ok richard,
forget the whole 'tenor vs. counter-tenor' thing (that was just an
example).
as simply put as i can, the point i was trying to make was that the
relative difficulty of anything (person, place, thing, vegetable, mineral,
animal, activity, etc.) does not make it of more value than that which is
less difficult. it simply makes it more difficult. in other words,
difficulty does not equal value.
as applied to somewhat of a theme of the current threads, a particular
genre's difficulty does not, in itself, make that genre more valuable than
those genres of less difficulty. specifically, while we might all agree
that singing and being heard over an orchestra, without the assistance of
amplification, is more difficult than singing into a microphone and being
eletronically amplified, that alone is not enough to say that the former is
of more value than the latter.
value is determined by need or want. for example: if i sit in the
last row of the last balcony and i want to hear someone singing like a
whisper, i'm not going to want to hear someone doing this in the same way
they would sing over an orchestra without electronic assistance (unless
someone has figured out a new way to do this), i'm going to want to hear them
doing it in a microphone. as noble as the former's efforts might be, it is
not what i want (in this case) and therefore, the efforts of the former are
of no value to me no matter what difficulties they might overcome.
i hope any examples i may have given have only served the point rather
than further obscuring it.
mike
|
