I play mostly oldtime/bluegrass/Americana. It is always a treat when some classically trained violin performance major shows up. No their playing is not what you would generally expect of bluegrass/oldtime fiddling, but they sure can play. (Funny, tho, when some of them want to play sheet music of some tune we all know. Of course, they are usually end up playing some crazy complicated version of that old standard, often at breakneck speed!)
I heard that Raymond Scott spent a fortune developing electronic music devices because humans were not quite good enough for him—they might occasionally make a mistake. He truly wanted a machine that would play exactly what he wrote.
Not only did such a machine exist in Beethoven’s time, but he wrote a piece specifically for it. I give you the panharmonicon.
I don’t know if Beethoven preferred it. I doubt it, since he never wrote anything else for it.
This got my back up a bit, and the following song immediately leapt to mind. Which version, jazz or classical, is perfect? I know which one I’d listen to over and over.
Jazz
Classical
Um. I kinda doubt that Eonwe was trying to imply that Billie Holiday or singers of her ilk are “amateurs” trying to excuse their “faults”.
The improvisational flexibility of the virtuoso is different from the faulty execution of the mediocre amateur, no matter what the genre.
Playing wrong note in Classical vs. Jazz
Vladimir Horowitz stumbles right out of the gate at his “Historic Return” concert:
Now, that’s just ridiculous.
I’ve heard top jazz players try classical pieces. That results were… adequate, at best.
And the obsession that non-classical music fans have with improvisation is weird. I cannot think of single improvised solo in any genre that moves me more than, say, Beethoven’s late piano sonatas, Chopin’s Nocturnes, or Brahms’ chamber music. Not one.
Why is it so difficult to accept that these two worlds, with widely different expectations and standards, are both amazing in their own way ?
I studied classical flute for years. My instructor was insistent that I play the notes as written on the page, when it came to classical stuff. Faure’s “Pavane” was particularly difficult: “Remember the slurs, you have to make the slurs!”
But when it came to other things, he was entirely open to them. I once showed him the sheets for Van Morrison’s “Moondance.” Yes, he and I could play it as written—until I didn’t. I took off, and he was left dropping his jaw. He had to realize that not all music was written on a page, and that all music, even unwritten, was amazing.
Exactly.
Plus, as @pulykamell wrote above, there are plenty of classical musicians who can improvise.
One of my friends graduated from the Paris Conservatoire, the most prestigious classical music institution in France, where you can only get in if you’re in the absolute top 0.01% of students. He can sight-read pretty much anything, analyze the harmonies of even the craziest avant-garde pieces and improvise. As a matter of fact, he worked for years as a pianist in various cinemas where he would improvise whatever best suited the action on the screen. Sure, he didn’t do jazz licks, but it was 100% improvisation all the same.
Becoming a top classical musician requires a unique combination of innate talent, rigorous training, and unwavering dedication.
For me, the epitome of musical technical precision is embodied by my favorite concert pianist, Yuja Wang. I’ve listened to her performances for years and have yet to hear a single flawed note from her piano. But she is much more than a technically brilliant speed demon; her playing resonates with depth, emotion, and a profound understanding of the music. IMHO, she’s as close to musical perfection as one can get.
Of course, it helps to start off as a child prodigy and develop muscle memory from a young age.
Rick Beato’s take on the subject.
This is true to an extent, but less true for strings, in my experience. An obvious dissonant note by the first violin will absolutely stick out, which is why first violins don’t make mistakes. An early entrance or late cuttoff will definitely stick out, which is why conductors are control freaks. A lot of people work very hard to ensure this doens’t happen.
I’d say that other than the heavily discussed factor of practice and rehearsal, the biggest reason you might not notice wrong notes is that you simply don’t remember them. You think you would, and in the moment you might. But most people are listening for rightness not wrongness, and the wrong notes slip out of your memory because they just don’t fit into the whole.
It’s the old trope of “book larnin’ vs. street smarts”. Improvisation is just a different art and a different skill than performing a set piece. And IMPROVISATION TAKES PRACTICE, as weird and nonintuitive as it sounds.
And also requires a great deal of learning, at least to be a terrific improviser. The musical vocabulary that a superb improviser has is generally mind boggling. The scales, modes, arpeggios, inversions, and theory at their command is huge. So, yes, great improvisation entails passion and feeling and imagination, but it’s all supported by a vast toolkit at their disposal.
You can have galaxy-sized passion, but without talent, technique and education—well, you’re a critic, I guess.
Bingo. This is why Charlie Parker and Coltrane etc practiced so excessively - to build up an incredibly complex toolkit to draw on.
And there are certainly musicians who can play both classical and jazz expertly. Wynton Marsalis is probably one of the more famous ones, but Keith Jarrett is likewise excellent (his recording of the Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues is sublime).
A rare exception that proves the rule: In Leonard Bernstein & the New York Philharmonic’s recording of Danse Macabre, the solo violinist David Nadien plays a clam, loud, during a very quiet passage at measure 459 (6:35 in the recording). Where the score calls for B-flat, he also hit an E-flat on the D string. Why they decided to release that take, only Bernstein could explain, but since the clam was consonant with the E-flat chord in that measure, they must have decided it fit in well enough.
Oh my God, I actually retched! 
Not just jazz. I’ll offer up Edgar Meier and Paul Kowert on bass, and Yo-Yo Ma and Mike Block on cello, as folk who can play classical and bluegrass at the highest levels. As far as I can tell, there is NO genre that Rachel Barton Pine does not excel at.
Universally-applicable musical theory is always essential, but presumably one would not be able to go crazy in, say, gamelan if one had never heard of it before. You would have to learn something, and practice until you “got” it; listen (and be taught) until you understand what the forms actually are.
I sing Wagner. I’ve probably done damage to my own hearing.