Don't let's prejudge music

Interesting reactions to my story The hoax that fooled the music critics for 30 years, including this email:

As co-founder of the Newt Hinton Ensemble in the mid-90's (unconventional performances of exciting music - with players from The Netherlands, France, Germany and the UK), one of our practices was to hand out programme books/notes AFTER our concerts. That way the listeners would open their minds to the "experience" of a piece of music, without prejudging its merits because the composer happened to be male or female, young or old, living or deceased, famous or unknown, European or non-European, etc. It was amazing how the works on the programmes were appreciated for their intrinsic musical power, rather than for the biographical or historical contexts into which one otherwise might have placed them - Vanessa Lann (seen in accompanying photo)

Photo credit Theo Krijgsman. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk


Comments

Pliable said…
And by a slightly disturbing coincidence this article was posted on March 3 2007, and Newt Hinton was born on March 3 1940, and died on March 3 1994.

Recent popular posts

Classical music's biggest problem is that no one cares

Pie in the face for a dangerous buffoon

A Philippa Schuyler moment

Walking with Stravinsky

In the shadow of Chopin

He thinks completely with his body

Male American pioneers

David Munrow - more than early music

The Accidental Pilgrim

Happy birthday to the paradoxical Dalai Lama