Musical style
Tommy Grand
periods, or to use a different style for each composer?
Dicerous
> Is it better to impose one's own personal style on music of all
> periods, or to use a different style for each composer?
Good question. It's best to learn the music as the composer intended
with respect for the performance practice period. After that, you
have to weigh whether you feel like tweaking the performance. What if
you suddenly felt like getting up, turning your chair around (away
from the audience) during a break in a cello suite? What if you feel
like putting a cross-string trill here and there? I took a lesson
from one guy, played a cello suite and his response was: you're not
really going to play it that fast are you? Whatever! After you've
learned music history and get a feeling for the overall, prevailing
attitudes about how to play it, you have to decide for yourself. So
it's a little of both I suppose. OTOH some people are sticklers for
*authenticity*. I'm not one of those. Oh they'll give you plenty of
decent arguments, but remember most of it is simply narcissistic
wrangling, or academic shenanigans.
Dicerous
> periods, or to use a different style for each composer?
Btw, I think playing a picardy third as minor maybe going too far.
Stanley Yates
"Dicerous" <dice...@gmail.com> wrote in message
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On Nov 11, 5:07 pm, Tommy Grand <howardj...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Is it better to impose one's own personal style on music of all
> periods, or to use a different style for each composer?
OTOH some people are sticklers for
*authenticity*. I'm not one of those.
------
Because there's no such thing as authenticity in music...
sy
agil
"Tommy Grand" <howar...@yahoo.com> ha scritto nel messaggio
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> Is it better to impose one's own personal style on music of all
> periods, or to use a different style for each composer?
A complete knowledge of the style of each composer is the essential
foundation for the work of an interpreter. When achieved, such a knowledge
does not lead all the interpreters to the same approach - thank Godness. For
a better understanding of the point, I suggest you listen to some works of
the same author performed by players belonging to different generations -
follow their performance with reading the score. For instance - just one
among hundreds - listen to Schubert piano Sonatas as recorded by Arthur
Schabel (their "discoverer"), then by Arthur Rubinstein, then by Radu Lupu,
Maurizio Pollini, Christoph Eschenbach, etc; you will perfectly understand
how respectful of Schubert's style, and how individually creative, each of
them can be.
ag
Dicerous
> "Tommy Grand" <howardj...@yahoo.com> ha scritto nel messaggionews:b97f74cc-3c96-45c2...@15g2000yqy.googlegroups.com...
Name dropping!
Tommy Grand
> "Tommy Grand" <howardj...@yahoo.com> ha scritto nel messaggionews:b97f74cc-3c96-45c2...@15g2000yqy.googlegroups.com...
AG, suppose you are listening to recording of a Milan pavan and you
are instantly able to identify the performer (such as Segovia). Is
this an indication of a bad interpretation? I think the modern-minded
players like Lutemann would say yes.
fol...@yahoo.com
> Is it better to impose one's own personal style on music of all
> periods, or to use a different style for each composer?
I think of it like actors. In the old days, you would see go to a
movie to see a Cary Grant, James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart film...you
would go to see the actor whose personality was consistent regardless
of the role or time period of the film.
Likewise, some players personalities often overshadow the music they
are playing...
I can't even think of the screen writer of White Haet but I sure think
of Cagney saying "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!"
Likewise, I listen to Segovia's performance of Louis Couperin's
Passagcalia not to hear Couperin but to hear Segovia.
Tommy Grand
So it's an old days/new days thing? Mark don't you find it ironic
that in an era where we have countless ways to hear a Milan pavan
(YouTube, live, CD) the prevailing fashion is for *less*
individuality?
fol...@yahoo.com
more or less old days/new days.
BTW/ youtube is not always a good thing. A student came for a lesson
the other day. He is a product of a major music school.
This student was trying to play primarily if not exclusively with his
RH middle joint. Why? cause some guy ( a famous young Italian) plays
that way...he saw it on Youtube...
of course this famous young Italian started playing guitar when he was
4 and the student that came to me started when he was 17.
Maybe it works for the Italian, but judging from the history this
student has with tendonitis , not for him.
