Klarinet Archive - Posting 000531.txt from 2002/09

From: Oliver Seely <oseely@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: [kl] Clarinet substitution
Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 19:40:23 -0400

To some extent it has to do with the portrayal of the traditional wisdom as
incontrovertible truth and the conflict of that position with the natural
human tendency to question authority. The general democratization of
knowledge has only aggravated that long standing conflict.

Even if it could be shown that a composer wanted a particular
interpretation, performing musicians have the freedom to do it the way they
want and the alleged desire of the composer be damned.

Professional musicians are somewhat limited in their latitude of freedom,
however, because their livelihood depends on building an audience and
keeping its members happy. That audience invariably includes purists (of
every stripe) who always have some kind of tut-tut-tut criticism of a
performance.

I find Jim Schweda (The Record Shelf) delightful to listen to on KUSC in
the L.A. area when I'm driving because he comes across as such a pompous
snob. He offers a mixture of considered opinion and indefensible baloney
but he says everything with such an air of authority that all of my trips
in the car are filled with enjoyment. He plays a lot of good music, of
course, and I learn new things, in any case. He had a guest on the other
evening who doesn't suffer baloney stuffers. Jim made a couple of sweeping
generalizations about pieces during the interview and his guest rather cut
him off with remarks such as, "I've never found that to be so." I thought,
"Serves you right, you silly twit."

Oliver

At 03:58 PM 9/24/2002 -0700, you wrote:
>I always listen in wonder to this conversation because (usually) is ends
>up as a discussion of "Who knows best?"

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