homogenized styles

[imperialbari]

bloke "hoping for the best... ' no spellcheck today"

Please don’t worry!

Your postings always display traces of one spell or another.

K

[peter birch]

This was occurring even before YouTube, but since YouTube I've noticed more and more homogenization of styles of brass playing from one global geographic region to the next. (Surely homogenation has occurred with other schools of music performance as well.)

In the (I guess "distant", as I'm getting old) past, I could purchase the lastest Philip Jones recording and really enjoy listening to the British brass band influences in their playing...or I could listen to the Vienna Philharmonic...or the Berlin Philharmonic...or the (etc.) and really hear amazing different styles/interpretations of standard works. Now...not so much (still a little bit, but not so much).

I dunno whether this is a good thing...??

bloke "hoping for the best... ' no spellcheck today"

I am not sure that I agree with about the PJBE and brass band playing influencing their playing, one of the things about their playing that was different to British brass band playing at the the time was that they actually played in tune with each other, and secondly they played without vibrato but still sounded musical and expressive, it had a huge influence on my playing as youngster.
My guess for the reason for the homogeneity of playing is the recording industry and the need to make commercially viable recording, if the critics "don't like" recordings then it seems likely that ensembles, conductors and record labels are going to produce performances that a fairly small, self selecting group of people are going to approve of, which will make them somewhat risk averse and similar sounding.

[sloan]

It's all about communication. The same thing happens with language. There are many countries where there is a standard language - and also many local dialects. Sometimes to the point where people who nominally speak "the same language" cannot understand each other - unless they both retreat to the standard "official" or "high" version of that language.

In the US, there used to be much wider variability in accent, vocabulary, and grammar. What changed this (or moderated it)? TV! Differences in accent are now MUCH reduced (over, say the last 50 years) - and most of that can be traced to broadcast TV.

I don't think travel (or travelling conductors) has very much to do with it. Instead, we now have middle-aged musicians who have had a lifetime of listening to more RECORDED music than LIVE music. Live music retains the regional "accent" - but the spread of recorded music means that everyone, everywhere, has access to (almost) all of the same "influences". Joe comments on the joy of picking up various recordings to experience the various flavors found around the globe. In turn, this means that Joe can probably PLAY a pretty good imitation of EACH of those styles, on demand. So can a musician in Berlin, or Buenos Aires, or Shanghai. It is to be expected that a hundred musicians, all exposed to the same 20 styles, will tend to gravitate towards a common ground. This common ground is reinforced by recordings made by these musicians. And so on.

Oh well, at least there are various "preservation societies" scattered around the world devoted to the task of preserving their local heritage. Everyone else is pursuing the "good" - no matter where that leads. It should be no surprise that there is increasing global agreement on what "good" means.