before people had the ability to record music?
I cannot determine if there is a simple answer. I'll give my humble opinion, to start. ... No, the question is too big! I wasn't around. I know a few of the Mustard members are (maybe) over a century old (young?) A little help here?
No argument there. So, is it now impossible to experience music in that way, for people living today? Still waiting for the 100+ year old member(s) to logon ... they're probably still on dialup.
Before music could be recorded I am pretty sure that more people would have been involved in making it. If you wanted music, you probably had to make it yourself and not be spoon fed.
It possibly wasn't so well done as it is now. No easily obtainable benchmarks of excellence for a large number of isolated musicians to copy or aspire towards. No doubt however the regional styles may have been more diverse than they are now.
Also, have you noticed that you think you can play well, right up tp the moment you record something and play it back ! My Butler is like that with the spoons.
And if all you lot wanted to learn something different, you would have to do it, in a lot of cases, from the "dots". That leads me to thinking that in each locality it would be a case of "same old". The other factor associated with this being that "the tradition" probably changed / evolved more slowly.
Heh, this goes back to all the discussions about learning by ear. Learn to do it in person, without a recording device, and you won't need a recording device, you'll have your brain.
Music was once ephemeral. Recordings can fool us into thinking it's fixed and permanent.
when I was young, I had a chance to play gigs with old guys here in America. I remember one night Derek, a French Canadian, told me how you used to be able to hear a pin drop while live music was being played. I heard the same thing from my grandma when she was still with us.
There was no such thing as "background music"
people only got to hear music if they knew somebody who played, that's why pianos used to be in the parlor and the center of the family entertainment 100 years ago. People would get together and sing songs and somebody knew how to play the piano
Here in Appalachia, the old tradition of the "hootinanny" is that folks drop by and bring or borrow instruments and everybody entertains themselves playing tunes. This is basically a kitchen session that would break out at family get togethers
now we just turn on a solid state device, load up our playlist, and forget there is music playing at all
even when I was in high school and we had LPs, we would listen to music differently than today. Instead of CD changers, the fellas would be digging through the record rack looking for what we'd play next, listening to a "side" of the LP and changing disks...we listened to more variety than I see my young cousins doing now
basically, all through our history whenever there was a change in the medium opf performance, there was a change in the public conception of music, so after all this verbage, I 'd say I agree...music was different
If you have a permanent record, of music, it also gets used as a gauge for the pontiffiers to judge perfection. It is my understanding that some guitarists who have listened to Segovia are now attempting, & will continue to attempt, to improve on the tunes he played. The reasoning is that Segovia's style was not as clean as what contemporary guitarists are capable of playing.
that's a good point, random. Music is a temporal art. When you record it, you freeze it in time. I always was envious of my freinds who were painters. They could create a piece of art, like a portrait, and it was done. Finished. They never had to repeat it. Never had to do it again. Me on the other hand, I was only as good as the next performance.
Before recording, when people listened to music the player would almost always be full in their view. I think that the nature of the player - his/her looks, demeanour, personality as far as this was known - would have been inescapably part of the experience of listening to his / her music - as it is in sessions now.
In this respect, sessions are a straight continuation of the way music was made and appreciated from prehistoric times onwards up to - and in many circumstances, of course, beyond - the advent of sound recording.
I wonder if people were more likely to treat someone throwing something into the musical pot as a neighbour rather than a wannabee recording artist. To view a pub band more like the village pantomime than a commercial production. Less likely to talk through the local support act.
nicholas, I think you might be discounting the effect of actually hearing music only in the presence of performing musicians. We are actually more focused on the "look" now with recorded music and all the promotion that goes along with it.
before recordings, getting to hear music was a treat. People were enthralled by the playing
recently, I was out to the country at bike shop run by some Mennonite friends of ours. Now these guys don't use computers, don't use cars, and certainly don't have iPods. I had my concertina along to play in the van on the ride out there, and Rich told me to go fetch it in and play some tunes for them. Let me tell you, I was surprised at how enthusiastic they were just to hear somebody play. I felt bad for Merv, the owner of the shop because I had all his help standing around in a semi-circle around me while I played the concertina. But when I stopped, Merv asked me to keep playing.
After we left, Rich told that those boys don't get to town much and that was probably big time entertainment for them
I just realized my question is probably easily answered with YouTube. I'm going to work now. Could someone, please, see if there are some clips of music being played in the Longbranch Saloon? Miss Kitty's place in Gunsmoke.
