Music Man

When does music cease to be music and become simply noise? I'm sure I'm going to offend countless people, but I found the performance of "My Country 'Tis of Thee" at President Obama's inauguration excruciatingly terrible. It was all the worse to my ear because, of course, it is the same tune as our National Anthem. I cringed, I really cringed. If singers are going to depart from the basic tune - and there's nothing inherently wrong with that although I would have thought that this was perhaps not an appropriate occasion for such an approach - then they should do so with some regard for the underlying structure of the piece. This just turned into a bout of self-indulgent shouting and screeching - it was horrible.