Today's players vs players of the 40s - 80s?

[bike&ed]

[bike&ed]

[Steve A]

[andybharms]

I think a lot of this discussion revolves around the sheer breadth of skills required of young musicians. I disagree with people who say perfection is the name of the game. I get to play with and hear a lot of great orchestras live, and it is a fallacy that anybody is up there playing perfectly. Even auditions, I have never heard of anyone playing a “perfect” audition, at least by their own measure. It might sound “perfect” by some measure, but there are always quibbles.

Re town bands, maybe, but (orchestrally, at least) most pro careers these days begin really with the festival and training orchestras… Aspen, Music Academy, etc. I actually think this is a bit of a problem in the industry, because the festivals are sometimes very expensive and can inadvertently end up gatekeeping for a pretty high degree of financial privilege. Not universally of course. But even a free festival means potentially missing out on a summer of work money, bills, etc. I am pretty up-front with students and clients who are considering this field, that if they are unable to participate in festivals, their odds of success are significantly lower.
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Andrew Harms, DMA
http://www.andrewbharms.com

[agolden]

there are so many unreal trumpet players out there today it's scary.
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trumpet - synths - cornet
Bach//Blackburn
Patrick Mouthpieces

[Steve A]

I don't think that the overall level of musical expressiveness necessarily changes from one generation to the next, but from a standpoint of technical execution, I think there's reason to believe that the average level of technical proficiency required by working players today includes things that many similar working players of the "golden eras" we often see idolized here weren't consistently expected to be able to do.

As an example, I remember when I was in my undergrad having my teacher show me a particular excerpt that he said used to be unusual in auditions because it was too hard but which I've since been asked to play in auditions a number of times, even when auditioning for orchestras that were obviously never going to play that repertoire. It kind of seems like the prevailing mentality is "the harder, the better".

[jvf1095]

Interesting post; "then vs now". Some of it depends on what type of music they played. How do you compare them in that way? You almost have to compare them by style. For example, take singers. You can compare Engelbart Humperdinck with Tom Jones; Bobby Darin with Frank Sinatra or Michele Bublé; Barbara Streisand with Celine Dion; etc. You would almost have to do it that way; & perhaps give the guys from the 40s & 50s a bit more consideration, perhaps even due to equipment. Now I realize as they say in golf, it's the arrow & not the Native American (trying to be politically correct here), but todays top end horns are made with much better precision, tolerances, valve alignment, mouthpiece precision etc. Not trying to go off on a tangent here, but take golf...if you could bring back Ben Hogan & give him the latest, greatest titanium driver & precision made balls, would he blow the doors off of today's guys? I don't know. If I had to pick someone, I think players like Harry James can hold his own among anyone; but within his style of music. .