Ian Crisp:

>>>The only simple and convenient thing here is to shrug off all
>>>responsibility for understanding and decision-making by palming it off
>>>onto the crumbling shoulders of the long-decomposed composer who lived
>>>his life in a different world.  Try to understand him by all means, but
>>>don't give the dead power to make choices for the living.  Like it our
>>>not, that's ours (for a while) to do the best we can with, then to pass
>>>on to others.

Me:

>>Wow.  The composer's dead, therefore living performers have carte blanche
>>to mess up their works any way they darned well please.  Oh, yeah, that's
>>some reverence for art.

Steve Schwartz:

>This is hyperbole.  I doubt if you asked performers who omitted the repeat
>that they would reply they had carte blanche to mess up works any way they
>darned well pleased.  We're talking about taking or not taking a repeat in
>the last movement of the Jupiter symphony - or so I believed - not an Orgy
>of Musical Permissiveness.  I'd suggest that performers who failed to
>follow the repeat probably had some other reason, possibly even a musical
>one, which prompted their decision.  Or is that an unreasonable assumption?

No, it's not hyperbole (I'm not the only one who noted an implied
irreverance for Bach in Ian's post), and yes, it's an unreasonable
assumption.  Regardless of what their answers would be if you asked them if
they had carte blanche to mess up the composer's work, the fact is that if
they want to alter the composer's intent by omitting the repeat, then why
would they not alter something else? Why not the dynamics, tempi, or the
notes themselves?

-Jocelyn Wang
Culver Chamber Music Series
Come see our web page: www.bigfoot.com/~CulverMusic