Ok... so this came up with a friend today. I have a thing for cello players, and I met one online, and we're sort of uneasy friends. She was raised that art music was good, modal music was bad, tonal music was nice for relaxing, atonal work for serious times, and that's all she needed to know. Having been only a mediocre cello player (she played like a goddess but not one of the great goddesses) she now plays along to Enya when she feels like playing cello.

Meanwhile my Mom loved the Beatles and Gospel music, my Dad loved Rock and Roll, and I'm 28 and I think that tonal music has the broadest emotional range, atonal music is better for one or two emotions, popular music is generally shit but I still fill my ears with it sometimes, and art music is the best music EVER!

So is it a game of reverse psychology? I don't think it is totally, but they kind of put my friend through the wringer. 8 hours of practice a day, hand exercises, hand soaking, not being allowed to clean house or boil water for fear of damaging her hands... she just didn't have the shine and they cast her off. That part of art music is really sad. In my opinion they should let performers develop their talents a little older and worry less about virtuousity, but I'm not in charge of the world either.

But, what I think it is really is that art music requires first a diseased mind that wants to figure out why it's felt to be at least nominally important to our culture, and second, a passionate soul when you figure out why art music is much more than nominally important.

I think everyone gets to an age, some people much later than others, that they want to go see chamber music and go to the art museum and take their time. Everyone gets there. But what the art music people don't get, is that art music is for mature people.

Only a handful of people of the age of 15 can play certain Violin Concerti, and that's because that kind of muscle movement is only available to a highly trained youngster of 15. If the music was written to be played by 15 year olds, then it's not art music in my mind because art music is for the mature. People with souls, people with consciousness, people who have lost their minds a few times and picked up the pieces.

Good art is the same. When I see a Caravaggio, I see an amazing technique, but there are people with better technique. What I want is the mature emotional content, and Caravaggio's have that a plenty. To expect a youngster to have the emotions of a 40 year old woman is preposterous, but there's a CD for every mentor who said they found one.

And that's why my cello playing friend, who is 19, listens to Enya instead of Art Music. In 10 years she'll be playing Haydn or something and making friends with real music. Right now she won't play my pieces because her hands are all messed up from cleaning house and nothing sounds right.

I'm not bragging but the piece was written for a female cellist, not her in particular, and the piece is good. There aren't many 32nd notes in the score, just a few mordents and trills, but it's tricky, kind of like a Czerny etude, much harder than it looks.

Well enough of that. I think the quitting smoking psychotic attacks are starting to wear off. Maybe it's because I fortified with beer yesterday. I don't know. More later maybe.