Klarinet Archive - Posting 000018.txt from 2000/10

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: [kl] Ad hominem?
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2000 16:51:04 -0400

On Sun, 1 Oct 2000 12:19:57 -0700, kevinfay@-----.com said:

> Believe it or not, it's inappropriate for me to debate the merits of
> the current action on a public mail list.

No, I believe it.

> Golly, I might even have a professional responsibility not to do so.
> In any event, I'm not going to -- no matter how many silly little tag
> lines you put on after your signature to goad me. This is a list to
> chat about things clarinet (plus the occasional adventures of Shadow
> Cat). If you feel the need to derive adolescent pleasure from bashing
> the company I work for, there are many chat rooms set up for that very
> purpose. Please go there.

No, in my view it's not adolescent. And it's not pleasure either,
believe me.

Mark Charette said, save the venom. It was more like a shout of pent-up
anger and resentment.

Let me set a context for this.

Mostly I want here to talk here about things musical. I'm more
interested in those things than I am in stuff about which ligature is
the best, which discussions I *do* regard mostly as adolescent, to use
your term.

And your posts are usually similarly oriented towards an interest in
the music, for which I'm grateful.

You do have a tendency to come on rather strong, given your experience
and knowledge -- on our first encounter, as you may recall, you were
very eager to explain to me what classical music is all about: "The
only real rule: No false accents!"

But your post about how hard-done-by you were, being asked to play
something that you couldn't play by some lady composer, really irritated
me. I mean, how often can that happen to you, that you get to play a
new piece that makes what seem to you unreasonable demands? A couple of
times a year?

DIDDUMS.

I played new music, as a permanent member of a contemporary music group,
(one of the very best) for fifteen years solid. During that time, I
played my share of good, bad and indifferent pieces, as you can imagine.
And I learnt that sometimes very good composers, as well as bad ones,
ask you to do what seem like, and occasionally are, for you, impossible
things.

But I never said that they were impossible, because I *knew* that other
people might well be able to play them. And I also knew that sometimes
composers write speculatively, searching for something out of the
ordinary. This has gone on throughout the history of music, and
engaging in that process can be a worthwhile one.

But what composers *never* do, is to *make* you play what they write.

After all, they can't. Your quarrel with your university professor
ended, I assume, in your playing what you could manage. And there were
no repercussions, I also assume. You didn't get thrown out, or
reprimanded, or anything.

She just didn't get what she wanted, or imagined, or dreamt, or
whatever.

So, how did *you* lose out in that? What are you complaining about?
What terrible wrong did she do to you?

You talked about reorganising the orchestra's policy -- no living
composers -- so that you wouldn't have to put up with this terrible
wrong that might be done to you; this terrible wrong that someone might
ask you to do something so awful that you had to say, look, I'm sorry,
but even with practice, I won't be able to manage that.

What a loss of face, for the great Kevin, or the great Tony, to say such
a thing.

I see such reorganisation as manipulative, and contrary to the spirit of
music making and the general good, and said as much.

By the way, in passing, another thing that composers don't do, is that
they don't do deals with mouthpiece makers and reed manufacturers so
that their reeds don't work on your particular mouthpiece, so that you
have to buy one of theirs -- they're very *good* mouthpieces, you know!
-- or alter the reed yourselves, in order to play their pieces.

That might make it worth complaining about them.

But mostly, they're just trying to make music as they see and hear it.

> As far as the "very deep moral degradation" thing goes, well, what can
> I say.

Nothing.

> It's a free country (ours is, anyway), so you can say what you want.
> Ad hominem attacks on an open mail list just aren't very nice things
> to do, though, and you're getting into the habit of making them on
> this list. Please stop; it's inappropriate behavior that does not
> reflect well on you.

I say what I think, after consideration. If you perceive what I then
say as an ad hominem attack, then so be it.

Just to educate you, an ad hominem attack is an attack that avoids the
subject of the argument, dealing instead with the personal
characteristics or the tone of the person making the argument, in order
to discredit the argument without having to rebut its points.

That isn't what I do here.

But it's what you just did, whether professionally constrained or no.

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

.... I've found Jesus. He was behind the sofa the whole time.

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