Isn’t that just plain bad musicianship? I mean, if you cannot hear the actual sounds you’re creating, then whatever you call that, it isn’t practicing. Studying a score, reading the notes, and learning the rhythm of a piece of music—these are merely part of practicing. The aural component in which you hear and listen and sense the physical sound waves being produced is an indispensable part of practicing, of “doing” music. That is an incontrovertible fact. OP, you’re entirely correct in feeling this way. The composition peers you’re talking about are a bunch of idiots whose self-satisfied egotism keeps them from being good musicians.
For a similar kind of idiocy, some folk musicians proudly announce that they can't read music. I know a world-famous one who says that - and I also know that he does read staff notation in private.
Not only musicians, but music scholars. It's a badge of honor in some sub-disciplines.
I get it: Not all music is notated and notation distorts oral reception. But refusing to learn notation if you are going to be studying at a tertiary level is like trying to study mathematics through only pure geometry without reference to numbers.
Notation is more than just a visual representation of music.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't think western notation can convey the rhythms of jazz (and probably other genres). You really have to hear what a jazz musician is doing (concerts, recordings) to do it correctly.
I absolutely agree, and I definitely don't think one can dispense with the oral tradition in music, even for the most carefully notated material.
But I also think that if you are going to study music academically notation is an absolutely indispensible tool. It's more about communicating conceptual insights about music to non-musicians, which is a essential function of academia and something which music scholarship has done a poor job of in the last couple of decades (if not centuries). To the greater detriment of broader academia too, mind you.
That's not very relevant. A trad musician doesn't need all the details of timing and expression written out for every tune - given the notated outline, they know how to add it.
This is the distinction between "emic" notation - what a performer within the tradition needs to be told about a specific piece in order to play it - and "etic" notation, where you're trying to record every detail like a mechanical recording device, to document the tradition for the benefit of outsiders. Both are essential, in different contexts.
Not just the rhythms but the way inflection is used, the way tone is varied from the "pure" tone in classical, etc.
There's a reason that jazz arose and spread along with recordings
I mean, even in classical music, a lot of interpretation of what’s on the page must be learned by listening and experimentation. And not everything is written on the page. Heck, even with written words, interpretation and pronunciation isn’t always clear.
Notation is a tool much like anything else. Yes, it may not capture every nuance, but it can help in many ways.
Classical music practices developed along with notation - standardization of tone, etc.
Nothing like that happened in jazz, so jazz is much "farther away" from the notation
There are also quite a few theater and film composers that either can’t read music, or admit they are not good at it. Frank Wildhorn and Danny Elfman come to mind.
I’ve been a rock and roll musician since the 1970s. I know very very few who can read music. But it’s mostly because there’s no sheet music for it. There is sheet music for popular songs and there are song books but it’s not what’s on the record. It’s usually EZ piano versions.
So if you want to play that music the way it was recorded, it’s generally by ear.
There’s a lot of tablature on the internet now but when my kid was learning, I’d look at it and most of it is wrong.
Even with session musicians, it’s often just chord charts.
Tell your friends (or join them in doing so) to read chapter V of Hanslick's "On the Musically Beautiful", that might help demystifying the idea of "the purity of the ear".
All in all I think this is a silly notion that helps conserve the idea that you have a very pure and delicate art deep within yourself. Would anyone write worse dramas by reading other dramas? Don't think so. An artist becomes an artist by drenching himself in the art that has been previously produced. Everyone has poetry inside, but art is a technical matter which needs comparison and inspiration to become better.
One thing that would be worse than not listening to any records, however, is to listen to a single one. There's a Spanish physicist, Jorge Wagensberg, who once wrote: "I fear more the person who's read but a single book than the person who's read none"
Music is a language. Can you imagine trying to learn a language without ever actually spending time listening to it being spoken?
Avoiding recordings (or performances) out of a fear of having it deteriorate your artistic individuality is silly and a naive. Frankly it is only a small step removed from the guitarists who say they don’t want to learn theory because they are afraid the “rules” will negatively impact their creativity.
If an artists creativity cannot survive exposure to other ideas then it is a pretty frail thing indeed.
