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From:  Tako Oda <toda@m...>
Tako Oda <toda@m...>
Date:  Mon Oct 2, 2000  9:08 pm
Subject:  Keepers WAS: 'opera singer' was junior, church


On Mon, 2 Oct 2000, Linda Fox wrote:
> I have to say that the question of
> "lost"/"surviving"/"inferior"/"classsical-v-popular"/"old-v-new" has now
> kept me half-awake for half the night, and since I'm not in a position
> to do this myself, I wonder if you or anyone else has done any work on
> the matter of how we could ever know just how much music (as in musical
> composition/creation) has existed and now no longer seems to, and for
> what reason. This thread could well open up some very interesting ideas.

I used to have access to the University of California Berekeley library
system, which is the third largest in the US after Congress and Harvard...
There were literally rows of opera scores, many by composers I hadn't even
heard of, let alone their operas. I had a similar experience walking
through the IU Bloomington library (which is smaller, but for obvious
reasons has an extensive opera section). I didn't read through all the
scores, so I couldn't tell you if these "yet undiscovered" operas were
great or not! The assumption is that there has already been some filtering
before these scores even made it into the collection...

> Don't you find it engaging, though, that some stuff that is not lost but
> simply stashed away by some musicologist who thought it not worth
> reviving might next year - because tastes have changed, shifted
> slightly, perhaps because of our recent exposure to some other work that
> points in the same direction - suddenly turn out to be delectable after
> all?

It is a very exciting thought! There are definitely a few operas in
circulations now that deserved to be rotated out :-)

Tako


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