hey john, no looking down the nose from this end. and BTW amateurs are not the only ones who don't always get paid ;-)
it is simply not my responsibility as a composer to teach amateur or untrained musicians. that said, i firmly believe in doing whatever we can to make today's music accessible to whoever wants to get involved. but the score produced by a composer whose main work is in the realm of professional performance should never cater the notation or score or materials to a lay audience. if, however, a composer works with an amateur orchestra or musician(s) they could certainly provide a separate document as needed, but that document would provide largely or completely superfluous info for professional musicians, who may think the composer is being condescending or pretentious in assuming they don't know these things. the amateur musician/orchestra has the responsibility of educating themselves about the practices they are interested in, just as much as the composer has the responsibility of making their performance materials optimal for the context they are expected to be used in. the fact that i call my work professional and insist on a professional level of notating (and performing) my music says absolutely nothing against "non-professional" musicians. in fact i have often heard far more interesting comments and perspectives on new music by non-musicians than by musicians, whose training for various reasons can encourage a certain conservatism in their knowledge and practice. (*) but composers have to take for granted that the musician who plays contemporary music knows enough about the field to actually be able to play it. just as i don't need to explain what a sharp or triplet or pizz is to an amateur or professional musician playing a chopin nocturne, i should not be expected to explain what a quarter tone or nonuplet or bartók pizz is to an amateur or professional musician playing music composed in the past half century. this should by no means not be taken as an insult by non-professional / amateur / inexperienced musicians. it is simply that my work must be at the highest quality if i ever expect to have a musician reflect that same quality in their performance of my work. *) if you are interested in the longer version of this comment, check out my article "Practicalities of a Socio-Musical Utopia: Degrees of freedom¹ in mathias spahlinger¹s 'doppelt bejaht' (studies for orchestra without conductor)." http://newmusicnotation.com/chippewa/texts.html cheers, jef >To all you professional musicians, a very large >number of Finale users are NOT professional >musicians. I do quite a bit of notation for >non-professional singers. They really appreciate >the courtesy accidentals (by the way, I have a >good friend who sincerely believes they should >be called "intentionals" rather than >"accidentals".) Many of you regard the time you >spent learning to be a "professional musician" >entitles you to be more than a little proud. >Does it really entitle you to look down your >nose at an amateur who may have worked just as >hard to learn the rudiments of music without >ever getting a single dollar to show for it? >Please don't take this note as an insult; I >really appreciate all the comments from this >group. >John Witmer >Clemson Downs Retirement Community -- neueweise -- fonts for new music (and traditional) notation http://newmusicnotation.com/fonts.html shirling & neueweise | http://newmusicnotation.com new music notation + arts management + translation [FB] http://facebook.com/neueweise | [TW] http://twitter.com/neueweise _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: [email protected]
