Author: fskelley
Date: 2014-04-25 19:38
(I posted this in the thread about "4 rags", and then realized it's a different subject, so it needs a new topic.)
I am curious whether performers feel free to take more liberties with the printed notes (in a big time public performance with critics) with pieces like "4 rags for 4 johns" than they would with say, something by Mozart? I hear a lot of runs and flourishes in the version I sampled on YouTube... were they all precisely scripted?
And if so, why? Would it be more acceptable? Does the music somehow "need" it more? Or let me go the other way- if not... doesn't the jazz/pop style of this properly call for a more flexible (though equally masterful) approach?
Joshua Rifkin recorded the Scott Joplin rags on a big Steinway back in the 1970's. And I noted that, while he followed the printed notes absolutely most of the time- he did some improvising during some repeats. 40 yr later I still don't know how I feel about that, which makes me also a bit of a hypocrite, since the lack of freedom is one of my complaints about classical.
Or am I wrong in believing that Mozart notes are treated as sacred? Never had that kind of training, avoided it actually.
LET ME ADD that I recognize that in ensemble play, the performer properly has far less flexibility other than perhaps in issues of articulation and dynamics. And even those have to be driven by how everybody else is playing and what the director wants. I am an independent spirit, but not an anarchist, LOL.
Stan in Orlando
EWI 4000S with modifications
Post Edited (2014-04-25 19:55)
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The Clarinet BBoard
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