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Doublereed Archive - Posting 000032.txt from 2005/07

From: Oboeeee@-----.com
Subj: [DR-L] Quote of the Day
Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 19:23:43 -0400


"The jazz musician is denied the dignity accorded the composer because not e
verything he composes is first written down, or, necessarily, written down
afterward, or, once written down, considered immutable. And he is denied the
dignity accorded the Serious-music performer because the latter is an
"interpreter" of presumably great music. The musician, in other words, who makes up
his music as he goes along, or makes up a good deal of it, or who rarely plays
the same music twice in the same way, is, we are given to understand,
inferior to the musician who makes no music of his own. For all his undisputed
virtuosity and inventive fancy, the jazz musician cannot, we are led to believe,
be granted equality with the Serious musician who can read and play the notes
written down for him by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner a century
or so ago."

-Henry Pleasants (b. 1910) U.S. music critic
"A Performer's Art," Serious MusicAnd All That Jazz, Simon & Schuster (1969)

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