« » »Description:Elizabeth LeGuin is the third in a dynasty of brilliant women writers. Her mother is the popular science fiction novelist Ursula LeGuin, and her grandmother was Theodora Kroeber, author of « »Ishi » ». In this complex study of the music of Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805), LeGuin discloses a « »secret » » that every skilled musician already knows: Composers write music for performers, not audiences. More cautiously, one might say that composers necessarily write with performers in mind. It’s the composer’s ability to sense the performer empathically, to imagine her hands as his on the instrument or his voice resonating in her larynx, which enables him to write in a musical idiom that she can also `speak’, even if he is long dead. This notion of composer and performer occupying the same physical space is a central thesis of cellist Elizabeth LeGuin’s musicological biography of cellist/composer Luigi Boccherini. Here’s another way to express it: Performers, even if they perform only for their cat or their begonias, experience music on several levels not accessible to passive listeners. Ergo, performers comprise the composer’s most satisfying audience, in that only the performers can « »get » » the whole experience that the composer conceives. I realize that this might be an invidious distinction, and an offensive one, for non-performers who are passionately moved by music. And can it possibly be true or apt for ALL composers? Perhaps we can ignore that question, since we (i.e. Dr. LeGuin) are concentrating our thoughts on one specific composer, Boccherini, who indisputably wrote the bulk of his music for the pleasure of –and purchase by– performers. But Boccherini lived and composed in a milieu where a major percentage of « »the better classes » » were somewhat competent at music
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"""Description:Elizabeth LeGuin is the third in a dynasty of brilliant women wri...