chriswilke
Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:30:58 -0700
Jeff,
--- Jeffrey Noonan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Presenting contemporary works as historical is a
> long tradition in the music
> biz--
>
So is outright stealing and piracy.
> The program notes to a recent Naxos recording of
> Ponce's solo guitar music
> recounts this episode. Segovia was merely trying to
> keep up with the other
> international virtuosi of the day
Yes, Fritz Kreisler was another famous one. We
can chuckle about it now, remembering what colorful
characters the big names of yesterday were. But it
was horribly irresponsible even in those days.
From a musicological standpoint, such stunts
could potentially waste countless hours as researchers
try to track down sources that don't exist. This is a
serious issue. (In Ponce's case, musicologists
_should_ have picked up on the stylistic discrepancies
immediately, but I suspect they simply weren't paying
attention to what was happening in the guitar world.)
From the listener's standpoint, such behavior on
the part of performers is disrespectful to say the
least. Ponce/Segovia/Kreisler, et al are free to use
whatever nom de plume of their own invention that they
so choose. I've done it myself with a couple of my
compositions. When they compose, perform, publish and
record music under the name of a (long dead and safely
un-litigious) musical giant, however, they are
intentionally misrepresenting themselves by riding on
the coat tails of another's reputation.
Chris
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