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Re: Adjudication correct?

D.LANCASTER@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> 
> 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'.

Can't argue with that. Its just that the number of test pieces I would
put in this category can be put in a very small container.

Regards, Dave.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> David
> 
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