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Re: Adjudication correct?

David Buckley wrote

> D.LANCASTER@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > 
> > David Buckley wrote:
> > 
...snip...

> > > But that's contesting. Brass bands need to forget contests and get on
> > > with music. A way too much energy goes into writing music never heard
> > > again in order to test players. Has resulted in great playing standards
> > > for what are still more or less amateurs but its time to move on.
> > > Just my opinion.
> > > Dave Buckley.
> > 
> > Good to see you back on the list, Dave.  If we lost all the music
> > that has been composed for contests the world would be a much poorer
> > place!  As conductor I'm usually happy to include a serious work in a
> > concert programme in order to attempt to achieve a balanced
> > programme, and I'm usually very disappointed whenever I go to hear a
> > band in concert and all we get is arrangements, solos and fillers...
> > In my opinion, many bands seem to fall into the trap of underestimating the
> > intelligence of their audiences in this respect.
> 
> Agree re programming. I always scheduled at least 1 "serious" piece in
> my old SA programming days. Theseof course were not quite comparable to
> test pieces but challenged my players and my audience. Also of course
> scheduled crowd pleasers. But very few test pieces stand up to my test
> for great music although I bow to your greater familiarity with the
> repertoire. My test is whether or not the music is of interest to anyone
> outside the core audience. How do I make this judgement? By whether or
> note the music has been re-arranged for other combinations eg wind
> bands, orchestras or whatever. By this citeria no test pieces make the
> grade to my knowledge.

Hmmm...interesting criteria...would you apply the same to string 
quartets or settings of the mass, I wonder?  Has Monteverdi's Vespers 
been arranged for other ensembles or is it not great music?   In fact there
are quite a few re-arranged test pieces that spring to mind.  Brass band 
tradition holds that Holst's 'Moorside Suite' and Ireland's 'Comedy 
Overture' and Downland Suite' were originally band pieces before they 
were given an orchestral incarnation.  More recently, much of Philip 
Sparke's brass band music appears in concert band format - in 'Year 
of the Dragon' for example the trombone solo crops up on the cor 
anglais.  I once heard a concert band arrangement of 'Resurgam' that 
made me cry for all the wrong reasons... 

Composers this century have used texture, timbre and tone colour as integral
elements of their composition alongside and often equal in importance to
the melodic and harmonic elements.  For this reason, plus the fact that the
brass band has a unique, distinctive and relatively monochrome timbral
palatte, I can easily understand why musicians aren't queueing up to 
arrange 'Montage' for strings.  But I won't be buying the band arrangement
of Beethoven opus 132 either.

My criteria for identifying great music would be something like this:
'music that I want to hear again and again and that I want everyone else
to know about'.  

Cheers

David


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