/r/badmusicology
Welcome to bad musicology where we look at all bad music-related stuff! We have a few rules:
/r/badmusicology
I didn't know where else to post this, but this thread in r/classical cracked me up way more than it probably should have:
Why I hate the Goldberg Variations by Jeremy Denk
Usually r classical is pretty good with their knowledge of performers, but I guess Jeremy Denk is a completely unknown quantity to them even though he is one of the most affable pianists of the last 10 years. Add on top of not knowing who he is, they also don't know that 1) he recorded the Goldberg Variations in September 2013 and clearly is in complete awe of them as any pianist should be and that 2) he had a whole series of blog posts, interviews, and more with NPR throughout all of 2012 as he prepared for his recording project and his tour.
I think I just can't fathom their lack of imagination that maybe just maybe Denk was being tongue-in-cheek...
Hi r/badmusicology,
I just submitted a request to take over moderation of this subreddit after seeing all the spam posted last month. I love this subreddit and want to wipe it clean of spam. I've done this in the past for r/jazzpiano as well so I'm hoping we can return to having some hilarious quality posts soon.
Some choice comments from r classicalmusic's recent unpopular opinion thread overstating Debussy's influence on jazz:
you remove Debussy and you get rid of... jazz (in my uneducated opinion)
Debussy and Ravel were a huge influence on a whole generation of jazz musicians
If you remove Debussy you still get jazz, you just get an alternate reality version of it - Louis Armstrong was influenced by Debussy and took that "expressionistic" floating quality out of his music and on top of jazz - that led to a "jazz grows up" type of moment that influenced jazz/dance/pop/etc music to this very day. But jazz was existing just fine without that, it would have just been entirely different - perhaps it just wouldn't have grown the way it did
Found a great YouTube comment on atonal music (specifically Arnold Schoenberg - Piano Concerto, Op. 42)
Text:
"Atonal music is similar to food "delicacies" in certain cultures, those that taste horrible but people still eat them because they're said to be interesting or out of the ordinary, and call them "acquired taste" just to make themselves look sophisticated and open to new things. The fact that something is edible or listenable (i.e. eating it or listening to it won't kill you) does not automatically make it enjoyable. I bet only very few people are able to memorize or recite any 5-second fragment of any atonal music, or even differentiate between two such fragments, without any melodic anchor to hang on to. For me, anyone who says he/she "likes" atonal music is just posturing, to make them seem to have a refined taste, the same way as in the food analogy."