It probably wasn't all that different. There's very little relevant comparision to be made between live music played for the pleasure of those present and music recorded, often on multiple tracks, for commercial sale. I personally don't care very much for the sound of banjo on recordings, but I thoroughly enjoy playing with a good banjo player - I experience an entirely different emotional and mental response to music played with others to that I experience when I hear an electronic reproduction of a sound recording. Likewise the energy of two players, not necessarily brilliant players by any means, who synchronize to produce that wonderful 'greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts' moment, however brief, creates a response, however short-lived, that can only be experienced a couple of times in response to a recording, before the initial sense novelty and wonder gives way to something altogether different - whether it's a desire to emulate, a sense of respect, awe, jealousy, admiration, or even a dulled acceptance. Whereas that sense of good music being made by a couple of people in the same room, the immediacy and transience, will always quicken something in people who are capable of being moved by good music.
Why would that experience be any different now than it was a hundred years ago?
because music is more prevaillent now. We hear it everywhere. I'm a musician and even I'll hold a conversation over it. That's the difference. We used to never hear music unless we were in the presence of somebody playing it.
"It possibly wasn't so well done as it is now. No easily obtainable benchmarks of excellence for a large number of isolated musicians to copy or aspire towards. No doubt however the regional styles may have been more diverse than they are now."
There's so much to pick up on in that paragraph from ormepipes' post.
The thing about how well music was "done". Have you ever heard those recordings from the 1900s of some of the Irish musicians of the time? The Dunn family archive, I think it's called. There are probably more. Some of the things those fellas could do can't be done by modern players - the old fellas were just too good. I thnk there's a tendency in all sort of areas of life to assume that we do things better now than before, and i personally believe that, as far as the present day is concerned, it is almost always wrong. In literature, where is the writer of the stature of any number of 19c novelists? In classical music, where are the Beethovens, Liszts, Mozarts, Bachs etc etc? The 19c had Turner, Constable, Gaugin, Van Gogh. We have Tracey Emin.
In trad, as in other genres, people did move around, and they were clearly able to pick up on what other people were doing. I don't buy this "isolated musician" image. Particularly as regards an Ireland which, in the first half of the 19c, for instance, was much more heavily populated than it is today. So, I also don't accept that there were no "benchmarks" for people to aspire to (even though the concept itself makes me just slightly uneasy).
Regional styles is another issue. It can be a controversial issue, since there are plenty of really good players who don't accept that there is any such thing as a regional style, just a style created by a few really good musicians, or even maybe just one, in a particular area. Population movements in Ireland throughout the 19c were as dramatic, or perhaps even more so, as population movements in Ireland today. I would have thought that this would, in itself, have led to a diffusion of styles and blending of any that might have existed. Most Irish trad musicians that I know have been more influenced by the styles of real live musicians with whom they've played than they have by recordings. But maybe that's just the people I mix with.
Thinking we are somehow "better" than people of past generations in whatever pursuit is a common affliction which in most cases doesn't reflect reality. Obviously some things have improved (rock climbers now can climb stupid things no one could have gotten near in the 1890s due to the wonders of modern gear) and other things definitely haven't (like architecture -- could any modern building survive hundreds of years so well as a medieval Gothic cathedral?). I'd tentatively place music in the latter category. I like listening to old recordings of uilleann pipers especially, because they do crazy sh*t that you just don't really hear these days.
Some of you now seem to be teetering on the brink of squaring (ish) with my definition of ITM. All of a sudden coming down on the "older is better" side. No mention yet that its better now because we have Reavey, but I'm waiting for it.
As for recordings of old pipers. Have you just passed me the tin opener for that can of worms?
Thomas Hardy's writings are often taken as giving the flavour of things in one part of England. Scroll down to the box headed "West Gallery Tradition" in this: http://www.fiddlingaround.co.uk/english/index.html and use your imagination. Spot any tune names you know ?
Were people like John Doherty and Michael Gorman playing for people with wide access to recordings ? Was Michael Gorman going around playing for dances that much different to the description given by Hardy.
On One to one you got to learn the regional Style too, But after recording tune's at session's etc, to learn tunes later - As I did.. regional Style's started taking there last Breath !
jim,,,
Thanks for the responses. I wish I had something to add.
My earlier misguided suggestion was way out in left field. I knew it was, I just didn't know how far ... Sadly I spent too much time looking through YouTube. I was hoping to find a session (or hoedown) in the Longbranch Saloon. No such luck. But, since I wasted all the time, & misery loves company, here is a clip of the day a photographer appeared in Dodge City to immortalize its' inhabitants.
