Murder by Earplug

Worse than being bodily stabbed to death by the innocuous little buggers is the death we endure every time we plug ourselves in: the death of tone.

At least there is an actual corpse to show in cases of bodily murder.  Who is the victim in the other case?  Well, Mozart, for example.

When are music teachers going to own up to their own insensitivity to tone and stop inflicting "easy" Mozart on their students?

Yesterday I heard two different students play two different movements of the Piano Concerto in A, K. 488, which I first played (with orchestra) at age 15.  I retain memories of the piece's agony.  I did not know when I played it that it was agony, but I felt the agony of the sounds--not the themes, the sounds themselves.

I had a chat on the way out with a self-taught singer/songwriter about the key of A major as an embodiment of physical pain.  Turns out she had found herself plus other musicians in the studio two days before having to transpose a song from B-flat to A.  It was so entirely altered by the change of key that they had to rearrange the whole thing.  She knew exactly what I was talking about.

What does it show?  Ear  Ear  Ear    no plug   Ear  Ear  Ear