To: flieg@socrates.Berkeley.EDU
Cc: minstrel@pbm.com
Subject: Re: minstrel: Nature of Bardic Competitions
Message-Id: <19981005.125825.4791.2.cley@juno.com>
References: <2.2.32.19981005191423.0121d390@socrates.berkeley.edu>
From: cley@juno.com (cynthia j ley)
Date: Mon, 05 Oct 1998 17:11:19 EDT
Sender: owner-minstrel@rt.com
Precedence: bulk


>>Granted, there are some books well known to be acceptable as sources,
>>such as the Oxford Book of English Madrigals. Then there are things 
>no one except the entrant has ever heard of, and teaching is part of the
>>task of a competitor.
>
>    Hunh!???  What?  Sez who?  I enter a competition (and I don't 
>often) to show off what I can do and to challenge myself (perhaps)
>to do something new.  No competition I have ever entered has said
>that teaching is part of my duties as an entrant. I have in fact seen
>only one where that was the case; the competition was in research 
>papers.

Must be the tradition where you are. Here it's expected. Even if someone
waves the aforementioned Oxford at me and says "We're gonna do a madrigal
from this," I still expect them to tell me more than just the source,
even though I've worked intimately with the Oxford for 17 years. Is it a
true madrigal? A ballet? A canzonet? What makes a madrigal? etc.

>    Imho -- documentation is to show the judge that the competitor
>knows what is period; presumably the judge already knows.

That's the purpose of a findings or summary paper. A competitor may not
have time to talk about the entry in their performance, but the paper
(which is meant to be short and sweet) does give that essential
background. The judge can read it fairly quickly, set it aside for later
for consideration in the tallies.

> Especially when the competition is a _job_ interview (which is where
this all
>started out, at the Bard of the Mists Competition), documentation
>is not the purpose of the competition, entertainment, performance 
>and competence are.

While I don't disagree with you, I don't agree completely either. We've
been discussing period stuff here--wouldn't you like to know the context
of the work being done? Don't you think that it will help you as a
performer to understand not only what it is, but why it is, and the
cultural context of it? Don't you think the judge would like to know too?
To take an *extreme* example, what do you think a judge might think if
you performed "Deo Gracias Anglia," without explaining the extremely
historic context? That's the sort of thing that can drive judges over to
the "East German" side!


					Arlys


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