musicianiship--when is it bad or good ?

hi tvad:

do you rememebr a performance of a brahms piano concerto with glenn gould and leonard bernstein ?

the conductor made a stetement about the interpretation of glenn gould with which he disagreed.

whenever standards are set up by experts, there may be other experts who disagree.

if one must perform in a certain way to be licensed, one perorms according to the requirements to get licensed, but then may chose not to perform that way. it's not medicine. it's art. yes there are standards but they are not absolute.

hi ellery: communication can be neutral and you the reader then decide if you like what is being described.

my own style of communication is one of detachment from that which i am experiencing. i try to report what i observe and let the reader decide what it all means.

yes, my description is subjective, but i try to be as neutral as possible, as a reporter does.

Mr. T ( hey, that's what my Mom called me ! ), may I say you have every right to aim for perfect objectivity... that may need some definition, of course, but you certainly have the right to it IMVHO.

if an artist deliberately takes liberties, including wrong notes, tempos, plays sharp or flat, some professional musicians might consider such a performance an example of poor musicianship. yet, the performing artist may disagree.

Thank you for providing an example to illuminate this point, which would otherwise have remained perfectly moot because unassailable: what a teacher of mine used to call "handstands in the void" because you can't disagree with it but it doesn't make any difference to anything.

do you rememebr a performance of a brahms piano concerto with glenn gould and leonard bernstein ?

the conductor made a stetement about the interpretation of glenn gould with which he disagreed.

With which Gould disagreed. He was a bit of an enfant terrible ( a brat ), they say.

So here are two great musicians discussing interpretation, and disagreeing. That's wonderful, I hope this kind of thing never stops. They may never agree, but their performance may nonetheless be superb ( including the sour note ).

There must be a million similar examples, from music sure, but also from chess or sports. What about Zidan's head-butt in the World Cup, the one that got him thrown out and lost the game? With my French-British background I say it was a dreadful example of poor sportsmanship, he would have done better to keep a cool head and avenge his opponent's provocation by winning the game, but others say he would never have shut the fellow up that way. Nobody will ever have the last word on this.

I think it all goes to show there's nothing objective about a great performance, and to me that suggests there are better yardsticks for great performances than objectivity.