My learning edge

...I dread being the first to contribute to this blog after Evan’s former post, which was by the way, incredibly well written. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, thank you Evan. But as I am new to this ‘blogging thing’, I thought I’d be brave and jump right in (which by the way, completely contradicts my personality type).

As a tubist, my experience with music from the 1900’s could be considered, sound. (excuse the pun). However, considering the youth of the instrument compared to its brass or percussive counterparts, there is vastly less repertoire in existence. That is the primary reason why transcriptions of works from earlier periods are so common.

Hence, my knowledge of music since 1900, compared to the centuries before, is weak at best. It seems that every theory or history class I’ve ever taken seemed to scramble through music from the last century with the few hours left at the end of the semester. The only consistency lay in the omission of several of the great composers of our era and consequently, the creation of a gap in my knowledge of ‘modern music’. However I have found myself, after a decade of studying (miniscule comparatively, I know), to be able to retain knowledge far better when I myself am doing the research. Hence, the past two years in graduate school have been of far greater significance in this area of study, than years past.

To the next question on the agenda, where is my learning edge? Mmmmm….that’s a tricky one. Having completed two performance degrees, I can honestly say that I have always felt as if I were on my ‘learning edge’ (or about to fall into the shark infested ocean). I considered this a result of good teaching from the professors I have had the privilege of studying with. Also, as an internal drive to constantly ‘push my own boundaries’ and test my abilities. Both success and failure have marred my efforts. But composer/piece specific, I have to say that works from composers outside of my immediate repertoire are my most challenging.

Outside of my immediate performance arena, I have always had a great sense of patriotism for South African composers such as Kevin Volans, and Hendrik Hofmeyr. I attribute this directly to the fact that I could relate to their traditional influences, having studied at similar universities, experienced the same historical and social backgrounds, and shared a sense of patriotism with them. Consequently, I was able to appreciate similar composers from different countries directly because of the similarities that I found within their music.

The influence of traditionalism, upon which we touched on in class today, is a major contributor to my personal taste and consequently my initiate to study specific composers and their styles. Because my idea of traditionalism incorporates African qualities, I can honesty say that every American composer that we dissect and study this semester will be on my ‘learning edge’. Besides the required reading, class participation, and writing assignments, I will take it upon myself to find comparisons between the composers I grew up to respect and appreciate, and the ‘American Innovators’ we will be studying. In so doing I hope to broaden my knowledge of the specific composers. I may fail at this but at least I will have attempted to relate somewhat to the influences of the great American composers of the twentieth century. Here goes….