On 29 Jan 2005 at 13:12, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote: > I'm one of those who prefers to listen to recordings or watch films.
But were it not for repeated live performances before audiences, it would not be possible to get recorded preformances that hold up under repeated listening. It's the regular performance (not rehearsal) that, in my opinion, makes musical performances grow to the point where they gain depth. I have worked with the retired opera singer Olivia Stapp the past two years at the California Music Festival, and she was ruminating at one point about what an impossible task we set ourselves at the Festival -- last year, for instance, singers started blocking Handel's Alcina on Monday, and then performed the whole thing in public a mere 10 days later, with two casts, so the two performances were not multiple public performances for all the singers. She said that when she was actively performing she never really felt she had a role under her belt until she'd sung it on stage in public 15 or 20 times. I couldn't agree with here more. It takes a long time for one to absorb major works of music (or even minor ones), and public performance is the crucible through which the raw musical ideas are converted into something more than just a run- through. In my own current performing as a member of the NYU Collegium I definitely find that second performances almost always have a lot more in them than first performances. This past fall we gave a concert as part of the New York Early Music Celebration (we were the only "student" group involved in any way), and on this concert we revived pieces that mostly came from our previous two concerts (a couple of pieces were revived from a couple of years before). *Everything* went better than the first time around, even though we had vastly less rehearsal time (one of our performers flew in from Texas 6 days before the concert, and he was performing 1/3 of the pieces on the concert). Perhaps all of this is one of the reasons composers are often dissatisfied with first performances of their pieces, precisely because it's impossible in any first performance to accomplish more than just scratching the surface. If new music works could get 15 or 20 performances by the same group, maybe folks like Dennis would not be so bitter about the results. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