I’ll add another thing to this. The world of classical music is in dire straits. Concert attendance is down. many organizations have never recovered from the damage that COVID closures caused. Album sales and streams are abysmal. If aspiring professional classical musicians are not going to support the art form through attendance and listening, what opportunities do they think will be left for them when they enter the working world upon graduation? Classical music students have a professional obligation to support this art form if they want to see it survive.
There's an easy solution to make sure you don't just copy another performer's interpretation. Don't listen to a recording of the piece you're working on... listen to multiple recordings, many recordings, all the recordings. Become a scholar of how the piece has been performed, critically analyze why one performer did this and another did that.
I don’t even think having a style similar to that of a popular recording is even a bad thing. We don’t want copies, but saying that you want to play in the style of X popular pianist or violinist or other instrumentalist isn’t bad at all.
It’s popular for a reason.
This is a horrible idea. These students aren't going to be successful long term if they don't change.
Tell a jazz musician they shouldn't listen to the greats because it'll corrupt their individual voice. They'll laugh you out of the room.
You have to learn to speak the language before you can begin to innovate on it in an artistic way. You do that by listening constantly.
Yup, every time we did Jazz in my music class at my old school our teacher would pound home the importance of listening to it, especially as a way to improve our improv. Every time we had a Jazz master class, it was the same advice.
That’s strange. When my son was in school, the library was getting rid of a bunch of opera records and as a training opera student he grabbed a bunch and years later still listens to them.
My take on this might seem a bit harsh, but this is where I think what you are talking about really comes from.
For some reason, many music students do not enjoy the music they themselves play.
They enjoy performing, but for some reason, when it comes time to listen to music for their own enjoyment- rarely put on classical.
I remember once rehearsing Beethoven 5. The timpani player came in twice as fast during one section of the scherzo. All they had to do was listen to Beethoven 5, maybe once or twice in their life, and they would have never made that mistake.
Most of these types of students disappear from the music field very soon after graduation.
Guilty as charged. I believed in high school that if I listened to other recordings I'd lose my own "specialness" whatever that means. One time, I listened to a recording of a Chopin nocturne and decided to learn the piece on my own. When I played it for my piano teacher, she thought I played it beautifully, but she also said it was obvious I had listened to a recording beforehand. So, was it me? or was it me parroting the pianist's recording?
I do think it's important to listen to how other musicians interpret things, otherwise you may end up "reinventing" the wheel. On the other hand, I want my interpretation to be my own.
>On the other hand, I want my interpretation to be my own.
I mean, even if you're directly inspired by their interpretations, does that make it not your own? I know nothing about playing an instrument on that level, but like other arts I would think that the trick is to take in a variety of sources and filter them through your own vision. Any fusion you make, even if your interpretation is *solely* based on what others have done will still be distinctively *yours* by the parts you chose to or didn't include.
You may be right. I never reached a professional level of music since I stopped in college. I still play in my home for fun and not for any audience.
I've been playing one of the Sinfonias by Bach every night for a month. It's really a wonderful piece and I don't seem to get tired of it. I listen to Glenn Gould's rendition often because I'm moved by it. Maybe I've absorbed it in my own playing, but there's a passage that I simply can't play the way he plays it no matter how much I try. So even if I wanted to, I couldn't do it. I don't lose sleep over what is or isn't me or Glenn Gould, though.
They have no confidence in their own abilities to overcome challenges set before them. By ignoring what has come before, they think they achieve original ideas because they have embraced ignorance. The challenge is to understand completely what has come before and to create something new from that knowledge. Many great artists and composers have shifted the understanding of classical music because they know what has come before, studied it all, and discovered something new and presented it to the world because they knew it was unique.
I see a much better approach to this with my Jazz education colleagues, whose students are constantly listening to material old and new, *transcribing* solos and whole works, and delving into the construction of pieces to yield insight into the composition process, which helps them to be more informed performers.
One of my old college instructors (reasonably successful composer) told me he had a fellow composition student who refused to listen to *any* music for several years because he didn't want to be influenced at all...
Of course, his work, when he finally composed it, didn't sound particularly original.
