The "reception" of a piece of music becomes part of its identity. Our performances, recordings, reviews, reactions, lawsuits, teaching, reflection, arrangements, remixes, appropriation -- all of that is the piece, along with the text we started from. Famous music acquires a larger and larger, and more multiply-determined identity. Eventually, there are so many components that none of us can affect the whole very much. When I give the first … [Read more...]
Archives for October 2009
Quality Control
Classical music culture is permeated with judgment making. Maybe it's necessary? Maybe it suits us? We audition musicians to discover who will play better in an orchestra, or to find out which students can develop best in a school. We're always grading and sorting. Critics and conductors announce what pieces are better than other pieces. (Recently, I read about Jean Sibelius's "best" symphony.) It's dangerous. And not because we don't want … [Read more...]
Ascent
There's a certain pride associated with rising melodic lines -- in much nineteenth-century music. Singing soars, and in soaring affirms something very positive about being human. As pitch rises, we might get louder, more tonally intense, more emotional. In other music, high registers are thin. Earlier instruments and techniques may corroborate this thinness: no steel "E" strings on eighteenth-century violins, singing voices differently … [Read more...]