☟ Question for the ☟ week
I am a student of classical guitar and have recently enjoyed Hisaishi's music. But every time I told my teacher that I wanted to play Hisaishi Jean, he was very angry and said that I had poor taste. So, complex classical music must be better than simple Hisaishi? Like Hisaishi Jean is poor taste? Is Hisaishi's status in classical circles really so low?
- Liter G size 7 liter 11 chords
Speaking of Hisaishi Jean, it is probably the beginning of many post-80s and 90s listening to pure music.
From "Spirited Away" and "Castle in the Sky" to "Kikujiro's Summer", almost every song is familiar to everyone. The melody sounds, and the mind instantly crosses back to the simple and carefree childhood.
Simple and pleasant, light and clear, Hisaishi jean uses a childlike joyful melody to build a wonderful fairy tale world for the little us in the sense of hearing. I believe that many people have a very deep affection for his music.
But as we grew older, we were exposed to more music, and even after many people entered the field of music professionals, they gradually found that Hisaishi Jean seemed to have become a music that was not worth mentioning in the eyes of the so-called "professionals" around him.
How do you look at such voices? Does complex classical music necessarily better than the simple-sounding Hisaishi Jean?
Here's the answer to this question:
This little friend has a lot of problems! However, I believe he also asked a lot of people who have common doubts.
First of all, about Hisaishi's music, we have previously talked about the soundtrack he made for Jiang Wen's film "The Sun Also Rises", when Jiang Wen's request for him was: better than Mozart's "Requiem".
Hisaishi Jean added a trumpet at the beginning, and then used a small second degree to run through it, and there is a clear oriental charm on the whole, which is very suitable for the theme of the movie. Jiang Wen was particularly satisfied with this song, and later used it again in "Let the Bullets Fly".
This soundtrack work is beyond everyone's daily understanding of Hisaishi Jean.
I will not directly judge the level of Hisaishi's works today, but I want everyone to know that the Hisaishi Jean that we are familiar with and understand may not be a complete him.
In addition to the well-known anime soundtrack, Hisaishi also has chamber music, symphony and other works. Therefore, subconsciously thinking that Hisaishi only writes anime music and reduces his work to "simple" things is actually a bit of a generalization.
So, even hisaishi's well-known, "simple"-sounding works, must be worse than complex classical music?
Obviously, this cannot be said in general.
When we explained the soundtrack of Rebels before, we happened to do a comparison between "June Boat Song" and "Life's Carousel", and yes, in terms of performance, Tchaikovsky's work is more complicated than Hisaishi's score.
But the complexity of the playing doesn't prove that June's Boat Song is better than Life's Carousel. It can only be said that in the face of different plot expressions, different expressions need to be used. These two pieces have played a very important role in their respective film and television dramas, with a particularly good expression and foil effect, and they have found the most suitable application for each other.
As another example, the theme song "Love them" of Morricone's "Cinema Paradiso" that we recently talked about is very beautiful, but the melodic lines of this song are very simple. But the more simple the melody, the more difficult it is to play, because it needs to express its emotions and sense of space without showing traces and deliberately.
You can feel the "Over the Rainbow" played by jazz pianist Keith Jarrett and see how the masters interpret and express songs that we find easy to understand. We will find that even seemingly simple melodies can express emotions in place and are very artistic.
So, I think complexity and simplicity are relative. At different stages, you can understand and realize different things, and your perception of complexity and simplicity is different.
If people become more and more mature in music, they will find more and more that these so-called simple things are more difficult to play very well. After reaching a certain realm, masters are more willing to pursue the expression of those seemingly simple things, rather than expressing those works that look cool, complicated, and showy.
In short, equating Hisaishi with simplicity, classical music with complexity, simplicity with vulgarity, and complexity with elegance—these are very rigid and absolute views, and they are also invisibly trapped in the trap of what we often call the chain of musical contempt.
Of course, I don't think to focus on today's problems. The point is the phenomenon behind this question: what do you do when you encounter music you like but are not recognized by so-called "authority" people?
Our society has a lot of defaults to music, such as "classical music" is noble and elegant. If you accept such a definition and accept that classical music is antithetical to other music, then you will not only be confused when you encounter Hisaishi, but also at other times you will encounter this problem:
I like pop music, isn't it tasteful?
I like to listen to folk songs, isn't it very earthy?
……
Many times, our judgment of the quality of music is often derived from various criteria from the outside world: what is the status of the author in the circle? What do professionals say about it? Rather than thinking about the music itself.
There is a very interesting phenomenon: when the piano children learn the piano, they often change a teacher, they will have different views on the same problem, there will be subversive explanations of the same piece, and then these children will be confused, who should listen to?
In fact, what we need most is to build our own understanding of music and learn to think for ourselves, rather than staying on the standards established by "industry" and "authority". Only when you really build your understanding of music do you know how to face and control the sounds of the outside world, and you will no longer be entangled in whether what you like will be recognized in the circle.
Therefore, I am very happy to receive such a question today, indicating that this student has begun to have doubts in the face of these external standards, which is the beginning of self-thinking.
Of course, the same is true for this teacher. A person who can draw direct conclusions and absolutely evaluate something is not good, that means that the teacher has stopped growing.
Because people's understanding of music should be dynamic, at certain stages of life, after experiencing certain things, the perception of music may change. If the student's preference is directly and arbitrarily denied, then it means that he has not continued to think.
No matter what music you like, know why you like it, and understand what's so good about it, then feel free to enjoy and play it. Music learning is a dynamic process, and the understanding of each piece of music is the process of finding and discovering your heart. And this is the original meaning of music.