I recently finished teaching Intro to Anthro, and for one of the last sessions I taught Kiri Miller’s conference paper on Guitar Hero’s Rock Pedagogy which is a great piece on an even more fascinating topic — Guitar Hero. As I was preparing for class I thought about how restricted our conversation about Guitar Hero would be because so few students had a sense of what real technical virtuosity in music making is like. After some googling I just said “screw it, half way through the class I’ll just show a youtube video of Hilary Hahn playing the final movement of the Sibelius violin concerto.” This went well — one student said that her fingers looked “CGId” because, you know, we all know that humans can’t really do that and it must have been a special effect. But, more to the point, I began googling Hilary Hahn some more.
I choose to show the Hahn performance for the rather poor reason that it was top hit in most of the search engines I tried for various combinations of ‘Sibelius concerto violin’. I had some vague sense that she was some physically striking prodigy who put out albums of Standard Romantic Showpieces With Covers Depicting Physically Striking Young Women Clutching Violins To Their Barely Concealed Chests which has become sort of a thing as major classical labels desperately try to get people to keep listening to their albums.
As it turns out, in fact, Hahn is a fascinating and articulate person who has been keeping an online journal since the late 90s and has blog entries going back to 2002. She posts regularly, has short pieces, a youtube channel, twitter alerts, and all manner of other things.
Frankly, I’m not a big fan of twitter and don’t watch that much youtube — but thanks for the channel Hilary, 60 people who never heard that Sibelius now have had a taste — but I have to really give it up for the blog entry and another recent, longer thoughtful piece on crossing musical genres. Its great to see an artist be so thoughtful in public about what they do. I was really impressed.
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Can you help me to give below information to Hiraly hahn?thank you!
Hi,Hahn,the most obvious features of your performance is steability,It seems that you will never make mistakes. I also beleive that your music comes from heart,you donot chase forms only. I like the style you knead the strings,the tremolo make me comfortable. Now, I usually play my violin along with your CD(bach concerto,unAccompaniment,and the village). for some easy music,I played as good as you, for difficult ones, you are better than me!
Another thing,when you play “old concerto”(many violinist had played),maybe you can draw lessons from them. But when you play THE VILLAGE,you have to image the sound effects by yourself,and develope your skill in your own way to create a convincing music.I want to know what did you think(design the all details of the whole music) when you prepare for the film music which was totally new for you?
I also play jazz music,do you like that?That’s a different way.
Thank you!
my email:gracey79n@yahoo.com.cn
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