But whose to be believed, a local yokel guitar teacher like me or the
example on youtube of this young Italian whipper snapper?
fol...@yahoo.com
voice has always been rare.
agil
"Tommy Grand" <howar...@yahoo.com> ha scritto nel messaggio
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It does not work this way, not for me. From reading a page of a score - no
matter for which instrument or group it is written - in a very short while -
a minute in the case of a guitar solo piece - I have clear in my mind how
the music sounds. This is my interpretation of the piece. Finished. I do
not need any audition to realize the music. Since then, I maybe, or not,
interested to listen to someone playing the piece, but I feel no need to
judge what I listen in terms of good or bad - this is useless - but in terms
of what it may suggest to me, which I had not already realized in my "image"
of the piece. I know how a Pavane by Milan should sound for me. I do not
need anything else. Listening to Segovia for me is always a pleasure: I have
nothing to share with his vision of the music, but I can perceive, from his
interpretations, the world he had in his mind and soul, and forgive me if I
believe I am no so stupid to compare that world with mine. He was Segovia. I
am myself. I am glad he was so Segovia. And I am not unhappy with being so
myself. Clear?
ag
agil
<fol...@yahoo.com> ha scritto nel messaggio
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This is why it is more direct, worthy and effective, for one who has a
talent, to write his/her own music, instead of playing the music of other
creators.
Segovia could have been a composer, a painter or a writer: we have evidence
of all these talents, which he did not cultivate, because he was Segovia.
I couldn't say: what a pity, but I cannot avoid thinking that, if his talent
was the greatest among guitarists (except Ida Presti's one), perhaps playing
guitar was not the highest investment he could do of it.
Being Segovia can be a prison.
ag
Tommy Grand
> Clear?
But surely you agree that some interpretations are too
individualistic. If I play a C major scale and claim that I've
interpreted a Milan pavan, then I have simply made a false statement.
What if I play the right notes, but at MM=1, or like a Sousa march, or
with slurred scales? I think the boundaries might be narrower these
days, and I wonder why that might be the case. With so much exposure
to these pieces, you'd think variety would be a good thing.
agil
"Tommy Grand" <howar...@yahoo.com> ha scritto nel messaggio
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His interpretations were the expression of his world. I couldn't blame an
artist for being "too individualistic", because I understand why he did what
he did. He had a why for his way of playing.
First understand, then judge.
ag
David Raleigh Arnold
> Is it better to impose one's own personal style on music of all periods,
> or to use a different style for each composer?
Do without style.
Regards, daveA
--
For beginners: very easy guitar music, solos, duets, exercises. Early
intermediate guitar solos. One best scale set for all guitarists.
http://www.openguitar.com/scalescomparison.html ::: plus new and
better chord and arpeggio exercises. http://www.openguitar.com
David Raleigh Arnold
> On Nov 12, 9:11 am, "agil" <calatrav...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> Clear?
>
> But surely you agree that some interpretations are too individualistic.
> If I play a C major scale and claim that I've interpreted a Milan pavan,
> then I have simply made a false statement. What if I play the right
> notes, but at MM=1, or like a Sousa march, or with slurred scales? I
> think the boundaries might be narrower these days, and I wonder why that
> might be the case.
Because where there is more knowledge and understanding of the
composer and his environment there is bound to be less variation
in those aspects of interpretation based on that understanding.
Knowledge is constantly expanding, and, alas, other knowledge
is lost. As AG avers, there is still a universe of difference remaining,
not only because none of the interpreters *are* the composer, but also
because composers' ideas of how their work should be played are seldom
strictly limited to their own renditions. IOW some composers write
better than they realize. ;-)
With so much exposure to these pieces, you'd think
> variety would be a good thing.
It's better than the alternative, and that is the important thing.
And I second everything AG wrote. I have exactly the same
attitude, and I have expressed it before, but not as well.
agil
"David Raleigh Arnold" <d...@openguitar.com> ha scritto nel messaggio
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> As AG avers, there is still a universe of difference remaining,
> not only because none of the interpreters *are* the composer, but also
> because composers' ideas of how their work should be played are seldom
> strictly limited to their own renditions. IOW some composers write
> better than they realize. ;-)
We could quietly conclude that few composers were - and are - able of
performing their own works at the standard they implied.
Ravel is a case in question. Castelnuovo-Tedesco, who obviously admired the
music of the French master, told me once that he listened to him performing
his own Sonatina, in such a dreadful way so as to make hard believing that
he was the same musical mind who created it; and it is known the famous
Toscanini's sentence, after a performance of the Bolero which Ravel
criticized for its being too fast: "You do not understand anything of your
music!".
ag
David Raleigh Arnold
I will catch hell for this: IMO Tedesco's guitar quintet surpasses
any of Ravel's string quartets. There is yet another lesson here:
Don't play your own stuff. ;-) Regards, daveA
fol...@yahoo.com
quartet?
> intermediate guitar solos. One best scale set for all guitarists.http://www.openguitar.com/scalescomparison.html::: plus new and
Tommy Grand
> Do mean catching hell because you think Ravel wrote more than one
> quartet?
lolol
David Raleigh Arnold
> Do mean catching hell because you think Ravel wrote more than one
> quartet?
Close. I didn't remember that there was only one, so I wasn't
absolutely sure that I had heard them all. Tedesco's was still
better IMO. CRS. daveA