http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGOH1xzNCOU
Absorbing...I also watched the later parts as he explores how to convey emotion in music, thanks.
Mike
He is lightyears from a musical genius. A blind autistic person will most likely develop stunning absolute pitch. His brain do not process auditory information to higher semantic levels. He can't compose anything relevant. He is a human spectral analysator, not a musical genius.
He's no Elgar ::)
Did you actually watch the documentary? Part five shows him in a very impressive jazz session with Jools Holland. He is clearly very gifted in Jazz improvisation.
Mike
I don't get it.
Quote from: 71 dB on April 19, 2007, 10:27:57 AM
He is lightyears from a musical genius. A blind autistic person will most likely develop stunning absolute pitch. His brain do not process auditory information to higher semantic levels. He can't compose anything relevant. He is a human spectral analysator, not a musical genius.
Agreed.
It is summed up quite correctly by Sloboda at the end of part 2, one of the BIGGEST names in music cognition. Emotionally, he is completely absent. Note the lack of verbal communication in finding his errors. Almost sounds a case of the CLASSIC and famous split corpus callosum cases in individuals being being able to sense and comprehend but unable to communicate. Similarly, Derek probably could recite entire passages of foreign languages after one listen without understanding any of what it means.
As far as the improv is concerned, he understands the syntax of the chords. Being able to chose notes over those chords is a response to that syntax. His music lacks those elements in which people with normal socialized human emotions (secondary human emotions) have. Animacy cues, hints of empathy and sympathy in music; those elements of music that make to people without these conditions which make music in fact music.
A very similar and perhaps more profound account of such
musical savants was Blind Tom. According to some accounts, Blind Tom's ability at age 6 matched Derek Paravicini's during this taping. My ignorance of part 1 will probably place me incorrect to say the cause of Derek's condition might have been
retrolental fibroplasia.
Furthermore, as Robert Jourdain deftly puts it in his book
Music, the Brain and Ecstasy, "The abstract manipulations that are at the heart of composition are quite beyond a savant. His musical hierarchy is shallow and inflexible."
He may be a 'musical genius' but to me, being able to play well with such difficulties doesn't entitle you to be a genius. It is when one creates something that comes from inside one's soul that is so great as to leave the listener/viewer in amazement. To me, Beethoven wasn't a genius because he may have had a high IQ or may have been a very gifted pianist. It's because he created works like the late quartets and the piano sonatas that I consider him a genius.
I understand that my definition differs from most but it's just how I see it. Nevertheless, Paravicini is very gifted.
I don't recall anyone calling him a genius in the programme and he does not fall into any definition of the word that I know. We wre misleading ourselves here by a title thought up as a catchpenny in order to maximise the audience.
Mike
I didn't notice that. Thanks, knight.