Klarinet Archive - Posting 000725.txt from 2002/04

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Mozart Concerto Competition
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 08:40:13 -0400

I wrote,
> Nonetheless, IMHO it would be more constructive to wait and see how this
> competition turns out before condemning it, rather than assume that the
> judges and other officials can't or won't learn anything between the
> announcement of the competition and its completion. Though I'm not in love
> with the entire idea of music competition, I think that a rigorous endeavor
> of this sort can provide a powerful motivation for learning and growing.

Dan Leeson wrote,
>>What good does waiting do? If one has information
>>about the likelyhood of an occurrence, the whole point
>>of giving that information out is to do it BEFORE the
>>event so that a participant can be well prepared. To do
>>it afterwards as you suggest serves no useful purpose
>>whatseover.

"'Sentence first--verdict afterward!'
"'Stuff and nonsense!' said Alice loudly. 'The idea of having the
sentence first!'
"'Hold your tongue!' said the Queen, turning purple.
"'I won't!' said Alice.
"'Off with her head!' the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody
moved."
--Lewis Carroll, _Alice in Wonderland_

Examining the evidence before passing judgment is the most basic element of
fair play. For me, that's enough reason to wait. But on a more pragmatic
level, what do you want? Is your goal to prove you're right that Italian
judges are ill-equipped to judge this contest and that

>>the Italian music schools are teaching Mozart as it was sung and played in
1885>>?

Or is your goal to improve musicians' understanding and interpretation of
Mozart?

Not waiting, disparaging this competition in advance, discourages people from
participating and thus sets up a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the most
potentially valuable participants (including dissidents) stay away, then the
results will probably validate low expectations and give a warm glow of
satisfaction to those who confidently predict a travesty: gratifying for
them, but how does the world benefit? The value of waiting to criticize (or
at least mentioning past problems in the more positive context of expressing
hope that this contest might demonstrate progress) is that, if knowledgable,
enthusiastic participants do show up and work hard to make the event a
success, then its quality *might* rise to a level that could prove low
expectations mistaken (or at least out of date). Further, if the judges do
screw up, then criticisms will have more weight because they're based on what
did happen at this event, instead of on speculations about what might happen
based on past (different) events.

If the musical public pre-judges this event, then bad publicity may back the
Italian organizers into a corner and encourage them to take a self-defensive
stance that could make it difficult or impossible for them to change their
views without looking as though they're meekly kowtowing to detractors.
Self-defeating defensiveness could discourage these musicians from learning
and growing and would thus seem to prove the wisdom of pessimism. ("What's
the use of changing our ways? They call us dogmatic, but it's obvious that
they're just as closed-minded about us as they accuse us of being about
Mozart! They're not going to change their minds about us, no matter what we
do, so there's no point in trying to impress them.") However, another value
of waiting to criticize is that if the Italians feel encouraged by genuine
well-wishers, and if they try hard to live up to high expectations, then they
may see this contest as an opportunity to explore, learn and grow in new
directions, with the hope of public recognition and approval for doing so.

Think of the married person who growls to his or her spouse at every
opportunity, "You're so stupid that I don't know why you even bother going
back to school. You'll never amount to anything. You'll end up in the
gutter or in jail, just like your aunt and your brother, and when you do,
don't expect me to bail you out. Where'd you get that new jacket? Steal
it?" People expected to fail tend to fulfill the prophecy. "They already
think I'm a thief, so they can't think any less of me if I do steal things."

I believe that it's productive to encourage people to do as well as they can.
I don't mean that we should ignore or naively wish away real problems such
as you and Tony Pay describe in the Italian musical education system; but I
do think that the odds of elevating the world's understanding of Mozart (or
anything else), get better when people include each other, communicate in a
friendly and welcoming manner, and encourage each other's best efforts by
coupling criticism of specific performances we don't like with constructive
suggestions for improvement. It's futile to try to gain allies by shoving
away potential colleagues with ridicule while using low expectations to
discourage them from trying. It's easy to make people look bad. It's a lot
harder but more rewarding to change their minds.

Dan, you and Tony Pay and others have discussed the basset clarinet and the
performance of Mozart at length in these pages, most helpfully. I suspect
that when Tony goes to Italy and teaches (instead of just sitting in Oxford
and bitching about Italian clarinetists), he also says a word or ten there.
But these arguments weren't what convinced me to esteem the use of the basset
clarinet in the Mozart concerto. Tony's recording did that. The basset
clarinet spoke for itself and no modern clarinet has sounded quite right to
me in that concerto ever since.

Bottom line, and I mean this more respectfully than it probably sounds: Put
your music where your mouth is.

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