Wednesday 27 October 2010

I find it remarkably easy to be disinterested in classical music. Not the music in and of itself, but present-day classical music culture, and hence what the music often sounds like. I have to concur with Bruce Haynes (in spirit if not in detail) where he writes in The End of Early Music that historically-informed performance is 'profoundly anti-Classical':

Institutionalizing HIP in the twentieth century has influenced us all into thinking of it as a department of Classical music rather than a bloc with distinctly different principles.

To be honest, I think the picture is now rather more complex than that, as other, even less 'Classical' musics demand, rightly, to be considered as seriously as the canonic 'Masters'. 

But then every now and again I stumble across something like this, in which Horowitz transcends all the unpleasant snobbery and dubious over-subsidised traditions, simply by making remarkable music. And I think maybe classical music isn't so bad after all. For a bit.

an unexpected but welcome instrument now residing in my university office 

I haven't tried this yet, but I like the idea of tuning by 'twang' rather than counting beats.