Web Development by Alistair Robinson

I have two reasons for the recent lack of blog action, and I mention them because they’re quite interesting (though I feel that neither will counteract the suspicion that if one takes four months off from work then one has time to write blog posts pretty frequently): I was preparing for my saxophone grade three jazz exam; and I’ve become addicted to Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/alistairrobinson/)

Last time I mentioned the sax exam in these pages, I had just committed to do it. I said at the time that I had opted to play All Blues, Autumn Leaves and Mopti, but I decided not long after to forget about Autumn Leaves and play Lady Be Good instead. It was a good mixture of styles. Starting off with the understated, yet relentless and bluesy, Miles tune; then into the lyrical, cutesy quirkiness of Gershwin; and rounding it all off with the big, ballsy expressive Don Cherry number (in which I think I was sounding like I was playing tenor rather than alto, and in my head I think I heard it played by a tenor man like Pharoah Sanders).

Well the exam has been and gone and I got the result earlier this week: 139 out of 150, which is classed as a distinction. I was certainly hoping for a distinction, but I reckoned I was right on the borderline at 130, and was prepared to settle for a merit. So I was pleasantly surprised. I think I’ll jump to grade five next, if I decide to continue down this route. Unfortunately the jazz grades stop at five with the ABRSM, while their traditional, “classical” grades go up to eight. Trinity Guildhall’s jazz grades go up eight, and they offer the option of performing a piece that you’ve composed yourself, so that might be the way to go.

Or I could just stick with the ABRSM and go classical. Well, just so long as I don’t have to play Flight of the Bumblebee.

The thought of going down the traditional route leads me to my latest endeavour in cultivating my musical taste-buds. I’m reading Musicophilia by celebrity neurologist Oliver Sacks, and I recently read Anthony Storr’s Music and the Mind. It’s clear that both of them are quite musically accomplished, and they write with authority on the music of Haydn, Chopin, Beethoven and so on. For them, the world of music is dominated by the pre-1900 stuff, and I’ve become eager to have another try at appreciating it. I love literature and art right through from the Renaissance, so why can’t I get on with the great music of those times?

So I’ve been listening to Beethoven’s sixth symphony and one of JS Bach’s violin concertos. Yes, I like them (the second movement of the violin concerto gets me pretty ecstatic), but I do tend to feel there’s something missing, at least for my own taste. Sacks confesses that, although he plays Chopin and understands music deeply, he finds the complex rhythms and syncopations of jazz and Latin music “confusing”, because he was brought up with mainly Western classical music. But those rhythms and syncopations are absolutely essential to my world of music, not to mention the jaggedness and dissonance of rock and modern straight music*. Unlike Sacks, I was brought up with Zappa, the Beatles, Hendrix and Ella Fitzgerald.

I’m really a twentieth century boy, and it seems very often that it’s only twentieth (and twenty-first) century music that can do it for me. Or at least music outside of the pre-1900 Western straight music tradition. Maybe the rhythms are just too simple for me, the tonality too dull? I can only go so long without a nice meaty chunk of 7/4 time, or a big splash of minor seconds.

Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t given up: I’ve got several Haydn symphonies to get through.

I’ve discovered the delights of Flickr, and spend my days refreshing my Flickr page to see if I’ve got any more comments on my photos. I’m desperate and pathetic: it must be a true addiction. A few of my pictures are littered over this post. Go see more at my Flickr photos

*Straight music: music that comes out of the continuous tradition of musical education and training in Europe and the Americas, centred around prestigious music schools and university music departments and grounded in a study of classics like Bach and Mozart, and in a study of counterpoint, classical harmony, cadences and so on, and which is written mainly for orchestras or ensembles of the traditional acoustic orchestral instruments.

Some call post-1900 straight music “modern classical” but that doesn’t really work, because “classical” is really a musico-historical term; and the alternative “serious music” suggests that jazz, for instance, is frivolous. I’ve been using “modern orchestral”, but in this era more than others composers are writing for smaller ensembles than orchestras and more unconventional instrumentations than are usually found in orchestras, so “orchestral” can’t be quite right.

So I’ve opted for “straight music,” although it, too, is hardly objective and accurate, revealing as it does the prejudice of the jazz world that came up with the term – some of which, however, is probably justified.

Tags: abrsm, alto, classical, grades, jazz, music, photography, photos, practice, sax, saxophone
Posted in aesthetics, music | 3 Comments »