 The Clarinet BBoard
|
Author: theclarinetist
Date: 2003-06-27 17:52
Last night (for lack of sleep), I was reading through old posts and I stumbled upon a heated debate about Debussy's Premiere Rhapsody, and more broadly composer's intentions and the amount of liberty a performer may take when perform a piece of music. This got me thinking about this old topic (composer's intentiosn)...
I am a clarinetist and a composer (I probably excel at the latter more), and I often find it hard to believe that every single composer is as obsessed with details as most performers would believe... When I compose a piece I have overall effect in mind. I write the notes, write out the effect I want (mysterious, scherzando... etc), then I (often with much dread) go back and add every stupid articulation over every note. While there are some spots where articulation and other such details are essential to achieving the effect I want, most of the time I couldn't care less. I generally just give an instruction like "smootly" or "detached and bouncy" and that suffices for me. Perhaps I'm not as picky as other composers (or perhaps not as arrogant), but I actually enjoy seeing what a performer brings to my music. It is my (debatably) educated opinion that a composer should provide performers with musical notes (from which the majority of the musical interest is drawn, in my opinion) and broad instruction, then let them have fun with it. I think it is INCREDIBLY arrogant and self-indulgent of composers to think that pieces should just be performed to their exact specification without any interpretation... Composer's need to remember that 1) without performers we can write music all day and it won't ever be realized and 2) making music unapproachably strict only discourages performance... so what's the point?
I have another point to add about this, but I'm fixing to go see a movie, so I'll add it when I get home. Please any one (especially those who compose) respond with comments and opinions!
Thanks
don
theclarinetist@yahoo.com
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: EEBaum
Date: 2003-06-27 19:12
I believe Sousa was very much against recorded music, and liked to change things when they were played. He wrote music with the maximum parts that would ever be played, then directed people in his ensemble to cut out, take things down, or make other changes during the performance, giving his ensemble a unique sound.
I think it's all about interpretation. If I didn't want performers to add some of themselves to a piece, I may as well play a midi recording.
Also, if you're not too strict about it, performers can play your piece in a way you may never have thought of, which you may or may not like.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: BobD
Date: 2003-06-27 20:49
I'm not a composer but I have worked with them to some extent. I don't know that one can make any broad generalizations about them any more than one can about writers. Further commentary(from me) could go on forever and would probably be as useless as some critics' analyses of some composers' music.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: theclarinetist
Date: 2003-06-27 21:29
The other thing I wanted to add is that I've heard of (and personally experienced) many times when writing music that thing turn out differently than you originally intended. You may have a melody in mind, sit down to play it at the piano (or whatever) and accidently hit a wrong chord that ends up sounding much different than what you originally intended, and using that one instead. Now, a normal performer/teacher would look at my hypothetical piece and make a huge deal about how much I meant that chord to be there and how I used it to inspire the rest of the piece, when it was just a mistake!
A very informed professor of mine (while having this very discussion with me) said he had heard rumor that the first note of Mozart's 40th Symphony was actually a typo that he had just left because he liked how it sounded (being a rumor, take it for what it's worth).
Another example is story a band director once told me. Martin Mailman (an excellent composer who used to teach at Univ. Of North Texas) was directing a band in a piece he had written. The woodwinds were struggling with some very difficult runs, and Mailman basically told them "just move your fingers, nobodies going to know the difference anyway.."
These are just stories, and clearly do not speak for the views of all composer, but I think it does illustrate a good point. We spend so much time obsessing over details that the composer may or may not have even cared about that much. This doesn't mean we should disregard what they've written, as most of it is precisely crafted. It does make you think though... I've seen Shakespeare interpretted many ways (often at opposite ends on the spectrum), but each performance brings a new point of view and something fun and different.... why is music so different? If Leonardo DiCaprio can play Romeo in a hawaiian shirt, I think we can play Debussy with a little personal flare (I don't want to rehash the Premiere Rhapsody debate... I'm just using it as an example because it's what inspired this post to start with).
Don
theclarinetist@yahoo.com
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: ken
Date: 2003-06-28 14:38
The clarinetist wrote: "Mailman basically told them just move your fingers, nobodies going to know the difference anyway."
--Must have been a brass player. About 10 years ago our concert band was recording Nelhybel’s “Trittico". The band director being the Wiley Coyote s-u-p-e-r g-e-n-i-u-s he was couldn't settle on the interpretation of a lousy 2 measure allargando turn around into the recap. After sitting on his "blessed assurance" for days conducting thumb-sucking debates with the band's upper crust and scrutinizing a pile of previous recordings (including one with Fennell on the podium) he opted to phone Prof. Nelhybel for the solution. After a week of near misses he finally got through; anticipating eternal words from the wise he reverently questioned the 75 y/o (1994) master on the passage. To his shock Nelhybel’s response was a cold, dry and flippant, “Play it the way you want!”—click goes the receiver.
People are people, regardless of what cut of cloth they come from; fortunately for me thus far in my music career all the composers/arrangers I've worked with (except one) were highly gracious, talented and humble artists who knew the individual musician, ensemble and group held the keys to realize their wildest creations, personal fulfillment and financial success. v/r Ken
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
The Clarinet Pages
|
 |
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
