Ephesos and the Cult of Artemis

Can I buzz-in with my bees or butt-in with my stags?

 

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Ephesos
AR Obol
Obv: Bee
Rev: Epsilon Phi, 2 chess pieces - Opposing Knights...who will take whom...?

 

Ephesos
AR Hemi-Drachm (Tri-Obol)
Obv: Bee
Rev: Incuse with Magistrate TIMESIANAX (in Greek)
ca. Late 5th C. BCE
Seaby/Sear 4368

 

i was window shopping at ebay today, look at the fake coin in this lot.....on topic with this thread.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ancient-Rom...-/262036465373?hash=item3d029726dd&rmvSB=true

 

Doooooaaah! @chrsmat71 LOL, you scared the devil out of me! You swept in right after my posts with a comment on fake coin... WHEW! Not me!

 

NO, NO, didn't mean that........SORRY!

 

Dude, no prob! LOL I laughed after I followed your link!

 

Excellent! Someone with whom I can rant about the proliferation of I–V–vi–IV as well as the shortcomings of the Standard Model As a pianist and an I-wish-I-could-find-the-time composer myself, evidently the intersections of interests on this forum are even deeper than were revealed in the last thread.

 

Oh...no...John... I am totally tone-deaf, and canNOT keep a beat... Flunked music in Jr.High... I like to listen though!

 

I'm afraid you've opened one of my Pandora's Boxes. This is going to be a long post. I've always been mystified by the imbalance built into most conservatory curricula, meaning a preoccupation with Common Practice techniques and history. Granted, the music of the Common Practice comprises a large portion of most orchestras' repertoires, and a good musician must know his craft, but after two years of CP harmony, you're delving into the erudite complexities of voice-leading that properly cross over into musicology. I often wondered if this did any of our instrumental students any good - no conductor is ever going to ask you what grade you received in Species Counterpoint.

Nevertheless, I would have no objection to this course of action if an equal amount of consideration was given to contemporary approaches. But what the average instrumental major gets is one semester of Twentieth Century Techniques, most of which is dedicated to the Second Viennese School. And whether musicians like it or not, audiences have long ago delivered a verdict on atonalism: a resounding NO.

Now you might think this verdict would have an effect on the composition departments of the major conservatories, but you would be wrong. In a baffling act of ivory tower intractability, most composition curricula emphasize the Second Viennese School and its offshoots. The young composer is taught to set aside his childish ideas of melody and harmony, and follow in the footsteps of what I call the "obsolete avant-garde."

Years ago I had my one and only conversation with Seiji Ozawa at Tanglewood. (He only ever managed to speak cave-man English, which is not a criticism mind you - I doubt I could do better in Japanese.) Andre Watts was playing that night and I went back stage to say hello. Somehow the subject of Shoenberg's Piano Concerto came up and I asked them both if it was something they ever considered. Ozawa said, "No. No good. No story."

In a nutshell, he explained why audiences are either bored or annoyed by atonalism: if you strip music of melody and tonality, you've stripped it of its narrative, or at least limited it to a very narrow framework. So of 20th-century composers, who gets played in the concert halls? The Neo-Romanticists who only used atonality as an occasional effect: Barber, Bartok, Stravinsky, Hindemith, to name a handful - there are many more of course.

This brings me full circle to my criticisms of the average conservatory curriculum. Why can't it reflect the reality of the concert stage? By all means, let's analyze as many Bach chorales as we want, but let's give equal time to the Rite of Spring, or Barber's Piano Concerto, or a host of other fabulous, engaging masterpieces. Recently I was talking to a Masters candidate in cello performance and I asked him if he had ever played Hindemith's most popular composition, the Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Weber. He had only heard OF the piece because it was in his book of excerpts. This was someone who had gone through six years of "professional" training.

Thankfully, this academic artificiality was slowly dissipating during my tenure. I saw many signs of improvement during my time. But there are still many, many holdouts - music schools all over the world that are convinced that their obsessions with the Common Practice on one hand, and atonalism on the other, are somehow relevant to the modern world of classical music. They have yet to find the middle path.

 

Yep.

All I got from that was "Schools are out of touch with reality and are not preparing their students properly."

I've heard similar in other disciplines.

 

Golly JA, I dain't realize dat youd went ta music skool and all?!!

=> maybe you'd be likin' to try-out for Bing's band? ... we be lookin' for a fella who like to tickle dem keys!!

Heck, I even like da name you choosen for da band ...

=> put yer hands tagether for Pandora's Box, featuring J.A. Ephesos!!

 

Hello JA,

very nice coins you have there ... and Steve.

IONIA, Ephesus Hadrian Æ 18 117-38 AD Artemis
Reference.
RPC 3, 2061; BMC 229

Obv. ΑΥT ΚΑΙ ΤΡΑΙ ΑΔΡΙΑΝΟС СΕ
Laureate head right
Rev: ΕΦΕ-СΙΩΝ
tetrastyle temple within which cult statue of Artemis Ephesia with supports

8.2 gr
24 mm

 

IONIA, Ephesos. Æ. Kyandros, magistrate. Circa 200 BC,

 

Wow, great write-up, you make a lot of good points.

 

Fantastic points - I've encountered several instances of this myself, in a somewhat different capacity, and your view has added some context I was previously missing. I'm on the board of an orchestra in which I also play (cello) and have seen similar disconnects in orchestral preparation as in the professional world (the software industry).

There appears to be some carryover from historic teaching which has resulted in longer term influence in music preference from a performer's perspective, not necessarily aligning with an audience's desires. We (like most orchestras) have been struggling with falling and aging attendance, and I don't see it as solvable in the current model.

Many of the conductors with whom I've worked hold the Baroque period reverentially, perhaps because their teachers also were deeply enthusiastic about it. I had a conductor who I'd describe as a "Bach Elitist": anything non-Bach was unacceptable and he frequently scoffed at it. Yet, audiences don't respond to Baroque music nearly as much as the more accessible Romantic period and as a result, ticket sales tend to be considerably lower.

However, proposing alternate repertoire is tantamount to musical mutiny. On the opposite side of the spectrum, we had an all-atonal concert and it was a disaster, with audience members vocal in their irritation with it. A middle ground would be much more palatable to an audience; intermixing various periods will allow the Symphony to reach a broader base and introduce concepts that may have been previously overlooked by more narrowly focused audience members. It also makes the overall experience much more interesting to the musicians (I'll admit it: I don't enjoy endless ostinato passages ).

On a tangential topic, new musicians, many of whom have just completed performance Masters degrees, find themselves in their first "real" symphony experience and fail to recognize the broader context and purpose of an orchestra. I've sat next to a disappointing number of cellists who, on their first day at rehearsal, find the need to prove their technical abilities by blatantly playing excerpts of Barber's Cello concerto or a Paganini Caprice instead of the music in front of them which will be played at the rehearsal.

I've had some stern conversations with these types of self-aggrandizing musicians in the past but they never seem to be as effective as one would hope. I worry about classical music in general and would hate to see it fall further from the public's eye. For all of its failings, Youtube has made "classical crossover" much more accessible to the general public and is hopefully making an impact. I just hate seeing disappointed faces of audience members who come to concerts expecting "The Piano Guys" and receive formulaic Haydn.