Message-Id: <2.2.32.19981005213311.00f24fcc@socrates.Berkeley.EDU>
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Date: Mon, 05 Oct 1998 14:33:11 -0700
To: cley@juno.com (cynthia j ley)
From: "Fred (Flieg) Hollander" <flieg@socrates.Berkeley.EDU>
Subject: Re: minstrel: Nature of Bardic Competitions
Cc: minstrel@pbm.com
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At 05:11 PM 10/5/98 EDT, cynthia j ley wrote:
>
>>>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.

   This is not the competitor teaching you _or_ you teaching the 
competitor. This is just a requirement for extreme documentation.
  This is also (imho) entirely too picky for words and an excellent
reason to go off in the corner away from the competition
and sing filk (just for the contrast).
  I'm here to participate, to be the hero (of various stripes) in my
own story, and incidentally to learn, so as to do the others better.
I'm not here (nor are most people that I know) to go to school and do
homework assignments, expecially picky ones.

>
>>    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,

  Gods! I hope not -- few things are more disruptive of the mood than 
having someone "give their documentation" just before the 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.

   Tallies?  I think we may be talking about two entirely different things
here. You sound like you're talking about classic "A&S competitions". I've
been talking about "bardic competitions" (clearly separated out about
eight days ago, at least in my mind).  

>
>> 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? 

  Maybe.  Maybe not.  Usually I don't care "why", and I'm not part of that
culture so I'm never _really_ going to understand that. And if I'm
singing a period drinking song, neither I nor my audience _need_ 
to know anything but that it is a drinking song. If it's a love song,
the only interesting thing might be how little the sentiments have
changed between madrigals and rockabilly.

>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!

    I might expect the judge to judge me on whether it was a period 
piece and how well I did it and not worry about Agincourt. And if I
worked a brief mention of it in my intro to the audience, such
as "I will now sing 'Deo Gracias Anglia', in celebration of our recent
victory over the forces of Louis at Agincourt." Then I would expect to 
get a little tiny plus point for working in the basic docco. I would
_not_ expect to supply any of that in my docco for the piece. 

   *   *   *    Frederick of Holland, MSCA, OP, etc.
  *|* *|* *|*   flieg@socrates.berkeley.edu        
 |===========|   
  (((Flieg Hollander, Chemistry Dept., U.C. Berkeley)))
 ====================== Old Used Duke  =====================
 [All subjects of the Crown are equal under its protection.]


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