Wow... freaky... Michael Jackson died at age 50

[gep]

the remarkable 23 year old Russian Alina Ibragimova who, while currently playing a good deal of Bach here, there and everywhere, has recorded the Hartmann Concerto funebre and the two Roslavets concertos (the former in only its second recording to date and the latter in its première recording)

I heard the Hartmann in a concert a few years ago (albeit with another violinist), and it most certainly is a piece worth hearing more! Roslavets'  Concerti a quite remarkable (esp. no. 1), and we may be fortunate we still have them! His Piano Trios 2-4 are quite worth hearing too!

I should be happy to sign a Condolence Book for Nicholas Maw, a major British composer who died last month and whose music will be remembered for far longer.

I didn't know that he died, pity to hear! 'Fraid his Odyssee CD's will not skyrocket now....

his death represents a massive loss to us all.

My life will never be the same, quoth he with massive sarcasm...

Gep

[ahinton]

We now have two posts in a thread about the recent demise of Michael, son of Jack which make reference to Roslavets. There must be a moral or a lesson in that somewhere...

Wow... even more freaky... Elliott Carter didn't die at 100.5. Perhaps "freakier" still, he apparently even played the piano a little to illustrate some things in recent piano pieces of his in an interview with Pierre-Laurent Aimard at the Aldeburgh Festival a few days ago; he did admit publicly that he doesn't play as well as Aimard, though...

Best,

Alistair

[thalbergmad]

Elliott Carter didn't die at 100.5.

Normal service has been resumed.

You missed him off your last post.

Thal

[ahinton]

Normal service has been resumed.

You missed him off your last post.

I apologise for that, if apology is indeed due and, even if it isn't, I apologise for offending your apparent sensibilities and/or expectations. Incidentally, you appear not to have noticed that I made no mention of America's most senior composer in the post before my last either. At the same time, however, I am at least pleased that you sense my having introduced some normality here. What's your problem? This is pianostreet, not an edition of BBC Radio 4's long-running panel game Just a Minute...

Best,

Alistair

[thalbergmad]

This is pianostreet

Yeh, and this is a thread about Michael Jackson.

Thal

[ahinton]

Yeh, and this is a thread about Michael Jackson.

Exactly - and if some of those of us who feel it important to try to put him and his work into some kind of realistic perspective actually do so, other terms of reference and comparatives will inevitably be brought into the arena; if that doesn't appeal to you, then please stop reading the thread or at least read only those bits of it that you like.

Best,

Alistair

[thalbergmad]

Exactly

Which begs the question why America's most senior composer was regurgitated.

[gep]

Skipping the term "regurgitated" as being a Thaltypical piece of charmwriting, one could say that Carter at 100+ writes more interesting and worthwhile music every day than MJ did in his entire career.

But then MJ himself even stated "I'm bad" on an album which was even called BAD. And I wouldn't want to argue what one could call the expert on that!

[retrouvailles]

Skipping the term "regurgitated" as being a Thaltypical piece of charmwriting, one could say that Carter at 100+ writes more interesting and worthwhile music every day than MJ did in his entire career.

Carter and Michael Jackson are both masters at what they do/did. However, can you really compare the two, and go as far as to say that one is better than the other? I have a great amount of respect for both, but I can't say who is "better" from a qualitative standpoint. I like to listen to Carter more, but that doesn't make him "better", generally speaking.

Sooo, Thal. Who do you like more, Carter or MJ?

[ahinton]

Which begs the question why America's most senior composer was regurgitated.

It does not at all beg the question; it answers it - although "regurgitation" is not a word that I would have used in the present context. If, on the other hand, you believe that a thread on the late Mr Jackson must refer to no one else and eschew all suggestion of value judgements in the form of comparisons with anyone else, then that's fine for you, one may suppose, though by no means necessarily so for anyone else.

