bluemlein
Group: Members
Posts: 83
Joined: June 2020 |
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Posted: Sep. 07 2020, 17:25 |
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Quote | Quote (qcfoetus @ Sep. 06 2020, 18:47) Quote (bluemlein @ Sep. 05 2020, 18:14) incantations is fiendishly difficult, based on the circle of fifths. it's entirely possible that this sprang out of oldfield's head simply by virtue of his having heard and - consciously or not -analyzed it, developing it by sheer experimentation and repetition.
this is a very strictly mathematical work that is given a lot of life by the ornamentation especially of the flutes at the beginning. yes, hiawatha is long but i dare anyone who thinks it is too long or too monotonous to sit still during gavin bryars' "jesus's blood".
for myself i quite like it. during preparations for a failed project i listened many times to it, on earphone. i can tell you every glitch and squawk - but they do not detract. it is pointless to overwork something to the point of technical perfection if it drubs the life out of it.
Interesting to think that Mike, who tolerated these glitches and squawks in his mid 20s, decided at age 50 to re-record TB to fix mistakes in the original, and then in his 60s deliberately left mistakes in the recording of RTO to retain a human quality to the music. Anyway, I agree with your take on Incantations, which will always remain one of my favorite MO albums.
Mike is well known for changing his opinions on the same subject years later, or just plain contradicting himself, which I am sure we all do, but because we are not in the public eye it doesn't get talked about or noticed. |
it would be a sad world if no one ever changed their opinion of the worth of their work. i have written some ridiculous things - fortunately did not publish them or i'd be sitting here with an omelette on my face. as you say, when one is in the public eye it can be more problematic. it becomes especially bad when one has early success that one's public wants to hear repeated. let's face it, there is a subset of fans for any musician/group/writer/actor etc that wants nothing more than the same dished out 40 different ways.
also, when one gets long in the tooth, one has more lived experience against which to compare and judge one's work. there are some oldfield works that leave me not even cold, just beset by ennui, because in my estimation they are repetitive, derivative, lacking variation in tempo etc. but you could be sitting across the table thinking that's just bologna, because you hear them in a different way.
when one is a creative individual one may have a love-hate relationship with one's work, perhaps because of personal associations, bad timing, etc. and years later, when the above no longer matter one can see one's work more clearly. (that happened to me with one of my own works - it's strange to reread a couple of decades later and acknowledge that damn! it is good after all - better than groan, why did i ever issue this with my name on it)
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