Klarinet Archive - Posting 000392.txt from 2002/02

From: "Tony Wakefield" <tony-wakefield@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Spontaneity and other ephemera!
Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 18:39:07 -0500

Such real eloquence from Tony, Dan, Neil and Ed. Congratulations. The list
has never been in my experience so cool and wicked. I ask myself why haven`t
I discovered all the conjecture to do with Wolfy`s music in one of <my>
previous lives? :<)
I also ask tho`, is it all a game of guessing? And is it really worth it? Do
we not understand Mozart`s life to have been as hectic and unreliable as any
modern pop musicians`? Could our human weaknesses (i.e. his - I think he
must have had some) i.e. delayed deadlines; throwing something onto the
paper in haste; trying to remember what you thought of yesterday and making
a fairly good stab at copying it down the day after, or the day after that;
intending to alter something that you knew was badly written after the rest
of the work was complete, but not attending to it properly, as you had
forgotten what the alteration was going to be; or not even attending to it
at all. All this comes into the process of composing music. Are we being too
caring, too clinical, even silly, to the point where the composer might be
looking at us now thinking "Why don`t they just get on with enjoying what I
wrote without all this hustle and bustle. If I meant to omit a bar and
forgot to, should this be such a time consuming pastime for so many, so many
hundreds of years after I couldn`t care less?"
Or is this a very wrong syndrome of thought. Are we right to try to discover
the truth? What is "right" in this context? Because we could still be
searching in another 1000 years time, and not know any more truth that what
we do now. The truth might not be out there. Yet you all still find it
enthralling in your searching.
Tony W.

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