Anyway, here's an extract from what someone recently wrote to me on the subject and which I think might interest some people here (it might even interest you, Thal, since its only mention of anyone other than its subject is a passing one of the author of the article concerned):

I happened to see an article by Paul Theroux about Michael Jackson containing a transcript of a telephone conversation he'd had with him, which showed that MJ was actually quite intelligent - he could certainly put coherent words together; but he lived in an absurdly artificial world which he had partly created himself but which had also been built round him, and his songs seem to show just how rigidly he was locked into this crazily childish showbiz world which was just a kind of advertisement for itself, and nothing other than that - certainly not art in the way that you and I understand it. Art is about finding yourself, not about hiding yourself in a fake version of childhood.

Here is something that I wrote on the subject (which you won't like, Thal - or at least from the close of which you may need to avert your gaze in order to avoid seeing a name that so obviously upsets you for some reason or none); it was in response to the remaks that I recently quoted on the subject that I had received from a composer colleague following the invitation to him to sign prsformusic's condolence book:

Iconic? "I con, therefore I am", perhaps! The trouble is that today's "music industry" is full to beyond bursting point with things that are, as you put it, "glossy and ephemeral" - and some of them not even all that glossy either. I am not for one moment seeking to suggest that Mr Jackson
lacked talent but, in the end, he was (at least before he went off the rails) a showman first and foremost - and not a particularly great one at that. The notion that he "wrote" "songs" that would continue to form part of the fabric of Western society many generations after him has the kind of
absurdity that one would really rather not witness emanating from prsformusic; are we seriously supposed to believe that we should regard his "songwriting" legacy as comparable to that of Fauré, Strauss, Gershwin, Duparc, Rakhmaninov or the aforementioned Porter? I imagine that, in a society where Madonna is fêted as a major musical artist and Andrew Lord Lloyd is described ubiquitously as a "composer", we are indeed expected to regard "the King" (hasn't that term been used before?!) in such glowing terms. Anyone would think that this recently deceased "icon" had written
the C# minor quartet!

What to do? Well, apart, of course, from declining to sign this condolence book (his death, after all, hardly represents any loss at all, let alone a massive one, to the likes of you and I, who have never met him), we should take Carter's liver pills - or rather his wise advice; just do what you
want to do and write how you want to write - if you want to make a lot of money from writing music, then do - that's one way of doing it - and if you want to write notes (meaning real music that comes from within), do that and hope that others enjoy it as much as you enjoy writing it (I paraphrase here, of course, but that's more or less the gist of it).

One aspect of this thread title seems so far to have been side-stepped - the implication that Mr Jackson's death at the age of half a century is somehow "freaky". Mozart, Chopin, Schubert, Lekeu, Skryabin, Reger and many others including that other famous Thalian bête noir Schumann all died before reaching that age, yet I have never noticed any commentator decribing such premature demises as "freaky". Any thoughts on that, anyone?...

Best,

Alistair

[gep]

Perhaps the title of this tread should have 3 dots removed, changing it to the perhaps more correct:

Wow... freaky Michael Jackson died at age 50

Perhaps the Wow might be dropped too...

[ahinton]

Carter and Michael Jackson are both masters at what they do/did. However, can you really compare the two, and go as far as to say that one is better than the other? I have a great amount of respect for both, but I can't say who is "better" from a qualitative standpoint. I like to listen to Carter more, but that doesn't make him "better", generally speaking.

Sooo, Thal. Who do you like more, Carter or MJ?

Regardless of the extent to which one may or may not be able to draw realistic and meaningful comparisons between Carter and Jackson (and I for one would not wish to pursue any such analogy farther than it may deserve to go), it is certainly possible to draw distinctions between the two; it might indeed be salutary to do so given that there are those who appear to seek to ascribe great and lasting value to the latter's contribution to musical art just as there are others who would do the same in respect of the former. What seems to me to be at stake here is not so much whether Jackson's output is or is not "better" than Carter's but whether widespread claims that it has a long future are realistic whereas in Carter's case that would seem to be in far less doubt, even among those who do not necessarily care for his music as much as you and I do.