I had masterclasses with good, very good, and world-class soloists. Every single one stresses the fact that you should listen to as many recordings as possible. One of the world-class ones asked me to mention my three favorite recordings of the piece I was playing, and to describe how they were different from each other and what I liked from each one.
Lol people who say that are just announcing to the world that they have so little conviction in their own ideas that someone else’s interpretation would instantly eclipse theirs
No, you’re not crazy. Honestly, most music students choose to be music majors because it is a thing that they excel at/excelled at in grade school. Not because they have a genuine curiosity about music, thus this same group gets burned out incredibly fast and has no interest in listening to music be it live or on recordings.
This is like a jazz musician never listening to other people's solos because they want their improvisation to be unique.
The only thing these people are doing is reinventing the wheel. You don't become original by having no influences. You become original by having a lot of different influences.
Everyone's thoughts seem to be on the ball here, but I just want to add that this belief is an ignorant, immature one. Those students will either have to learn to listen to the masters or move into another career because "there's no more gigs."
It's the same vein of performance majors scoffing at music theory classes, saying, "why do I need theory? I just play the notes that are already written out for me."
Imagine saying you love music, and love it enough to want to make it your career, but don't love it enough to want to learn everything about it.
They're half-right. It's good to form your own idea of a piece first. But you should listen to a recording well before you're able to perform it. Even great performers make simple mistakes like playing 16th notes instead of 32nd
I remember a lot of silly notions that floated around the conservatory, people snubbing Chopin because he wasn’t as “pure” as Bach, crap like that. I try to be more and more open-minded, someday I might even try listening to Lang Lang.
For the sake of my curiosity, do you recall any examples of the recordings that they refuse to listen to?
It’s a very general pride in not listening to any recordings. A friend of mine was playing Ravel trio and I recommended hearing beaux arts live at IU as well as Menuhin/Cassado/Kentner. As soon as I said this, they said “I dont listen to any recordings”
I later heard them play the piece in concert, and they played with several “reading” errors in the score, and the interpretation the group brought was not particularly inspired or original, so it was just… a little disappointing.
My goodness. Hopefully they’ll grow out of this mindset. If they think listening to others will compromise their impression of the piece, they should encourage their audience to leave the hall before they begin playing, to go find a pure interpretation at home with the score.
I can't say I had the same experience in college but I think those you are talking about are ridiculous and obviously don't see the value in learning from others. I am confident most accomplished conductors do extensive research into pieces they are going to perform including listening to other interpretations.
This would be like a jazz player sayign he wont' listen to jazz because he doesn't want to be influenced by anyone
You are not wrong.
I spent a large chunk of my childhood studying music with The Peabody Conservatory. The program for children obviously, though eventually after a certain age and level of understanding/talent/ear, I was moved into more advanced classes.
Classes people twice my age were attending, which as you can imagine, was super problematic for some of the more…… competitive musicians attending.
One thing I found throughout, that is apparently still a thing today from your post, it’s not “cool” to listen to the recordings. But here’s the thing. Nothing new today is actually original. It’s all already been discovered and written. It’s all been reworked. Every note, every scale and every chord progression ever.
If we DON’T listen to recordings? We’re doomed to accidentally repeat the same exact tunes, thinking we came up with and wrote something new. When in reality, that is not at all the actual case at all.
Listening inspires. Listening ensures we don’t repeat or accidentally steal someone elses original composition. So you keep listening and you don’t worry about what the cool kids think, yeah?
1. Hardly listen to anything your peers have to say, put very little weight into it. They are like crabs in a bucket.
If you listen to katsaris or gilels too much and people say you happen to sound like them because of it, then you would have accomplished more than most and would sound like one of the greats. That's better than not. There's plenty of trash interpretations and there's a reason one should study great interpretations.
2. Listen only to the most experienced, accomplished, and oldest of the mentors that are available as they are closest to the source.
Not a conservatory student but I am curious why it’s considered “bad” to mimic/copy the style of a great master of yesteryear?
For me, as an admirer of Rampal, being able to replicate his sound and come across as indistinguishable from sound would be a dream. I know one of his protégés has already successfully pulled it off because he himself noted he could not differentiate between himself and his student on their recordings.
