Klarinet Archive - Posting 001373.txt from 2000/05

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: [kl] McNaught and Mozart
Date: Wed, 31 May 2000 22:42:17 -0400

On Mon, 29 May 2000 15:08:59 -0700, leeson0@-----.net said:

> Michael has submitted a review of the music, not a performance, of
> Mozart's A major clarinet quintet by someone named William McNaught.
> To sum it up, McMaught finds large portions of the work to be dull,
> uninteresting, etc., etc.
>
> Well, if that is the way he feels about the piece, it's OK with me. I
> am not bothered if someone does not like what I like, or vice versa.
> Is there an issue here? If so, I don't see it. It is simply one man
> expressing his opinion.

Michael Bryant then wrote:

> Dan is quite right to take a stern view of this wildly eccentric and
> "tongue in cheek" view, expressed by such an influential figure as
> McNaught, even if some of the mechanics of McNaught's description are
> nearly correct.

[snip]

> [McNaught's] book "Modern Music and Musicians" is a brilliant critical
> exposition, admirably free of prejudice of any sort, of various
> tendencies and techniques in 20th century music. As a writer of
> programme notes and gramophone reviews McNaught was unsurpassed.

I for one would be very interested to read McNaught's book. Constant
Lambert's 'Music Ho!' gives a fascinating insight into what modern music
looked like to Lambert between the wars -- Sibelius the way forward,
Stravinsky's deep flaws, etc. I think we can learn a lot by realising
how different the musical scene looked to the musicians who were
immersed in it, even only a few years ago.

'Modern Music and Musicians' might serve a similar purpose.

On another tack, though, I'm surprised that Michael says that the review
is wildly eccentric and tongue-in-cheek. I found it very clearheaded
and honest, and I'd like to argue in another post that reviews like that
are actually very useful to performers, and that this one would have
been very useful to me if I'd read it when I was younger.

I felt that Dan was mild rather than stern, in fact. I do want to
disagree with something he *might* have meant by: "It is simply one man
expressing his opinion," because in my view McNaught did a little more
than just give his opinion. He unpacked his opinion to an extent that
it started to become an argument.

Opinions come in various forms, after all. A good argument is merely a
very-well-unpacked opinion. A good argument presents us with bits
and pieces of evidence, some downright factual, some less so, that we
may find we are disposed to agree with -- our disagreement with any one
of those pieces being always a possibility, of course. It then
reassembles those pieces in a convincing way.

*Proof* is of course another matter -- but the status of proof is very
rarely approached except in very restricted types of argument, and
certainly not in discussions of music.

So I would say that even if you disagree with what McNaught said, and
even if it doesn't have the status of an argument for you, it might well
constitute a strong stimulus to look afresh at various aspects of K581.

And that's what we have to do as players: look afresh at things. (Not
*differently*, note.)

To be continued, but don't let that stop anyone responding.

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE www.gmn.com/artists/welcome.asp
tel/fax 01865 553339

... Is this yours? Your dog left it on my lawn ...

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe from Klarinet, e-mail: klarinet-unsubscribe@-----.org
Subscribe to the Digest: klarinet-digest-subscribe@-----.org
Additional commands: klarinet-help@-----.org
Other problems: klarinet-owner@-----.org