Imagine that a ghost arrives on Earth who erases all music of the past. Every score, every recording, every history book, every performance of every single piece of music written in the past is suddenly and mysteriously vanished. You can recall names of great composers (e.g. Mozart, Handel) but you can recall nothing of their artistic contributions. What is now available is only music of the present day in October 2020.
First, discuss any ethical implications of playing music exclusively of the past. Then please write about the music you would then perform on your instrument and include any links to this music, if possible. Why are you including the music you select? Finally, offer your cogent opinion on this quote from Nietzsche:
If you are to venture to interpret the past, you can only do so out of the fullest exertion of the present. Only when you put forth your noblest qualities in all their strength will you divine what is worth knowing and preserving in the past. Like to like! Otherwise, you will draw the past down on you.
A lot of people do play exclusively music of the past, and this has made a sustainable lifestyle for many people. But I think the consequences to exclusively doing it would just mean for music to not progress. Musical ideas are always being copied, interpreted in different ways, and progressing through time. So if past music was to vanish from us, it’s hard to say what would happen to our music other than we’d have to start all over again. Also I don’t understand if you mean all the music of the past regarding to every genre? or do you mean just Western Classical music? But i’m with going every genre. So with that, I would perform this song I enjoy called “going out” by Role Model, I’m including this because I think it would be fun to interpret in my own way, and its one of the only songs I know that came out this October. It’s definitely a different type of singing that i’m used to, but I think singing in this pop style would be really fun to try out. Lastly, what I got from Nietzsches’ quote was basically to not copy music of the past. What that means for my major (voice) is to not resort to a recording of someone singing the piece i’m about to learn. Not portray what I think the poet felt in that moment they wrote the poem, but to learn the music with nothing but the sheet music in front of me, and reflect my own substituted thoughts and experiences as to why I might feel a certain way in the piece. This doesn’t mean to not listen to any recording at all, but make it original in my own way first before listening to other interpretations.
To reflect on what I wrote before, I’d also like to throw into the question, would we still know how to be an artist? If all the music of the past was to vanish, does that mean everyone who knew how to play piano, guitar, sing etc would still know how to do it? You say only the music in October 2020 onward would be remembered.. so my guess is that we would still know how to do our art, but without remembering all the music that got us to the position we are in. Which is weird to think about because that means all those licks people know on the guitar, vocal styles people sing would all still be there, so just through muscle memory, people would probably be recreating a lot of old music without knowing, in their own interpreted style of course, but I could see a lot of famous melodic and rhythmic lines coming back. Also some cool songs I would also sing that just came out would be “LA DON’T LOOK GOOD ON U” by ASTN and “Dream” by Shawn Mendes. I enjoy this style of music and would go into it if I wasn’t pursuing classical voice right now. Thank you so much for this wonderful class and I will hopefully see you around sometime Mr. Boyle.
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