Isn't it a pity Angelo that one has to spend the time and energy of writing
simple, and common sense. Why do some people need such explanations? Why
can't they get it on their own. You know what I think is the reason?
vision blind, because it dithers and filters their outlook. Then they need
leave you alone.
I've always found it ironic how jealousy makes one demanding. The jealous
that you're not even in their ball park. How do you tell someone you're not
interested in playing their game? I guess walking out is one way.
Post by Angelo GilardinoPost by Sarn DyerMatti, I'm happy with the construction that I used. I might have
softened my question, but then Angelo Gilardino might have softened his
ex cathedra dismissal of Regino Sainz de la Maza as a composer.
For a respect to the friends who have kindly taken a public position in
this story, I feel obliged to point out once more what I mean and what, I
believe, I said.
This is the very last time I am writing on this subject, and - I stress
this point - I do this only for a sense of responsibility toward third
parties who took the pain of writing here.
Whatever I said, was said with very plain and normal words, with no
assumption that I was speaking ex-cathedra: I believe that he was not a
composer and I told he was not a composer. That I was speaking with a
pre-built authority is a sheer invention: not a single word of mine can be
correctly quoted for supporting such a statement. I do not need more than
my thoughts and feels to feed my opinions and I do not need anybody
permission to make them public: I am not an authority, I am a man, with my
thoughts, my beliefs, my faiths and my passions, and upon them I founded
all what I did so far. My cathedra is in your mind. Not only I do not have
it, I do refuse it with all my strenght. Do you know why? Because I do not
need it. I feel very well as I am.
Post by Sarn DyerI've explained my position on Angelo's covert polemics already: I don't
find them admirable. They have a long history. In an interview with him
in Guitar International some years ago, when Angelo was still developing
his career as a composer, his interviewer stated that he, Angelo, had
succeeded in offending just about everyone in the guitar world. Angelo
did not deny it.
Here the text of that part of that interview (published on 1992),
AB (The interviewer): The beginning of your career - I refer to the early
seventies - was characterised by harsh quarrels with most Italian
guitarists and also with foreign guitarists. Time has proved that you were
not simply a "naughty boy", but a person capable of seeing farther than
many others. In the course of time you become more tolerant or have you
retained your early, sharp critical inflexibility?
AG I don't like polemic in itself. I think it is an instrument for
culture, provided that when you have a polemic with somebody you are able
to divide the themes, the arguments, the subjects of the polemic from the
person. My arguments have always been given with a great respect for the
person with whom I was not in agreement. I can't see that this regard has
been used to me, but I never cared about this. I have always thought that
when you have a strong idea, and when you are correct, at the end the
truth will come out, and I don't think I have been wrong in this sense. Of
course, I would like to be in harmony with all the world, but it is
impossible. I have discovered, in my career, that you make enemies, not
because you do something to somebody, but simply because you exist - and I
cannot give up existing!
----
Of course I confirm all what I said as above reported, and I invite
everybody here to see how well it applies to the situation. One thing I
want to stress: in art - as in other fields - whether an idea, or a series
of ideas, let me say - pompously - a "philosophy", cannot be judged only
in itself, with just considering how nice are the words which speak it.
Ideas, in art, are valuable only when facts are attached to it exactly as
fruits are attached to a tree. With those ideas - which caused so many
polemics among guitarists - I have built up, in less than 40 years, a
series of 300 (yes, three hundreds) publications of new music for guitar
written by very distinguished composers all over the world, or rescued
from where nobody else, before me, had been able to shake the dust. I
have created, with my own ideas - the very same ideas which lead me to
discriminate a true composer from an occasional writer of little,
unconsequent guitar solo works - a repertoire which includes the works of
authors who never wrote for guitar before I invited them, the works of
authors who returned to compose for guitar after a disappointing, isolated
first experience, and did so because it was me to ask them, and the works
of authors who were buried under the silence from decades. If I had not
been the man I am, with the ideas I have and the opinions I tell aloud
without fear, I would not have been called by the heirs of Segovia (who
left them such an instruction? did they look for me into some dictionary
of guitarists?) to take care of the music he left, and you - the British
guitarists, as well those of all the world - wouldn't be allowed to add to
your repertoire the works of Lennox Berkeley and of Cyril Scott. Is there
anybody in this discussion who can show the fruits of his ideas, made
available to the guitar world, at the same extent? What did they do,
concretely, besides and beyond announcing their ideas and dismissing my
own? Facts, please: titles, publications, dates.
--------
Post by Sarn DyerHe is still a polemicist and wishes to remain so but
without alienating others from his music. A question of wanting to have
your cake and eat it.
My music is published, and it speaks for itself. People who can feel
alienated from my music because they do not agree or sympathize with my
ideas, or because have taken an opposite party in a polemic, are people
whom I wish to stay out from my music. Because they are stupid, and a
stupid works stupidly when thinking, when playing and also when sleeping.
You tell you are a composer. Well, rest assured that when your
compositions will be published (I apologize if they are already and I do
not know of their publication: I am ready to know about them) I will read
them for what they are, and not for what our relationship has been so far.
I am not stupid.
Post by Sarn DyerWhen Leo Brouwer publicly renounced this polemic, Angelo's response, on
the old Eskimo guitar forum, was that Brouwer had 'sold out' to make his
music more acceptable.
Leo and me, we are tied in a connection that you will never know: we feel
estimation for each other.
And now, a conclusion, once for all. I work for music in the guitar world
according to my way of being a musician. If my works and my ideas are
discusses, whatever the conclusion maybe, I am in the game. I leave the
field because here it is not a matter of ideas and works. This too is a
long story. But it is boring, useless and it leads nowhere. I have music
to make.
Thankyou to all the friends who wrote in the NG and privately.
AG