And in light of the following funeral classical musicians are a dying species so they must indeed have a lot of spare time on their hands for discussions: http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=f3839c75-3724-4154-adc4-e0638e30448a&p=1

[snip] Last January, Gene Weingarten, a Washington Post columnist, persuaded the violinist Joshua Bell to join him in an experiment. Bell was to dress in jeans, a T-shirt, and a baseball cap, position himself at the head of the escalator in the L'Enfant Plaza subway station at the height of the morning rush hour, open his violin case, take out his $3.5 million Stradivarius, launch into Bach's D-minor Chaconne for solo violin, and see what happened.

Nothing much happened. People hurrying to work hurried by. Half a dozen or so, mainly those working in the station or early for appointments, listened for a little while and put some money in the open case. One passerby, a former violinist, knew the playing was superb and dropped a five. Another recognized the performer and dropped a twenty.

But of course it was hardly an experiment. All concerned knew perfectly well that people at rush hour are preoccupied with other things than arts and leisure, and would not break their stride. But the fulfillment of the self- fulfilling prophecy gave Weingarten the pretext he sought, in an article titled "Pearls Before Breakfast," to cluck and tut, to quote Kant and Tocqueville, and to carry on as if now we knew what really happened at Abu Ghraib.

Bloggers took up the refrain. Notice, wrote one, that "all the children wanted to stop and listen. They knew. But their parents kept them moving on. Sadly it reminds me of an occasion when children wanted to stop and listen to Christ but his disciples didn't let them." Saddest for me was that the weblist of the American Musicological Society, my professional organization, added its meed of clucking and cackling. Scholars are supposed to be skeptical of spin and pose, but here we were piling on. My hat goes off to one Ben H., a netizen who saw through it all. "Perhaps the Post could do a whole series of articles about philistines ignoring Joshua Bell's sublime music-making in different locations," he suggested:

1. Outside a burning building (not one fireman stopped to listen!)

2. At a car crash site (one paramedic actually pushed him aside!)

3. During a graduation exam (shushed by the invigilators!)

4. At a school play (thrown out by angry parents!)

5. On an airport runway (passing jet liners seemed oblivious!)

In one respect, though, the caper was instructive. It offered answers to those who wonder why classical music now finds itself friendless in its moment of self-perceived crisis--a long moment that has given rise in recent years to a whole literature of elegy and jeremiad. These three books, by self-appointed counsels for the defense, constitute one of its subgenres. Others have argued the case for the prosecution. [...]

What makes the classical music crisis suddenly newsworthy is itself a question worth asking. When has the place of classical music in modern society ever been secure? Reviewing Lawrence Kramer's book in The New York Times, Edward Rothstein shrewdly observed that it might have appeared decades ago, but then it would have had a title more like "Why Contemporary Composers Don't Matter" or "Why Audiences Are Stuck in the Past." This is a weatherbeaten complaint, and one that no longer seems worth debating. To quote Pieter van der Merwe, a South African music historian, "for the general public, 'classical music' belongs mainly to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, carries on with rapidly diminishing vigor into the first few decades of the twentieth, and has ceased to exist by 1950." The difference is that the irrelevance to concert audiences of contemporary music now seems to be merely a special case of a problem facing the classical field as a whole. Doubts have widened, and Rothstein admits that he has come to share them. "Though I once tended to whine about its problems with cranky optimism, now even a stunning performance seems like a spray of flowers at a funeral." ...

Classical music has itself (among others) to blame for the quandary that it now faces, and I see the reason epitomized in The Washington Post's disgusting "experiment" with Bell the busker. The discourse that supported its old prestige has lost its credibility. As with rising gorge I consumed these books, the question that throbbed and pounded in my head was whether it was still possible to defend my beloved repertoire without recourse to pious tommyrot, double standards, false dichotomies, smug nostalgia, utopian delusions, social snobbery, tautology, hypocrisy, trivialization, pretense, innuendo, reactionary invective, or imperial haberdashery.

On the evidence before me, the answer is no. The discourse supporting classical music so reeks of historical blindness and sanctimonious self-regard as to render the object of its ministrations practically indefensible. Belief in its indispensability, or in its cultural superiority, is by now unrecoverable, and those who mount such arguments on its behalf morally indict themselves. Which is not to say that classical music, or any music, is morally reprehensible. Only people, not music, can be that. What is reprehensible is to see its cause as right against some wrong. What is destroying the credibility of classical music is an unacknowledged or misperceived collision of rights. The only defense classical music needs, and the only one that has any hope of succeeding, is the defense of classical music (in the words ofT.W. Adorno, a premier offender) against its devotees. [...]

Now that the whole twentieth century has run its course and German music has run aground, the claim of universality is threadbare, recalling Stanley Hoffman's sublime definition of ethnocentrism in these pages some years ago: "There are universal values, and they happen to be mine." The doctrines that Johnson's, Fineberg's, and Kramer's books continue to advance retain so little credibility that one has to ask what sort of reader they mean to persuade.

I think you have a very idyllic view of the life of professional musicians.  Somebody who wants to make it must be constantly on the go, courting burn-out.  If you are imagining a leisurely life, and all the time in the world, that is definitely not so.  Perhaps there is a tight self-discipline, but as far as having time to cultivate other interests - I would not think so.  Orchestral work, I hear is tedium, sometimes under eccentric or boorish conductors or others who control the scene.  There is intense competition - your spot might be under fire.  You must constantly be on top of the music, keep up your skills.  And while a translator can revise his translation to perfection, the musician must produce perfection then and there, under the glaring eye of hundreds or more, and also among their peers.  Many musicians have day jobs, or they teach themselves silly, never having the time to do what they are trained to do.  The equivalent of "Should I bid to do eleven concerts next week?" definitely exists. 

