Klarinet Archive - Posting 000251.txt from 2000/09

From: "Kevin Fay (LCA)" <kevinfay@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] Twentieth Century Music @-----.
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 17:55:49 -0400

Allen posted:

<<<As recently as last year a Philadelphia Orchestra cellist was telling me
similar stories about some of the pieces on the orchestra's incredible
season of 20th century programs. He really thought that much of it was a
waste!>>>

. . . I am afraid that your 'cellist acquaintance is correct. So much of
the music of the twentieth century was crap. Good thing, too.

This comes from a clarinetist (that would be me) who volunteers to play in a
community orchestra pretty much dedicated to playing new music. Most of it
is bad. Some of it is shockingly bad -- a couple of tablets of Pepto Bismol
necessary to get through it. Having the composer skulk about the rehearsal,
complaining that the key clicks they added to your part are "just not loud
enough" is just infuriating. (Side note -- clarinet is NOT a percussion
instrument; I pay a great technician good money to make my keys as silent as
possible).

If you think that all of the music composed in the time of Bach, Beethoven
or Bruckner was good, you would be mistaken. They had their fair share of
crap back then, too -- but being crap, few people bothered to play it. What
is in the canon today has been qualitatively filtered by the ears and
collective tastes of musicians and their audiences. (Not that this musical
Darwinism is necessarily correct; many great pieces have been lost to
obscurity.)

The upshot is simple, though. If you want the next generations to have
great music to play from your era, you have to slog through the crap to find
it.

kjf

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