Dear Lloyd and Vocalisters:
Your comments about pop music made me think again! While I enjoyed hearing rock
and roll (coming from the 50's generation), it was mainly as a sport, or
recreational exercise to keep up with the Joneses. (my peers) I enjoyed recently
hearing an interview with one of the writers of some famous R&R songs, including
"Get a Job," "Charlie Brown," and enjoyed hearing his discussion of his genre as
well as his financial up's and down's, lol! HOWEVER, I do remember reading a
statement which stuck somewhere about the idea that folk music and pop music,
notably R&R, gospel, and blues as being a segment of the more or less untrained
musical element because they use only a few chords and those untrained can
easily reproduce these sounds. That made sense to me, since most of the friends
I had who were into R&R and blues were not musically educated to a high degree,
and were not schooled in the classics. Now, there are many songs (seems
especially songs...) that I desire to teach my own voice students who are not
trained in the classics as a way of getting them into the classics. Those would
be such songs from the Broadway musicals. As far as Stephen Sondheim, by way of
acknowledging one's lifetime to be hopefully a progressive endeavor, after
having heard a discussion of Stephen Sondheim on an NPR program, and hearing his
music discussed as brilliant, innovative, and the most progressive and wonderful
composer in the near-current world of music, I decided to give him a better
listen. And guess what happened? I, too, learned to incline towards his music
also. All this after I thought the only good composer was Mozart years ago, and
after telling this to my piano teacher, he told me not to think that Beethoven,
Brahms and Schumann were washouts either. (This pianist was the resident pianist
with a famous NYC orchestra) Cindi
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