http://robpongi.com/pages/comboMOKINHI.html
I don’t get it. Why did they chain a little girl to a xylophone until she learns to play it like a tiny happy robot? Wouldn’t it have been easier to do the whole thing in cg?
What I want to know is, why the heck are people looking for when they find this shit on teh internet?
Google: Smily happy chinese girls playing music like bots.
Picky picky: She’s Korean.
North Korean.
she looks like a muppet.
Maybe she really likes to do it?
Mozart was a great pianist by age 6.
Yes, but that hardly invalidates the point about this little girl as Mozart was himself locked in a room and forced to practice by his obsessive father for days on end.
Bit like football dads and moms forcing their children to play every weekend whether they like it or not.
I know that Ludwig van Beethoven’s father, Johann was overly obsessive and forced Ludwig to perform for his friends and would lock him up. Did Leopold really do that to Amadeus as well? I must have forgotten.
I know that Ludwig van Beethoven’s father, Johann was overly obsessive and forced Ludwig to perform for his friends and would lock him up. Did Leopold really do that to Amadeus as well? I must have forgotten.[/quote]
Ah, now you mention it, I might be getting the two mixed up. Both had obsessive dads but I think Ludwig’s was the worse of the two.
I have only heard that about Beethoven. I think Mozart liked music. Beethoven learned to, which is amazing considering.
I wouldn’t call Leopold a benign father either. He may have been more of the inspiring rather than torturing kind, but he was quite obsessive about having his way. He harassed Amadeus until the end of his years for never taking to the violin as seriously as he did the piano, long after Mozart became too busy as a composer to bother with performance.
Not particularly. I’m sure he liked music as well, he just learned to keep his antipathy for his father separate from the study of music. I know, that sounds difficult as well, but…
Anecdote: I was neighbours with a kid whose father was rather accomplished in the Canadian Armed Forces, and whose family had a military tradition stretching all the way back to England. In fact, they ended up in Canada because of the Revolutionary War. Anyway, he obviously was sent to military camps for summer, and he HATED it as a kid and early teenager. I ran into him at a high school grad party and his resentment was gone - he’d grown to appreciate the discipline, physical training and strength of character it gave him. He was in the reserves while taking a year off and then the army was putting him through college.
I honestly think that most people are like that. As we grow older, we understand why we were pushed, controlled and manipulated. There’s definitely a difference between strict and guiding or even controlling, and abusive. Where do you draw the line? If your kid hates everything but chocolate and pizza, are you going to cave in or force him to to eat healthy because it’s good for him?
The key is to decide where your own desires are unsuited for your child and how much is too much. I was rather driven as a kid to excel, but as I look back, I wish my parents had given me focus rather than mere support. Heck, I’d appreciate being forced to learn piano even though I have no musical aptitude (and I don’t know a single piano player who didn’t hate learning it as a kid.) As long as I was given something specific to focus my energy on. Now I’m like a learned dilettante. A little of everything, but never enough of something to be particularly useful.
Both were probably pretty screwed.
Mozart was both very gifted and born into a family of professional musicians, but his father definitely had strong and questionable aspirations for him. Beethoven had a nice knack for music on his own, with the lovely addition of having an alcoholic father that’d come home drunk and drag him out of bed to make him practice piano. Coincidentally, this was because dear old dad wanted him to be a child prodigy on the scale of Mozart.
Jakub’s on the right track here. In addition to eventually to appreciating the discipline and structure, it’s extremely hard to hate music. You can hate practicing, you can hate being forced to play stuff when you don’t want to, and you can hate the manner in which you’re forced to play it. But there’s something else about being involved with it that’s almost perversely enticing, especially when you’re capable of getting so much out of it not in spite, but due to harsh training like those 2 had.
It’s still very possible to turn a child away from the art by grinding them into it, but Beyond that, Mozart seemed like a pretty accomodating guy whose dad wasn’t a total dick, and Beethoven still liked music but clearly just wanted to play whatever the hell he wanted to play.
Oh, Beethoven didn’t just like music, he absolutely loved it, make no mistake - and he was definitely a prodigy in his own right. It’s this love of music which probably helped him get through his childhood with his abusive father. And as for being a composer, the guy was a radical. His music was all about the emotional aspect and is IMHO much more interesting to listen to than the more “technically correct” Mozart.
I personally like Mozart and Beethoven both. I agree that generally Beethoven is more passionate. Mozart is definitely more of a mainstream type who cranked out music because music was there to crank out.
Fur Elise and Beethoven’s 9th are generally my favorites, but the more I’ve grown acquainted with and knowledgeable about classical, the more I like Requiem - I’d say it’s tied for first with the other two now. I collect almost exclusively Deutsche Grammophone recordings and the one they have of Requiem dates back to 1971 and the Weimar Philharmonic. Whoever the soprano is who sings “cum vix justus sit securus” at the very end of Tuba Mirum (or whatever the 3rd track is called) sends chills down my spine and sets my hair on end every time I hear it. She hits that high note, loud and clear, and then goes higher and louder and higher and louder… sweet Jesus it’s a beautiful performance.