Brass quintets and rigidity

>From: Carl Lumma <clumma@nni.com>
>
>>Yes. But isn't it striking that so many other genres of music DO
>>encourage improvisation, rearrangement, etc.? How, and importantly
>>WHEN, did classical music become subject to this rigidified attitude?
>
>Never! The best composers and performers have always borrowed and
>experimented. Bach made folk songs and sacred hymns into fugues, wrote
>dances in the style of Scarlatti... Ravel orchestrated Musorgsky... ELP
>re-orchestrated Musorgsky... The Byrds sang Dylan... Dylan sang folk
>music... Glenn Gould played everything as strangely as possible... In Jazz
>they don't even bother to notate everything.

Carl, I think the person to whom you responded had in mind a lot of the
opinions expressed on this list.

John Link

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Watch for the CD "Live at Saint Peter's" by John Link's vocal quintet,
featuring original compositions as well as arrangements of instrumental
music by Brahe and Taylor, Chick Corea, Miles Davis, Claude Debussy, Bill
Evans, Ennio and Andrea Morricone, Modeste Mussorgsky, Erik Satie, and Earl
Zindars.

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