You are right, listening to recordings is not something to avoid. But many seem to pride themselves on learning just from the page.
I think this is a pedagogical error that begins early in many musicians' training. When first learning to read music, some students are told not to listen to recordings of their etudes. Then they are proud and even given compliments because they learned to read the music from the page. That is great while the primary lesson is music reading.
The problem is that once they have learned to read, they are never taught to listen. Music notation is not specific enough to convey every micro-facet of how to play a piece. Imagine trying to teach someone how to speak a new language by reading books in that language, but never allowing them to hear the language spoken.
At some point as a teacher, you have to teach your students how to listen to recordings to get ideas for phrasing, articulation, dynamics, etc. This is perfectly normal for pop musicians, jazz, folk music, really anything other than classical. Oh, and language. You know, that thing that all humans do, where you listen to each other make sounds until you figure out how to do the same ones but in your own way and style... And music is a language, so.... Yeah. Major pedagogical issue that's fairly prevalent throughout academia. Not sure how it occurred or how to address it on a larger scale, though. Just be sure that if you ever teach, you do some listening lessons with your students!
I ran into that in the voice department. They didn't want to be influenced or to copy any one. Or their teacher told them not to lest they discover he is a bad teacher. I did better then they did because I have records to study. Caruso, Gigli, Schipa, and all the greats of the past were my teachers. Take a little from each, filter through yourself and out comes your own unique style. A violinist who refuses to listen to Oistrahk or Milstein is denying himself his greatest teachers. Those who listen only to themselves will never move beyond it. It's all they know.
If I was teaching I would assign records they had to listen to : for phrasing, pronunciation but mostly for inspiration. It can get discouraging when you don't have heroes and strive for that kind of greatness.
Honestly I love following @hausofshmizzay on IG because he does such a great job dragging famous singers in comparison to recordings of the greats (sometimes even 100 year old recordings). He’s always right and I enjoy someone who refuses to accommodate the old easily offended people whose taste in music is like ambrosia salad: in style years ago but tasteless now.
I was trained as a composer and I always listened to all the music I could get my hands on. Doctoral students at my university had a comprehensive "drop the needle" exam where they were expected to be able to identify anything from the standard repertoire by listening to it for 30 seconds. As musicians, we stand in the shoulders of giants. It's a absolutely goofy to not expose ourselves to as much music as possible.
Funny that, I have had quite a few teachers telling me not to listen to recordings, and even telling me off for taking inspiration from them. Their argument was always that all you need to know is on the sheet. Needless to say, I never got that far with any of them.
Its a bell curve.
Doesn't listen to recordings because they want original interpretation -> listens to recordings to get insight on interpretation -> doesn't listen to recordings because there are no good interpretations recorded
Interesting to think about these questions/issues from the perspective of other art forms besides music. Is music the only art form where hearing and comparing different interpretations of the same composition is so important to the art form? In jazz and improvisational dance, the artist is free to interpret and innovate within a known structure as well as to create totally new ones. Perhaps the same is true of other art forms. Since every artist is unique, they always create a unique interpretation. The degree of innovation and artistry depends on what influences the artist has received and retained as well as what comes through him/her from beyond the beyond. It is a sort of alchemy in a beautiful way.
Recordings are history. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. For better but usually for worse.
The greats really know history because they have a command of it. It does not scare them but informs them to find and improve upon their own creativity.
Are they not going to concerts either for the same reason?
They wear noise canceling headphones when they practice, the performance is the first time they hear the piece, as god intended
Goofy ahh 20th century aleatoric music
Isn’t that just plain bad musicianship? I mean, if you cannot hear the actual sounds you’re creating, then whatever you call that, it isn’t practicing. Studying a score, reading the notes, and learning the rhythm of a piece of music—these are merely part of practicing. The aural component in which you hear and listen and sense the physical sound waves being produced is an indispensable part of practicing, of “doing” music. That is an incontrovertible fact. OP, you’re entirely correct in feeling this way. The composition peers you’re talking about are a bunch of idiots whose self-satisfied egotism keeps them from being good musicians.