Best,

Alistair

[Petter]

Im thinking it's actually Quincy Jones whos behind most of Michael Jacksons success and Im not sure if they had a lasting effect on popular music overall but definitely an effect on how much money you can pump into it and gain in return. Also he has alot of fans, of which some seems almost relgious fanatic in their worshipping. I read somewhere that 12 people already have commited suicide so I dont think he will be forgotten. Probably theres going to be a similar cult like the one of Elvis Presley with conspiracy theories and myths.

[arensky]

Im thinking it's actually Quincy Jones whos behind most of Michael Jacksons success

Absolutely

 

and Im not sure if they had a lasting effect on popular music overall

Some, but nothing like Jimi Hendrix or the Beatles. Again, without QJ there wasn't much to Jacko in terms of musical value.

but definitely an effect on how much money you can pump into it and gain in return.

Big deal so what. And that money could have been put to better use.

Also he has alot of fans, of which some seems almost relgious fanatic in their worshipping. I read somewhere that 12 people already have commited suicide so I dont think he will be forgotten. Probably theres going to be a similar cult like the one of Elvis Presley with conspiracy theories and myths.

Certain celebrities of all stripes attract this sort of weird senseless adulation. And yes, Jacko's ghost has already been sighted. Now THAT would be a scary thing to see.

[birba]

I forced myself to stay up last night and watch a special on Jacko.  I wanted to see if I had missed anything.  Maybe what he did more than other singers was "benefit" concerts for Africa and such.  I love "We are the world" just as much as the next guy, but I still can't hear a myth coming out of this music.  I just can't.  The harmonic progressions are trite, the words, as well, etc.  the message is good, yes, but all this fuss about him is just media hysteria.  I know I'm going to be stoned here, but like I said a while back, death can make a myth out of anyone with the proper pubblicity.  Can you imagine what would happen if Madonna keeled over tomorrow?!

[Bob]

Can you imagine what would happen if Madonna keeled over tomorrow?!

I believe one of her stagecrew did die recently.

[birba]

No, they were TWO workers taken on the spot (French, Marseille) to build the stage she was going to use.  She cancelled, sent her condolences and promptly left for her next stop...

[ahinton]

Can you imagine what would happen if Madonna keeled over tomorrow?!

No more performances of my Grieg Variations and no recording of Sorabji's Fifth Piano Symphony from one particular artist, for sure. Oh, wait abit - THAT one? The Ciccone one? Sorry! Er - can I imagine what would happen? Yes, I think so; loads of media hype and at least one lawsuit. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...

Best,

Alistair

[nia_kurniati]

  So true, death for some artists can be the best career move. MJ has a massive debt, this debt will most likely be paid off now due to the high demands in his music due to his death. His London concerts would have not achieved this.

People around him might think he's more valuable when he's dead 
If there was a conspiracy about the dead .. poor MJ

[maul]

ahinton is one disgusting and jealous human being.

[communist]

ahinton is one disgusting and jealous human being.

Wow, you actually have the nerve to insult the great Alastair Hinton?

[thalbergmad]

ahinton is one disgusting and jealous human being.

I have no idea how you have formulated this opinion.

Thal

[gep]

from: maul on Today at 04:04:12 PM
ahinton is one disgusting and jealous human being.

I have no idea how you have formulated this opinion.

Thal

Considering that that mauling remark is so far off truth we're talking cosmological distances, neither have I. I guess you have to be quite disgusting and jealous to make such a remark...

gep

[birba]

Here we go again...don't you realize that these two actually love and respect one another.   well, maybe not the former, but certainly the latter.  I've only been here a short while, but I even I get the gist.

[gep]

Are you referring to Thal (with whom I agreed) or to Maul, whose post I couldn't call respectfull (unless it's meant to be hugely ironic, of course...)

[birba]

Oh, I get it.  You wanted to say "I guess YOU have to be disgusting..."  You did read the irony in Thalbergmad's comment, though, didn't you?

[gep]

Oh, I get it.  You wanted to say "I guess YOU have to be disgusting..."  You did read the irony in Thalbergmad's comment, though, didn't you?

The remark was pointed at the "you" making the MAULing remark, yes. I may have been a tad unclear at that point.
I did get the irony of Thal's comment, yes. I just decided to read it cast-iron literally

gep