On Thu, 31 May 2001, Vicki Bennett wrote:
> I think that you can make a cover version and still imprint yourself
> upon it, therefore making it your take on things.
[sniparoo]
Well, if by "cover version" you refer to the commonly held notion that
there's this "original" performance/recording of a composition, and
all subsequent performances or recordings are therefore imitiations or
some stripe of shallow derivation, then you'd have some room for
argument.
However, this idea is merely a minor burp in the entire history of
human music-making. Even a genre as young as jazz doesn't
(necessarily) subscribe to this notion -- it's acceptable for a Miles
Davis version and a Louis Armstrong version of the same tune to
coexist, and neither is the lesser of the other.
And if you go slightly farther back in time to ragtime, now a century
old but with several waves of revivals since then, the differences in
"acceptable" performance styles is quite extraordinary.
Classical music enthusiasts have a fetish which is similar to the
"cover version" thing -- there's a golden score which exactly
represents the composer's intentions, and all worthy performances must
follow it exactly. Naturally, since a written score can never express
fully the full nuance of a composition, this "golden score" really
only exists in the minds of the critics.
Just my own $0.02 worth, not that I'm a serious academic or anything,
but I have been there and done too much of it....
- Colin
*** Colin Hinz *** Toronto, Canada *** asfiATeol.ca ***
"HTML in email fulfills the noble service of providing crayons
to those who believe them indispensable to the communications
process." -- Jim Williams
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