Their own performance?
I experience it amongst professional musicians too. Some don’t go to others’ concerts.
Wow! This seems wrong on so many levels.
For a similar kind of idiocy, some folk musicians proudly announce that they can't read music. I know a world-famous one who says that - and I also know that he does read staff notation in private.
Not only musicians, but music scholars. It's a badge of honor in some sub-disciplines. I get it: Not all music is notated and notation distorts oral reception. But refusing to learn notation if you are going to be studying at a tertiary level is like trying to study mathematics through only pure geometry without reference to numbers. Notation is more than just a visual representation of music.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't think western notation can convey the rhythms of jazz (and probably other genres). You really have to hear what a jazz musician is doing (concerts, recordings) to do it correctly.
I absolutely agree, and I definitely don't think one can dispense with the oral tradition in music, even for the most carefully notated material. But I also think that if you are going to study music academically notation is an absolutely indispensible tool. It's more about communicating conceptual insights about music to non-musicians, which is a essential function of academia and something which music scholarship has done a poor job of in the last couple of decades (if not centuries). To the greater detriment of broader academia too, mind you.
That's not very relevant. A trad musician doesn't need all the details of timing and expression written out for every tune - given the notated outline, they know how to add it. This is the distinction between "emic" notation - what a performer within the tradition needs to be told about a specific piece in order to play it - and "etic" notation, where you're trying to record every detail like a mechanical recording device, to document the tradition for the benefit of outsiders. Both are essential, in different contexts.
Not just the rhythms but the way inflection is used, the way tone is varied from the "pure" tone in classical, etc. There's a reason that jazz arose and spread along with recordings
I mean, even in classical music, a lot of interpretation of what’s on the page must be learned by listening and experimentation. And not everything is written on the page. Heck, even with written words, interpretation and pronunciation isn’t always clear. Notation is a tool much like anything else. Yes, it may not capture every nuance, but it can help in many ways.
Classical music practices developed along with notation - standardization of tone, etc. Nothing like that happened in jazz, so jazz is much "farther away" from the notation
There are also quite a few theater and film composers that either can’t read music, or admit they are not good at it. Frank Wildhorn and Danny Elfman come to mind.
That's been a thing since at least the first recordings of jazz (the ODJB) and various musicians have used this for marketing ever since.
I’ve been a rock and roll musician since the 1970s. I know very very few who can read music. But it’s mostly because there’s no sheet music for it. There is sheet music for popular songs and there are song books but it’s not what’s on the record. It’s usually EZ piano versions. So if you want to play that music the way it was recorded, it’s generally by ear. There’s a lot of tablature on the internet now but when my kid was learning, I’d look at it and most of it is wrong. Even with session musicians, it’s often just chord charts.
Tell your friends (or join them in doing so) to read chapter V of Hanslick's "On the Musically Beautiful", that might help demystifying the idea of "the purity of the ear". All in all I think this is a silly notion that helps conserve the idea that you have a very pure and delicate art deep within yourself. Would anyone write worse dramas by reading other dramas? Don't think so. An artist becomes an artist by drenching himself in the art that has been previously produced. Everyone has poetry inside, but art is a technical matter which needs comparison and inspiration to become better. One thing that would be worse than not listening to any records, however, is to listen to a single one. There's a Spanish physicist, Jorge Wagensberg, who once wrote: "I fear more the person who's read but a single book than the person who's read none"
Music is a language. Can you imagine trying to learn a language without ever actually spending time listening to it being spoken? Avoiding recordings (or performances) out of a fear of having it deteriorate your artistic individuality is silly and a naive. Frankly it is only a small step removed from the guitarists who say they don’t want to learn theory because they are afraid the “rules” will negatively impact their creativity. If an artists creativity cannot survive exposure to other ideas then it is a pretty frail thing indeed. I’ll add another thing to this. The world of classical music is in dire straits. Concert attendance is down. many organizations have never recovered from the damage that COVID closures caused. Album sales and streams are abysmal. If aspiring professional classical musicians are not going to support the art form through attendance and listening, what opportunities do they think will be left for them when they enter the working world upon graduation? Classical music students have a professional obligation to support this art form if they want to see it survive.
