Just checking in . . .

Well, almost a week since I've posted and not much to add. I'm doing more research on the role of creativity in the performance of tradtional classical music, especially the way many aspects of a performance can and should be improvised.

More thinking, too, about the fact that any successful improvisation is dependent on rigorous preparation and then "letting go" to the moment.

And reading and thinking about the sociological issues in the decline of improvisation in classical music. The rise of a middle class, the rise of public music, the increasing separation between composers and amateur performers, the role of institutional, standardized musical education, which is by its very nature not nurtuting of individualistic creativity.

Just remember. You are a creative person. You have both the need and the right to express yourself creatively.

Quick thought, since it is springing to mind. Yo Yo Ma (it's so much fun to name drop) once told me that he measured the "success" of a performance by how "creative" it was.

Which reinforces my develoiping thesis: composers and performers are creative partners in the creation of as performance. And performances, even of "classical" music, are, no matter what we wish they might be, or think they ought to be, as much about the performer(s) as they are about the composer(s).

20th-century attempts to get around this, to make performing art music into some sort of scientific, objective activity rather than genuine creative collaboration in which the performer has a creative role, are one of the things that have nearly killed off classical music.

And now, off to Kronos at Carnegie. They are one of the groups reinventing classical music, and I love them for it.