Klarinet Archive - Posting 000109.txt from 1996/02

From: Neil Leupold <nleupold@-----.EDU>
Subj: Re: A love/hate relationship
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 17:29:28 -0500

"Going straight to hell and back"? You mean you know of a way to come back?

On Mon, 5 Feb 1996, Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu wrote:

> 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)
> ====================================
>