Sunday, April 28, 2013

Variability vs. Getting It Right

There is far too much emphasis on getting it right these days, as opposed to staying alive, staying interested, refusing to be repetitive or predictable (same thing). 

Isn't it positively shocking that in the F minor Two-Part Invention Bach uses contradictory articulations for the same figure?  Or , as I found this morning in a learned book of essays on Haydn, that he articulated the "same" material differently in different autographs of the sonata?

Recently I heard a fine presentation of the concept of rhetoric as applied to music making:  Constant variation was the name of the game, always finding an alternative way of articulating the essence of a passage or device.

My rule is simpler: If I am bored I am doing something wrong.  And I get bored easily, or at least I used to.