Klarinet Archive - Posting 000337.txt from 2003/10

From: Roger Shilcock <roger.shilcock@-----.uk>
Subj: Re: [kl] Who speaks?
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 04:13:33 -0400

I think it *does* matter how you (impersonal) play a
bad piece. The audience may not share your scale of values.
Roger S.

n message <20031011.070724.29@-----.org writes:
> On Fri, 10 Oct 2003 17:51:24 -0700 (PDT), ormondtoby@-----.net said:
>
> > I wrote:
> >
> > > I wanted to hear other people's responses
> > > [about the restraining one's own emotions
> > > while performing] in a broader context.
> >
> > One reason why this question interests me is that some pieces of music
> > have been deemed to deserve different treatments over the centuries.
> > Such pieces of music did not, therefore, speak entirely for themselves.
> > Performers (or arrangers or conductors or whoever) lent different
> > flavors to them and, at the time, received a consensus of audience
> > approval.
>
> What pieces do you mean?
>
> It's impossible to avoid that different people find different answers to
> 'what the music demands' for a given piece. Nevertheless, if the piece
> of music is a good one -- and, obviously, if it is a bad piece, it's not
> really worth discussing how you play it -- 'putting your own feelings
> into it' is a superficial and misleading description of the process of
> performing it.
>
> > Music is, ultimately, interactive. I acknowledge that searching for
> > 'what the music demands' can be important. Looking for a cha-cha in
> > "Ride of the Valkyrie" would be silly; but putting ridiculous or comedy
> > performances aside, I question whether a composition necessarily has a
> > self-contained essence which a 'proper' performer (or audience) must
> > never violate.
>
> That wasn't what I said. 'Self-contained essence', 'proper', 'never
> violate' are your words.
>
> > It's a different situation, of course, if the goal is to perform a
> > piece the way that you believe the composer intended.
>
> Composer intention doesn't determine it. Any work of art has aspects
> not consciously planned by its creator, because artistic activity is a
> partly conscious, partly unconscious process.
>
> The point is, if it's to be a performance *of that piece*, the emotional
> aspects are appropriate to the performer's vision of the piece itself,
> and are not arbitrarily injected.
>
> It is of course possible for a great musician to give (slightly)
> interesting performances of *any* old tat via such injection; but their
> ability to do that will have had a lot to do with what they have learnt
> from their participation in the deeper process, with better music.
>
> > Returning to prayers and hymns, which is where this topic began, there
> > is so much meaning in a prayer or hymn that (imo) does not come from
> > the music itself. Hence "letting the music speak for itself' seems
> > to me to be an especially dangerous assertion in this case.
>
> I don't see what you mean by this. 'Dangerous'?
>
> All of that meaning constitutes the context of the music. It may or may
> not inform musical and emotional aspects of the music, but if it does,
> it certainly isn't arbitrarily injected.
>
> On the subject of prayers, I found Tony Blair's 'emotional' bible
> reading at Princess Diana's funeral to be a striking example of the
> 'dangers' of *not* letting the text (in this case) speak for itself.
>
> A slightly different way of looking at all of this is in:
>
> http://www.woodwind.org/Databases/Logs/2002/09/000553.txt
>
> Tony
> --
> _________ Tony Pay
> |ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
> | |ay Oxford OX2 6RE http://classicalplus.gmn.com/artists
> tel/fax 01865 553339
>
> ... I entered this message just to use this tagline.
>
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Change is one thing, progress is another.
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