Re: [LAU] Paul Hindemith says hello

On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 11:11 PM, nescivi<nescivi@email-addr-hidden> wrote:
> To put it the other way round...
> (Which is partly what Paul Davis was also hinting at...)
> You need to have mastered the craft, before you can make art out of it.

and to amplify *that*, another eno quote: "a good instrument has
properties that the body can learn and the mind cannot". electronic
music control systems until very recently (and even then only in the
context of academic research projects) just have so little sensitivity
and so much requirement for conscious decision making that its really
hard to have the same kind of muscle-memory-based kinesthetic
experience when making sound with them. so not only do we have the
"golly gee whizz look it goes whiiirrrrrrrr!!!" kind of effect that
you write about, but even when you have moved beyond that, its very
difficult to get into a "tight feedback loop" of physical expression
and consequent sound. so much contemporary music is all based entirely
"in the head" because you simply don't need a body to play it - in
some cases, a body *cannot* play it! its not the virtuosic skill that
goes missing - i can live without that. what we lose is the
kinesthetic experience that lends extra meaning, direction and ideas
to a performer/composer's work, even without them being particularly
aware of it.

--p
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Received on Tue Jun 23 20:15:01 2009