Music

every musician’s worst nightmare…

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It happened to me! My worst nightmare as a performer… and I lived to tell the tale 😀 It made me think: who decides what is virtuosity in music, and what is… worthy?

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25 comments

@johnchastain7890 October 11, 2024 - 7:01 pm
So this jerk didn't like your playbill: "too easy for Masters students." Was this a music teacher? Did he know the performance requirements for attaining the Masters degree? Meh, [expletive deleted] him.

On the subject of virtuosity: Around the turn of the previous century, pianists used to have "ragtime piano races," to see who could finish a Scott Joplin or other ragtime composition the fastest. Joplin, the God of Ragtime, got so fed up with this faux-virtuosity that he insisted on printing at the top of his sheet music "Not Fast." "Do Not Play Fast." And even: "Notice: Don't play this piece fast. It is never right to play 'ragtime' fast. -- Author". He considered these ridiculous piano races an abuse of his compositions.

Finally, I don't know who said it first, but somebody smart said: A simple tune played well is far better than a complicated tune played badly. [😅N.B.: I wouldn't know, because I tend to play everything badly! ;-) ]
@LukeShalz October 11, 2024 - 7:01 pm
I’m the organist and choirmaster of a medium sized Catholic Church in California. Most of our music is that “slower” (sight reading Byrd surely doesn’t feel slow!), medieval and renaissance music. I think most people generally understand the value in contemplative, insightful, virtuosically simple music. It’s just once every now and again you find a grossly uneducated critic who equates speed with ability.
@nicoledebeer2833 October 11, 2024 - 7:01 pm
I had a very special experience a couple of years ago. At the time I was playing regularly with a harpsichordist, and we even played quite a big concert at a very beautiful venue, to show off my new voice flute. The concert wasn’t bad, technically it was even quite good sometimes, but it was a bit meeeh. At my lesson a few days later my teacher tried to find out why I kept playing with this guy. She didn’t want to tell me directly I shouldn’t waste my time with him, but I didn’t really understand what she was trying to tell me. In that same lesson we played a few Mattheson duets, nothing special, just nice music for closing an intense lesson, and then I suddenly understood: it’s not about how many notes you can play, or about playing all this pretentious baroque repertoire. It’s about playing together, reacting to each other and to the music, listening to each other and to the music, being embraced and being carried away by the music, even with these “simple” Mattheson sonatas. I hadn’t experienced that in all of 9 months of playing with that harpsichordist, and here was my teacher taking me there within a few minutes. I’ve talked to that harpsichordist only once or twice after that…
@Pocketfarmer1 October 11, 2024 - 7:01 pm
You are too polite. He deserved a hearty,” f-u-c-k off”, especially after the second comment.
My sons were in a youth orchestra thing at Carnegie Hall awhile ago. They were in the junior orchestra. The senior orchestra played an advanced piece. It was too much for them and did not go well. My boy’s group played an easier piece and nailed it, clean, tight and expressive. The KISS principle still holds true (keep it simple,stupid).
@musicandscience October 11, 2024 - 7:01 pm
It happens to all of us: After a concert a guy came up to me and said, well you are really a beautiful woman but you cannot sing at all. That broke my heart. So unfair! First make a compliment and at the same time destroy me as a singer. I think, we do not owe our audience virtuosity but we do owe them authenticity. To show ourselves and share feelings and play the best we can.
@amunhotep69 October 11, 2024 - 7:01 pm
Same happened to me in an art gallery. He was belittling my painting as insignificant in stature to the other works. Forgive this peak, even so, I suggested the blighter should look at the painting and not down the front of his trousers.
@DinoAlberini October 11, 2024 - 7:01 pm
“Too easy” is not a good argument because there’s no such thing in music. One can even argue that it’s a fallacy.
@javierpastrana3277 October 11, 2024 - 7:01 pm
Great insights! May I say this is perhaps one of your best vids ever?
@anthonymccarthy4164 October 11, 2024 - 7:01 pm
He felt shortchanged? I hope he payed to hear it, then.
@jeremiahreilly9739 October 11, 2024 - 7:01 pm
Love your channel. Ouch. What a story. Why would this guy go out of his way to tell he was disappointed? I had the opposite experience. I suffer terribly from performance anxiety, much more when I was young, less now. I played piano in a jazz ensemble in school. After a performance, a woman in the audience approached me and said, "I loved your performance. It was great." I felt very uneasy. I argued with her telling her all my mistakes. She stopped me. "When someone gives you a compliment, you say, 'Thank you.' And tuck your shirt in." One of the best lessons of my life. I am so grateful.
@IkSaRbara October 11, 2024 - 7:01 pm
This sounds like the old rich people that were heavily funding our performing arts center. Many concerts were just classical orchestral music because that's what old rich people thought was the best kind of music, and had no actual idea of what classical music really can be
@stuartryerse October 11, 2024 - 7:01 pm
This was a super-important video for me to watch. I've been working very hard on playing very note-ey fast music lately, and while I'm glad to be improving in skill, I often just assume that people will undervalue me and my music if I don't try to show off as much as possible. So for me, it's super refreshing to hear such a clear and concise argument against the idea that we “owe” the audience virtuosity. Thanks for sharing another way of thinking about this.
@TonyaChrisluSCV October 11, 2024 - 7:01 pm
As a musician, I loved your comments. So right! Sometimes the "easy" music is exposed and more challenging to be done well because of all the things you mentioned. We often struggle with programming because what musicians like and appreciate can be very different from what non-musician audiences enjoy. You did a great job in addressing something that we all think about.
@BassBusMusic October 11, 2024 - 7:01 pm
This reminds me of Neville Martin's article in Guitarist magazine many years ago. Down at his blues club he put his name on the list and was at the end. When his turn came he had seen everyone playing 100 notes in a bar and the audience look knackered. He played a slow blues and had the best audience reaction of the night. As you say Sarah, it can take a lot more work to make a slow piece sound good and you cannot please all the people all the time.
@ChristelleTarr October 11, 2024 - 7:01 pm
I was rehearsing in church and a member of the concregation told me I was playing wrong notes. I offered him my recorder and asked him to educate me. Needless to say he never uttered a word ever again.
@WolfyGreen October 11, 2024 - 7:01 pm
I won’t tolerate rudeness in the concert hall. Unless I am drunk, flagrantly not bothered about how I play or showing my bottom during an encore - they can jolly well keep their opinions for the papers.

