The thirteenth musical thrill: what are you listening to?

[Tero]

[Sean Hayden]

[Sean Hayden]

[Sean Hayden]

[Sean Hayden]

[Sean Hayden]

[Sean Hayden]

[Hermit]

Sean Hayden has taken over Crumple's role as spammer of random Youtube music clips.

[Jason]

[Sean Hayden]

[Sean Hayden]

[Sean Hayden]

[trdsf]

Carpenter is doing his level best to do for the organ what Tiger Woods did for golf -- make it cool. There's a lot of debate about the "liberties" he takes with some of the canon, but you know, music can evolve.

Can? Did I read this right? Can? I love people taking liberties, and I think Back, among other composers, actually demands it. His notations, or rather the lack of them, certainly do, and wasn't he the champion of improvisation? I love the story of the duel that never happened because Louis Marchand was so certain he could not even hope to win that he fled Dresden before "harpsichord at ten bars" even began.

I expressed myself poorly here -- I meant the broader re-interpretation of classical pieces, beyond simply stylistic differences between performers, arrangements, etc. Carpenter wanders further than most in his performances, beyond the insertion of an ornamental trill or grace note.

Generally speaking, I fall somewhere between the purists and the modernists, with a tropism towards the purists. I think there's something to be said for 'as written' -- or at least if I'm listening to a classical piece that I know well and the performer goes in an unexpected direction, I find it jarring even if it fits thematically. I prefer variations in arrangement to variations in melody.

Of course, what's happened with Bach is that what did get written down, even if it was a placeholder, got canonized. I only know of one recording of an alternate harpsichord cadenza for the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, and that was thought to be intended to be ad liberatum rather than fixed. Most recordings I have of the Third Brandenburg completely punt on the adagio, play the two chords as written, and get on with the third movement. Wendy Carlos is a notable exception; she's recorded three different takes on the adagio in the three recordings she's made (Switched-on Bach, Switched-on Brandenburgs, and Switched-on Bach 2000).

That's completely different from reinterpretations through jazz and rock and other styles of music. I expect those to go a-wandering.

[Hermit]

Carpenter is doing his level best to do for the organ what Tiger Woods did for golf -- make it cool. There's a lot of debate about the "liberties" he takes with some of the canon, but you know, music can evolve.

Can? Did I read this right? Can? I love people taking liberties, and I think Back, among other composers, actually demands it. His notations, or rather the lack of them, certainly do, and wasn't he the champion of improvisation? I love the story of the duel that never happened because Louis Marchand was so certain he could not even hope to win that he fled Dresden before "harpsichord at ten bars" even began.

I expressed myself poorly here -- I meant the broader re-interpretation of classical pieces, beyond simply stylistic differences between performers, arrangements, etc. Carpenter wanders further than most in his performances, beyond the insertion of an ornamental trill or grace note.

Generally speaking, I fall somewhere between the purists and the modernists, with a tropism towards the purists. I think there's something to be said for 'as written' -- or at least if I'm listening to a classical piece that I know well and the performer goes in an unexpected direction, I find it jarring even if it fits thematically. I prefer variations in arrangement to variations in melody.

Of course, what's happened with Bach is that what did get written down, even if it was a placeholder, got canonized. I only know of one recording of an alternate harpsichord cadenza for the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, and that was thought to be intended to be ad liberatum rather than fixed. Most recordings I have of the Third Brandenburg completely punt on the adagio, play the two chords as written, and get on with the third movement. Wendy Carlos is a notable exception; she's recorded three different takes on the adagio in the three recordings she's made (Switched-on Bach, Switched-on Brandenburgs, and Switched-on Bach 2000).

That's completely different from reinterpretations through jazz and rock and other styles of music. I expect those to go a-wandering.

Ah. I see what you mean. My attitude is more laissez faire. No fine line between attempts at authenticity and literalism (in so far as those are even possible) on one end of the spectrum and inventive interpolations on the other for me. While I do not like everything I hear, I do enjoy - depending on my mood at the time, Keith Jarrett's note by note rendition of the well tempered klavier, Leopold Stokovski's various transcriptions and re-orchestrations and Hiromi Uehara's mangle of Beethoven sonatas among many other 'impurities'.

Composers have always stolen from each other and incorporated those stolen bits like alien organisms in their own corpus. Now no less than in the past. It's fun to listen to Neil Diamond's "Song Sung Blue", even though the song is basically a radically stripped down interpretation of A.W. Mozart's 21st piano concerto. In fact, I like the song because of that. Is Procul Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale" unpleasant to listen to because the band ripped off and mangled the Air from Bach's third Orchestral Suite?

So, yeah, some music jars, but not because the performer goes in an unexpected direction.

[Jason]