 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2025-06-14 16:17
I worked many years as a software engineer for a machine tool manufacturer. Over time that work informed me that the definition of software is in three parts: first, a vague idea in a customer's head about what they want; next, a vague interpretation of that idea in the heads of the engineers; and finally, a vague impression of how it works in the heads of the end users. Note that what the customers say they want turns out to often be different, or even at odds with, what the end users need. The links between the three sets of minds are also impeded by the usual types of distortion and noise.
In music, I imagine a similar definition that substitutes composer, performer, and listener in place of customer, engineer, and end user. Vague, vague, and vague. In the end, anything that's clear is art.
The idea of composers' intentions should be treated with respect, but the listeners' needs and situations are at least as important. Further, the performer is more than just a link between composer and listener. All three own the music equally.
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Author: Fuzzy
Date: 2025-06-14 16:48
Hi Philip,
I really enjoyed your thought-provoking post.
Perhaps the conductor could be the lower manager who believes he knows what the customer/composer wanted, and how to get the users produce those results?
I might see the correlation for classical music...not sure if I see a correlation for non-classical.
Pop tunes of the 1930s and 1940s were adapted and performed by several different bands/groups in a very short period of time. The individual bands' arrangers rewrote the parts to have different intros, different beat emphasis, different swing, different instrumentation, etc. Today's pop groups do the same thing - just over a much longer course of time.
So - I think pop, jazz, folk, and most other types of non-classical music - generally use the composer's work as a loose idea on which to build upon - and not a literal request/command (probably not a statement which flatters composers, but I think this is the reality).
Fuzzy
;^)>>>
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Author: ruben
Date: 2025-06-14 18:05
I believe in closely following a composer's intentions and markings, with one exception: metronome markings. I have worked with many composers -never Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart or Brahms, I must admit- and found that they were incredibly slipshod about metronome markings and didn't respect them themselves. Mind you, a work has a life of its own and when composers go back to pieces they had written a long time ago, they have sometimes changed their mind about them.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
Post Edited (2025-06-14 21:04)
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