Klarinet Archive - Posting 000018.txt from 2007/03
From: "danyel" <rab@-----.de>
Subj: Re: [kl] An interesting point of view
Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2007 22:56:03 -0500
Thanks for posting this. The point has indeed been made before, it is
interesting because it reflects the tendency to ignore aesthetic and
historic peculiarities or maybe eccentricities in favour of a PC dogma of
rather dubious motivation. People (in particular in the US) simply expect
other people to adopt their attitudes, like non smokers chasing smokers out
of public places, or Muslims who think other religions (like christianity)
are rubbish. There might be very little to be said in favour of smoking or
christianity, however music is something else. In traditional cultures it is
considered normal that certain music is played by men, other by women. They
rarely mix in performance; never, as far as I know, in art or ritual music
except for vocalists. Why? These cultures are not entirely bad, let alone
the modern society entirely good. And their music was, generally, far
superior to our's.
Has anybody asked himself (or herself, of course) why the Vienna
Philharmonic has retained at least some of its unique sound and aura? I
myself really do like women in all sorts of capacities (most of my disciples
are female and people with whom I share corporal intimacy are exclusively
female, no demands by journalists or activists will ever change that!) yet
it smacks awkward if what might well be the only at least semi-authentic
19th c. orchestra remaining today as a sort of symphony-museum or
'Mahler-World' or whatever, should comply with demands made by outsiders who
know nothing about the inner workings of this wonderful socio-aesthetic
organism (they might as well demand to get rid of the old fashioned dress
suit and to wear short pants and t-shirts on the podium; but the dress suit
is another aspect of 19th c. European life style without which the music
loses its substrate).
Yes, I do insinuate that the V Ph might sound so great because there are
very few if any women in their ranks. I don't know why that should be so,
but it is conceivable to me that 19th c. Austro-German music, in order to be
properly played, requires a specifically male sort of neurotic character. Of
course this resembles the question whether people of non-African heritage
can play blues, or goyim can play klezmer. It mostly (very rare exceptions)
is a mere travesty if they do. Why? because they have different backgrounds,
different character structures. Until they lose it and fuse with the
mainstream. In this case we will probably end up, like in Jazz, with the
original people (African Americans in Jazz, males in Austro-German 19th c.
music) losing the "feeling" for the music too and nobody remains to play it
authentically, i.e. with proper 'gusto'. This has happened with almost all
symphonic organisations as far as I can tell (especially those mentioned in
the article as examples of flexibility), hence gender doesn't matter any
more with those. They could hire robots or mp3 players, it wouldn't make
much of a difference.
As I stated before, I really can't understand (honestly, it's a mystery to
me!) how people can be so naive to believe it was proper to use a modern
Oehler or even Boehm clarinet for Mozart or Weber, and to me it appears as
equally ahistoric, i.e. plain wrong, if women perform in the Vienna
Philharmonic. Sure, the V. Ph. could change, become up to date (provided
they'd play modern music), but please, don't! If anything, change back to
the sound you had under Bruno Walter, but please, please, don't change to
become just another professional, modern, versatile, amusing, p.c. and
totally sterile orchestra. We have enough of these.
Dan, I know you are probably either going to respond with insults or not at
all, but if you would consider to point out what exactly your view is in
this context, I'd appreciate.
Best wishes,
danyel
www.echoton.de/clar.html
----- Original Message -----
From: "dnleeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
To: "klarinet@-----.org>
Sent: Friday, March 02, 2007 6:25 PM
Subject: [kl] An interesting point of view
> The following well-written article by Justin Davidson appeared in
> Newsday quite recently. It may be seen directly using the
> following link: http://tinyurl.com/2hsazt. This topic,
> continuing and ongoing sexism of the Vienna Philharmonic, has
> been discussed on this list several times, but Davidson's
> position pretty much says, "Time's up, fellows. Get moving or get
> out."
>
> Dan Leeson
>
> ---------------------------------------------------
>
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