On Wed, 29 Mar 2006, Steven Smolian wrote:
After all, true rhythm is seldom accurately reflected in music notation.
While I am in total agreement with you, I believe that many musicians today would disagree, which is probably why I find performances today to be so dull...another reason why I value those old performances.
I am reminded of one critic who, when reviewing my release of the Scriabin rolls, took objection to rhythmic liberties Scriabin took with his own music!
In addition, much is taken for granted. Has anyone seen sheet music for rock that has a hard accent over the second beat?
Your statement reminded me of something one of my musicology professors once said. We were discussing jazz charts at the time. My teacher stated, "can you see it...think of some musicologist in the year 3,000. They discover one of these charts. All of the recordings were lost in a huge magnetic storm. One musicological paper after another is written to try to determine how those sections marked 'ad lib' were performed. Reputations are made and lost over the controversy...and in reality, they were rarely done the same way twice." In a seminar the next semester, one of my assignments was to find out how the "Haydn ornament" was to be performed. I spent about an hour or so, every day for 3 months and couldn't find the answer. I went back to my professor and asked him the answer. He said he didn't know and had been spending a bit of his own time for the last five years trying to find out the answer. Too bad we didn't have recordings back in the time of Haydn.
Karl
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