Tuesday 29 May 2018

Crazy academic

Because it is sometimes healthy to have a laugh about some particularly weird endeavor, it is sometimes worth to explore a certain type of academic writings which, in their courageous rejection of 'received wisdom', do not reveal some original or revealing  point about the subject, but feel the need to transgress only because they get irritated by the achievements of others which, in their restricted capacity for reception, they cannot grasp. So, they enter the subject unhindered by any musical expertise or understanding, an affliction sometimes to be found in academia as in every other sphere. I stumbled into an article upon Debussy by some Dr David Wright, DMus, which is truly interesting for the immense scope of ignorance and misunderstanding of one of the greatest musical creators of all time. Debussy was a clumsy, helpless composer not knowing how to write music, and clearly if he had had the chance to listen to Dr Wright, he could have done much better.

Knowing that he sometimes went 'against the grain', Dr Wright has a full understanding of the despair his writings may cause to serious readers. So we read on his website:

"There are other writers on music who object to Dr Wright's articles out of jealousy and/or because his writings are scholarly, definitive and reliable and, consequently, other writers may feel diminished."
 


www.wrightmusic.net

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