Klarinet Archive - Posting 000531.txt from 2000/12

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] Performance [was, Peplowski continued]
Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2000 19:56:14 -0500

On Sat, 9 Dec 2000 20:15:41 EST, Knaphet@-----.com said:

> I only feel sorry for the guy who started it [the thread], who just
> wants to buy his kid a few clarinet CD's for Christmas.

The title of the thread *has* changed, you have to admit.

and on Sat, 9 Dec 2000 19:56:05 -0800 (PST), Bilwright@-----.net said:

> Tony Pay wrote:
>
> > All music (all art?) is partly conscious and partly unconscious. You
> > could say that it's 'about' the relationship between consciousness
> > and unconsciousness; or, that it's a partly conscious and partly
> > unconscious *message* that the audience appreciates partly
> > consciously and partly unconsciously.
>
> Tony, I'm not disputing what you say, but this is a recurring dilemma
> for me. I have an image of someone telling me: "Bill, I want you to
> practice and I want you to pay attention to your feelings, but I don't
> want you to analyze them consciously...."

Large parts of our responses to things are unconscious, and even the
process of practice itself is one of making initially conscious actions
unconscious. If by 'pay attention to your feelings without analyzing
them' you mean, allow yourself to be prompted by your judgement of what
the written music seems to you to require, then the fact that the
genesis of that judgement is partly conscious and partly unconscious
isn't a dilemma at all. The unconscious part includes, as someone was
saying here a bit ago, all your previous experience of music, including
your experience of singing. Most important that last bit -- one of the
best ways of getting in touch with the unconscious part of what you want
from a passage is to try singing it to yourself, however badly it
actually comes out.

The point is both that you couldn't make it all conscious even if you
tried, and also that you don't need to. Trying to make too large a
proportion of it conscious is in fact counterproductive, I assert. But
that's no surprise. Think how often the solution to a puzzle, seemingly
intractable, suddenly pops into your head a little while after you stop
thinking consciously about it.

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

.... I'm spending a year dead for Tax Purposes

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