Klarinet Archive - Posting 000209.txt from 1995/06

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: Re: Creativity in Performing
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 1995 12:44:03 -0400

Jim Sclater sees performing a very much creative act as contrasted with
my perspective as seeing it as a reproductive act.

Let me try another direction Jim. If you wrote a work and I performed
it, each of us would be doing a certain specific thing with respect to
your work. Let us examine which of us is indispensible.

My role in performing your music is interpretive. I don't diminish the
importance of the act, I'm simply trying to be specific in terms of what
I do with respect to your music. Now just how necessary am I to our
collaboration? If I were to call you a few days before our joint concert
(your composition, my interpretation) and say, "Sorry, Jim. I just got
another gig and it pays $2.35 more than yours, so get another clarinet
player!", your reaction would be to do just that. You would go out and
find someone else who would interpret your music and you could do that in
about 30 milliseconds, which just goes to show you how indispensible
anyone is who can be replaced in 30 milliseconds.

But if the tables were reversed and you lost the only copy of your
composition on the way to our joint concert. How would it be possible
to replace you? Obviously it would not be. I would substitute another
work and do my best to interpret it properly, but your creativity could
not be replaced under these circumstances and that is a logical absolute.
You are absolutely indispensible in the creation of any composition by
you. I am not indispensible,absolutely or otherwise, in the performance
of any composition created by you.

You say that you just don't see how performing is not a creative act
(though you said it in different words, of course). By the same token,
I have equal difficulty seeing it as a creative act when anyone can
do the performance, some better than others of course, but no one but
you can do that specific act of creativity (and you might do it better
or worse than someone else). Quality of composition is irrelevant but it
is a unique act.

The same act occurs when I do Beethoven's Eroica, for example. If I'm
not there, 7,000 other clarinet players are ready to jump in. But if
Beethoven had not done his piece of the action, no one else would have
written THAT PARTICULAR piece.

I am trying to be objective and rational here, not difficult and irrational.
Perhaps we could argue about whether the interpretive act is unique and
there might be some common ground between us. But the act of performing
is so common that anyone can do it. There is nothing special about
performing, though there might be something special about how one
performs.

Does that help understand where I'm coming from any better? Does it
clarify the waters, or muddy them further?

====================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
(leeson@-----.edu)
====================================