Gunsmoke ~ "Magic picture box" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBIODuGqn4g
-- I've noticed that many older folks (I am thinking 60+) have a remarkable # of tunes/songs they can sing or whistle, most of which they at some point learned by performing in one way or another. While the kids I teach today, they have exposure to probably 100x more music (one iPod can store a thousand LPs now!), but they spend much less time per piece of music, and they know it less well.
-- My parents and grandparents, who were amateur musicians and mountaineers, recall going camping/climbing in the 30s and 40s, and said that there was ALWAYS music being made in the evening, and that even "non musical people" (which then meant people who didn't play) sang. Get a bunch of climbers today aroudn a campfire, and if they can collectively sing anythign other than "happy birthday" or advertisements, you're in luck.
-- in Cape Breton, Canada, which was (in some ways) like old Ireland, there was a strong tradition of travelling music teachers and performers. There was (and still is) a strong tradition of people bringing new tunes (and songs) around, so standards did evolve. Often ceilidhs were held where one fiddler, or a fiddler with one piano, had to provide all the music for a dance for 100-200 people. This is one of the origins of the ass-kicking fiddling style of Cape Breton (think Ashley MacIsaac): if one violin has to hold down the dance, it has got to be letter-perfect and massively rhythmical (and people will be quiet when it is being played).
People notice rhythm (or flaws in rhythm) before anything else in music, and so I imagine that music being played for dance purposes back int he day w
"My parents and grandparents, who were amateur musicians and mountaineers" - must have been interesting - hope they were whistle players and not pianists !
Lots of people who study literature think that (in European writing) the peak of achievement was Modernism. Joyce in Ireland, Musil in Austria, and Proust in France all indisputably wrote the most complex, and aesthetically radical, novels of their time (although IMHO Joyce the novelist was just a really clever pastiche artist...bring on the abuse...). These guys went the 19th century greats one better in terms of sheer complexity, development of interiority, yadda yadda.
I can't think of a contemporary writer with the power of a Musil or a Proust. Only Pynchon comes close.
But regarding ITM...the form is basically closed. If it isn't reels, jigs hornpipes etc, it's not ITM...so one wonders how exactly to compare past and present on anything other than technical grounds. (the novel was basiclaly exploded in the early 1900s) Dunno if there's ever been (or will be) a "golden age" of fiddling or whatnot. It seems more like, there was a period (1920s-40s) where a lot of these really awesome people got recorded, many of whom learned purley by ear, and represent the "end" of a totally aural tradition. So they are touchstones of a world that's to a large extent gone and therefore really valuable. But dunno if they were "better" in any way than any number of modern guys.
I agree with a lot of the above. When I was young, the older folks seemed more apt to know how to play instruments, to know whole songs, not just snips of choruses, and there were more pianos in parlors. Music was something all people made, not just some kind of commodity that was produced by specialists for consumption by the masses.
And certainly, without recorded music, there would not be any of those tedious jazz critics that deconstruct Charlie Parker solos note by note, and compare and contrast them to solos in the same song on a different recording....
Was the experience of music different ...
Was the experience of music different ...
before people had the ability to record music?
I cannot determine if there is a simple answer. I'll give my humble opinion, to start. ... No, the question is too big! I wasn't around. I know a few of the Mustard members are (maybe) over a century old (young?) A little help here?
# Posted on October 12th 2010 by Ben Steen
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
Yes
# Posted on October 12th 2010 by ...
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
It's the same thing with cameras and a good sunset
# Posted on October 12th 2010 by ...
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
No argument there. So, is it now impossible to experience music in that way, for people living today? Still waiting for the 100+ year old member(s) to logon ... they're probably still on dialup.
# Posted on October 12th 2010 by Ben Steen
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
Yes, I believe it was.
Before music could be recorded I am pretty sure that more people would have been involved in making it. If you wanted music, you probably had to make it yourself and not be spoon fed.
It possibly wasn't so well done as it is now. No easily obtainable benchmarks of excellence for a large number of isolated musicians to copy or aspire towards. No doubt however the regional styles may have been more diverse than they are now.
Also, have you noticed that you think you can play well, right up tp the moment you record something and play it back ! My Butler is like that with the spoons.
