Steverino Schwartzo [[log in to unmask]] has promised not to post in the
"repeats"-thread anymore, but leave the topic he cannot:

>Indeed, Reger and Schoenberg still need them.

It is just that, that Reger is so boring that very few have the guts to
study him.

>Most famously, I suppose, he found a wrong note in the published score
>of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde and traced it back to a copying
>mistake in the composer's autograph. For those of you who believe that
>the marks in a composer's score represent the final word on the
>composer's intent, I invite you to read Mitchell's "Mahler's Abschied:
>A Wrong Note Righted," pp.  181-186.

Now you are not Steven Schwarz, now you are a picking Steverino again!  I
am not going to throw in my real opinions on composers intent here, but I
will wonder if those who claim " what the composer wrote is his intent"
mean that typing mistakes are part of the composers intent.

The Swedish composer Dag Wiren (with an accent mark over the E), who by the
way was skilled at doing much with little material, used to say:  "When I
listen to recordings of my 4th symphony...you know this symphony is very
compact, but I always found it is more dense than what I intended it to be
when I composed it".

See there, I see I came to express my opinion after all.

But a part of the value of an artwork is that it is a letter from its
time.  And even if a composer later changes his opinion about a work,
or even reject it (like Mendelssohn with his "Reformation"-Symphony), the
work stands as a sign of what the composer did at *that* time, and what his
thoughts, feelings were at that time, and what kind of experiances that
affected him at that time etc.  In that way a rejected work has the same
value as a work that the composer liked, and therefore...  it should be of
interests at least for musicologists.

And of course a composer can mistype a note as a G when he wanted an F or
even an E, but a composer don't mistype a repeatmark.

And by the way, you wrote that you wouldn't contribute to this discussion
anymore, at least that how I interpret you, but still you continue to do
that repeatedly.  So, what you wrote is obviously not what you intended.
But you are not a composer either:-)

>The big strike against him is that he disliked the music of Mahler and
>Schoenberg, but so what? Why should he like everything?

For a critic, or a composer or another serious musician it is not so
important to like everything, but it is important to be able to see
the values also in the music one doesn't like.  There were a bunch of
Nameknowledgeable Swedish composer who wrote much critic in papers in the
1910ies-1940ies, Peterson-Berger, Rangstroem, Pergament, Atterberg etc.
It is interesting to see how those proceed in this.  Pergament or Morales
often saw values in others works, but others like Peterson-Berger could
write about a work he didn't like "Four Kondradsbergians perform a
stringquartett by the fifth" about a SQ by Hilding Rosenberg (Kondradsberg
was a well known Stockholmian mental hospital), or about Alfvens
"Midsommarvaka":  "Most appropriatedly played on the funfair".  There he
didn't like Alfens music, or more correct perhaps:  he didn't like Alfven,
and therefore he to times seemed completely unable to see the all the
values "Midsommarvaka" actually has.  Now perhaps "Midsommarvaka" was a bad
(?) example, as many use to miss the great values in quirks of this work,
just as it is announced as a "rhapsody", but I think my idea is clear.
Perhaps it is a part of the characteristics or personality that make a
genious?

>Nobody followed Mozart, either.

Nonsence.  Many followed Mozart, but as nobody of them became more famous
than Domenico Cimarosa...

>...that there are two kinds of people:  French and German.  If you're not
>one, you're the other.  Mitchell discovers Wagner as the common ancestor to
>both and in so doing argues for a cohesive European musical culture (always
>leaving aside Britain and Russia).

Why does he draw this conclusion? I can well agree there are Berlioz
influences in Wagner, but as I percieve Berlioz, he is rather German in his
style than French.

>We might ask ourselves whether it's the critic's job to be right.  I've
>never believed it.  Schumann may have praised Chopin, Brahms, Wagner,
>Mendelssohn, and Berlioz, but he also went ga-ga over Niels Gade.

Niels Gade is certainly not a Wagner or a Brahms in level, but he is
averey charming composer, and interesting is certain types of works...
vastly underrated, and always has to stand in the shadow, not only by
Nielsen, but also from others, for example Holmboe.  I wonder if this
ga-ga-Gade statment is your own.  If so, what have you heard by him more
than "Efterklage af Ossian"-Ouverture op.1?

Mats Norrman
[log in to unmask]