Re: Cartoon music klezmer?

[Horowitz <merlinms...>]

Henry,

Boy, you sure put an iron lid on that tin can-o-worms. Really well put. You
know what I think is confusing for many people listening, say, to the
amazingly psychedelicately *klezmerish*-sounding scores of say Scott Bradly
and co., is that stylistically there are so many gestures which we have
come to know through klezmer music, i.e., violin glissandi, uneven
phrasings and haphazard bowings in the string section (half up half down at
the same time), xylophone riffs and honking brass, etc. etc,  which were
nothing more than typical stylistic traits of the day, even in (blasphemy
no. 1) classical music. Check out Robert Philips' Early recordings and
Musical style (Cambridge Univ. Press) for an analysis of the classical
genre in the early period. At first reading I could have sworn,
ethno-centrically, that  he was writing about Klez Music. How
ethno-centric!

A lot of that slapdash chaos found in cartoon scores (and early classical
78 r.p.m.s) came about as a result of the unbelievable dirth of rehearsal
time. It just didn't exist for those musicians, and in our present-day
septic, rubbing-alcohol  musical world, we are enchanted by all that
delicious sloppiness, not realizing that it was simply the way music was
made then. Does anybody have a good recipe for chocolate chip cookies? I
have the chocolate, flour, eggs and Slivovitz, but no manual. J.P. Horowitz