I will try to respond to Hans' objections: First of all, Hans, your final point is something I can agree with completely. You say that my book may be valuable for some people, but not for all. Yes, indeed! In writing this book, I am not proposing that we abandon Kopprasch, Kling, Maxime Alphonse, Gallay, and company, have a big bonfire with all their books, make everyone buy the quarter tone book, and start over with just that one book. This is a specialized book. It is hard. it (hopefully) helps people learn to play a certain kind of music (which not everyone likes) which is pretty new to us horn players. My career is very different from yours, and I am constantly asked to play many kinds of new music in which I have to figure out how to execute what I am asked to do. From a professional point of view, if I want to put food on the table and pay the rent, it will not behoove me to point out to the composer that nobody likes his or her music. In fact, believe it or not, I often like the music. Taking the case of the Li geti Trio, a piece with lots of quarter tones in it, I would describe that piece as absolutely hauntingly beautiful (anybody on the list who doesn't know Ligeti's trio or his horn concerto, called the Hamburg Concerto, has a big treat ahead, and I would highly recommend checking those pieces out).
Hans, you say "Sounding VERY COOL is not an argument. The audience must like the music, not just very small selected group." This is a tricky argument. First, I would propose that, if I am right and the music sounds "very cool," then by definition people will like it. People like things that sound cool. So I think what you are saying is that, while it sounds cool to me, it does not sound cool to you. Fair enough. I think we should remember, however, that much of Brahms' music was heard as cacophonous when it was first heard. Luckily, people lived with it, grew to understand it, and now we horn players have a chance to hear people like you play it so beautifully in concert halls and on recordings. Also, most music being written at any era was garbage. I don't spend my days listening to Stamitz, for instance, because that same period produced Beethoven, who was a lot better. But we can't make a rule that only the good composers get to write. People like me play all kinds of new stuff, and devote a large part of our lives doing so, with the understanding that the good stuff will rise to the top and will last. Many of the pieces will, as you say, get performed only a single time. That's the way it goes. I agree with you that "Composers write much garbage using any kind of writing technique & expect that we learn all this stuff." It's true. Believe it or not, I enjoy figuring out how to play the stuff they write. You clearly don't, which is fine. Part of the point of my new book is to explain to composers, who are already writing lots of quarter tones (this is not a one-shot deal, with the quarter tones: I see them all over the place), how to notate them clearly and consistently, precisely so we hornists won't have to figure out what has been written every time. Also, I would gently suggest that, in comparing Haydn's horn writing with Mozart's, you see a composer (Mozart, of course) pushing WAY past the boundaries of what hornists had previously been asked to do. And thank God for it. Using the example of Strauss (one of my favorite composers, and BTW, if readers of the horn list have not checked out the horn parts in the opera Der Rosenkavalier, you have another major treat in store), I would suggest that he also pushed the boundaries of what horn players could play. Of course Strauss had "a sound imagination & sound taste." You get that kind of composer once or, if you are lucky, twice a generation. But we're always looking, right? I promise not to compel Hans, or anyone else, to work through my new etude book. I have written it for people who are curious to learn something new, or who want to explore a side of music they hadn't encountered yet, or who are always looking for ways to experiment on the horn, or who have some really hard music to play and want help preparing. If anyone is interested in the book, you can get it at my website, www.danielgrabois.com. I appreciate all the discussion of it on the horn list. I myself spend lots of time thinking about contemporary music, its place in society, our relationship to audiences, and what it means for a piece to be good. I am enjoying reading other people's thoughts on these issues. _______________________________________________ post: [email protected] unsubscribe or set options at https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
