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Re: Brass-band Digest V4 #125

To: <brass-band@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Brass-band Digest V4 #125
From: "Alec Gallagher" <alec@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 10 May 1998 21:13:08 +0100
Priority: low
Reply-to: brass-band@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Cookson <RichardCookson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: INTERNET:brass-band@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@smsltd.demon.co.uk
<brass-band@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@smsltd.demon.co.uk>
Date: 09 May 1998 17:57
Subject: Brass-band Digest V4 #125

Message text written by INTERNET:Alec Gallagher

>Isn't up to you, the musician, to provide the challenge to the public?
Music would never develop if  musicians and composers did not provide the
listening public with new challenges.  Lead, man, don't follow - it's your
duty!!<

All very good in theory, but the fact is, the park concert going public
don't want to be challenged!

I disagree - I don't believe that the park concert going public know what
they want.  The typical park audience, in my experience,  consists for the
most part of people who went for a stroll in the park, just happened to find
the band there, and stopped to listen.  For that reason, they are not
particularly critical of the music you play, provided that it is relatively
tuneful, entertains them and holds their attention.  After all, for many,
perhaps even most of them, a live performance is a novel experience - it is
perhaps difficult for people like us, who make live music twice a week, to
understand that, for so many people, experiencing live music is a rarity.

When I go to park concerts I expect (and want) to hear marches, overtures
and selections etc. (As an aside I would like to say that I also used to
like hearing the classic 19th century waltzes but brass bands sadly seem to
play these much less in the last few years.)

Oh dear.  There is nothing wrong with the music described above, of course,
but it does rather reinforce the perception that, as some enlightened souls
are trying to drag brass bands, kicking and screaming, into the twentieth
century, the rest of the musical world is about to step into the
twenty-first.  I'm not suggesting that we should be playing 'Now That's What
I Call Atonal Music 94' on the bandstands this summer, but most bands will,
I think,  be doing *some* items which the Victorians would not recognise -
e.g. Gershwin, Berlin, John Williams, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Gordon Langford,
lighter items from our 'home-grown' composers such as Philip Sparke, Goff
Richards,  and so on.  Not *too* radical, I think.

Richard Cookson
EEb Bass
Besses o' th' Barn

Best wishes

Alec

________________________
Alec Gallagher
alec@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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