Klarinet Archive - Posting 000486.txt from 2005/08

From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Composers as teachers
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 07:26:43 -0400


Tony Pay wrote,
>The most important thing is, I study the score,
>and I look at the expressive instructions that
>the composer writes. If it is not a contemporary
>piece, I try to find out something of what the
>composer might have meant by the notation of that
>score, and by the expressive instructions.

As a teenager, I once had the privilege of singing in an enormous combined
choir for a one-shot concert, directed by a guest conductor who'd never met
any of us before. She didn't get to audition us. She just got stuck with
what the local choir directors gave her. She was superb, despite being
named (I swear I'm not making this up) Meady Bacon. One of her more
memorable instructions was, "See those dynamic markings? You do know what
I mean by 'dynamic markings,' right? Hmm? Well, please try to think of
them as traffic signals. The composer did not intend them as suggestions!"

Lelia Loban
P. S. I hope all you all from New Orleans are able to read Klarinet
messages today because you all cleared out of there well ahead of Katerina.
Good luck.

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