Re: Comparing Artists

On Jul 8, 5:44?pm, "REG" <Richer...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In the, I suppose, limited hope that there's some content about about
postings about 'lists', I thought I would put my thought down more simply. I
don't get comparing artists, and I'm not sure I know how to do it. I feel
like I can compare a given artist at different points of their career, and I
feel like I can compare different artists to the same standard (that is, the
music), but I never really understand much trying to compare artists to each
other. I suppose I do it ocassionally, but I don't get how it works. I can
say I like this one or that one, and don't like Brand X, but that's
something different.

So that for me, when we make lists (not really 'we'), I don't know what
we're comparing - is it artists at the prime of their career, artists in
their 'best' repertoire or in their relative failures, artists live or
artists on record.....it feels like too much of a mish-mash to me.

One example only. The comparison you always get in books on singing, and
this is pretty consistent, is between Clara *** and Schumann-Heink doing
Orsini's Brindisi. They are both seen as important and to some degree unique
(if two things are unique) recordings, and there's always a comparison
between the two, usually to one of the two singers' disadvantage, and it's
often *** who comes out ahead. But I don't even get that comparison. The
arias were recorded at two very different points in the singers' respective
careers, are in different keys (which makes more than a slight difference)
and are sung in various degrees of completeness - and with consciously
different vocal techniques, I should add. SO how do you 'compare' two
recordings like this to each other? I can tell you which I admire more, but
what else does the comparison between the singers mean? Maybe there's an
answer and I don't get it, but I certainly don't.

That's it, and why I don't like lists for the most part. Mybe a list of
singers who went their entire career without a vocal crisis (whatever that
means, if we know), or who went their whole career and never had to give up
much of their initial repertoire (whatever that was at the beginning), but
at least there you are dealing with a whole history. Otherwise, the lists
mean little to me.

And it's totally incidental that Simionato would have been on both lists.

Music is of the moment, there and then, for good or bad and I've done
both and in between.

There is not an answer except among people who compile lists, music or
anything else.

Now back to Davrath's Letter Scene: it's not worthy of any sort of
list but is I think a wonderful performance caught at that moment
which I suspect is the best we can hope for.

The next night, had there been one, might have been entirely
different. One never knows.

And, for all I know, that was the third "take".

Not into lists of anything.

Kind regards,
Alan M. Watkins


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