when you listen to Le Sacre you can hear what seem to be unbelievably dense and sophisticated woodwind noodling. Well it turns out that each one of those parts is incredibly easy to play, almost lays on the instrument like a practice exercise for a high school orchestra.This statement is definitely completely wrong. The Sacre is very difficcult to play for all members of an orchestra and very difficult to conduct for a conductor. Having a high shool orchestra playing the Sacre would be like a MacDonalds cook cooking a meal for the queen of England. Strawinsky himself was destroying practically every intrerpretation of the Sacre, saying the musician where not good enough to play it. By the way; Strawinsky did not like Hollywood Film music at all. he was offered enormous amounts of money to write scores for Hollywood films, money which he could use, because he lost all his rights from his famous works while leaving the Soviet Union, but he allways clearly did refuse.I am familiar with those stories as well. And in regards to your words that what I said is wrong: I said almost. I am not wrong. You may have mistook me. But certainly all I was doing was giving an example for others. Do you live in Los Angeles? Have you spent a decade there? I am not sure you understand that the language of Le Sacre is what is spoken here. It is so fundamental that it is even a forgotten assimilation. In any event, we were talking about the Hollywood Sound, and it's only my interpretation on what you have said here, but I don't think you exude words that show much experience with it. Every LA musician in the union plays Le Sacre-like music natively. It's our language. (I'm trying to say this without giving any offense, because I think you are a very interesting person and I have very much enjoyed all your posts and sharing our experiences on the board together.)
As it turns out, taking your analogy further, The Queen Of England sits in every seat of the orchestra in all the orchestra's of LA. And I am not talking about audience members. I am talking about the musicians. LA musicians are the top of the top. Not necessarily the concert musicians ... the session musicians. They are the real brainiacs and soldiers of music. There is nothing they cannot solve, nothing they cannot play. If there is, than they don't get hired again. Very few have any vanity. Their pleasure is derived from being hired again and again.
However you are most certainly correct in appending what I have said with the importance of a great conductor. I certainly never said that Le Sacre is easy to play. Oh absolutely not. (I hope I didn't come off sounding liek I said that.) But any one instrument is far from being as difficult as it sounds. The choice of key and corresponding instrument shows the thoughtfulness and respect for the philosophies of Korsakov and Boulangier.
I suppose I should have mentioned that although there is a lot to learn from Le Sacre, that it is impractical to write that way for long passages on a tight film schedule. And indeed about 8% of Le Sacre are examples of extremes in ranges and technicality. But the other 92% is good enough to set an example by.
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