Klarinet Archive - Posting 000503.txt from 2010/11

From: Joseph Wakeling <joseph.wakeling@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Sabine Meyer, but actually,text and meaning
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 04:17:00 -0500

On 11/26/2010 10:33 PM, Tony Pay wrote:
> I think Joe is referring to Hall's paragraph:

Well, Joe is referring to something remembered from reading about 3
years back ... :-)

> "In the theatre, directors often cut something because they say it does not work. It is more often because they do not know how to make it work. To cut the text because it has lost all meaning and is truly incomprehensible seems to me regrettable, but permissible. But in fact there is -- as yet -- quite little completely dead text in the canon. If the actor understands, the modern audience still understands. To cut and edit in order to give Shakespeare a new interpretative slant seems to me to be hubris of the worst kind. It is something we would never do to a composer."

It's one of the paragraphs, but I recall there's one where Hall refers
explicitly to his experiences of directing opera and the difference of
typical approach between musicians and dramatists.

... but that paragraph gets to the core of it, really -- that it's not
cutting per se that is the issue, but the reasons, and in particular
when it stems from not appreciating how that part of the play works or
how it fits into the whole. (You could compare to e.g. the way that
some musicians wilfully alter the composer's dynamics and other markings
because "they don't work", as opposed to intelligently adapting them,
where necessary, to accommodate differences between period and modern
instruments.)

As Peter Brook puts it in The Empty Space, "I do not for one moment
question the principle of rewriting Shakespeare -- after all, the texts
do not get burned ... But if one has a knife in one hand, one needs a
stethoscope in the other."

> And you can imagine that this paragraph is to be read in the context of an argument that is more subtle than Joe's sketch can possibly indicate.

Yup. Read the book. It's very interesting.

Best wishes,

-- Joe
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