Re: Re: Re: Re: tuba musical performance - pet peeve


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Posted by Brandon Ostrom on September 03, 2002 at 16:23:31:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: tuba musical performance - pet peeve posted by MA on September 03, 2002 at 15:48:18:

I find an interesting twist in either forms of teaching. But it depends on the player.

1) One can be so completely mechanically perfect, then even if one were to put the slightest emphasis of feeling, the results would be quite impressive.

2) One can be so completely expressionistically perfect that if one were to put the slightest emphasis on technical, the results would also be quite impressive.

Either one can lead to strengths in the other. To remark on your previous comment, i have heard some quite amazing violin players, who are have obviously trained so strongly on technique, they are no longer instrumentalits. Through this rigorous training, they have turned their minds and bodies into a music making machines. Albeit, machines in the basic of sences, imputting a program - i.e. the general consensus of how the piece should be played- and then the execution -the years and years of training-. These people seem to most as either a gods-gift to the violin, or no better then the noteworthy composer program i have on my computer, which can perform music in much the same manner they do.(mechcanically perfect). However, a machine is only a machine because of the programmed instructions it posseses, or the "mind", people are capable of god-like achievements, and can train them selves to behave just as this. Only one problem with this, we are not machine. There is a living, thinking consious mind behind any musician. I can't even imagine the musical possibilities of even one of these "technical" titans if they were suddenly made to see, after 30-40 years of playing every day almost every waking hour in the deepest of consentration and devotion to the precision any piece they play, that music has feeling in it. For a person trained litterally to utter perfection in performance, they have every tool imaginable orchestrate the most beautifully expressionistic music ever made. There would be nothing they could not do -nothing-.
But as I mentioned above, it all depends on the musician to make or disregard this decision.

The same however can be said about expressionistic players. Thus a troubling duality exists, which method should a person be taught??? Technical perfection as a conduit for extreme expressionistic playing, or Extreme expressionistic playing as perfection in beauty?

What I say to myself, after having mulled over this exact dilema in my head, is: do what you believe feels true and right to you. Listen to no one. Find the voice in your heart that tells you this is the way things should be done. Then you will have no dilema, because you are at one with your musical desires.

P.S. Pay no attention to anything I say,




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