Solminore wrote:It is important not to prejudice the artistic value with the personal life of the author; this holds true for Chopin, as it does for any artist!
Well, unfortunately we don't decide that. In Israel, playing Wagner is still somewhat of a taboo event. People who judge art based on the artist exist, and they even have the right to do whatever they want. In Gilda's messages, one notices a kind of adoration for Chopin's personality. This is a prejudice, but it has the right to exist.
The only thing that upset me was seeing forum users "arguing" about a musically irrelevant issue!!!
... my last intervention was trying to explain how the issue WAS relevant... we can discuss the adjective: musically relevant? Historically relevant? Ethically relevant?
Solminore wrote:It is obvious that certain aspects are relevant if they enter directly into the work produced by the author; otherwise, they become irrelevant.
as Eagle says, every "human" aspect enters into the work of art. If I pick my nose, I might stain the score... Our excessive desire to distinguish the work of art from the artist (which makes sense in some situations but less so in others) leads us to forget how it is also ethically right to speak of a person for who they were and not for what we dreamed they were. Often, the discussion about the sexual identity of composers has started as a "compensation" for historical injustices. I still remember a UTET music book in which Peter Pears was credited as a "friend" of Benjamin Britten. Reading that made me feel sad, because it is horrible to deny a dead person the truth of their affections. To prevent being told that I am "too involved in the discussion," I emphasize that this reflection should be applied generally to the utility and ethics of the discourse on the sexual identity of artists. A discourse that I consider very important.
Whether Caravaggio was a brawler, I don't think it is relevant when judging his works, just as I think it is irrelevant whether Chopin was or was not gay....
Judging the works is something that does not interest me.
You have repeated it several times, so perhaps that is the point, which I will now clarify for you: knowing that Caravaggio was a brawler, or homosexual (let us remember once again that "gay" is a modern term), does not serve to "judge" his works, but to understand them. To contextualize them. Michelangelo Buonarroti wrote many sonnets in which he speaks of an irreconcilable conflict between sin and redemption. Today we can say that he was almost always referring to his homosexual impulses. And not by chance, some of those sonnets were set to music by Britten...
While I listen to (or play) for example Nocturne No. 20 in C# (it's just an example but it applies to everything), I get emotional and it personally conveys a lot to me, but I don't see how in that composition I can find links to his sexual life!
and now, however, you tell me what link you find with the relationship with George Sand :-) because this is also the point. If I talk about relationships with women, then no one asks questions; it's obvious to talk about the wife or the lover or the girl sitting next to him in class. If I talk about relationships with men, ah, then I am a pervert who finds obscene drawings in the scores... If a composer writes a cycle of Lieder for a woman, then it is reasonable to suppose they were lovers. If a composer writes a piece for a man, ah, they were just friends :-)
It is OBVIOUS that things change from composer to composer and from piece to piece. Moreover, it is always very complex to perform this type of analysis with instrumental pieces. But, I repeat the example. If the composer Claudio Grasso writes a very sensual piece for violin (sensuality is found in music, right? It has no sexual preferences but it exists), and you discover that during that period he began, in his real life, a relationship with a man, then you CAN, after studying it, think that that sensuality is homoerotic sensuality. Perhaps it is just your interpretive scheme, perhaps it is a fantasy, but the music "holds up" even this type of interpretation.
There are much more "seasoned" cases, but they mainly concern vocal music. There is an aria from Britten's "The Turn of the Screw" in which I feel almost embarrassed...
Solminore wrote:@Chopin
Bollani stated it as a fact... that's why I say that sometimes one should seize the opportunity to remain silent...
i repeat again, I only heard him play a piece and talk over it with an effeminate manner. That doesn't mean taking anything for granted..."}
