On 1/11/07, David W. Fenton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
quoting me:
> Christoph Graupner's music reinforces this hunch, because in many > ways, his sinfonias are more interesting than sinfonias that were > being written just a few years later in Vienna. And while all the > Viennese composers get credit for their innovations
David replied:
I think you're running off the rails here. The whole idea of "who did what first" is a discredited, 19th-century style of approaching music. It's not innovations that keep music from being boring -- it's much more a matter of having musical materials and processes in the piece of music that hold our interest.
Remember: I asked Johannes why he thought so many find early or "preclassical" music boring. Then I made a personal observation on a fallacy: that simply because later composers were writing in the preclassical period, that music was somehow more "modern" than the baroque, or that the music was "more interesting." The liner notes to the CPO Benda disc go to great lengths giving examples of how music never really developed in a linear fashion (you agreed with this notion later in your reply). My personal research with Graupner was showing this to be true, with the examples I gave. I believe Graupner's music is interesting because, well, it is. Of course, YMWV.
Anyway, the whole point is that "who did it first" is only meaningful when you know 100% of the music composed, and that's never going to happen, so it's completely stupid and hopeless to ever worry about it.
Boy, I'm really glad you don't teach history ;)
I don't know that Mozart's youthful music was praised except as the achievement of a child, basically a trained monkey ...
Really? That's not the words Hasse used when he wrote about Mozart and the opera "Ascano in Alba," Hasse stated "This boy will cause the rest of us to be forgotten." Remember, Hasse was the leading opera writer of that time; and had been to just about all the large centers of music in Europe. And if you look at what Mozart did to J.C. Bach's sonatas when he turned them into harpsichord concerti, the musical form of the pieces were improved. Not bad work for a 'trained monkey.' On more than one occasion, it was suggested that Mozart's father was the real composer; and there are several accounts of Mozart being locked up in a room with just paper and ink to make sure that indeed there was no funny business going on. Thanks for an engaging thread ;) Kim _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