A conversation is one thing but unsolicited rudeness means one thing - open season.
@jmm-y4v October 11, 2024 - 7:01 pm
I had a family member laugh at me and tell me basically that my singing was sh** All this when I was starting out as a teenager! Hard to take and yes hurtful as I can imagine you must’ve felt with that person you were talking about in your video. It’s amazing how it stays with us but as musicians, our passion is stronger than all the negative criticism and we carry on and continue with our craft. Thank you for sharing your experience with us 😊
@deldia October 11, 2024 - 7:01 pm
Oh there are plenty of weirdos around.
@nanookalexkaye77 October 11, 2024 - 7:01 pm
He got his kick by getting under your skin, then went onto a restaurant to abuse the server and leave a nasty Yelp- and now how many performances since have you had that bad man patronizing you in the back of your mind? You were playing to make others happy, and he shamed you for it.
@HollandHiking October 11, 2024 - 7:01 pm
There is no easy music and a love a nice larghetto or Adagio. Play what you fancy most and enjoy it. The audience will spot thta you are enjoying what you are doing and that is the most important maybe. You PLAY music. Getting something dove very fast can be great fun to do, but a single tone played on a recorder solo is already so wonderful.
@billychalmers212 October 11, 2024 - 7:01 pm
Nice video. I use to love to hear a player play fast but now I listen for how well they communicate and I find myself liking more lyrical qualities then fast notes. One of my favorite things about the recorder is it's beautiful long sustained tones. This is what drew me in to want to learn the instrument.
@stephenmatcham October 11, 2024 - 7:01 pm
In some respects playing simple music is the greatest test of musicianship as any mistakes are more obvious and more expression required to make an impact. Anyway Sarah you survived the experience! Keep up the good work.
@sooth15 October 11, 2024 - 7:01 pm
That guy sounds like he was just being unnecessarily rude and aggressive. Speed isn't everything, and some slow pieces can be far more beautiful than fast or complicated ones. It's perfectly fine if he didn't enjoy the selection, but as my parents often told me: If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.
@ogechter October 11, 2024 - 7:01 pm
Last time I recieved this kind of comment for my work, I laugh before this level of stupidity and I don’t say a word more.
@SpinesAndSplines October 11, 2024 - 7:01 pm
I had a visual art exhibition in 2015 at a community gallery and the curators encouraged me to leave a guestbook. 28 paintings, etchings, drawings and paper sculptures. The first man through the exhibition after the opening wrote one word on his way out: “Tedious.” Then a bunch of teenagers who had to write about my exhibition for school had the tenacity to write in that I “hadn’t done enough work” 😂. Luckily one woman at the end of the exhibition wrote the most beautiful comment, and then came back to the exhibition on the last day and I spent an hour walking around the exhibition with her talking about all the work. Still, I can never look at the word “tedious” in the same way again, and even wrote a song about the whole experience last year… Recently, I was painting an electricity box in my town, and an older lady who lives in the house behind it and has a grudge against the whole intersection (long story) spent a good hour on two occasions complaining directly to my face about it, ending with the line, “well you’re no Banksy”, made even more hilarious by a passerby who liked the work referring to me as Banksy earlier in the day. You can’t win them all I guess. 😂

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