GAVIN@HNYMPI52.BITNET (Gavin Burnage) (02/06/90)
> I miss singing in chorale pieces but I don't miss obnoxious Choir > directors (the least popular people on the planet) > (sorry if any of you are) (Choir directors, I mean) > --tD Know what you mean. I hate snotty choir directors (or anyone else I suppose) telling me just how I've got to pronounce this in this way or sing that just so or open my mouth wide enough for a tennis ball. They always presume their musical values are universal. People have told me once or twice to take music lessons or join a choral society but I never did cos it's all so regimented and impersonal. I'd rather learn by listening, asking, and doing. (that should get Micki K going...) Fortunately the "choir" I "belong" to has at most six people in it, and the guy who assumes control claims to have been a punk who went to gigs in an undertaker's van smelling of formaldehyde. Even if this isn't true it does indicate a certain easygoingness. I wonder if maybe the nature of the music is as fault? `Classical music' directors are always in pursuit of the classical ideal: trained voices, vibrato, enounciation, etc etc whatever it is. The idea is always to sound exactly like the composer meant. Whereas in other stuff like jazz, blues, rock, traditional music or whatever the idea is to produce something varied, individual, and different within a general framework. The latter by definition requires its practitioners to have a wideness of vision which the former all but excludes. Hmm. Gavin.
ST402711@BROWNVM.BITNET (Tim Johnson) (02/06/90)
>I wonder if maybe the nature of the music is as fault? `Classical music' >directors are always in pursuit of the classical ideal: trained voices, >vibrato, enounciation, etc etc whatever it is. The idea is always to sound >exactly like the composer meant. Whereas in other stuff like jazz, blues, Well, yes and no. In classical music, there is lots of room for interpretation and expression. However, it has to be guided. Since there are lots of performers, someone has to guide the interpretation - you can't have every person in a choir or orchestra pursuing there own idea of tempo and volume and whathaveyou. Thus the director is the one who gets to establish the interpretation which the performers must follow. So, in a sense, it is the nature of classical music, but not precisely in the way you expressed. Not because there is a formal ideal to be followed exactly, but because there is only room for one interpretation per piece - and that has to be the director's job. -Tim