Re: [Shaku] Everything you wanted to know about re-meri

From: Phil James (nyokai@nyokai.com)
Date: Wed Jan 05 2005 - 09:19:28 PST


>Is shakuhachi music traditional or art? In our era, shakuhachi is
performed on concert stages in front of large audiences, is notated,
theorized about, has a written history, and is taught in conservatories
such as Geidai, where Japanese music theory is also taught. These
characteristics define art music.

Yes, as I said, shakuhachi is used for both art AND traditional music.
That much is pretty obvious.

> Living or dead? In Western art music conservatories such as
Juilliard, a flute student's most important class by far is private
lessons with a master musician, in a relationship much like that of the
shakuhachi student/teacher one. I don't see how art music is less a
living organism than shakuhachi music.

I didn't mean to imply that I think western art music is a completely
dead tradition. However, in terms of the performance of the canonical
Western literature (the stuff COMPOSED from 1780 to 1950), things like
pitch are pretty well set by the score, as they are in sankyoku and many
other composer-based art musics. Perhaps I should have said that in
performer-centric music, as opposed to composer-centric music, the
evolution of performance style is much quicker, and you can watch the
evolution and branching on a very macro level in your own lifetime.
Because of this, trying to apply theoretical rules is often less
fruitful than observing practice and working with observed practice.
Hopefully that is more clear.

Karl Signell wrote:

> At 10:04 AM 1/5/2005, Phil James wrote:
>
>> The wonderful thing about traditional music as opposed to art music
>> is that it evolves and branches as a living organism, and that you
>> can follow a DESCRIPTIVE (actual practice) grammar rather than a
>> PRESCRIPTIVE (theoretical) grammar.
>
>
> Is shakuhachi music traditional or art? In our era, shakuhachi is
> performed on concert stages in front of large audiences, is notated,
> theorized about, has a written history, and is taught in
> conservatories such as Geidai, where Japanese music theory is also
> taught. These characteristics define art music.
>
> Living or dead? In Western art music conservatories such as
> Juilliard, a flute student's most important class by far is private
> lessons with a master musician, in a relationship much like that of
> the shakuhachi student/teacher one. I don't see how art music is less
> a living organism than shakuhachi music.
>
> Karl
>
>
>
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