Re: Jews and Christmas music

[Peter Hollo <raven...>]

Wolf,
Thanks for the response, and I am very sorry for calling you a bigot.
However, I still disagree.
> > (which I don't believe in anyway), or anything. It's just the music.
> >
> This is unbelievable, coming from an artist. It has absolutely
> everything to do with the words and the faith they profess.  Are you
> saying, "It's just sound, man"?  It's time to change the bongwater.

Well since I just accused you of being bigoted, ok fair enough. But I'll
have you know I don't use drugs of any kind and never will.

I disagree with you entirely here. "Coming from an artist"? Well, yes,
but how about coming from an atheist? No music I play, no musical
experience has for me any sort of spiritual aspect to it, and I don't
think this in any way shallows the experience I have. (I don't mean to
imply that you suggest it does...) To continue...

As a musician (yes!) I wouldn't possibly consider not playing Faure's
Requiem (to overuse my own example) because it is Christian music. I
don't believe that the power of that music has ANYTHING WHATSOEVER to do
with what the words are about (to me at least), whether or not the
person who wrote it did so out of deep faith. It's truly wonderful music
which I appreciate *as* an artist, and as a human being, whatever the
words are about. Most of the music I listen to has no words to it, and I
love it much more than, I would imagine, much cantorial singing which
comes deep from the faith and the heart of the singer.

> Very sloppy thinking.  The whole deal is the feeling one puts into the
> words and the notes.  If this feeling comes from a place of
> understanding and deep faith, it might result in a beautiful moving
> experience for everyone.  If it is just words (the singer neither
> understands nor feels) and notes, its a waste of time and the audience
> has been ripped off.

Not at all. Does that mean that as an atheist, when I play any music the
words of which happen to be of a religious nature (for the sake of
argument Jewish since I am a Jew) the audience is "ripped off", and has
a cheapened experience because I'm an atheist? Hardly. Clearly, to me,
one does not need to even understand what the words mean in something
like a Requiem to feel the music's emotive power. Could I then be part
of a performance of the second movement of Ravel's Piano Concerto (to
name another piece of music I find transendentally beautiful) and not
waste the same audience's time? This is just nonsense I'm afraid
(perhaps I've misinterpreted you?) The music is what is important to me,
and these two pieces of music have a similar impact on me even though
one has no words at all, and the other has words which when translated
are about something that is doubly irrelevant to me - as a Jew and as an
atheist.

Perhaps we should agree to disagree, but "sloppy thinking"? I think not! 
Best,
Peter.
-- 
Peter Hollo  raven (at) fourplay(dot)com(dot)au  
http://www.fourplay.com.au/me.html
           FourPlay - Eclectic Electric String Quartet
                    http://www.fourplay.com.au
"Of course, dance music can be a music where you lie on your back and
your brain cells dance" -Michael Karoli of Can, quoted in Wire mag.