Pre-recorded Music for the Inauguration and Pete Seeger

I have begun to see a few articles taking issue with the classical quartet for using pre-recorded music at the inauguration. They have been compared to the likes of Milli Vanilli and Ashlee Simpson. No comparison. The articles have obviously been written by someone who knows little or nothing about stringed instruments or people with little talent. If you don't have much talent to begin with, you don't want to be exposed before a live audience. If you play a stringed instrument, you know all of the things that can go wrong in an extreme weather situation.

Anyone who has ever played a stringed instrument knows how easily they are affected by changes in temperature and humidity. It is almost impossible to keep an instrument in tune in such extremes. Both the wood and the strings are affected. In extreme cold strings held so taut can easily break. Obviously the musicians were playing. We don't know exactly what they sounded like. Surely the instruments had been allowed to adapt to the cold, but who knows how well they held up.

It is hard to gloss over something so precise as classical music. Whereas, if James Taylor or Pete Seeger had hit missed a note we probably wouldn't have noticed. Changing the subject slightly, wasn't it great to see Pete Seeger on stage singing? A man who was a prime mover in the folk movement of the 1950's and 60's and who felt the wrath of McCarthy as a member of the Weavers. He was blacklisted and investigated and tailed by the FBI, so he could certainly identify with those who were blacklisted, wiretapped, and secretly investigated during the recent Bush era. What a great choice for the inauguration, and it was hardly noticed. I digressed, but maybe a good subject for a later post.