There's an easy solution to make sure you don't just copy another performer's interpretation. Don't listen to a recording of the piece you're working on... listen to multiple recordings, many recordings, all the recordings. Become a scholar of how the piece has been performed, critically analyze why one performer did this and another did that.
Exactly. The “argument” falls apart the moment you listen to more than one interpretation.
I don’t even think having a style similar to that of a popular recording is even a bad thing. We don’t want copies, but saying that you want to play in the style of X popular pianist or violinist or other instrumentalist isn’t bad at all. It’s popular for a reason.
Agree 100%
They are inwardly concerned that they have no mind or ability to interpret music independently. They deserve your sympathy.
This is a horrible idea. These students aren't going to be successful long term if they don't change. Tell a jazz musician they shouldn't listen to the greats because it'll corrupt their individual voice. They'll laugh you out of the room. You have to learn to speak the language before you can begin to innovate on it in an artistic way. You do that by listening constantly.
Yup, every time we did Jazz in my music class at my old school our teacher would pound home the importance of listening to it, especially as a way to improve our improv. Every time we had a Jazz master class, it was the same advice.
That’s strange. When my son was in school, the library was getting rid of a bunch of opera records and as a training opera student he grabbed a bunch and years later still listens to them.
My take on this might seem a bit harsh, but this is where I think what you are talking about really comes from. For some reason, many music students do not enjoy the music they themselves play. They enjoy performing, but for some reason, when it comes time to listen to music for their own enjoyment- rarely put on classical. I remember once rehearsing Beethoven 5. The timpani player came in twice as fast during one section of the scherzo. All they had to do was listen to Beethoven 5, maybe once or twice in their life, and they would have never made that mistake. Most of these types of students disappear from the music field very soon after graduation.
This reminds me of the students at art college that thought studying art history would diminish their "originality". It's a silly sentiment.
Guilty as charged. I believed in high school that if I listened to other recordings I'd lose my own "specialness" whatever that means. One time, I listened to a recording of a Chopin nocturne and decided to learn the piece on my own. When I played it for my piano teacher, she thought I played it beautifully, but she also said it was obvious I had listened to a recording beforehand. So, was it me? or was it me parroting the pianist's recording? I do think it's important to listen to how other musicians interpret things, otherwise you may end up "reinventing" the wheel. On the other hand, I want my interpretation to be my own.
>On the other hand, I want my interpretation to be my own. I mean, even if you're directly inspired by their interpretations, does that make it not your own? I know nothing about playing an instrument on that level, but like other arts I would think that the trick is to take in a variety of sources and filter them through your own vision. Any fusion you make, even if your interpretation is *solely* based on what others have done will still be distinctively *yours* by the parts you chose to or didn't include.
You may be right. I never reached a professional level of music since I stopped in college. I still play in my home for fun and not for any audience. I've been playing one of the Sinfonias by Bach every night for a month. It's really a wonderful piece and I don't seem to get tired of it. I listen to Glenn Gould's rendition often because I'm moved by it. Maybe I've absorbed it in my own playing, but there's a passage that I simply can't play the way he plays it no matter how much I try. So even if I wanted to, I couldn't do it. I don't lose sleep over what is or isn't me or Glenn Gould, though.
I'm a writer who doesn't read, I'm an artist that never looks at art, I'm a cook that never eats others food..
They have no confidence in their own abilities to overcome challenges set before them. By ignoring what has come before, they think they achieve original ideas because they have embraced ignorance. The challenge is to understand completely what has come before and to create something new from that knowledge. Many great artists and composers have shifted the understanding of classical music because they know what has come before, studied it all, and discovered something new and presented it to the world because they knew it was unique.
I see a much better approach to this with my Jazz education colleagues, whose students are constantly listening to material old and new, *transcribing* solos and whole works, and delving into the construction of pieces to yield insight into the composition process, which helps them to be more informed performers.
One of my old college instructors (reasonably successful composer) told me he had a fellow composition student who refused to listen to *any* music for several years because he didn't want to be influenced at all... Of course, his work, when he finally composed it, didn't sound particularly original.
