Newspaper Article

Play it again, fans

Freyne, Patrick

2012

Overview

  \"Everyone knows that if you learn how to play a piece of music you experience it in a different way to if you're just listening to it,\" says Dr Jennifer Walshe, an acclaimed Irish composer who lectures at Brunel University, in London. \"And what [Beck Hansen]'s doing, though it seems like an almost retrogressive move, it's actually very now. It's like Jay-Z's Black Album, which everyone sampled and remixed, and that was part of the fun of that album - all the different remixes that were done and the weird clashes between them.\" Walshe also notes that university music departments are starting to look in the opposite direction, at untrained musicians. \"I think it's interesting that Beck is bringing out a song album with notation as the universities are thinking about how to integrate musicians who can't read music,\" she says. \"Say you have this kid who's really amazing at writing dubstep but can't read or write music: how do you teach that kid and not bar their entrance to the university?\" Such \"graphic scores\" began in earnest with Earle Brown in the 1950s, and they often aim for indeterminate results. \"Notation is changing all the time,\" says Walshe. \"It will be interesting to see what it looks like in 50 years' time.\"

• Publisher: The Irish Times Ltd
• Subject: Hansen, Beck / Walshe, Jennifer