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Internets: Serious business.

But really, it's the internet; YouTube is filled with 14 year old kids mostly that comment on these videos.

It's really easy to make a YouTube account and post comments.
A lot of them just like to troll on people's videos to make people upset and flood the comment pages with internet fights.

It's the internet though people; on YouTube, you can easily become famous and easily fade into darkness even more quicker. It's not meant for seriousness. It's about as constructive and reliable as Wikipedia. Enjoy the good comments even the "SOunds good, lolz." and ignore the "Yeah, my friend can better than you, lol." comments.

.....and I would say that as per the rest of your post, it never really was, and to the extent that it sort of was, it shouldn't have been.


Although I do happen to like when people also know about stuff like sunspots.


I'm a colleague, and I'd say that the best doctors never were the ones who could recite Harrison's etc. Those were the ones who were at the top of their classes, and probably most of them really were very good, but the rote factual stuff was overrated. BTW.....back in the day I was on committees and task forces that worked toward revising the MCAT and National Board exams to reflect what we might call more enlightened thinking, and I think we had a certain amount of success. From what I can tell, the current MCAT and National Board exams do indeed reflect more of what we would call relevance.

I remember that when I took the MCAT, much of the stuff on the "General Information" section was beyond esoteric, and meant little. I didn't even do well on the classical music questions, because almost all of them were about OPERA! And although I was a huge sports nut, I missed at least one of the sports questions because I didn't know enough about POLO.

P.S. I still have my copiously-annotated copy of Harrison's.


Mine too.

I worry about that.
And......this is a little off the subject, but every now and then when I see something like the following, I feel encouraged.
It's a couple of spiffy college kids just jamming and doing a near-world-class duo performance of a super-hard Alkan etude. You can feel the fun and camaraderie. Could it be that with people like that, classical music and classical musicians might eventually be seen as COOL?



P.S. There's also a youtube video of one of them playing the etude by himself.

Very well said! Those people also have the urge to show the world that they know something, so they need to post constantly in any newsgroup that they belong. When people misstated something, they must be the first one who corrects. Those who know are quiet! There is a chinese proverb, a half full can sounds noisy, the full one does not make any noise.

Now I do not trust what people post in this newsgroup, I listen to their playing first, then I can believe what he or she said.

Like Mark Cannon, he really knows what he is talking about, his playing talks loudly about his ability. He is not an internet pianist. He did a lot of posting within a few months of joinging this group. But his postings are great to help others.

In my experience the comment pages on youtube at piano videos are really not that bad... especially when compared to more popular video subjects.
There's still a large part of comments expressing appreciation for the music. Sometimes there are even interesting and informative comments, or imaginative descriptions of the emotion or atmosphere of a certain piece.
Yes, there are also rude posters, flamers and spammers, even at piano videos, but you know.. it's the internet.. you have to deal with it and learn to ignore it.

I agree. The ones I have trouble with are the rude nasty comments made just to be... rude and nasty. Someone has taken the time to post their or someone else's playing and some little bastard who could probably care less about music comes on and rips the person up. It's the fact they can hide behind an alias that gives them this courage.

You have discovered the art of internet "trolling" and "e-thugging" I presume.

Any decently smart person would ignore these neanderthals and listen to the majority of the comments (which are usually positive and constructive). We seem to ignore the 99% of good comments but we are so bothered by the 1% that's bad for some reason.

You have to wonder what kind of lives these type of people have. I mean - why do that? Is life that bad you have to sit by a computer and tear apart others just for sport?

I saw one comment the other day which seemed to sum it up. It was 'What's this sh*t doing here? Kids don't like this sh*t. Get it off. Where's Beyonce, Miley Cyrus? That's what we want to see. Not this sh*t'

I feel compelled to go back to what started this thread:



cardguy: I can't come up with a single reason why you'd think these are the best and the brightest.

Because they're listening to classical music on youtube??

I thought I was nuts for reading that incredible book around 50 times, or at least it has seemed that way. I think I can quote large amounts of it for memory. Truly a landmark work belonging in the collection of every member here.

IMO Arthur Loesser's book 'Men, Women & Pianos' is also required reading, though it takes a very different approach than Schonberg. And at times, Loesser has a sense of humour which can all of a sudden creep up at the most unexpected moments. Delicious stuff.

Dude, I thought you guys were talking about Arnold Schoenberg's Theory of Harmony or Fundamentals of Musical Composition. I was thinking... 50 times? 200 times?

A little research later, and I get it: you're talking about Harold Schonberg's Great Pianists. Which I've seen, but don't really know anything about. Thanks for the recommendation!

-Jason

(p.s. Mark: This is off-topic, but since you don't PM I'll put it here: I noticed on Amazon your review of Nabokov's Pale Fire. A masterpiece, you call it. Are you familiar with the hilarious and bizarre allusion of the novel's title?)

LOL Jason, you are funny. (BTW, I always enjoy your intelligent contributions here.)

Yeah, at uni I studied a fair amount of Schoenberg (Moses and Aaron for starters), but it never really communicated to me as I suppose it should have. As a mathematician I could see where it would appeal to you. I did, however, make a fairly decent analysis of the violin concerto (but could I have the Elgar instead? -which I have extensively analyzed) and once in piano class I was called upon to sightread the opening of the piano concerto- I was picked on without warning! I think I managed okay... my classmates were a bit impressed, but I've always had a modest talent for sight-reading. De rigueur for a church musician. Cheers...

My copy (which I've read many times) was a gift from a singer I was accompanying, more years ago than I care to number. Lovely voice - alas, she died far too young.

Not to continue an off-topic discussion that ended a while ago, but after reading about Pachmann in The Great Pianists (many times...), I got curious enough to see if he really did gloat during his performances. Sure enough, for those that haven't heard it.

Thanks guys for book recommendation. In just a few clicks I have ordered in from my local library, it was checked in!! Also grabbed the Horror-wits biography by same author. Can't wait to get into some great holiday reading, Yay!

That's a sad story currawong - it must be a special book for you.

Call it elitism if you must, but, presenting opinion factually, correctly and intelligently, is anything, BUT. It is NOT elitist, to use proper terminology. The "song" used as an example by the OP, is NOT a song at all, and were you to "friendly and enthusiastically" mention to Frederic Chopin, that his "song" (said etude) was a brilliant work, I have no doubt that he would dismiss you as easily as I'm sure he was able to tear through Op. 10 No. 1. With the vast wealth of information available these days to anyone with an IQ, there is, absolutely, no reason for the abundant ignorance that runs so rampant (surprisingly so) around, seemingly, every corner. There is NO better place, that I can think of, to witness blatant ignorance, in action, at it's finest, than the comments sections provided on YouTube. Some of the things I've read there (and I've sworn I don't know how many times that I'll never scroll down that far again) absolutely amaze me. The cultural demise at hand, is, quite simply, the result of impatience, lack of respect, and laziness.

I get irritated when I watch something on youtube and in the comments about a song (non-classical) by my favorite artist there are just tons of comments full of "facts" about them which I know aren't true, and anyone who took the effort to google it would know.

I also find it annoying that on youtube so many people think that "f---y--" is a valid arguement and that it actually proves a point.

I always think this video is funny.

Just watched! thanks phlebas.

Altho i played this moonlight song when i was like 13 for my exam and I put more emotion in it but yeh ur pretty good =) "not as good as the original" -?%#*&#@!