Klarinet Archive - Posting 000379.txt from 2003/10
From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] Who speaks?
Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2003 19:49:45 -0400
Ormondtoby Montoya wrote:
> Tony Pay wrote:
>
> > You obviously didn't read the reference I gave you, where this
> > misunderstanding is discussed:
> >
> > http://www.woodwind.org/Databases/Logs/2002/09/000553.txt
>
> I did read it, and I hope that I understood it. Without intending
> insult, and without expecting to resolve the debate simply by
> declaring my own beliefs, we are different people. I can't convince
> myself (and I've tried to do so) that 'making an analytical cut
> between composer and performer' is inappropriate.
The analytical cut between composer and performer, like any analytical
cut, isn't real; and the reason that it's inappropriate is that it just
leads to problems.
I have personal experience of many of those problems. So my suggestion
is: instead of trying to convince yourself that that one is
inappropriate, just try the other one.
Oh, I'm sorry...You can't, can you? And, you don't have direct
experience of the problems of the first, do you?
I'd say that *why* we are different people is that as well as playing
myself, I am constantly involved with the problem of having potentially
good students understand what good performance is, and what it is not.
I spend my life, and sometimes almost break my heart in this
endeavour...
....whereas you -- and actually, I don't care whether I offend you --
are just a fucking dilettante who is amusing himself with his opinions
on this list.
What you fail to appreciate is that the problem is fundamental, and
occurs all the time in what serious musicians do.
For example, when an otherwise talented student of mine does something
that amounts to 'putting a glace' cherry' on top of something that is
already unsatisfactory, I have to stop them doing it. And the problem
may be more deeply rooted.
'Explanation' isn't sufficient. "I just feel it that way," they may
say.
I need to undermine the importance of *that* feeling, whilst still
allowing that 'feelings' are important. Paradoxical, no?
You, Ormondtoby Montoya, if that is indeed your name, how would I know,
have no notion whatever of the incredible importance of this delicate
move. A student who thinks that what they feel *isn't* important needs
one sort of treatment. A student who thinks that they know *bloody
everything* needs another sort of treatment.
And both sorts of student may well be subjected to all sorts of outside
influences, like your crude judgements, that confuse the issue.
In all of this, I have to have them go beyond what they superficially
'feel', but without in the process destroying their confidence in their
intuitions. (Those intuitions are all they have, after all.)
To do this requires a viewpoint in which their involvement in the work
itself allows them self-expression. Like, the viewpoint involving the
split between 'text' and 'performance' that I suggested. That viewpoint
throws them out into the world, and gives them the chance to get beyond
what they may initially be disposed to do. They are encouraged to take
both the text and what lies beyond it, as well as themselves, seriously.
> As in any debate, definitions are often the key to the debate's
> outcome, and this appears to be a point where you and I are operating
> from different definitions.
So, when you say 'We operate from different definitions', that's just
shows that you're not thinking from the context of trying to have people
play better.
Because, 'definitions' do nothing. A 'viewpoint' may, because it allows
development.
It's crucial, because some of my students go on to be important players.
> > I find it intriguing that you, not a performer, have such a -- how
> > shall I put it -- 'high profile' attitude to what performance 'must
> > consist of'. I wouldn't have the chutzpah to summon it up in a field
> > in which I hadn't spent my life, and in which others had.
>
> Tony, I know that both of us are trying to talk about this without
> being 'ad hominem'.
'Ad hominem' means, to demean the person making the argument as an
excuse for not engaging with the argument itself.
But I've already engaged with the argument itself on several levels, so
it isn't ad hominem to tell you:
....that you are an arrogant fool, who doesn't understand what he's
talking about.
(Richard Feynman said something like, "I can stand an ordinary fool.
You can teach him. But an arrogant fool, that, I cannot stand.")
> And yet we both have feelings that we want to express. I'm sure we
> both understand that music is personal, and sometimes it's
> difficult to discuss personal emotions without causing insult or
> offense. I'm saying my prayers.....
Tough.
No, my feelings are irrelevant.
I have an *agenda*. Why else do you think I post here?
People sometimes say that music is a common language, and that it may
contribute to understanding between people.
I agree. That's because music speaks of things that we have in common.
Great music is 'out there', saying deep things that we may recognise.
When we recreate it, we try to understand as fully as possible what
those things are, including the emotions that are a part of it. It's
what they show us we have in common, and what we can learn from.
But, we cannot learn from what we immediately change to conform with our
own predelictions. What use are we, if we don't ask what the music
wants, as opposed to what we want?
*Every* culture has 'superficial' self-expression.
And actually, the notion that we allow our own immediate personal
feelings (which have very arbitrary sources) to infect our performances
of particular works, is not unlike the notion that we allow our personal
feelings to infect our judgements of events in the outside world,
without investigating those events properly.
It's so *easy* to hate the Jews, isn't it?
(Or the Palestinians. Which do you prefer?-)
> Anyway, thank you for the conversation.
I find this 'thank you' presumptuous.
I notice that in a later post, you feel that you are qualified to 'sum
up' what the thread has been 'about'.
Actually, you understand very little.
Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE http://classicalplus.gmn.com/artists
tel/fax 01865 553339
..... The Eternal Triangle is usually right tangled.
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