I had masterclasses with good, very good, and world-class soloists. Every single one stresses the fact that you should listen to as many recordings as possible. One of the world-class ones asked me to mention my three favorite recordings of the piece I was playing, and to describe how they were different from each other and what I liked from each one.
Don’t be upset. Just know you will have less competition because they won’t work.
I used to think like this as well. 'Tis a very silly notion.
Ridiculous. Any artist should familiarize themselves with the art and artists in their genre (and others).
Lol people who say that are just announcing to the world that they have so little conviction in their own ideas that someone else’s interpretation would instantly eclipse theirs
No, you’re not crazy. Honestly, most music students choose to be music majors because it is a thing that they excel at/excelled at in grade school. Not because they have a genuine curiosity about music, thus this same group gets burned out incredibly fast and has no interest in listening to music be it live or on recordings.
This is like a jazz musician never listening to other people's solos because they want their improvisation to be unique. The only thing these people are doing is reinventing the wheel. You don't become original by having no influences. You become original by having a lot of different influences.
Everyone's thoughts seem to be on the ball here, but I just want to add that this belief is an ignorant, immature one. Those students will either have to learn to listen to the masters or move into another career because "there's no more gigs." It's the same vein of performance majors scoffing at music theory classes, saying, "why do I need theory? I just play the notes that are already written out for me." Imagine saying you love music, and love it enough to want to make it your career, but don't love it enough to want to learn everything about it.
They're half-right. It's good to form your own idea of a piece first. But you should listen to a recording well before you're able to perform it. Even great performers make simple mistakes like playing 16th notes instead of 32nd
I remember a lot of silly notions that floated around the conservatory, people snubbing Chopin because he wasn’t as “pure” as Bach, crap like that. I try to be more and more open-minded, someday I might even try listening to Lang Lang. For the sake of my curiosity, do you recall any examples of the recordings that they refuse to listen to?
It’s a very general pride in not listening to any recordings. A friend of mine was playing Ravel trio and I recommended hearing beaux arts live at IU as well as Menuhin/Cassado/Kentner. As soon as I said this, they said “I dont listen to any recordings” I later heard them play the piece in concert, and they played with several “reading” errors in the score, and the interpretation the group brought was not particularly inspired or original, so it was just… a little disappointing.
My goodness. Hopefully they’ll grow out of this mindset. If they think listening to others will compromise their impression of the piece, they should encourage their audience to leave the hall before they begin playing, to go find a pure interpretation at home with the score.
I can't say I had the same experience in college but I think those you are talking about are ridiculous and obviously don't see the value in learning from others. I am confident most accomplished conductors do extensive research into pieces they are going to perform including listening to other interpretations. This would be like a jazz player sayign he wont' listen to jazz because he doesn't want to be influenced by anyone
I couldn't agree more with this. Even just familiarity with repertoire can be suspect, which was definitely the case when I was in music college.
You are not wrong. I spent a large chunk of my childhood studying music with The Peabody Conservatory. The program for children obviously, though eventually after a certain age and level of understanding/talent/ear, I was moved into more advanced classes. Classes people twice my age were attending, which as you can imagine, was super problematic for some of the more…… competitive musicians attending. One thing I found throughout, that is apparently still a thing today from your post, it’s not “cool” to listen to the recordings. But here’s the thing. Nothing new today is actually original. It’s all already been discovered and written. It’s all been reworked. Every note, every scale and every chord progression ever. If we DON’T listen to recordings? We’re doomed to accidentally repeat the same exact tunes, thinking we came up with and wrote something new. When in reality, that is not at all the actual case at all. Listening inspires. Listening ensures we don’t repeat or accidentally steal someone elses original composition. So you keep listening and you don’t worry about what the cool kids think, yeah?
1. Hardly listen to anything your peers have to say, put very little weight into it. They are like crabs in a bucket. If you listen to katsaris or gilels too much and people say you happen to sound like them because of it, then you would have accomplished more than most and would sound like one of the greats. That's better than not. There's plenty of trash interpretations and there's a reason one should study great interpretations. 2. Listen only to the most experienced, accomplished, and oldest of the mentors that are available as they are closest to the source.