And if all you lot wanted to learn something different, you would have to do it, in a lot of cases, from the "dots". That leads me to thinking that in each locality it would be a case of "same old". The other factor associated with this being that "the tradition" probably changed / evolved more slowly.
This could be a most stimulating debate.
# Posted on October 12th 2010 by ormepipes
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
Heh, this goes back to all the discussions about learning by ear. Learn to do it in person, without a recording device, and you won't need a recording device, you'll have your brain.
Music was once ephemeral. Recordings can fool us into thinking it's fixed and permanent.
# Posted on October 12th 2010 by Will Harmon
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
What llig said but more so.
# Posted on October 12th 2010 by gam
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
when I was young, I had a chance to play gigs with old guys here in America. I remember one night Derek, a French Canadian, told me how you used to be able to hear a pin drop while live music was being played. I heard the same thing from my grandma when she was still with us.
There was no such thing as "background music"
people only got to hear music if they knew somebody who played, that's why pianos used to be in the parlor and the center of the family entertainment 100 years ago. People would get together and sing songs and somebody knew how to play the piano
Here in Appalachia, the old tradition of the "hootinanny" is that folks drop by and bring or borrow instruments and everybody entertains themselves playing tunes. This is basically a kitchen session that would break out at family get togethers
now we just turn on a solid state device, load up our playlist, and forget there is music playing at all
even when I was in high school and we had LPs, we would listen to music differently than today. Instead of CD changers, the fellas would be digging through the record rack looking for what we'd play next, listening to a "side" of the LP and changing disks...we listened to more variety than I see my young cousins doing now
basically, all through our history whenever there was a change in the medium opf performance, there was a change in the public conception of music, so after all this verbage, I 'd say I agree...music was different
# Posted on October 12th 2010 by Nate Ryan
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
If you have a permanent record, of music, it also gets used as a gauge for the pontiffiers to judge perfection. It is my understanding that some guitarists who have listened to Segovia are now attempting, & will continue to attempt, to improve on the tunes he played. The reasoning is that Segovia's style was not as clean as what contemporary guitarists are capable of playing.
# Posted on October 12th 2010 by Ben Steen
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
that's a good point, random. Music is a temporal art. When you record it, you freeze it in time. I always was envious of my freinds who were painters. They could create a piece of art, like a portrait, and it was done. Finished. They never had to repeat it. Never had to do it again. Me on the other hand, I was only as good as the next performance.
# Posted on October 12th 2010 by Nate Ryan
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
Before recording, when people listened to music the player would almost always be full in their view. I think that the nature of the player - his/her looks, demeanour, personality as far as this was known - would have been inescapably part of the experience of listening to his / her music - as it is in sessions now.
In this respect, sessions are a straight continuation of the way music was made and appreciated from prehistoric times onwards up to - and in many circumstances, of course, beyond - the advent of sound recording.
# Posted on October 12th 2010 by nicholas
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
I wonder if people were more likely to treat someone throwing something into the musical pot as a neighbour rather than a wannabee recording artist. To view a pub band more like the village pantomime than a commercial production. Less likely to talk through the local support act.
# Posted on October 12th 2010 by David50
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
nicholas, I think you might be discounting the effect of actually hearing music only in the presence of performing musicians. We are actually more focused on the "look" now with recorded music and all the promotion that goes along with it.
before recordings, getting to hear music was a treat. People were enthralled by the playing
recently, I was out to the country at bike shop run by some Mennonite friends of ours. Now these guys don't use computers, don't use cars, and certainly don't have iPods. I had my concertina along to play in the van on the ride out there, and Rich told me to go fetch it in and play some tunes for them. Let me tell you, I was surprised at how enthusiastic they were just to hear somebody play. I felt bad for Merv, the owner of the shop because I had all his help standing around in a semi-circle around me while I played the concertina. But when I stopped, Merv asked me to keep playing.
After we left, Rich told that those boys don't get to town much and that was probably big time entertainment for them
this is what it was like before records
# Posted on October 12th 2010 by Nate Ryan
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
I just realized my question is probably easily answered with YouTube. I'm going to work now. Could someone, please, see if there are some clips of music being played in the Longbranch Saloon? Miss Kitty's place in Gunsmoke.
