On 6 Oct 2003 at 22:55, Michael Edwards wrote: > Now I get the feeling that Dennis belongs to this second camp, and is > making what I would have thought the reasonable request that performers > honour effects or features he has clearly notated in his music
I'm in your 1st camp, believing that our present system of music notation can never precisely and unambiguously notate everything required to make a satisfactory performance. But I am also in the camp that says it is first the performer's responsibility to play everything in the score, to the best of the performer's ability. In that regard: On 6 Oct 2003 at 22:59, Michael Edwards wrote: > The "senza Ped." indication is so anomalous that it looks like a > misprint to me; and I cannot follow it literally without the music > suddenly sounding utterly thin and ridiculous, completely spoiling the > mood of the whole piece. I cannot follow this instruction and make > musical sense out of the passage. I am very familiar with almost all > of Scriabin's complete output, and feel I can make certain judgements > about how his music should sound - and there is no other piece by him > which has a similar anomaly notated in it. > > Now, in good conscience, what should I do here? Follow the instruction > because the score tells me to, and produce a performance that sounds > ridiculous and uncomfortable to me, out of keeping with the spirit (as > I perceive it) of Scriabin's music? - or ignore it and produce a > performance that sounds just right and where the two bars in question > fit in well with the rest of the piece. I say that your most important job is to make a compelling performance of the piece, musically convincing and internally coherent. While the *first* job is to attempt to reproduce every fly- speck in the score, the most important job is to make the piece work musically. If a performance that follows the score rigorously is not coherent and does not hold together, it's time to jettison some of the information in the score and try to figure out some alternative that is as close as possible to what is in the score and conveys the idea that you think the notational exactitude was trying to notate. Perhaps the senza pedal notation simply means "drier, cleaner, more transparent" with an implication that the other measures are to be "wetter, thicker, richer." That's an interpretive decision that you have to make. The alternative for the composer who refuses to hand over that responosibility to the performer is to not have his pieces performed at all. And I gather that Dennis is fine with that, as he'll turn to machines when human beings don't suffice. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
