Author: clarnibass
Date: 2008-10-14 08:53
>> And surely, that's what we should always BEGIN with, rather
>> than with other people's recorded messes -- whoever they are.
In university I had a class called "Introduction to Composition". In reality it was a teacher who usually just brought a lot of music pretty much no one in the class has ever heard before. One thing he used to do a lot of times is not tell us who the player/composer was before we listened. A few times he brought especially bad music played by a very famous musician, to prove a point.
The same can sometimes work for written music too. Sometimes actually being unfamiliar with the music and all the details that are written actually helps. For example, I've never seen the Copland Concerto notes and have no idea how it is written, but I listened to the several versions I have after not listening to it for a long time.
I listened to the cadenza, and having no idea how Copland meant for it to be, I had only my sense to follow the logic of the playing in relation to the music. Some things are hard to tell, at least at first, but some are pretty obvious. I think it's a matter of understanding the logic in the music and why certain things wouldn't be a good idea. If, for example, someone isn't familiar with certain ideas and a style that is in this cadenza, there is a good chance they will not know how to play it with these ideas. In one version I have, the player obviously is familiar with a lot of things in the cadenza, so he completley exaggerates it, which turns out terrible.
Maybe it's important to explain it has nothing to do with personal taste (or as close to nothing as possible). If I liked that particular version I would have no problem admiting it. Actually I didn't like it, but there is a lot of music that objectively I think has a lot of problems, bad ideas, wrong playing, etc. but I still like it. There's a good chance some people will like that version, but in spite of this, the problam is exactly what you explained here:
>> being HONEST when we are making free with them, and
>> not pretending that somehow we are justified in doing
>> what we do by the slippery notion of 'interpretation'.
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