| The issue of aesthetics is so interesting to me intellectually that it occasionally (and may eventually, unfortunately) subsume my trumpet playing. I really enjoyed the post about Stockhausen because he concieves of the work as so so so much more than dots and dashes: it is the entirety of the listening and performing experience! And you get the sense that he wouldnt mind if his works were never performed after his death, if only they are performed with integrity and truth and power today.
Here's a more complicated issue: if composer's tempo markings are always to be trusted (and nobody here is saying that is absolute) what do we make of the composer-as-performer violating his or her own rules? I'm thinking of Stravinsky, the ultimate in "do as I say" notation (and you know what? he knew what he was doing). But when Stravinsky conducts works more than once, he starts to change his mind... tempos are different, dynamics are different; and yet, the same general point gets across.
I personally find a slight distinction between rental works or manuscript copies, although this is silly, and commercially published works. I feel that sometimes composers want it both ways: they want your money and to control the performance, but I feel that buying the score (just as a director buys the rights to play by david mamet and prepares to utterly change its subtext--because in theater, you very rarely see reproductive performances) means that you lay claim to the work in a sense, that the composer has given his idea up to be reshaped by others. Now, someone like Stockhausen is clearly not in it for the money. my digression has digressed. |