source file: mills2.txt Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 22:20:54 -0700 Subject: various From: bq912@freenet.uchsc.edu (Neil G. Haverstick) Haverstick here...to Paul E...yes, now's the time to call someone with experience in the field of refretting...hope it works out for you. On composition...in the liner notes to Kazuhito Yamashita's CD of the Bach Cello Suites (on guitar), he says "As Segovia and Casals showed through their own work, one's ultimate aim must be to attain the ability to express something of universal signifi- cance through one's performance"...indeed, this could not have been stated better...this is just the quality that I feel makes any sort of art "great"...and it's damn for sure that very few folks ever reach this place. The ones that do are very worth of respect and emulation. I will try and attain those lofty levels until they cart me out of here. Also, Brian's comments about Partch's hard times are well taken...he certainly did get ignored by the "establishment" folks, but he also had it a lot better than Crazy Horse, who got murdered by the govern- ment for trying to defend his people. Of course, CH wasn't a micro- tonal musician, but I bet the white folks didn't like Indian music much better than they liked Partch's music...come to think of it, has anyone out there done any research on Native American music? It sure doesn't sound like it's in 12/eq. One more thing...when Brian talked about how hard it is to get through Partch's "Bitter Music" (which I have never heard), he hit something right on the head for me...much of the Partch I have heard (which is not a lot, to be sure) does have a quality on the emotional level which is not appealing to me...it does not contain, for me, that "universal significance" just mentioned...it is "hard" to listen to. On the other hand, I really dig Charles Ives, who certainly is not "easy" to listen to...but, I feel something totally different off of Ives than I do Partch. Perhaps, too, this difficult music of Partch's is one reason (only one) why folks didn't take too kindly to him when he was alive...most folks don't want to work too hard when it comes to music listening, and that's a fact. To quote my lovely daughter Neela once again; we were listening to US HIGHBALL once, and I asked her opinion...she said it "sounds like creepy spiders or something"...since I did not have the honor of ever hanging with Partch, I cannot say what kind of man he was...I do get the feeling, however, from the small sample of his music that I have heard, that there might have been some internal problems which he was dealing with...his music sounds troubled and anguished at times...and it is only natural, of course, that these things would show up in his music... Back to Bach...I truly feel that Yamashita's version of JS's Solo Violin Sonatas and Partitas is a great accomplishment, on any instru- ment in any genre at any time period...it truly blows my mind right out of the door...I cannot believe he did it, and put so much deep feeling into it as well...the guy's a bad MOFO...Hstick Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Wed, 5 Jun 1996 15:10 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id GAA19251; Wed, 5 Jun 1996 06:10:05 -0700 Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 06:10:05 -0700 Message-Id: <960605130446_71670.2576_HHB13-12@CompuServe.COM> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu