Classical Snobs

Rather silly article by Philip Hensher which is supposed to be about why rock musicians shouldn't attempt anything more ambitious than three-minute pop songs, but really says a lot more about the snobbery of large sections of the classical world.

One of the reasons such enterprises often fail so dramatically - and it's very difficult to think of any that have lasted more than a couple of performances - is that their composers rarely have the technical ability to record and convey their intentions with any accuracy.

Many rock musicians can't read music and have what strikes most classical musicians as rather a loose conception of authorship, relying on amanuenses to transform vague ideas into detailed life. In the world of popular music, such transcribers, arrangers or "producers" have always done a great deal more than the public suspects.

Note the scare quotes around the word 'producer'. I know that it's not exactly a secret that a lot of best-selling chart acts have extremely limited musical abilities, and their records owe more to whoever's producing them than anything else. But there are plenty of other rock artists with plenty of compositional and arrangement ability, especially those working in genres outside the fashionable 'indie' mainstream. Some can ever read music!

When he starts talking about 'amanuenses' (yes, I did have to look that word up), Hensher reveals how little he understands rock music and how it's created. He can't get his head round the idea that you can have highly complex and sophisticated music that doesn't completely revolve around 'the dots'. If a lot of rock musicians can't read music, then a lot of classically-trained musicians are incapable of playing by ear. I remember a bassist telling me how frustrating he found it to work with musicians who couldn't play a note unless they had those dots in front of them. The reason rock works the way it does because of the ubiquity of recording technology, something else he fails to grasp.

Actually, one of the worst things about many rock/classical crossovers is the appallingly lacklustre playing by some of the orchestral musicians. Frank Zappa has railed against this sort of thing on some of his many orchestral collaborations, especially the complete lack of rhythm of some orchestras. Listen to the original recording of Uriah Heep's "Salisbury", where what's actually quite a good composition is spoiled by some very sloppy and out-of-time playing.

The article ends with a rogues gallery of unsuccessful rock/classical collaborations, while conveniently neglecting to list any of the successful ones.