manage to somehow get hired. And to characterize string players as "...so much better musicians that any brass player, they play real music not lousy arrangements." is completely misguided. First of all, to say that brass players are not good musicians because they have to play arrangements of music shows your complete ignorance of the origins of the various musical instruments and the music they play. Is it the brass players' fault that string instruments were invented before brass instruments? Have you ever heard of a composer by the name or Giovanni Gabrieli? He wrote MANY pieces specifically for brass instruments in the 16th century. Since that time, there have been reams of music written for various combinations of brass instruments. And what bearing does the music any instrumentalist plays have on the quality of the performance? A good musician does a good job on whatever music is on the stand.

It sounds to me like you haven't had the pleasure of working with good quality brass players, assuming you could recognize good playing if you heard it. My suggestion to you is to spend alot of time working in a practice room to make yourself worthy of working with some good musicians who happen to play brass instruments. If that choice sounds unpalatable, you could always sell your horn and use the money to buy a bunch of recordings of string quartets...


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