Klarinet Archive - Posting 000096.txt from 1996/02

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: A love/hate relationship
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 11:52:16 -0500

Diane Cawein brings up the fact that, in speaking of operatic fantasies for
clarinet and something, I have a love/hate relationship. And she is correct
to rebuke me on this (though she did it in such gentle terms, that it took
four readings to find the rebuke). I think I need to explain.

In general, music that brings service to the performer has always struck me
as cheap and tawdry. Music is not created to make the player into a big
cheese, but rather to make a statement through music. One might not like
the statement (or one might like it very much), but its purpose is important.

Personally, I have always preferred music that brings service to the composer.

In this way, a work such as "The Carnival of Venice Variations" has always
struck me as bordering on the stupid, not worthy of performance, and a cheap
way to make the performer appear as if he or she can do something important,
when all such music is is the equivalent of an elephant standing on its
trunk; i.e., not important that he does it well, but amazing that he does it
at all.

So for years, I would run in the other direction whenever someone would
play such a work. Seriously. I have walked out of concerts when clarinet
players did the Rigoletto fantasy. And when I reviewed concerts, I would
invariably state that I was not reviewing the variations performance because
of an intense dislike of the form.

And yet, deep in my heart, when I was alone, I found some such works to be
remarkably inventive and clever. So there I was: on one hand I hated them
because I perceived them as cheap and tawdry. On the other hand, I enjoyed
them because the could be so inventive (and they were fun to play).

I don't know how many of you have read Somerset Maugham's play "Rain" in which
a preacher speaks loudly in public about the morals of the local prostitute,
but in private he tries his best to get her in the sack. That is what I
felt like: a two-faced hypocrite.

I deserve the rebuke.

I am an evil sinner probably going straight to hell and back.

Yuk!

Egh!

Chocolate soda, anyone?

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

   
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