Klarinet Archive - Posting 000582.txt from 2004/10

From: Tim Roberts <timr@-----.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] Opera productions that should be damned
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 12:43:30 -0400

Adam Michlin [mailto:amichlin@-----.com] wrote:

>PS: And yes, I would put a beat to the Mozart Clarinet Concerto if I
>thought it was the only way I could eventually get them to appreciate
>the real thing. Luckily, I don't feel that way, but I also don't have to
>worry about selling tickets to an opera house.
>

And on Wed, 20 Oct 2004 21:19:52 +0100, Matthew Lloyd"
<matthew@-----.uk> replied

>Without wanting to descend into personal criticism, as far as I am
>concerned if you stand by your postscript your views lose all validity.
>
>

Matthew, your position is unreasonable. Reinterpretation is a keystone
of music, and always has been. Look at how many of our great pieces of
music are "Variations on a Theme of Composer X, by Composer Y". None of
those would exist if people were afraid of reinterpreting the work of
others.

Many such variations are crap, of course, but that does NOT mean we need
to be afraid of trying, for fear of being eviscerated by the Classical
Music Mafia. For example, I can easily imagine the first movement of
K.622 reinterpreted with a rhumba beat: ONE and two AND three and FOUR
and ONE and...

"Xavier Cugat plays Mozart!" Is that what Mozart intended? Almost
certainly not. Would Mozart have liked it? We will never know. Is it
sacrilege? No. There is nothing holy about K.622.

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

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Klarinet is a service of Woodwind.Org, Inc. http://www.woodwind.org