Also, don't forget that these are professional performers.  You are supposed to smile, look relaxed and at ease, regardless of what happens.  Do you remember the kerfuffle when a cellist, wife of a world known violinist, showed her annoyance?  The discussion that went around the music forums at the time was that if anyone makes a mistake, you do not let the audience know.  You make it appear that the most wonderful thing in the world is happening.

Maxi

And in light of the following funeral classical musicians are a dying species so they must indeed have a lot of spare time on their hands for discussions: http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=f3839c75-3724-4154-adc4-e0638e30448a&p=1 [/quote] Musicians do not have spare time!!!  If you are practising 6 hours per day, rehearsing 4 hours, running your itinerary - how on earth do you have spare time?  Yes, the Bell story has been discussed at length, in the same way that we translators discuss translation issues.  Most people said that the location was wrong, and designed on purpose to make a point.  The person who lingered was not a violinist, but a former violin student who recognized something unusual, and hovered for a very long time, not being able to tear herself away. Maxi

[Edited by Maxi Schwarz-Bastami on October 24, 2007 10:19 AM]

So... how come they can hold discussions on their fora???

Anyway, I am glad to hear that they are not a dying species. (It could not be that they are generally more, how should I put it, articulate than translators, could it?)

Jacek

So... how come they can hold discussions on their fora???

How come we do?  And in general, the fora that I visit are used in a tight, utilitarian way , stressing problems and insights into the profession or the art, ways to hone skills or acquire them etc. 

Maxi

Would you say it's comparable to the 86% postings on our fora?

No.  Most of our topics are related to linguistics in a peripheral way at best, and we write about anything under the sun.  The music fora I frequent have less postings, they are to the point of music but generally not in a totally abstract way - maybe like 20% of our linguistically oriented postings.

Maxi

I think one reason for this may be that translators operate more often internationally and many are interested in problems such as the invoicing, taxation, costs of living or intercultural comparisons while on interpreting assignments. Translation is not only about technical skills. I have met a few generalists who would read up on all sorts of topics unrelated to linguistics to maintain their versatility in this profession. Others would hang out on specialized Web sites for accountants or architects to keep up with developments in their fields of specialization. Maybe that's why it is hard to pull them all together when someone asks a specialized question on the fora. That translators do not form a community has been a leitmotiv in many threads.

Jacek

Which is a tough call considering that the information age allows us to comfortably know less by outsourcing our brain more. (There will be music in the following piece, so it's not completely off topic.)

Op-Ed Columnist

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: October 26, 2007

Until that moment, I had thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more, but then I realized the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less. It provides us with external cognitive servants — silicon memory systems, collaborative online filters, consumer preference algorithms and networked knowledge. We can burden these servants and liberate ourselves.

Musical taste? I have externalized it. Now I just log on to iTunes and it tells me what I like.

I click on its recommendations, sample 30 seconds of each song, and download the ones that appeal. I look on my iPod playlist and realize I’ve never heard of most of the artists I listen to. I was once one of those people with developed opinions about the Ramones, but now I’ve shed all that knowledge and blindly submit to a mishmash of anonymous groups like the Reindeer Section — a disturbing number of which seem to have had their music featured on the soundtrack of “The O.C.”

Memory? I’ve externalized it. I am one of those baby boomers who are making this the “It’s on the Tip of My Tongue Decade.” But now I no longer need to have a memory, for I have Google, Yahoo and Wikipedia. Now if I need to know some fact about the world, I tap a few keys and reap the blessings of the external mind.

Personal information? I’ve externalized it. I’m no longer clear on where I end and my BlackBerry begins. When I want to look up my passwords or contact my friends I just hit a name on my directory. I read in a piece by Clive Thompson in Wired that a third of the people under 30 can’t remember their own phone number. Their smartphones are smart, so they don’t need to be. Today’s young people are forgoing memory before they even have a chance to lose it.

Now, you may wonder if in the process of outsourcing my thinking I am losing my individuality. Not so. My preferences are more narrow and individualistic than ever. It’s merely my autonomy that I’m losing.

I have relinquished control over my decisions to the universal mind. I have fused with the knowledge of the cybersphere, and entered the bliss of a higher metaphysic. As John Steinbeck nearly wrote, a fella ain’t got a mind of his own, just a little piece of the big mind — one mind that belongs to everybody. Then it don’t matter, Ma. I’ll be everywhere, around in the dark. Wherever there is a network, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a TiVo machine making a sitcom recommendation based on past preferences, I’ll be there. ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/opinion/26brooks.html?em&ex=1193544000&en=1d772dc7cbc2dd34&ei=5070

I did see that one earlier this morning but this next article really resonates with someone who can't sit still when I hear music

Dancing in the Seats <script language=Java­Script type=text/Java­Script>function getSharePasskey() { return 'ex=1351137600&en=9d92f0df6eec72c3&ei=5124';}<script language=Java­Script type=text/Java­Script>function getShareURL() { return encodeURIComponent('http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/opinion/26levitin.html');}function getShareHeadline() { return encodeURIComponent('Dancing in the Seats');}function getShareDescription() { return encodeURIComponent('Music can be a more satisfying cerebral experience if we let it move us physically.');}function getShareKeywords() { return encodeURIComponent('Music,Dancing,Brain,Biology and Biochemistry,Daniel J Levitin');}function getShareSection() { return encodeURIComponent('opinion');}function getShareSectionDisplay() { return encodeURIComponent('Op-Ed Contributor');}function getShareSubSection() { return encodeURIComponent('');}function getShareByline() { return encodeURIComponent('By DANIEL J. LEVITIN');}function getSharePubdate() { return encodeURIComponent('October 26, 2007');}