# Posted on October 12th 2010 by Ben Steen
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
It probably wasn't all that different. There's very little relevant comparision to be made between live music played for the pleasure of those present and music recorded, often on multiple tracks, for commercial sale. I personally don't care very much for the sound of banjo on recordings, but I thoroughly enjoy playing with a good banjo player - I experience an entirely different emotional and mental response to music played with others to that I experience when I hear an electronic reproduction of a sound recording. Likewise the energy of two players, not necessarily brilliant players by any means, who synchronize to produce that wonderful 'greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts' moment, however brief, creates a response, however short-lived, that can only be experienced a couple of times in response to a recording, before the initial sense novelty and wonder gives way to something altogether different - whether it's a desire to emulate, a sense of respect, awe, jealousy, admiration, or even a dulled acceptance. Whereas that sense of good music being made by a couple of people in the same room, the immediacy and transience, will always quicken something in people who are capable of being moved by good music.
Why would that experience be any different now than it was a hundred years ago?
# Posted on October 12th 2010 by Dragut Reis
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
because music is more prevaillent now. We hear it everywhere. I'm a musician and even I'll hold a conversation over it. That's the difference. We used to never hear music unless we were in the presence of somebody playing it.
# Posted on October 12th 2010 by Nate Ryan
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
"It possibly wasn't so well done as it is now. No easily obtainable benchmarks of excellence for a large number of isolated musicians to copy or aspire towards. No doubt however the regional styles may have been more diverse than they are now."
There's so much to pick up on in that paragraph from ormepipes' post.
The thing about how well music was "done". Have you ever heard those recordings from the 1900s of some of the Irish musicians of the time? The Dunn family archive, I think it's called. There are probably more. Some of the things those fellas could do can't be done by modern players - the old fellas were just too good. I thnk there's a tendency in all sort of areas of life to assume that we do things better now than before, and i personally believe that, as far as the present day is concerned, it is almost always wrong. In literature, where is the writer of the stature of any number of 19c novelists? In classical music, where are the Beethovens, Liszts, Mozarts, Bachs etc etc? The 19c had Turner, Constable, Gaugin, Van Gogh. We have Tracey Emin.
In trad, as in other genres, people did move around, and they were clearly able to pick up on what other people were doing. I don't buy this "isolated musician" image. Particularly as regards an Ireland which, in the first half of the 19c, for instance, was much more heavily populated than it is today. So, I also don't accept that there were no "benchmarks" for people to aspire to (even though the concept itself makes me just slightly uneasy).
Regional styles is another issue. It can be a controversial issue, since there are plenty of really good players who don't accept that there is any such thing as a regional style, just a style created by a few really good musicians, or even maybe just one, in a particular area. Population movements in Ireland throughout the 19c were as dramatic, or perhaps even more so, as population movements in Ireland today. I would have thought that this would, in itself, have led to a diffusion of styles and blending of any that might have existed. Most Irish trad musicians that I know have been more influenced by the styles of real live musicians with whom they've played than they have by recordings. But maybe that's just the people I mix with.
# Posted on October 12th 2010 by ethical blend
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
ethical has a point that we do tend to think of ourselves as being better than people of the past generations.
# Posted on October 12th 2010 by Nate Ryan
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
Nice post, ethical.
Thinking we are somehow "better" than people of past generations in whatever pursuit is a common affliction which in most cases doesn't reflect reality. Obviously some things have improved (rock climbers now can climb stupid things no one could have gotten near in the 1890s due to the wonders of modern gear) and other things definitely haven't (like architecture -- could any modern building survive hundreds of years so well as a medieval Gothic cathedral?). I'd tentatively place music in the latter category. I like listening to old recordings of uilleann pipers especially, because they do crazy sh*t that you just don't really hear these days.
# Posted on October 12th 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
I knew this could turn interesting.
Some of you now seem to be teetering on the brink of squaring (ish) with my definition of ITM. All of a sudden coming down on the "older is better" side. No mention yet that its better now because we have Reavey, but I'm waiting for it.
As for recordings of old pipers. Have you just passed me the tin opener for that can of worms?
# Posted on October 12th 2010 by ormepipes
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
Thomas Hardy's writings are often taken as giving the flavour of things in one part of England. Scroll down to the box headed "West Gallery Tradition" in this: http://www.fiddlingaround.co.uk/english/index.html and use your imagination. Spot any tune names you know ?
# Posted on October 12th 2010 by David50
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
Were people like John Doherty and Michael Gorman playing for people with wide access to recordings ? Was Michael Gorman going around playing for dances that much different to the description given by Hardy.
# Posted on October 12th 2010 by David50
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
Would the experience of a good ale or whiskey be different if you couldn’t have it on demand, but only when someone offered it?
