Wow. If it's just about 'getting
it right' then we can all go home. No live performance - no CD, no
matter how many takes it's been mastered from -- no account can ever be
perfectly perfectly dead-on absolutely-as-it-can-be right on the money
perfect. Or -- merely be 'gotten right.' But that's
not really what it's all about, at lenot ast in my book.
I've got a community here (and I hate to
generalize, but why not?) which -- for the most part -- was musically naive
before I put together this little community orchestra of 50. Really --
it's very rural; many old-time families whose genealogy traces
their anticedents back 150 to the gold rush days (time immemorial for
California) and in many ways this area hasn't been touched
by progress. There's of course influence from outside; I mean they do
got real runnin' water and indoor plumbin', but there wasn't much -- if anything
in the way of live classical performances. Sure, I've been told
Les Marsden Founding Music Director and Conductor, The Mariposa
Symphony Orchestra Music and Mariposa? Ahhhhh, Paradise!!!
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, January 29, 2005 6:33
PM
Subject: Re: [Finale]
Performance/recording
At 03:22 PM 1/29/05 -0500, A-NO-NE Music wrote: >In my
life, I have three live concerts which my tears couldn't stop >coming
out during the show. [...]
Then you are at concerts for a different
reason than I am. All I want is the music, not personalities of performers
in the way. (And I did say that improv-based music is different -- the
music is re-invented in the performance.) What interested me about the
discussion was talking about replacements for musicians ... so far I'll
trade all your tears for recordings where the notes are actually right. And
it won't be long before virtual orchestras have every bit as much
contouring as pro performers have, but (to my taste, fortunately) without
all that performer "stuff" in the way. :)
Don't get me wrong. I have
performed and conducted and still do, but only because no one else does the
material I did. Early American choral before the renewed interest created a
body of recordings, free medieval and Renaissance concerts in an urban
community without access to it, and post-Fluxus performance art and
extended vocal work even today.
But once a piece is done and recorded,
it's done. Maybe somebody wants a different take. That's fine. But the
hundreds of undifferentiated classical performances of the same stuff are
to my mind just plain stupid. Save your $40 ticket and go buy a bottle of
wine, some spicy take-out, and a $2.99 CD and have a better-sounding copy
you can hear anytime and relive the moment.
At 10:33 AM 1/29/05 -0800,
Mariposa Symphony Orchestra wrote: >BUT: to have that communal
experience with a great >orchestra under a great conductor in a great
hall with >great acoustics: Yeah. Easy choice.
I've
been to concerts in great halls with great orchestras and great conductors.
Maybe not as many as most here because I get bored quickly by concerts. And
I just don't remember anything about them except the extra-musical part --
Bernstein hopping up and down during some Mahler, Stravinsky's plain
conducting in Sacre, Copland's microscopic motions during something of his,
the demeanor of the Czech Chamber the night their country was invaded,
Kubelik at Carnegie switching conducting hands during a Martinu piece to
mop his brow, some painfully bad male singing in Lulu (the earlier
truncated version) at the Met, the yawning horn player during something
Chailly conducted at the Concertgebouw... but the music itself? Nothing.
All better on recordings.
At 09:49 PM 1/29/05 +0100, Daniel Wolf
wrote: >The upshot of all this has been that I've had no enthusisasm
about >producing recordings of my own music, and have really begun to
think of >my music as tailored for concert, live broadcast, and private
playing. >I think that the greater possibilities of electronic
play-back from >scores will change this somewhat, but the ramifications
of this are >still pretty vague to me.
The de facto way of
hearing music today is on recording. I'm not going to try to convince you
that's good -- though it would be nice to hear your music more than by
chance someday, somewhere. But likely I'll never hear you in concert except
by accident. Most composers whose work I've come to know and love has been
via CD (or downloads now). The way things are set up today, going to a
concert means getting ready, dealing with getting there, paying a bundle
for one play and all its mistakes, listening through other junk you didn't
want to hear, probably getting bad seats since so few are really good,
being around noisy people, and worst of all -- having no reverse-scan
button, which I can't live without. :)
I appreciate the private playing
part. There is a communal nature that's fun -- but that's not performance.
That's a physical exchange with its own rewards. Performers do what they
do, and get fulfillment from it. And I enjoy sitting in on rehearsals of my
music (moreso if the rehearsal is for a recording).
As far as score
playback goes, that's on the way. And the effect will be dramatic. I look
forward to it.
At 08:10 PM 1/29/05 -0500, David W. Fenton
wrote: >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.
If the music is played correctly, the
recording will hold up just fine for me. I have shelves of recordings by
third-string groups that are completely listenable. In any case, I'll pass
on those idiosyncratic emotional readings that 'hold up under repeated
listening' for other people. All I hear is the conductor and the players
getting in the way of the music after a while -- very, very annoying. (What
comes to mind immediately is the ten bucks I wasted on a recording of
Casals snorting through Mozarts EKN.)
>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.
I'm not bitter. Who am I to be bitter? As far as performances,
of course more are better because they serve as rehearsals for a
potentially good performance and recording. This fall I had an orchestral
work performed 10 times by a pro orchestra with a good conductor. By the
10th performance, they almost had the notes right. (Hell, it was in C
minor, not some jump-ass atonal thing.) They worked hard and were
dedicated, and the performances were exciting to the audience, and I had
fun because of the 'eventiness' of it all, but I really would have liked
just one measly recording that had all the notes right. As it stands, only
my own electroacoustic pieces are done to my satisfaction.
There's
another factor. I think 90% is what the listener brings to a performance.
The right partner, the right beverage, the right moment in one's life, and
a mediocre performance blooms into a work of genius. If only I had time to
tell all the mis-hearings my music has gotten over the years ... as a
composer, I certainly don't need another layer of performer quirks being
interposed! I'll pass on the deep, rich, emotional, vivid, lustrous,
personal, powerful (etc.) performances. Plain is good, clean is good,
nicely recorded is good. Correct is best. If I feel like getting emotional
over one of my pieces, I'll do it no matter who is playing. :)
So I do
look forward to the virtual orchestra, or at least the assisted orchestra.
Something to, you know, get it right --- and be cheaper, too. Maybe all the
displaced musicians will find themselves composing ... now *there* is an
idea that appeals to me. More people creating. It would be a cultural
change that I'd certainly
welcome!
Dennis
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