Alan Dudley starts off...

>There seem to be two different schools of technique in acting, or rather
>two extremes in a continuum.  ...  It seems to me there may be parallels
>to this in music.

But I can't see the analogy supported in the following statement:

>Do composers, for instance, need to feel sorrowful to write sorrowful
>music, festive to write festive music, or seeking for God to write
>seeking-for-God music? Many of the contributors this forum seem to think
>that they do.  I find it hard to believe.  ...

I would say that there are two kinds of composers regarding emotional
music:  those who know how to use the devices necessary to produce it
as and when required and those who are generally in dire straits and
desparately need to work through their situation in music.

Examples of the former type I would cite are Haydn and Mozart.  Schubert
is the perfect example of the second type.  I am reminded also of Micheal
Haydn writing his requiem after the death of his son.

So yes the acting analogy holds up to an extent.

>Similarly, do performers need to feel the emotions they seek to convey? I
>know that many of them appear to do so, but is this merely a device - in
>some of them at least - to reinforce the musical means they are using.  If
>it is a device of this kind, do they continue to use it in the recording
>studio? If so, is this force of habit?

A lot of performers seem to become overinvolved in the music they're
presenting as far as I can seen.

But how can we be doggmatic about such things.  Psychology is for ever
trying to tell us about the existence of "types" yet there are millions
of examples out there to contradict them.  Every person is different and
every moment is different.

>So we come to listeners.  I know that a listener is not going to convey
>much emotion to others by the way he listens, but does he convey emotion to
>himself.  I believe that many of us feel the emotions we are led to expect
>to feel.  ...

I definately feel emotion strongly but is often not in programatic works of
the kind you mention.  It is usually with standard works like Schubert's
unfinshed.  That makes me want to cry every time.

Bob Draper
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