greg@olivej.UUCP (05/08/84)
Sorry if this is a repeat posting. The system indicated to me that my first try got trashed. I'm posting this to both groups, since, aside from the fact that most of the examples used are "classical" musicians, I see nothing that restricts the thoughts expressed to any particular type of music. Recent discussions of Toscanini highlighted the danger in letting anecdotes and other knowledge of the personal quirks of an artist affect judgements of their art or limit perceptions of such. I strongly feel that the only way to approach a work of art (music, poetry, literature, painting - whatever) is to leave yourself open to the impression it makes on you as a completely self-contained entity with a life of its own, as it were. If you dismiss the creative efforts of an artist because as a person he or she happens to behave like an asshole (as apparently Wagner, Toscanini, Reiner and Szell did on occasion), are neurotic to the point of constantly displaying contempt for their own work (Tchaikovsky), or have severe emotional problems (Maria Callas or, to leave "classics" for a moment, Billie Holiday) you are seriously depriving yourself. I also feel that it is a fundamental error to try to listen to music in terms of a chronological development or in the context of the general artistic and political developments of a time. There are times when these may apply to an extent, but in more cases I think it leads one to "reading into the work" things that aren't there and missing things that are. There may be some justification to saying that Beethoven further developed musical language where Haydn left off, or that Stan Getz continued along paths started by Charlie Parker, but I think this is more wrong than right. The success of the Beatles may have opened a few publicity doors for the Stones, but I see no logical connection or progression in the relation of their music to each other. I'm sure that Schumann, Liszt, Wagner and certainly Berlioz would have been appalled to be lumped together into the category of "19th Century Romantic Tradition". Trying to hear Debussy as an outgrowth of a tradition that runs through Gounod, Faure, Duparc and others is to hear something that exists only in musicology books. I get further annoyed with the gall exhibited by music writers who proclaim that a certain composer was "heavily influenced" by another composer. Who knows what actually influenced anybody else? In order to know that you'd have had to read their minds. Even if they left diaries, how do we know they wrote down every significant "artistic" thought or that they even wrote the truth at all? Essentially, there is no one who can declare with absolute authority that Debussy's "Pelleas et Melisande" was inspired by his hearing "Parsifal" at Bayreuth, rather than by an illicit encounter in the woods. - Greg Paley