I'll bite:
Jeff Dunn on Griffiths:
>>Nothing is lost, music says: it is here. But also: it is here only
>>because it cannot come back.'
>
>It is here only because it cannot come back??
It's all relative, but in a sense, the performance can't come back. You
can look at a painting until you drop, but when the musician(s) is done....
It takes a midwife, so to speak, to bring a score to life--a variable that
makes each performance one of a kind. I believe some electronic composers
put their performances on tape to remove this variable.
>Hmm, music can store. And pigs can fly. Or is Griffiths saying 'people
>can remember'?
While the score is sitting on the shelf, no, but during a performance,
sure. I can think of two poignant examples: Prokofiev's tragic recasting
of sections of the "Balcony" scene in the "Death of Juliet" scene, in Romeo
and Juliet; and VW's quiet, resigned reiteration of those great yearning
suspensions in the scherzo of his symphony #9.
> 'But like time in the everyday world, it passes. It is memory to
> which its audience has only temporary access, and it can thereby
> waver between these two spheres, of the remembered and of immediate
> experience. From this duality comes its capacity to be realistic in
> its solace and also in its sternness.'
>
>I don't see how the music can waver. Certainly the listener's thoughts can
>waver. Yes music can provide solace. But is it at the same time a stern
>schoolmarm shaking the listener like some movie character saying 'Snap out
>of it!'?
Well, I've hardly shed a tear over it, but when a particular performance
is over, it's over. The exact same performance and reaction is not coming
back, from an external point of view and an internal one: I still get
excited when I see a new recording of Verdi's Requiem, a favorite of my
teenage years, but it just doesn't turn me on anymore and this I find a
little bit sad. I'ts the memory of the excitement I revel in. The same
goes for the popular Shostakovich symphonies. Oh well.
John Smyth
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