Re: Measure for measure for measure...

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

Those are darn good questions, Bob and in the interest of keeping this 
discussion going so more people will buy the Sephardic Songbook, I would
like to wax philosophical...

> Is the style of performance of an early performer more likely to be
> followed if the performer is the composer?

Madonna recently covered the Don Mclean song, American Pie and didn't copy
his style. Also, the recent version of Killing me Softly and  and a bunch of
others on pop radio show that although the songline is kept intact, the more
individualistic performers cover the songs because they want to put their
stamp on it. In the area of film, this is usually catastrophic, nu?

It seems that a performer's influence is determined by how popular he or she
is, not whether or not the performer is also a composer. In the case of many
pop stars, they often don't write their own material. I use them as an
example because the level of their popularity is more visible. But you can
apply this to folk performers.

> ...more problematic is figuring out when
> the performer is "getting fancy", i.e. deliberately, or when s/he is being
> forgetful or running out of breath etc...

Determining where the prototype of the tune leaves off and where personal
fancy comes in is only relevant when we are trying to translate the song
into another medium (sound form to paper form), which in itself is a violent
act of transformation, as there is no one-to-one correlation. Analagous to
quantum physics whereby the act of observation changes the object being
observed, writing down music changes the music as well. Sure, you can ask
the folks to comment what is theirs and what is not, but then vanity takes
over. I remember asking Moshe Halaua, the great cantor in Salonica this
question about Tres hermanicas, which is a well known song, and he said
"What do you mean what is mine?!! The whole song is mine! I wrote it"
Strange, because there was a recording which dated before his birth of that
song, but on the other hand, his perfromance was so ridden with peronal
mannerisms that it was, in a sense his song. Got it?   Josh

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