Reality or invention?. Peter Dale reads from a Liverpool University symposium on the musical work

<< -- 5 -- Peter Dale REALITY OR INVENTION?

You may wonder doubtfully what on earth this book could have to offer the general reader, but the answer is actually quite a lot. Recently we had Elgar's Third Symphony. Or did we? Anthony Payne -- rather coyly, I thought -- described the music as 'an elaboration' from Elgar's extant texts. Yes ... but what did that actually mean when the piece still held the title (itself a technically legal term, if you want it to be) of Elgar's Third Symphony? It is perhaps not inappropriate to notice that the term 'elaboration' rather neatly sits on the fence of labor -- work -- on the one hand and something decoratively superimposed upon some resistant material on the other, which still retains its own identity beneath the elaborated surface. And just because a piece of work (or, as here, a series of sketches) is in a canonised author's hand does that mean it is intrinsically worthy of him (or us, for that matter)?

The Musical Work : Reality or Invention?
Liverpool Music Symposium
Edited by Michael Talbot

Liverpool University Press, May 2000
ISBN 0 85323 835 9, Hardback, 288 pages

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The original symposium, held in September 1998 at Liverpool University, UK, took the form of a discussion, by the contributors to the book, of draft chapters previously circulated.

The participants were Lydia Goehr (a Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University, New York), David Horn (Director of the Institute of Popular Music), Serge Lacasse (doctoral student), Richard Middleton (Professor of Music, Newcastle), Catherine Moore (a professor at New York University with special expertise in the music business), Reinhard Strohm (Professor of Music, Oxford), Jim Samson (Professor of Music, Bristol), Philip Tagg (Reader, Department of Music), Michael Talbot (Alsop Professor of Music), John Williamson (Head of the Department of Music), and James Wishart (Lecturer in the Department of Music).

Subjects discussed ranged from Works and Recordings: The impact of Commercialisation and Digitalisation, and From jingle to soundtrack: The Musical 'Work' or Commodity to The Practice of Early Romantic Pianism and Rethinking Werktreve.

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