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It’s been amazingly liberating to work on this music. A bass raises his hand and asks if that note should be a G-sharp rather than a G. Or the sopranos find the text underlay awkward and wonder if they can adjust it. The current orthodoxy is to treat composers as gods, so all questions like that always come down to determining the composer’s intent. What would Mozart have wanted? we ask, ignoring the question of what Mozart’s (or our) audience would want. The composer’s score is treated as holy writ, and any deviation treated as blasphemy.
With this bogus music, the will of the composer can be freely ignored. Who cares what Jean-Baptiste Weckerlin (the composer of "Mon coeur") wanted? He’s not even a demi-god. Who knows what loser wrote Bach’s supposed St. Luke Passion? Whoever he was, he’s a pretender to divinity. At last, I can make decisions based on what will make the most sense to the audience, without worrying about the high priests of Historically Informed Performance breathing down my neck.
I like to think I went into music because I had some musical sense and good musical instincts, and I trust my instincts when making musical decisions. It always galls me to have some hierarch of authenticity tell me I’m violating the basic spirit of music when I’m determining what’s best for my audience. The cult of the composer is widespread in our era, and I think it’s led to a generation of conductors and performers whose highest aspiration is to be technicians, not musicians.
Thomas Lloyd says
Allen H Simon says
John Howell says
donald patriquin says
Hello Allen,
Bravo for finding an interesting concert theme!
I enjoyed your point of view, though I find it somewhat extreme.
However, you give yourself totally away with one remark, which I’ll
atribute to you and no one else: “and I trust my instincts when
making musical decisions.”
If you had not spent years learning about music, its history,
its theory, its practice, its composition, its message, and so on,
you would never have developed what you call ‘instincts’. All of
these “instincts (you use) when making musical decisions” are, in
fact, NOT instincts. They are learned responses. So do allow for
‘learning’ per se when you programme music, when you present music,
and when you teach music to your questioning choristers. If you
want to play around with composers notes you should KNOW what you
are doing. Instinct is NOT enough.
We atrophy when we stop learning, so we should not deny those
who want to know more precisely what they are doing, the
opportunity to learn. Don’t worry about the ‘gods’!
Richard Mix says
Steven Grives says
Douglas Neslund says
Dan Gawthrop says
Allen H Simon says
Bill Paisner says
Martin Banner says
Allen H Simon says
Ronald Richard Duquette says