On 4 Mar 2003 at 22:25, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote: > At 07:17 PM 3/4/03 -0500, David W. Fenton wrote: > >It interests me a great deal how antithetical to Cage's philosophy > >your comments truly are. You seem not to delight in fortuitous > >"mutations" of your compositional efforts. That is, of course, your > >right, but it seems rather arrogant > > I don't consider the inability or unwillingness to play what actually is > written to be fortuitous. What I *do* consider fortuitous are the surprises > that come during a correct reading.
I still think this is a read herring. If people are not playing what's on the page, either through lack of dedication or from lack of rehearsal time, that's simply *wrong*, and we all agree on that. It has nothing to do with the discussion at hand, which is about what our ideals should be. For you to continue arguing the "wrong notes" side of the equation, I would have to argue the 1985-era MIDI side of things, when the instrumental sounds were not nearly as complex (the kind of sampling we all take for granted in our $30 sound cards was barely beginning back then), the options for real-time control of tempo and any number of other aspects of the technology made it really difficult to do anything particular rich and sensitive. But I'm not arguing on the basis of awful, mechanical MIDI performances realised on $1.98 FM synthesis sound cards. I'm assuming the absolute best synthesizers and controllers, since you wouldn't possibly be happy with anything else. Why would you assume that someone on the other side of the argument would be happy with ill- prepared, mistake-ridden performances? [] > >I don't really understand your point of view, and have a hard time > >comprehending where you are coming from with "why should distortion > >be the goal of performance," which seems needlessly combative. You > >seem to be heavily damaged emotionally by the apparent inability of > >every performer who's ever given your music a whack to get it right. > > That's either a bit extreme or I'm in good company. Performance failure has > inflicted more damage to new nonpop in the past century than any critic > could. Go to a real crackerjack performance and the audience is with you, > no matter how tough the piece on the ears, the heart, or the intellect. So, how do you get better performances? > Now find one. :) Ever heard/seen Eighth Blackbird? It's pretty obvious that there are committed performers who can brilliantly realize complex music. The question is: why aren't there more of them? And the further question: what can be done to increase their numbers? You seem to have bitterly decided to take them out of the equation, despite the wonderful things performers can contribute. We can place blame for the problems or we can work to change the situation. Wouldn't you prefer a world in which new music was an expected part of every performer's repertory? And that it was prepared with the same dedication the performers would devote to Bach or Brahms or Bartok? Or have you simply despaired of there ever being such a world? > >My only reaction to that is to ask: if none of them can do what you > >want, maybe you never should have been composing for live performers > >in the first place? > > Blame the victim? No, seriously, you're wrong. I spent some time with a > musician who was working on a Ferneyhough piece -- really working on it, > not dilettanting his way through it. It made him furious, but he kept at > it. Ultimately, he understood what Ferneyhough was getting at and fell in > love with the piece. A musician with less time, interest, energy or budget > (the dominant case) would have given up and, of course, blamed Ferneyhough > for writing impossible music. > > That's not historical news, either. Again, it seems to me that you are condemning the whole world for the mistakes of the few. Actually, not the few, the many. But nonetheless, you're painting with such a broad brush that Given practical realities, if you want live performances, you should compose in a fashion that mazimizes the chances that average or better than average performers will get acceptably close to your intentions. If your musical ideas prohibit adjustment to performance realities, you, unlike centuries of composers, have the option of hearing your music without the live performers. But if you're composing for actual human beings, flawed, imperfect people, who work for organizations that are strapped for cash and can't afford luxurious rehearsal time, or people who make their livings teaching 10-year-olds and therefore have only limited time for intensive practice, then you have to take all of that into account, either in the composing, or in judging the results. If you don't, well, you're doomed to despair. (you remind me of Howard Roark, actually, which I don't consider a flattering comparison at all) > >(on NPR I heard a back-to-back comparison of live performers with a > >conductor-guided MIDI performance, and while there was a difference > >in sound quality, the MIDI performance sounded quite acceptable). But > >while replacing a few dozen musicians with a conductor driving an > >array of sophisticated synthesizers might very well require little > >compromise in the basic sound quality of the ensemble or of > >individual instruments, it replaces the give and take of ensemble > >playing with the conductorial interpretation. The conductor has no > >initiative from other players to play off of, to encourage or > >discourage, and only her own internal tempo and agogics (I'm assuming > >we're talking relatively sophisticated equipment here). > > To use your words from earlier, "Some people, including a lot of composers > throughout history, would consider this a feature rather than a bug." And I would consider it profoundly antithetical to everything that music is about. Music is about process, about unfolding over time. The social aspect of it is for me the part that makes it fun and interesting, both for the performers and for the audience. Composers could choose (and have often chosen) to exploit this, to revel in the uncertainties, the spontaneities. But, again, if you don't like it, you have an option, and it's clearly your choice. But it doesn't mean there's something defective or wrong with those who find beauty among the imperfection. And when I read you, I feel there's that implied indictment behind everything you say. > >The problem, perhaps, is that such performances are only possible for > >music that is representative of a clear-cut style, and that modern > >composers possibly fall into a trap of inventing new stylistic > >conventions with every piece they write. > > And that's bad why? Well, it's not bad in and of itself. But it is, perhaps, one explanation of why performers have great difficulties realizing the music. And the value placed on it tends to come with a viscious flipside that says that the converse is really bad and unsophisticated. I'm not intending to attribute these sentiments to