Thoughts on LeGuin (Margaret)

LeGuin, Elizabeth: “A Visit to the Salon de Parnasse”
Margaret Wehr
Blog entry – 3/31/09

LeGuin’s work is both an entertaining escape from reality and an eye opening commentary on the changing life of music over time. As we follow the main character to a fictional meeting of composers and musicians of the past, we learn that it is not only styles or preferences of music that change over time, but that the very way we think about certain music or compositional techniques can be very different depending on our place in the historical spectrum.

“How can a sonata ever be better than its performance?” asks Diderot of the main character; the notion that a piece can be judged as an entity separate from any performance of it is a relatively new concept compared to the Classical era (LeGuin 16). It seems that both our understanding and our reception of a sonata has been drastically altered over time. Diderot then goes on to discuss the differences between the rhetoric involved in the way we would approach a sonata today and the way he would have in his day: “There is a signal different between putting everyone in the same room both spatially and socially and the professional setting created by a podium, a stage, a proscenium” (LeGuin 18). This statement implies that it is more than just our understanding of the piece itself; it is our presentation of it that can also greatly affect its purpose in different centuries of its existence. Diderot would prefer to hear a sonata in an informal setting among friends and family, even if the quality of the performance is not as great as if he were to hear it in a grand hall played by a master (LeGuin 15). This dichotomy of public versus private functions for music is discussed in terms of a musical “conversation,” which is debated using the first movement of Haydn’s Trio in A-flat Major, Hob. XV:14 as an example.

Questions to consider:
What applications are there for this debate about what constitutes a “conversation” with regards to our understanding of classical music? And what does LeGuin really mean by, "conversational eloquence is best learned at the dinner table, and not from books" in terms of music (21)?

Overall, what are the differences LeGuin wants readers to note between the roles of music in the past versus its role today?

When the main character comments that it's "perfectly possible to get pleasure from something vague," what implications is she making for the way we experience music today (LeGuin 15)? Do you think this statement is an accurate interpretation of the life of classical music in a more modernized society?