I do guided listenings every December in which we listen to multiple performances/arrangements of the same song. It’s a fascinating education in arrangement, interpretation, timbre, and ensemble. (More here, here, here, here.)
My takeaway from tonight’s listening is about knowing your line. We listened to eight different choral/vocal arrangements of Silent Night – each strayed in different ways from the hymn tune as you’d hear it in a Christmas Eve church service.
And each student had a different line. The arrangement line across which you should not cross without veering too far from the intent of the song.
We can all agree that the composer’s intent should play a role in shaping an arrangement. What’s fascinating is that we don’t all agree in how much role it should play. My line is different than yours, and it’s informed by a mixture of experience, personal preference, and particularly a sense of the song as an entity. (Your line for Silent Night might be different than your line for All The Things You Are.)
Your line can change over time, but knowing where it is right now is, I think, a valuable piece of information for shaping your own music-making. And nowhere is it easier to find your line than in a listening like this, comparing multiple different versions of the same song, at various levels of departure from the “original.”
Just another reason to use this sort of guided listening with your music-making students.