(However… I’ve seen reproductions… Here’s a link… It’s actually rather pretty! Damn sight better than I can do! Wish he’d stuck to that as a career choice.)
I’ve talked to musicians who say that real artistry comes in playing the slow movements, and not the fast ones. It takes a lot of skill, of course, to play a complex run of 16th notes, but it takes soul to play a melody in half notes. It requires more artistry in the subtle ranges of dynamics, attack, sustain, whether or not to allow a hint of tremolo, etc.
(I’m not entirely sure I agree…but they’re the musicians and I’m not!)
Also, technical expertise by itself isn’t applauded much. For example, a lot of fusion was rock played by jazz musicians with serious skills. Unfortunately, the compositions were boring, and almost nobody liked it. (Of course there are noteworthy counterexamples, most notably the ones playing fusion before it got “popular” like Miles Davis, Chick Corea, Weather Report. I’m not commenting on that!)
Certain musical sounds can be difficult to play and difficult to incorporate into a good piece and have it sound good. Sometimes even a bad attempt is praised more than it deserves if judged independent of the use of the complication.
I see the samee thing when film critics fall in love with a bad movie just because it’s highly unusual is some manner. It’s something to break the routine of sameness of the schlock they have to sit through, but is too often only that.
??? You’re the one who got it and explained it. What did you miss? ???
But what if it were sung by, say, The Andrews Sisters (c. 1945)? Or the Supremes (c. 1965)?
Or… Hm… Imagine a Beethoven serenade, using “Row Row Row Your Boat” as a foundational motif. Or even a symphony, where he uses it the same way he used the famous four notes of the Fifth, weaving variations of it all through the work.
(Some of you will have had the joy of hearing P.D.Q. Bach’s “1712 Overture,” where, among other things, “Yankee Doodle” is used as a base motif.)
In pop music, once you’ve got a nice tune, most of the job is done. Don’t get me wrong, being able to come up with a nice tune is already an achievement. Being able to do so several times and build a career definitely requires a talent that few people have. In other words, I’m NOT dissing pop musicians.
But in classical music, when you’ve got a nice tune, you still have a long way to go because the point is not to have a good melody (although that’s important of course) but to see what you can do with it. What sort of interesting or surprising variations of it are you going to use. Why? Then, you may want to come up with a second (or a third) theme. In order to achieve what? Are the new themes meant to contrast with the first? Or completely contradict it? Or actually reinforce it? What instruments are you going to use and what effect to you wish to produce by using them? And you have to think about the structure and proportions, too. Do you add an introduction? A coda? Is the piece meant to be cyclical or moving straight from point A to (unrelated) point Z? And again at each of these steps, you have to find a compelling reason.
Take Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. What a simplistic opening motive. It’s not even a fully-fledged melody. But what he does with it afterwards is pure genius…
I think it comes down to relistenability, to coin a word. A simple piece of music can be pretty much fully appreciated after just a couple listenings, while a complex piece may yield fresh enjoyment for hundreds of listenings.
It’s like an intricately plotted novel or movie. You may watch/read it several times, and yet find something new and fresh on your 20th or 30th time. It’s that quality that raises the work from something that is merely entertaining to the level of high art. It takes a lot of skill to produce that effect, and the same holds true with music.
