In U.S. criminal trials, juries are instructed that testimony given by police officers is no more or less reliable than testimony given by other witnesses. It has to be scrutinized.
After Foucault, it seems absurd that in classical music we might still be so obsessed with “what the Composer wanted.”
Idris Khan: every … stave of Frederick Chopin’s Nocturnes for the piano
We have texts. Texts that can be read variously, can be entered variously. We have context, which we may study and consider intensively.
Still, I’ve just attended part of a conference headquartered at a major institution of musical higher learning that was unironically titled, “Playing Chopin His Way.”
You mean the author is dead? (God may be dead?) You mean the composer might have just been a short term aberration in music?