Klarinet Archive - Posting 000128.txt from 1994/03

From: Robert_E._Winston@-----.COM
Subj: Re: Why Shouldn't We be Better Players?
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 1994 14:28:51 -0500

> You ask two good questions (which I paraphrase): one asks why
> we use all these new instrument if they were not so
> techologically superior and the other (with words very
> revealing of your feelings about worth) that asks why we waste
> our time studying all these musicological questions. "Waste
> our time" was your very phrase.

[Still in sports mode]

The ref blows his whistle, points at Leeson, and yells "Foul! -
paraphrasing out of context."

What I said was:

> But going back to your thesis, why shouldn't we be better
> players today than the players of say 30 years ago? We have
> the advantage of the accumulated experience, both technical
> and artistic, that they had - they taught us, after all - plus
> everything that has come since. If that doesn't make us better
> players, then why do we spend so much money for these modern
> instruments and why do we waste our time on all this
> musicological research.

You left out the modifier clause (or maybe I just didn't say it well).

What is the purpose of research? The warm gooey felling you get tracking
down how Beermann played trills? The self satisfaction of knowing that the
Mozart was meant for the basset not the soprano and those octave jumps
weren't meant to be there?

If the accumulated musicological research of, say, the last 30 years
doesn't make us better players than players of 30 years ago then why
bother? And what's wrong with us? And why teach it to the kids? If Belison
could play without knowing this stuff, why can't the Ithaca kids?

Could it be that:

a) The old guys weren't as good as we remember them?

or

b) They were that good and we haven't advanced art one damn bit.

Is that it?
We learn everything they can teach us.
Add to that advances in technology.
Add to that all the musicological knowledge gained in the intervening
years.
Add to that our accumulated musical experiences, for example, listening,
through recordings, to a vastly larger variety of music and musicians then
they could have possibly heard.

And after all that the best we can do is measure up to, but not surpass,
the players who didn't have these advantages. Maybe we're just lazy.

________
Robert_E._Winston@-----.com