Klarinet Archive - Posting 001027.txt from 2002/11

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Transcriptions
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 22:06:01 -0500

Albert Nemiroff wrote,
>Who could have dissed more flagrantly than J.S. Bach

If you're referring to Bach's many transcriptions of other composers' works,
I find those extremely convenient as excuses for playing the pedal lines of
his pipe organ music on my bass sax. However, I generally keep this excuse
to myself, because the awfully obvious rejoinder is, "Lelia, you're not
Bach."

:-) Yes, I've noticed that.

Someone who *is* Bach can get away with anything he likes.

As a listener, my tolerance for transcription depends on how much music is
available for a particular instrument, how accessible the music is in
original form and, naturally, how good the transcription sounds -- and how
good it sounds to me depends not merely on the transcription and the
performance, but also on the circumstances, the weather, what I ate today and
any number of other things.

Most of the time, I don't think I'd pay money to hear anybody play the Mozart
concerto on a kazoo, even if the kazzoist (that sounds like a sneeze) plays a
handmade, solid gold kazoo and is a famous virtuoso on this most difficult of
instruments. Then again, I don't want to hear a clarinetist or basset
clarinet player play the Mozart concerto, either, if he or she plays it
*badly* -- and my prejudicial approach to the kazoo version (n.b., I've never
heard of anybody playing Mozart on a kazoo) would be that I'd expect to hear
something that sounded not only bad but ridiculous. In a particularly
righteous mood, I'd think the enterprise insulted the memory of Mozart; in a
less-righteous mood, I'd consider that an overly-stuffy attitude, and I'd
shrug and say, "diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks" -- although I still
wouldn't go to the concert. OTOH, if I heard a busker with a cheap,
dime-store kazoo playing something recognizable as Mozart (even mutilated)
outside a subway station, I'd probably fork over some money as a reward for
sheer chutzpah, and in the context of subway busking, I'd find the badness
and the ridiculousness amusing rather than annoying. And if I saw a news
report about someone who'd escaped after several years chained up in a pit by
some monstrous dictator, and if that prisoner had kept himself sane by
playing Mozart on a kazoo he'd stumbled over in the dark, then I'd not only
go to his lecture and listen to him play Mozart on his kazoo but probably be
moved to tears by it.

("Oh, no, here come the Secular Humanists, more relativistic than ever!")
Lelia

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