Sat May 23, 2009 1:05 pm
#748014
I have long accepted the dearth of actual humour at the heart of current British 'comedy' - "Little Britain" and the like - as symptomatic of a society which is just getting dumber and dumber; but I didn't think serious music would be getting that way too.
Now one of my pupils has gone a bundle on a particular pianist whose work he's heard on youtube. I sought this guy out and I was depressed. The pianist is George Winston, and his music, which a lot of people really like, I find to be dreary, repetitious and of no depth whatsoever. My pupil has now bought an album of his and he's learning 'Bamboo', an alleged set of variations on a theme. The theme is two bars of pentatonic melody with two-chord harmony. And that's it. There are no variations; just plain repetition with barely perceptible changes to the texture.
I've heard quite a bit of this stuff with a few simple chords, a melody chucked on top - the whole thing being mildy attractive - and then repeated ad nauseam for about fifteen minutes; but I just consigned it to the kind of audience that listens to it with their latte and paninis, while laughing hysterically at 'Little Britain'........................then I heard some on Radio 3. The elements were all there: bland chords, banal melody, vacuous repetition....
I was in too much shock to get the name of the composer, or why he was on the R3 playlist (if any reason was given) but why? Are we going down the route of having across-the-board mediocrity feted at the highest levels?
Now one of my pupils has gone a bundle on a particular pianist whose work he's heard on youtube. I sought this guy out and I was depressed. The pianist is George Winston, and his music, which a lot of people really like, I find to be dreary, repetitious and of no depth whatsoever. My pupil has now bought an album of his and he's learning 'Bamboo', an alleged set of variations on a theme. The theme is two bars of pentatonic melody with two-chord harmony. And that's it. There are no variations; just plain repetition with barely perceptible changes to the texture.
I've heard quite a bit of this stuff with a few simple chords, a melody chucked on top - the whole thing being mildy attractive - and then repeated ad nauseam for about fifteen minutes; but I just consigned it to the kind of audience that listens to it with their latte and paninis, while laughing hysterically at 'Little Britain'........................then I heard some on Radio 3. The elements were all there: bland chords, banal melody, vacuous repetition....
I was in too much shock to get the name of the composer, or why he was on the R3 playlist (if any reason was given) but why? Are we going down the route of having across-the-board mediocrity feted at the highest levels?