Vocalist.org archive


From:  John Alexander Blyth <BLYTHE@B...>
John Alexander Blyth <BLYTHE@B...>
Date:  Fri Jun 29, 2001  7:58 pm
Subject:  Re: [vocalist] Students who quit...


Speaking as a composer and a generally effusive individual, I'm sometimes
reticent about praising performer a) if performer b) wasn't very good. Also
sometimes an interpretation takes a bit getting used to. I can recall a
performance of some of my songs which really took me by surprise - the
singer's voice was not as I had imagined it - much richer, but with less
clearly defined pitches. Only after some time did I realise how marvellous
a performance it had been! This same scenario has happened often enough for
me to realise that in vocal music in particular each performance is truly
unique and none can be truly considered definitive.
A composer may have been thinking of the piece, rather than the
interpretation. Composition is a very personal thing, almost as much as
singing IMHO. A celebrity composer might be reticent because anything he
says or does carries public weight and may be used out of context by a
performer, perhaps in ways that may rather shrink-wrap his composerly
mystique, which is part of what keeps the grant money coming! john


At 01:53 PM 6/28/01 -0400, you wrote:
...>in complementing performers. I was blown away - and pretty angry, as
>well -that this composer, in whose honor this concert was presented, for
>Pete's sake, couldn't say a single nice thing to any of the singers, or even
>the producer. I was totally bummed afterward, thinking that he thought we
>just didn't measure up to the famous singers who had performed and recorded
>his output over the years. We were all just too small potatoes for him.
>
>I later found out it's not that he didn't like what he heard; in speaking to
>one of the composers in attendance whom I knew well, I found out that his
>famous colleague was very taken with my performance in particular and had
>nice things to say about some of the other singers. But not to our faces.
>Is this some kind of mind game? Or is it just rude? Please understand, I
>don't perform for or ever expect praise from any audience, including a
>composer. But an acknowledgement of many people's collective efforts to put
>together an event celebrating his music would have been appropriate.
...
John Blyth
Baritono robusto e lirico
Brandon, Manitoba, Canada

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