Tribute bands are the new classical music: and here’s what I’d like to play..
Reading Nick Carr’s splendid rant about the idiocy of those who think that iTunes and its ilk are the apotheosis of the music industry, because “they have split music down to its component piece.. the [individual] track” brought together a couple of thoughts for me.
The other evening I went to a friends’ house, where they were giving a recital - a string quartet. As they’re professional players - one half of the Alberni Quartet, in fact - and one of them was playing a Stradivarius, and as supper was laid on as well, you could say that it was about as good as “going round to a friend’s house to listen to some music” gets.
Interestingly, they played two complete pieces (Mozartr and Schubert) and then, as a sort of mini-encore, played the fourth movement of Ravel’s F major quartet. I love the piece (particularly the second movement, but hearing the fourth on its own was almost jarring.
(Enjoy the second movement. Go on, you’ll like it, even though it’s not the Alberni doing it:
)
But classical players are a shrinking pool. Except… ask yourself, what precisely do they do? Re-play music written by someone else, precisely. Which is exactly what tribute bands do. There are dozens of them - read last Friday’s Guardian article, the copycats who got the cream. And they go out and they slog away, re-playing music written decades ago in some cases, note-perfect, intonation-perfect.
And the names are so splendid. Green Dayz. B-Muse. I think I’d enjoy the job of lead guitar in B-Muse. The guitar work’s not that hard. It’s just the vocals might be a stretch. And I’d have to wear a syrup. And stand in a trench. But at least with their repertoire, you could cook up a storming gig every night.
Weird to think that rock music has created its own spinoff classical universe. But that’s what classics are, aren’t they? The group doing repeating Genesis’s Supper’s Ready is doing a 20-minute piece, one-off, and the audience will know if they go the slightest bit wrong.
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
- musicplasma.com: find related artists, just like that (25 November 2004; score: 54.9%)
- John Peel 1939-2004 (27 October 2004; score: 52.09%)
- At Netimperative: Apple's plans for music videos (19 May 2005; score: 42.78%)
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May 24th, 2007 at 10:37 am
Ah, so you missed the Pink Floyd evening in Saffron Walden town hall … That was a lot of fun, if not quite the Alberni Quartet.
May 24th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
well.. im not into classical music but that video made em realize something. It is only now I learned to appreciate classical music. It made me feel better. I don’t know why but the feeling is really light. Now I must agree that this kind of music uplifts the soul… I should try going to some show sometime…thanks!
June 7th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
I’m going to violently disagree. Classical musicians do not set out to copy, note and intonation perfect, other people’s interpretation. There is, to be sure, a classical repertoire, but although classical composers are and were of course musicians, in most cases they couldn’t play the entire piece themselves (Beethoven was a nice pianist, AIUI, but he wasn’t out there playing his #5 symphony by himself). Every classical musician tries to bring a fresh interpretation to the established repertoire. In some cases, they even have quite a bit of latitude, as in the violin solo toward the end of Beethoven’s violin concerto.
Plus, in general, the classical composers are all dead, with no surviving recordings.
Tribute bands, on the other hand, may be - I’m sure, in fact, have to be - very good musicians. But they are doing the opposite of classical musicians: they are not trying to breathe fresh life into familiar pieces (like, say, Maggie Smith rendering “A *handbag?” to an audience who have been waiting for an hour to hear how she was going to possibly surprise us), but to make a perfect copy as if they were digital computers. The goal is not to surprise or to take a fresh look, but to *comfort* with the familiar. Elvis isn’t really dead, Abba isn’t really broken up, and small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri really are small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.
I say this as an interpreter myself; in my entire career as a musician I’ve written *one* tune and maybe two parodies of old songs. I perform other people’s music, both new and old, and I am always trying to come at it in a way that makes people hear it differently or hear something new in something they think they already know. It’s hard work, and I respect the people who are good at it.
wg