Klarinet Archive - Posting 000367.txt from 2003/07

From: "Tim Roberts" <timr@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] Re: Missing the Point
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 13:04:51 -0400

On Thu, 10 Jul 2003 22:13:00 -0700, Bear Woodson <bearwoodson@-----.net> wrote:
>
> I gave you guys a Treatise on Counterpoint
>in the tradition of "Art of Fugue" by Bach. If
>you find that offensive, I'm sorry, but I've already
>had a few scholars tell me that this Sonata WILL
>be a Milestone of Counterpoint for centuries to
>come. It contains a Chaconne, various Canons
>and Fugues, Two Quadruple Directional Stretto
>Fugues, a Triple Fugue, and then the Triple
>Fugue appears in Retrograde. How can all of
>this NOT be important and exceptional in
>history?

I have avoided commenting on this because of Mr. Woodson's hypersensitive and
moderately paranoid personality, but I just cannot let this slip by.

Your sonata will only be a "milestone of counterpoint for centuries to come"
if it is musical, entertaining, and pleasing. If what you have written is
just "fugue for fugues sake", then it will be important and exceptional for
approximately 10 minutes, after which it will be liner for the parrot's cage.
A piece of music does not become important by including a retrograde triple
fugue; it becomes important by being a pleasing work that, oh by the way,
happens to include a retrograde triple fugue.

The mathematical basis of fugues is well-understood, and has been so for
centuries. The fugue has "been done", so to speak. If a piece of music
happens to evolve into a fugue, that's magic, but it is difficult to believe
that you can offer anything significantly more than a mechanical and
mathematical modification of what Mr. Bach has already done.

Your announcements read as though you were writing music by checklist. A
retrograde triple fugue is certainly very neat, but it is difficult to
believe that the technologies you tick off in that last paragraph could
possibly combine to make anything other than chaos.

Your statements strike me as similar to a gent who writes a piece of music by
starting with the premise "I will use 64 e-flats, 32 b-flats, 16 f-naturals,
8 c-sharps and 4 d-flats". A computer could easily be programmed to write a
work with "two quadruple directional stretto fugues", but such a work would
likely not be either important or musical.

The world needs more clarinet sonatas. No question about that. And, for all
I know, your sonata might be the finest thing produced in America in the past
half-century. But are you really unable to see how arrogant and foolish you
sound when you say, and I quote, "this Sonata WILL be a Milestone of
Counterpoint for centuries to come"? History judges such things, not the
composer.

--
- Tim Roberts, timr@-----.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.

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