Posted by Long posting on January 17, 2003 at 21:55:41:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Haufrecht posted by JoeS on January 17, 2003 at 19:20:51:
Even if I am not any more familiar with the term "impudence", than what I just read in Merriam-Webster, I don't think, that was, what I reacted against.
But as soon, as I had read your first reply, I followed your hint towards your local university library and found the asked for music there.
So when I read the reply to you, I reacted, because I once more saw an attitude, which, polite or not, did not solve the question originally posed.
And I have seen far too many situations, where good projects have been aborted at an early stage, because persons, again polite or not, are not ignorant, but lazy.
The original question about buying some specific music can not be answered, because the music is not for sale. You gave an opening for a solution, which was rejected, even if it with very little footwork could have lead to a full and workable understanding of the situation.
Dead-end-road situations most often are dead-end-road situations because they are made dead-end-road situations by the involved persons.
I have worked with a lot of persons, that had a military background. Very mixed experiences with that.
One of them only had the rank of first lieutenant, but he had worked with operational matters. He ended as a very competent head of libraries in my present town. We worked together for about 23 years until his retirement.
I also worked together with a very high ranking bean counter officer and his second in command of only one rank lower. The boss knew the book and worked by it and by orders. He was not operational and not very good at planning processes towards a goal.
The second in command had a much wider horizon on how to make things work. He probably had honed his skills in the private business, he ran as an aside. (And he probably had made most of the work assigned to his boss).
I also have worked together with a boatswain. He loved his music and his tuba, only he was not very well educated in exactly music. But he knew whom to ask, when he met his own limits. When he had gotten the optional solutions laid out and explained, he carried them out with great dedication. We ran a band together until a drunken bandsman offended our good pro conductor very badly in the men's room at a party. After that we could not get a new conductor. No one wanted to suffer the same fate.
The last military man, I have met in my work with music and culture in wider aspects, had been a tank repairman for many years with a rank not much higher than lance corporal. Working strictly on a need to know basis. Only with the sad problem, that he did not know enough to run the band he chairs. And he doesn't ask, he just bullies his incompetent ideas through. Who suffers? First of all the music! How can he be allowed to chair a band? Because of the laziness of the rest of the band!
I think that operationally oriented persons, military background or not, are the persons, that make music making (and a lot of other matters) happen.
This does not necessarily call for the best education or knowledge, only the ability to know ones own limits and to know where to get help.
Of course every single person's operational values have something to do with type of personality, but most skills can be learned, if there is a will.
To end this long rant:
Even if I due to a joint condition (hyper-luxation) never was in the military, I am very interested in the history and the organisation of military music. Some years ago I sent some questions to the British embassy in my country. I got not only the organisational and educational overview, but also their compendium on how to score for bag-pipes and band from the British military conservatory at Kneller Hall.
When I some years later joined this forum of TubeNet, I wanted to learn some interesting, for me at least, details especially about instrumentation and the application of the crew for various assignments. When some answers began coming in, my sources had their mouths taped by their superiors. And believe me: as operational I strive to be, my questions were neither subversive nor would the answers have been helpful for Saddam. This was a "sad" sample of subordinates knowing more, than they were supposed, by their superior, to need.
A terribly long rant!
Klaus (who never had heard of Haufrecht until this thread came up)