Len Fehskens replies to Tim Connor:

>Curious that no one thinks it's meaningful to ask "what's the best picture
>of Michaelangelo's David?".  Why is music any different?

To amplify somewhat on Jan Templiner's response, if you consider what a
piece of music really "is" you have to come down on Richard Taruskin's
side and conclude that it is a purely "intentional" object, that to all
intents it is a mental construct in the mind of the listener or performer.
The score only makes it's performance possible.  So recordings give us
the varying possibilities of this object as filtered through the minds,
bodies, talents, instruments, and voices of the performers.  Michaelangelo's
David sits in the Louvre (I think) and is (within the vagaries of time
and poor preservation) what Michaelangelo made in the 16th (again, I
think) century.  But where is the "Eroica"?  If you can read the score,
you can create your own performance in your mind and I contend that this
is really the only place it actually "exists".  The rest of us must
settle for what we hear ourselves in live performance or what we can
purchase on records.

A play is really no different, except that most can read at least one
language.

David Simmons
[log in to unmask]