Easy peasy lemon squeezy
I am listening to the second movement of Beethoven's 5th right now.
No one knows any movements besides the first one. (ba-ba-ba-BUM...ba-ba-ba-BUM)
Poor other movements. They're just as good. But maybe not as catchy or dramatic.
My british conducting professor (ya know, I should really stop referring to him like that, but I can't help it. It just makes more sense to hear the stories about him if you're armed with the foreknowledge of his outrageousness.) likes to lecture..../rant..../"play devil's advocate"..../be inflammatory. And he is really pretty brilliant and I'm convinced he's sekritly the 11th Doctor, but some of the things he believes just get under my skin.
He's pretty much of the opinion that if you're a music major and don't like...the 'canon', I guess is the best term for it, since "classical" is not accurate at all really....That you shouldn't be in the field of music. Don't get me wrong, he's not against all other music (except the stuff that really deserves derision, a la Lady Gaga and Kings of Leon), but he has lectured us several times this semester (usually as he's walking around the room returning listening journal assignments) on how if we don't like this stuff we're not trying hard enough. Not thinking critically enough. Not really listening enough. And if we believe we are doing all that to the fullest extent of our faculties, that then we're in the wrong major. Now, I understand and am all for both a) being familiar with the body of work that you plan to base your professional opinions, performances, and philosophies on, and also b) not knocking something until you've tried it. But I find it offensive to be belittled for not enjoying a piece of music.
For those of you reading (are there any of you out there?) who may have had minimal or no academic instruction in music or any of the fine arts, let me just clarify that there is a gap the size of the Grand Canyon between "liking" a work (i.e. deriving aesthetic pleasure from viewing, listening, or otherwise interacting with it), and understanding it (recognizing its value as a work of art-or as anything else, for that matter, knowing the intricacies of its structure and composition, studying the creator's background and exigence for creating the work, etc). The direction I am coming from is one, especially as a prospective educator, where it is entirely possible to not personally like a work but recognize its value to culture, society, music as an art, or the education of young musicians (and, in fact, I think that if you can't separate those two things, you are never going to realize your full professional potential...what if no one taught Schoenberg because his serial period is hard to listen to, and in some instances downright awful to sit through?) In the end, what I am saying, is how dare you cast aspersions on my musicianship and passion because I have different tastes in music than you do? Clearly, one of us can't separate visceral judgment of the work from cognitive assessment of its value, and that one of us is not me.
tl;dr--I am not a sub-par musician or educator just because I don't LOVE every piece you do, bitch.
No one knows any movements besides the first one. (ba-ba-ba-BUM...ba-ba-ba-BUM)
Poor other movements. They're just as good. But maybe not as catchy or dramatic.
My british conducting professor (ya know, I should really stop referring to him like that, but I can't help it. It just makes more sense to hear the stories about him if you're armed with the foreknowledge of his outrageousness.) likes to lecture..../rant..../"play devil's advocate"..../be inflammatory. And he is really pretty brilliant and I'm convinced he's sekritly the 11th Doctor, but some of the things he believes just get under my skin.
He's pretty much of the opinion that if you're a music major and don't like...the 'canon', I guess is the best term for it, since "classical" is not accurate at all really....That you shouldn't be in the field of music. Don't get me wrong, he's not against all other music (except the stuff that really deserves derision, a la Lady Gaga and Kings of Leon), but he has lectured us several times this semester (usually as he's walking around the room returning listening journal assignments) on how if we don't like this stuff we're not trying hard enough. Not thinking critically enough. Not really listening enough. And if we believe we are doing all that to the fullest extent of our faculties, that then we're in the wrong major. Now, I understand and am all for both a) being familiar with the body of work that you plan to base your professional opinions, performances, and philosophies on, and also b) not knocking something until you've tried it. But I find it offensive to be belittled for not enjoying a piece of music.
For those of you reading (are there any of you out there?) who may have had minimal or no academic instruction in music or any of the fine arts, let me just clarify that there is a gap the size of the Grand Canyon between "liking" a work (i.e. deriving aesthetic pleasure from viewing, listening, or otherwise interacting with it), and understanding it (recognizing its value as a work of art-or as anything else, for that matter, knowing the intricacies of its structure and composition, studying the creator's background and exigence for creating the work, etc). The direction I am coming from is one, especially as a prospective educator, where it is entirely possible to not personally like a work but recognize its value to culture, society, music as an art, or the education of young musicians (and, in fact, I think that if you can't separate those two things, you are never going to realize your full professional potential...what if no one taught Schoenberg because his serial period is hard to listen to, and in some instances downright awful to sit through?) In the end, what I am saying, is how dare you cast aspersions on my musicianship and passion because I have different tastes in music than you do? Clearly, one of us can't separate visceral judgment of the work from cognitive assessment of its value, and that one of us is not me.
tl;dr--I am not a sub-par musician or educator just because I don't LOVE every piece you do, bitch.