“For years, [William Weber] has been gathering data on late-eighteenth- and nineteenth-century performances, and he summarizes his findings in graphs showing how works of dead composers came to dominate concerts in Paris, London, Leipzig, and Vienna. In 1782, in Leipzig, the percentage was as low as eleven. By 1830, it was around fifty, going as high as seventy-four in Vienna. By the eighteen-sixties and seventies, the figure ranged from sixty-nine to ninety-four per cent (in Paris). Matters progressed to the point where a Viennese critic complained that ‘the public has got to stay in touch with the music of its time… for otherwise people will gradually come to mistrust music claimed to be the best,’ and organizers of a Paris series observed that some of their subscribers ‘get upset when they see the name of a single contemporary composer on the programs.’ These quotations come from 1843 and 1864.”
This summary comes from Alex Ross of the New Yorker in an article called, “Why So Serious?“
Artie Isaac, a Columbus native, who works at an award-winning, creative marketing strategy and advertising agency, recently made a presentation to City Year Columbus on the topic of ethics in speech.
One of the great questions of the day was, “What’s the hardest part of maintaining ethical speech?”
The answer? Silence.
He writes quite brilliantly on this topic in his own blog at Net Cotton Content, and therefore, I won’t retell the whole story. I will just repeat his closing thoughts about a time in which he showed tact by staying quiet:
But, man, that moment is still awkwardly quiet. Because there are certainly things that could be said.
Having a free week this summer was a rare commodity, but that’s just what enabled my wife and me to take a trip to Long Island and visit her family. It was exactly what a vacation should be: non-productive. Needless to say, I did enjoy learning some of the basics of banjo-music from Emily’s brother, Randy. We even wrote a tune called (I think) “Moonshine Under the Moonlight.” Not too shabby, but I’ll spare you the details for now.
In the midst of this time, however, I did keep up on my reading of posts on music around the net. Here’s a few “found objects” that I thought worth sharing.
“In playing for contemporary composers, I’ve always felt that the ones I respected were not inflexible about what you did to their music. They permitted a certain degree of freedom. I’ve found that the lesser composers were the ones who insisted, no, I said mezzo piano and that’s not my conception of mezzo piano. I think the great composers believe their work will endure even if one does not adhere to the exact indications of the music.”
Isidore Cohen (quoted in Nicholas Delbanco, The Beaux Arts Trio: A Portrait)
Engraving is a production step that went from the individual to the pros and is now creeping back to the responsibility of the composer.
Early-music composers had quite possibly the most difficult job: engrave each piece AND develop a system with which to notate. It wasn’t until around at least 800 that music began to be notated in any systematic way and it was a long time (about another 800 years) before the modern system became fairly well developed.
Around 1500, shortly after Gutenberg developed a movable type printing system, music engraving became the job of professionals. Notation was more or less becoming standardized and composers were more easily able to produce multiple copies of a piece of music by handing it over to an engraver.
