Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2016-12-17 22:02
>> Perhaps because I play mainly opera I'm overly concerned with text in music? >>
No, you're quite right to be concerned with text in music. And thanks for your thoughtful posts.
I've played quite a lot of opera on period instruments too, though not as much as you, admittedly: all the Mozart operas, some several times, at Glyndebourne; plus Donizetti (Imelda di Lambertazzi, Les Martyrs), Verdi (Alzira, Falstaff) plus a few others (Rheingold, Dutchman, etc); and the sacred stuff involving singers, like Elijah, Creation, Seasons, St Matthew Passion(!!) etc.
And what I come away with is the impression that a great number of SINGERS are insufficiently concerned with text in music.
We used to be told that our playing of wind instruments would be considerably enhanced by our 'listening to singers'. But that very much depends on the singer. Some of them would do well to listen to some of us.
Mozart once said of a singer: "Raaf is too much inclined to drop into the cantabile. I admit that when he was young and in his prime, this must have been very effective and have taken people by surprise. I admit also that I like it. But he overdoes it and so to me it often seems ridiculous."
The idea of cantabile being a 'surprise' is unthinkable nowadays. I suppose that a movement towards the opposite of cantabile as a norm in both voices and instruments is one way of characterising what I'm after.
So – quite unfairly, since I've never heard any of Philidor's music – I find I want to say that despite the thematic resemblance you point out, I'm not very inclined to allow what a second-rate modern singer might possibly want to do with the text and music of a second-rate opera by a second-rate composer determine my parsing and understanding of the first theme and subsequent musical argument of possibly the best large wind ensemble piece of all time, written by an undoubted genius.
Tony
|
|
The Clarinet BBoard
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
