Klarinet Archive - Posting 000621.txt from 2003/09

From: ormondtoby@-----.net (Ormondtoby Montoya)
Subj: Re: [kl] Some Note Questions
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 00:55:34 -0400

Conversations such as this one are sort of amazing, aren't they? --- not
because of what's being said here in particular, but because of the
broader implications.

Can you imagine a copy of Hamlet that reads: "To exist, or not to exist,
that's what I'd like to know."? Yes, there are historical confusions
as to what a literary author or poet wrote originally. There are
variations on well-known musical themes (such as the 'Hungarian'
dances), just as there are variations on well-known literary themes
(such as the King Arthur legends). But despite the usual fervent
protestation that a sheet of music is the composer's very personal
expression of his or her own feelings, and despite the usual
acknowledgment that a single changed note can distort or destroy the
'meaning' of a musical passage, it seems to me that musical publishers
generally run more roughshod --- by far --- over the music that they
publish than literary publishers do with the prose or poetry that they
publish.

Can we blame this on the (alleged) fact that music is more complex than
words and therefore cannot be put down on paper as accurately and
completely? Or can we blame this on the (alleged) fact that musical
performers are asked to display in public their own feelings as they
play, whereas literary 'performers' are persons who read silently to
themselves and therefore we never hear what they do in their minds with
the words that are printed on the paper?

There are many exceptions. The Bible has been rewritten. Literature
that is (or was) considered pornographic is rewritten. Etc etc. But
it seems to me that music suffers much more often from unacknowledged or
uncaring 're-writing' than prose and poetry do.

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