# Posted on October 12th 2010 by Bob himself
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
On One to one you got to learn the regional Style too, But after recording tune's at session's etc, to learn tunes later - As I did.. regional Style's started taking there last Breath !
jim,,,
# Posted on October 13th 2010 by FIDDLE4
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
"Would the experience of a good ale or whiskey be different if you couldn’t have it on demand, but only when someone offered it?"
Yes, it would. Without a doubt.
# Posted on October 13th 2010 by worthy
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
Thanks for the responses. I wish I had something to add.
My earlier misguided suggestion was way out in left field. I knew it was, I just didn't know how far ... Sadly I spent too much time looking through YouTube. I was hoping to find a session (or hoedown) in the Longbranch Saloon. No such luck. But, since I wasted all the time, & misery loves company, here is a clip of the day a photographer appeared in Dodge City to immortalize its' inhabitants.
Gunsmoke ~ "Magic picture box"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBIODuGqn4g
# Posted on October 13th 2010 by Ben Steen
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
great thread!
-- I've noticed that many older folks (I am thinking 60+) have a remarkable # of tunes/songs they can sing or whistle, most of which they at some point learned by performing in one way or another. While the kids I teach today, they have exposure to probably 100x more music (one iPod can store a thousand LPs now!), but they spend much less time per piece of music, and they know it less well.
-- My parents and grandparents, who were amateur musicians and mountaineers, recall going camping/climbing in the 30s and 40s, and said that there was ALWAYS music being made in the evening, and that even "non musical people" (which then meant people who didn't play) sang. Get a bunch of climbers today aroudn a campfire, and if they can collectively sing anythign other than "happy birthday" or advertisements, you're in luck.
-- in Cape Breton, Canada, which was (in some ways) like old Ireland, there was a strong tradition of travelling music teachers and performers. There was (and still is) a strong tradition of people bringing new tunes (and songs) around, so standards did evolve. Often ceilidhs were held where one fiddler, or a fiddler with one piano, had to provide all the music for a dance for 100-200 people. This is one of the origins of the ass-kicking fiddling style of Cape Breton (think Ashley MacIsaac): if one violin has to hold down the dance, it has got to be letter-perfect and massively rhythmical (and people will be quiet when it is being played).
People notice rhythm (or flaws in rhythm) before anything else in music, and so I imagine that music being played for dance purposes back int he day w
# Posted on October 13th 2010 by chris stolz
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
sorry, let me finish!
-- people would have had a good ear for musical subtleties, esp rhythm (which in many folk musics outside the African tradition don't use drums)
# Posted on October 13th 2010 by chris stolz
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
"My parents and grandparents, who were amateur musicians and mountaineers" - must have been interesting - hope they were whistle players and not pianists !
# Posted on October 13th 2010 by ormepipes
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
ethical, interesting points.
Lots of people who study literature think that (in European writing) the peak of achievement was Modernism. Joyce in Ireland, Musil in Austria, and Proust in France all indisputably wrote the most complex, and aesthetically radical, novels of their time (although IMHO Joyce the novelist was just a really clever pastiche artist...bring on the abuse...). These guys went the 19th century greats one better in terms of sheer complexity, development of interiority, yadda yadda.
I can't think of a contemporary writer with the power of a Musil or a Proust. Only Pynchon comes close.
But regarding ITM...the form is basically closed. If it isn't reels, jigs hornpipes etc, it's not ITM...so one wonders how exactly to compare past and present on anything other than technical grounds. (the novel was basiclaly exploded in the early 1900s) Dunno if there's ever been (or will be) a "golden age" of fiddling or whatnot. It seems more like, there was a period (1920s-40s) where a lot of these really awesome people got recorded, many of whom learned purley by ear, and represent the "end" of a totally aural tradition. So they are touchstones of a world that's to a large extent gone and therefore really valuable. But dunno if they were "better" in any way than any number of modern guys.
# Posted on October 13th 2010 by chris stolz
Re: Was the experience of music different ...
I agree with a lot of the above. When I was young, the older folks seemed more apt to know how to play instruments, to know whole songs, not just snips of choruses, and there were more pianos in parlors. Music was something all people made, not just some kind of commodity that was produced by specialists for consumption by the masses.
And certainly, without recorded music, there would not be any of those tedious jazz critics that deconstruct Charlie Parker solos note by note, and compare and contrast them to solos in the same song on a different recording....
# Posted on October 14th 2010 by AlBrown