[78-L] Well EXCUUUUUUSE MEEEEE!!!

[Michael Biel]

  On 9/17/2010 11:40 AM, Matthew Duncan wrote:
> Mantovani may convey some emotion (not that I have ever detected any in his
> work) but I find no intensity there...that's what I look for in music as well as
> emotion(s)...

Every performer you mention is a soloist.  The three classical composers 
you mention wrote solo works and also were famous solo performers in 
their own right.  You are comparing them to an ensemble leader, and then 
to the easy listening format in general.  The operative word is EASY.  
The only emotion that an easy listening performance is supposed to 
project is detachment.  Don't blame something that is designed NOT to 
present excitement for not expressing excitement.  There are more 
emotions other than excitement, which apparently is what you are looking 
for in music.  Most performers have some nitch that they do better than 
they can do others.  There are very few on your list that I would choose 
to listen to if I want to just chill out.

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com

> Both intensity and emotion(s) are to be found in the work of artists and pieces
> of music I like...Son House, Charley Patton, Elmore James, Howlin' Wolf, Otis
> Spann, Louis Armstrong, Albert Ammons, Jerry Lee Lewis, Frank Hutchison, Peggy
> Lee, Billie Holiday, Blind Boy Fuller, Curtis Jones, Sonny Burgess, Ray Taylor,
> Warren Smith, Johnny Cash, Onie Wheeler, Dock Boggs, Vince Taylor, Gene Vincent,
> Little Richard....Beethoven, Chopin, Rachmaninov....
>
> But not Mantovani or any other purveyor of Easy Listening in my view...
>
> But I respect the fact that anyone can like what they want...but I'll never dig
> Mantovani, Stanley Black etc...
>
> Regards,
> Matthew Duncan
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Kristjan Saag<saag at telia.com>
> To: 78-L Mail List<78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
> Sent: Fri, 17 September, 2010 12:32:08
> Subject: Re: [78-L] Well EXCUUUUUUSE MEEEEE!!!
>
> Steven C. Barr wrote:
>> Point being that so-called "Easy Listening" (an actual radio category at one
>> time?!) was music carefully designed to offend as few listeners as possible,
>> while NOT inspiring any of its hearers...?! It is effectively music stripped
>> of
>> any emotional content...and the latter is and always has been the primary
>> purpose of its existence...?!
>>
> ----
> I like the question mark that ends your comment.
> It saves me the trouble to point out that music may also have other
> purposes, such as ritual, descriptive, distracting etc, none of which is
> inferior, per se, to being "of emotional content".
>
> But what is "emotional content"?
> Well, emotions associated with music could be of several types:
> 1) the personal emotions that the composer/ lyricist/ arranger/
> performer puts into it
> 2) the emotions that any of the former hopes to trigger among his listeners
> 3) the actual emotions perceived by the listeners
> 4) the emotions thought to be perceived by the listeners
> (The latter could be, for instance, the observations made by people who
> mistake head banging music listeners to express aggression, whereas
> they, subjectively, perceive and express joy.)
>
> Where is the "emotional content" in this spectrum?
> Am I, as a listener, justified to feel delight in Mantovani's music, if
> he (which I doubt) deliberately produced music to be without emotional
> content? Or is there a judge out there, somewhere near Toronto, perhaps,
> or in London or in the L A area, to decide where the emotional content
> in different types of music lies?
> Wouldn't it be better to allow all listeners, educated or not,
> sophisticated or not, cool or not, to define the qualities they find in
> different types of music, respect their stories and, perhaps, learn from
> their experience instead of diminishing it as bad taste and ignorance?
>
> What puzzles me, in these discussions, is the notion that many listeners
> seem to be unable to encompass different types of listening within
> themselves. The "sophisticated" listener looks for complexity in all
> kinds of music, and dismisses the music where he doesn't find it. The
> "primitive" listener, on the other hand - we don't find them on this
> list, of course - is provoked and disturbed by too much complexity. The
> "emotional" listener fails to perceive moods as emotions and rules out
> music that isn't overtly expressive. Etc.
> Relax! It's not a competition. No one needs to be smart or cool or
> primitive or educated 24 hours a day. The world isn't waiting for the
> Ultimate Definition Of Good Music. It waits for more tolerance, joy and
> curiosity, in music as in other matters.
> Kristjan
>
>
>