On 6 Oct 2003 at 10:02, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote: > I think all of this line of discussion is appropriately rigorous and > very different from arguments from performers who choose what to play > from among the notational elements based on what is essentially whimsy > or some habit of ignoring some sorts of markings as extraneous.
Is anyone defending whimsical disregard of what's notated? I don't think so. Sounds to me like we actually are pretty much in agreement after all. I wrote in another message about my experiences coaching at the California Music Festival. One of the things I noticed was the degree to which performers do, in fact, play only what's in the score (whether it's musical or not) and ignore certain kinds of markings or play them in a way that completely obscures the clear intent of the notation. One of these latter is the way in which I find modern performers tend to try to minimize changes of bow. This may be a desirable goal in Wagner or Bruckner, but in Mendelssohn, for instance, it tends to wash out all the points of articulation in a musical line. In regard to markings that get ignored, I think there are strong stylistic "rules" that are taught to performers and that they often are too simplistic in their application of them. When I was at Oberlin I was learning Mozart's K. 570 Piano Sonata, which is in 3/4 and begins with several measures of half/quarter, each measure with the two notes slurred. I went into my lesson and played this slur, with the half notes strong, the quarter notes weak and a small lift between the measures and my teacher freaked out. He said I was killing the musical line (and he was right about that, at a certain level) -- that it should be one long continuous phrase. I asked "Then why did Mozart put in those slurs?" And he said "those are just bowings." I retorted, "But don't you think Mozart knew he wasn't writing for a stringed instrument here?" And he had no answer. My goal was to try to honor those slurs without losing the long line. His goal was to ignore the slurs and go for the long line at all costs. I eventually played the piece in recital on fortepiano where it wasn't hard at all to honor the slurs and maintain the long line as well (i.e., the problem was almost entirely created by the modern piano). But the point is that he was just going to ignore the notation and not every *try* to play what it said on the page. And given how bad my initial attempts sounded on modern piano, I honestly don't blame him! And perhaps many of the cavalier attitudes towards notation come from the fact that modern musicians have to constantly play music that was written for instruments very different from what they are playing on, and so they've become accustomed to not even attempting to take certain things literally. That's bad, of course, but at least it's an explanation. -- 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
