Klarinet Archive - Posting 000523.txt from 2001/11

From: "Tony Wakefield" <tony-wakefield@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] A few <more>facts about Chromatic Modal Harmony
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 06:27:17 -0500

----- Original Message -----
From: <A4ACHESON@-----.com>
Subject: Re: [kl] A few facts about Chromatic Modal Harmony

> In a message dated 14/11/01 11:09:49 pm, assembly1@-----.com writes:
>
> << we're hearing pretty much all the music written in the last 50 years
> and most of the last hundred. Time has been kind and we are not presented
> with most of the really boring stuff from earlier periods >>
>
> This theory, which I accept, also applies to pop music, to which I no
longer
> listen on the principle "Why not wait and let time eliminate 'the really
> boring' stuff?"
> I see no reason why the same principle should not be applied to
"classical"
> music.
> You can save a lot of time that way.
> Arthur Acheson

So - go ahead and save time - - -
This is NOT being a musician; it is more realistically being an amateur
philosopher, a shredding machine, an intolerant, and essentially uneducated.
How do you come to be sure that a masterpiece of 'sound composition' is
indeed a masterpiece, without hearing the 'crap' along side of it. If you
hadn`t heard Weber`s Concertino, or Mendelssohn`s Sonata, or Neilsen`s
Fantasistykke,or even Adam Gorb`s Sonata, without hearing the Mozart or the
Neilsen Concertos in tandem, you might indeed have come to form the opinion
that the former mentioned works (they are still very much alive and kicking)
are of celestial sublimity, and at the top of the clarinet repertoire tree.

What I said in a very recent post re comparing the <same> composer`s
different works seems to me to be almost relevant to this. The Neilsen
Fantasi is obviously an early work written whilst the composer was still at
(or just out of) college. The Concerto is a mature composition. So are you
adamant then that you have no time for the Fantasi? It <IS> part of the
composer`s musical and <personal> development, and may only be dumped into
the trash can by narrow-mindedness. It IS part of (certainly) clarinet
music`s heritage.

I repeat again my earlier post when saying that ALL composers have good and
bad days, and I believe we should all recognise that bad days <MUST> be
experienced in order for 'good' composition to materialise.

It really doesn`t matter what <kind> of method is used to construct the
composition, as long as it relays and portrays an emotion, repeat <emotion>
within he listener. And we won`t; we will be unable to realise this emotion
without hearing both good <and> bad - (you may wish to interpret this as
immature and mature). There <has> to be room for much - much more than the
superficial discarding of what we call 'rubbish'. <IT> is just as much part
of the development of a composer, and of musical history as our most revered
compositions.

'Tolerance' or understanding, or the lack of, says it all?

Best,

Tony W.

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