Last Wednesday sprog gave a recital with two of her fellow students. It was an assessed public performance in completion of her Masters in Performance. The music was Previn and Francaix; both trios for oboe bassoon and piano.
The venue was in the Middle Kingdom, where sprog lived and went to school until University. She had performed at the Church as a nervous primary school student; later a talented but still nervous adolescent performer at various Christmas concerts and her own solo recitals. As a sixth form student at the fee paying school in town she had performed there frequently. Throughout this performing career she had played challenging but known music to a remarkably stable audience of local people. Some were parents of her peers, others just devotees of the music.
Off to University and local appearances were not part of the agenda. Post-graduate studies in London followed. She joined a bassoon playing friend from sixth form in her London studies. They and a friend from London revisited the Middle Kingdom to perform the two trios.
They performers were well known to the local audience, but the music they played was not. Playful and modern, tricky to play and follow, they nonetheless persuaded their audience of its merits and delights. What struck this happy parent was the progression of music they had performed, and how two youngsters had brought very unfamiliar modern music to our local audience [not noted for its youth!].
Kenneth Clarke said art was a long word, from millinery to religion. I think music is a very long word, from nursery to chapel via halls and palaces. We know it over lifetimes; our own and those of our performers. We need to see it in such terms if we are to understand it at all. The misery of Pepsi marketing in the permanent now of advertising and selling popcorn, lies out of reach of music seen in this way, as an organic development within communities of performers and listeners. Accessibility is not the issue, it is the ability to belong and grow in such communities that matters.
The venue was in the Middle Kingdom, where sprog lived and went to school until University. She had performed at the Church as a nervous primary school student; later a talented but still nervous adolescent performer at various Christmas concerts and her own solo recitals. As a sixth form student at the fee paying school in town she had performed there frequently. Throughout this performing career she had played challenging but known music to a remarkably stable audience of local people. Some were parents of her peers, others just devotees of the music.
Off to University and local appearances were not part of the agenda. Post-graduate studies in London followed. She joined a bassoon playing friend from sixth form in her London studies. They and a friend from London revisited the Middle Kingdom to perform the two trios.
They performers were well known to the local audience, but the music they played was not. Playful and modern, tricky to play and follow, they nonetheless persuaded their audience of its merits and delights. What struck this happy parent was the progression of music they had performed, and how two youngsters had brought very unfamiliar modern music to our local audience [not noted for its youth!].
Kenneth Clarke said art was a long word, from millinery to religion. I think music is a very long word, from nursery to chapel via halls and palaces. We know it over lifetimes; our own and those of our performers. We need to see it in such terms if we are to understand it at all. The misery of Pepsi marketing in the permanent now of advertising and selling popcorn, lies out of reach of music seen in this way, as an organic development within communities of performers and listeners. Accessibility is not the issue, it is the ability to belong and grow in such communities that matters.
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