Marcelo Kayath article and videos

[byronz]

A very interesting point of view about the the guitar's history and good proposals for its future

http://guitarsalon.com/blog/?p=1412

Rare videos of Marcelo performing.
http://guitarsalon.com/blog/?p=3511

[PaulHardy]

I have to say I found this a bit superficial and simplistic, and not especially developed from his thoughts when he was a professional player al those years ago.

I almost laughed when Kayath outlined reasons for the decline of classical music overall -- "...stress (and laziness) of leaving home and going to the concert hall, and the risk of muggings, etc." You can't open a newspaper without reading about a mugging outside the Wigmore Hall it seems!

In our PoMo, culturally relativist, aggressively democratised*, society classical music, i.e. mostly-Western art music, is no longer a legitimate aspiration of people with some education who are interested in self-improvement -- indeed the notion of self-improvement sounds very Victorian in an age where achieving more "experiences" is the goal. Why spend a thousand hours learning about counterpoint, or art history, or architecture, or whatever it may be, when you can spend a few thousand pounds and go bungee jumping in New Zealand or swimming with dolphins or any other "must-do" visceral experience some Sunday paper's colour supplement turns into a bucket list.

So therefore fewer organisations or individuals see supporting the arts as beneficial, and schools (as Kayath has said) run away from educating in classical traditions. Classical music does indeed have it bad.

The guitar probably profited in the counter-cultural '60s & '70s because of its position slightly outside classical music's canon. It would be interesting to know how many of those myriads seen by Jack Duarte at guitar recitals ever went to see a conventional string quartet, or similar. Now that this population has aging rock musicians and Windham Hill descendants to listen to, they have probably abandoned any interest in "classical" music per se, so the guitar probably has a more truly representative slice of the smaller classical cake.

His appeal for repertoire is empty; what does he recommend? He dismissed all of the Andres Segovia Archive in a few words, and makes no mention at all of the Generation of 1927 for example. Iznaola's great work here offers a fruitful contrast to the Spanish-inflected repertoire which Segovia inspired.

I have a lot to say about his comments on Williams but that'll be in another post.

Hmm... I need to go & get some breakfast and chill.

Paul


*democracy and the choice agenda denounce any artistic endeavour which aspires to elevate its audience as elitist and patriarchal