you, personally, but anyone who's been on the performance side of things knows perfectly well that this is the case. > >I also think that many of the composers I know aren't sufficiently > >sensitive to what is idiomatic on instruments and what can and cannot > >be done well. > > That's more blame-the-victim talk. I think composers are by and large as or > more skilled at their art than the average performers are on their > instruments. . . . You ingored the "composers I know" part, obviously. You can't tell me that my experience is invalid. And it's not "blame the victim." It's attempting to explain why things are the way they are. To say that a woman was raped because some yahoos got too excited over her short skirt is not to say that this is OK, that the victim is to blame for the rape. It's only an explanation of a part of the chain of events. > . . . But I'm a strong defender of composers, who have little > defense when their piece is slaughtered. (Film directors have a different > version of that slaughter, but now DVDs have opened up those undamaged cuts > for inspection. My DVD player makes me happy.) > > >While there's nothing wrong with stretching the performers, you can't > >have every single measure of a lengthy piece be at the edge of the > >advanced performer's capabilities and expect the piece to be > >absorbed, mastered and performed with any kind of authority or > >security. > > That's not even in question, even for Ferneyhough. I think we've all been > talking about more general situations with respect to the capabilities of > electronic/Midi performance. I certainly have. And I'd guess that Liudas > has. I've never written anything comparable to a Ferneyhough, and good > performers still muck it up or, in some sort of self-defense mechanism, > cloud it with rubato where they haven't quite learned it, or change tempi, > or simply reinterpret (rather than analyze) to come up with some arbitrary > presentation that fits their mood, skills, or current case of hemorrhoids. I don't doubt any of this. But it only means that you've had shitty performers. That doesn't prove a damned thing about what *could* be done. > >I have often felt that if I were God and in charge of teaching > >composers, I'd make all of them do internships as > >organists/choirmasters in small churches, and require them to write > >one simple anthem a week that was within the capabilities of the > >amateur singers they had available to them and could be prepared and > >performed with authority and security in the minimal rehearsal time > >available under those circumstances. > > Again, since I'm speaking personally and not generically about a lot of > this, I can say that I have done such things all my musical life. My > recording of "Sumer Is Icumen In" with my little amateur church choir > recorded in 1988 was even just released last month on the Longman Anthology > of English Literature accompanying CD to represent music of that era. I've > written compositions and arrangements for them. I taught elementary school > music for six years and wrote every band and choral arrangement for them. > Our little tiny choir also did Bernstein's "Chichester Psalms" and > Stravinsky's "Anthem: A Dove Descending" as well as early American music > and music of the middle ages, and buckets of regular old hymn tunes (some > of which I wrote). My arrangement of "How Can I Keep On Singing" has for > some unknown reason just surged in popularity in both sales and downloads. > And before MP3.com limited songs to three, we had a 40-piece recorded > compilation that had (as of today) 17,277 downloads. All of those miss the time constraints. And also, choirs that can perform Bernstein and Stravinsky, while strictly speaking amateur, don't really count to me in the definition of amateur. I mean people who barely read music, but who have musical ability. I mean the kind of people that sing in the choir in a church with 100 people at weekly services. I think that kind of lesson would be very valuable for young composers, since it would show them the lack of any necessary connection between simplicity/boring and complexity/interesting, complex=good and simple=bad. It would show them that music can be powerful while also being easy to perform. And it should also teach them how to write music that is going to be performed *correctly* with little special preparation. You learn what is hard for performers and then learn to shape the musical material to avoid musically unnecessary difficulties. I'm convinced from my experience that a lot of composers *can't* tell the differeence between musically necessary and decorative complexity. > I'm not patting myself on the back, only pointing out that knowing and > being able to do this sort of stuff does in no way convince me that I > *should* do it when composing. I still (or even moreso) expect a > performance that actually represents the music as best it can be understood > to be the creative output of the composer who wrote it. > > >Music doesn't have to be difficult to be interesting. > >Music doesn't have to be complex to be affecting. > >Music doesn't have to be entirely novel to be worth hearing. > > None of those address the question. I agree with all three. But those seem to be a major stumbling block in a lot of the music being composed these days, at least what I encounter. If you've got Eighth Blackbird to perform your stuff, hey, you're set -- go to town and stretch things to the limit. > >But your hostility to performers seems to me to bespeak a real > >misconception about customary relatuonships between the composer, the > >piece of music, the performers and the audience(s). > > There has been almost no "customary" relationship between composer and > performer in my lifetime. As a younger generation of energized and (thank > goodness) competent performers begins to appear (and Non Sequitur is a fine > example), this relationship may grow once again. But it was disrupted long > before my birth 54 years ago. It continues in certain areas. I'd be interested to know if you'd compose for viol consort, and what you might compose. Given not too advanced players and an ensemble with a limited range, what would you write? I know that my group would do its best within limited time to try to perform what they understood as the composers intent, since that's what we do with Jenkins, Boismortier and Buxtehude. But to me, it seems that the composers are the ones who broke the covenant. Schoenberg is one thing (he certainly didn't miss anything about this web of relationships; the rejection of his music was entirely the fault of Neanderthal reactionaries who didn't even understand the musical style of their own time), but Boulez is another. I read an awful lot of pain and hurt in your rejections of live performers, and I think there was no necessity for things to have turned out that way. -- David W. Fenton | http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates | http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
