Re: composers playing their own concertos (was GG hagiography)

[Elmer Elevator <bobmer.javanet@RCN.COM>]

Charles Ives never believed there was a correct way to play any of his
compositions, and didn't even take it as a compliment if a performer tried
to ask him for interpretive advice. I think he believed that any pianist or
conductor who was drawn to his compositions enough to want to play his music
had automatically demonstrated insight enough to get it right enough to suit
him. He may even have had an ego so robust that he looked forward to hearing
new ways of interpreting his music. (I don't think he ever heard any of his
symphonies publicly performed during his lifetime.)

A few years ago, the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music (the copyright owners)
was so offended by a European performance of one of the more famous Weill
operas that they threatened legal action to make them stop. I don't know if
they carried out the threat or how far they got. I think they had a right to
try to preserve what they felt was the spirit and intent of his music, but
I'd hate to see judges and lawyers debating and settling matters like that.
Courts certainly have a role to play in settling plagiarism accusations --
but interpretation?

Half the fun of being a Gould fan is all the fighting among the High and the
Mighty over Gould's "wrong" interpretations. And I think that's half the
contribution Gould made to classical music: Stretching the debate about how
these compositions can be played. I think the experience of the critical
reception of Gould's interpretations demonstrated, if nothing else, that
with the passage of centuries, interpretive ideals become stultified and
rigid and ossified and "Smithsonianized" -- the tendency is to regard the
interpretation of these things as sacred museum pieces. And I think that
slowly but inexorably works to classical music's detriment. As it grows more
and more rigid and stratified with each generation's insistence on (often
very arbitrary) rules, we forget that at one time all this music was new and
thrilling and electrifying, and this music gets drained of those components.

One of my favorite recordings is of Hoagy Carmichael singing his own songs.
He doesn't have a very good voice -- just good enough to stay on key and hit
all the right notes, but a real back-alley, untrained voice -- but when I
listen to him singing these famous jazz standards that have had far more
famous versions by everyone from Sinatra to Crosby to Ella Fitzgerald to
Billie Holiday, I'm convinced no one else could possibly surpass them in the
emotional meaning and emotional communication these wonderful songs were
meant to convey. So I'm tempted to believe composers maybe really do have
the inside track about performing their own compositions. Good or great
music may be the distillation of an individual's life and emotional
experience, and it's just possible that nobody else can quite step into the
composer's soul and live and reflect his/her life that intimately.

Elmer/Bob

-----Original Message-----
From: jergggg <jerbigero@EMAIL.MSN.COM>
To: F_MINOR@EMAIL.RUTGERS.EDU <F_MINOR@EMAIL.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Thursday, November 07, 2002 9:47 PM
Subject: Re: composers playing their own concertos (was GG hagiography)


>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Juozas Rimas" <JuozasRimas@TAKAS.LT>
>To: <F_MINOR@EMAIL.RUTGERS.EDU>
>Sent: Thursday, November 07, 2002 2:19 PM
>Subject: Re: composers playing their own concertos (was GG hagiography)
>>
>> Are there examples when composers' own performances are worse than those
>by other performers?
>>
>> I thought the composer's own interpretation (provided he is competent
>enough
>> with an instrument!) is always perfect, even if he changes it drastically
>in
>> every performance. He is the only one who knows exactly how the music
>should
>> sound at that particular moment. Can anyone else know it better?
>>
>> Juozas Rimas Jr (not the one playing)
>> http://www.mp3.com/juozasrimas (oboe, piano, strings)