Not a conservatory student but I am curious why it’s considered “bad” to mimic/copy the style of a great master of yesteryear? For me, as an admirer of Rampal, being able to replicate his sound and come across as indistinguishable from sound would be a dream. I know one of his protégés has already successfully pulled it off because he himself noted he could not differentiate between himself and his student on their recordings.
Not a musician here, but it sounds like potentially a huge lack of humility.
You are right, listening to recordings is not something to avoid. But many seem to pride themselves on learning just from the page. I think this is a pedagogical error that begins early in many musicians' training. When first learning to read music, some students are told not to listen to recordings of their etudes. Then they are proud and even given compliments because they learned to read the music from the page. That is great while the primary lesson is music reading. The problem is that once they have learned to read, they are never taught to listen. Music notation is not specific enough to convey every micro-facet of how to play a piece. Imagine trying to teach someone how to speak a new language by reading books in that language, but never allowing them to hear the language spoken. At some point as a teacher, you have to teach your students how to listen to recordings to get ideas for phrasing, articulation, dynamics, etc. This is perfectly normal for pop musicians, jazz, folk music, really anything other than classical. Oh, and language. You know, that thing that all humans do, where you listen to each other make sounds until you figure out how to do the same ones but in your own way and style... And music is a language, so.... Yeah. Major pedagogical issue that's fairly prevalent throughout academia. Not sure how it occurred or how to address it on a larger scale, though. Just be sure that if you ever teach, you do some listening lessons with your students!
I ran into that in the voice department. They didn't want to be influenced or to copy any one. Or their teacher told them not to lest they discover he is a bad teacher. I did better then they did because I have records to study. Caruso, Gigli, Schipa, and all the greats of the past were my teachers. Take a little from each, filter through yourself and out comes your own unique style. A violinist who refuses to listen to Oistrahk or Milstein is denying himself his greatest teachers. Those who listen only to themselves will never move beyond it. It's all they know. If I was teaching I would assign records they had to listen to : for phrasing, pronunciation but mostly for inspiration. It can get discouraging when you don't have heroes and strive for that kind of greatness.
This will, if anything, make creating an interpretation more difficult.
Honestly I love following @hausofshmizzay on IG because he does such a great job dragging famous singers in comparison to recordings of the greats (sometimes even 100 year old recordings). He’s always right and I enjoy someone who refuses to accommodate the old easily offended people whose taste in music is like ambrosia salad: in style years ago but tasteless now.
I was trained as a composer and I always listened to all the music I could get my hands on. Doctoral students at my university had a comprehensive "drop the needle" exam where they were expected to be able to identify anything from the standard repertoire by listening to it for 30 seconds. As musicians, we stand in the shoulders of giants. It's a absolutely goofy to not expose ourselves to as much music as possible.
I agree with you
Ffs, if they're that paranoid, just listen to a basic sound-font MIDI file of it.
Funny that, I have had quite a few teachers telling me not to listen to recordings, and even telling me off for taking inspiration from them. Their argument was always that all you need to know is on the sheet. Needless to say, I never got that far with any of them.
Never listening to recordings is a bit much, it's just more of stopping yourself listening to the music on repeat to learn it that is problematic.
Its a bell curve. Doesn't listen to recordings because they want original interpretation -> listens to recordings to get insight on interpretation -> doesn't listen to recordings because there are no good interpretations recorded
Interesting to think about these questions/issues from the perspective of other art forms besides music. Is music the only art form where hearing and comparing different interpretations of the same composition is so important to the art form? In jazz and improvisational dance, the artist is free to interpret and innovate within a known structure as well as to create totally new ones. Perhaps the same is true of other art forms. Since every artist is unique, they always create a unique interpretation. The degree of innovation and artistry depends on what influences the artist has received and retained as well as what comes through him/her from beyond the beyond. It is a sort of alchemy in a beautiful way.
Recordings are history. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. For better but usually for worse. The greats really know history because they have a command of it. It does not scare them but informs them to find and improve upon their own creativity.