Will Denayer wrote:
I am convinced that the Galant style was a very rhetorical style,
much like the French Baroque, where you have to get the gestures and
nuance right or it just sounds terrible. It takes a lot of style to
get the music off the page ... I played a lot of the Mozart sonatas
when I was young. I have never done any research regarding the early
Classical era or what came immediately before it (but I find the
things you are mentioning very interesting). I think that to get the
music off the page, Mozart demands unbelievable attention to all
possible details and gestures as well as extreme precision and even
then the results are not inspiring. I just do not find it great
music. It’s quite possible, I think (and know), to play Bach or
Beethoven (or Liszt) and if you play a note or two notes wrong or
even if you miss a whole measure, there is still a chance to do
something musically satisfying, it’s not per se ruined, but it would
be in a Mozart piece. Two years ago, there was a student here who
came close to improvisation in the middle of a Scriabin poem.
Musically speaking, I didn’t find the result so bad at all. I found
that quite interesting.
One thing that's important to remember is that not everybody will
respond to the same music in the same way. That's what makes it an art,
and that's what allows for there to be more than one major composer at a
time.
I find it very curious that so many musicians spend so much time trying
to decipher the minutiae of music from over 200 years ago, while
ignoring the music of our own time. And I'm also certain that Mozart is
laughing in his grave at the fact that we haven't been able to move
beyond him.
He wrote music of his time, for his time and for his audiences and
didn't waste time trying to decipher ways for proper performance of
music 200 years earlier. He would think it totally laughable that we
ignore the composers of our own times to devote so much energy and time
and shelf-space to the supposed proper interpretation of his music. All
the while knowing that we're all getting it wrong anyway.
Is it any wonder that so many composers of the 20th century ignored
their audiences, when they knew that no matter what they did, most of
their potential audience would ignore them?
Perhaps the lack of decent music education programs in our public
schools these days can help the population wean itself from an
over-dependence on music from 2 and 3 centuries ago, and make room for
developing a taste for the music written by composers of our own time.
The band world learned this lesson and continues to support composers
writing today for today's audiences. Why can't the orchestral, choral
and keyboard worlds learn the same lessons?
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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