Thursday, October 2, 2014

Swimming In It

That's how a friend describes what it is like to get together with fellow amateurs to enjoy a morning of music-making.  They are fortunate to play an assortment of instruments that suggests repertoire new to most if not all of them--recorders, violins.  This keeps them from that most unsatisfying business of bumbling through beaty Classical period cliches.

Having once heard the Classical period's gems turned into arithmetic exercises - and I did spell beaty correctly - it is very difficult to reverse the dynamic and get them to flow like an element in which anyone would voluntarily swim.

The challenge has represented a lifetime of work for me, personally.  I always thought (ha! ha!) that once having figured that out everyone would be overwhelmed.  Uh!uh!  The opposite seems to be the case.

What?  You don't want to sound like everyone else?  What on earth is the matter with you!  (yes, it is an intentional ! and not ?)