About this Short Film
An Interview with Joseph Ingram CLASSICAL MUSIC, directed by David Jackson (Australia, 2022), presents a straightforward interview with Joseph Ingram. The film listens as music, university life and the concerns of a young adult are named and shared. It has a quiet focus on the individual, offering space for the subject's voice to come through without artifice. Shown here as part of the Focus on Ability programme, the film sits alongside works that highlight abilities, experiences and achievements of people with disability. Simple, direct and attentive, it asks viewers to consider how music and education shape a life at a particular moment.
Film Details
Film Transcript
Yeah, I think I could say with good confidence that my favourite composer is Maurice Revell. One of my first weeks at uni we have a class called Technique and Repertoire where students play for each other for feedback, and some higher-level student, either third year or honours—I don't think I haven't seen him for ages—he played Ravel's Ondine. That's very much a piece that is supposed to sound like water. It starts with the pitter-patter of rain on windows and then it's just this torrential downpour before this water fairy appears, and it blew my mind. It gave me shivers, and so I've just become slightly obsessed with his music since then. It's a magnificent piece.
I think it depends on what meets the needs of the people who are listening to it. The music that you hear on the radio might not be classical music, but it's what people listen to, and there are certain—like, there's such a thing as good pop music and there's such a thing as bad classical. It's just stuff that's evolved naturally from this progression, so I don't know if what we consider to be classical music ever will really make its way back, but I think it will always be influencing these new works. And I don't know, maybe it's possible that in a few years' time these other new things will feed back into classical. I don't think it's beyond what happens in music. A lot of our Western music is based off of this natural progression of counterpoint, then functional harmony, and then chords without function but colour it. I think that it's not going to just disappear, and I think that people will just come back to see how this progression has happened. I mean, there is a timeless aspect about great music, and it's amazing—you'll go back to old compositions and you'll see things in them that you'll realise were very forward-thinking, maybe even today that would be considered something that's new and we're just looking at it differently. So of course we can never go back to what it was like when those pieces were modern, but I don't think that their age makes them any less valuable.
Filmmaker
David Jackson is the filmmaker behind this entry. See every Focus on Ability entry from David Jackson.
