Seldin-sensei (and others),
You're right, this is a provacative issue and one that's fun to
think about. I appreciate your comments, and I especially liked this:
>And anyway, as my teacher once said to a student who started to
>take notes, "What if I want to teach the piece differently next
>week?"
It's the obverse of the accomplished player asking, "what makes you
think you'll want to play it the same way twice?" It reflects on
the entire nature of notation and the difference between suggestions
from the page and instructions. I suppose the impulse toward making
and reading marginalia comes out of the western tradition of wanting
everything defined.
When it comes to notes, mine are mostly translations of what the
kanji or kana on the page say - not being literate in Japanese makes
it difficult at times to remember what some of the less frequently
used characters mean.
I think that, ultimately the question comes down to this: to what
extent are we, as western shakuhachi players, responsible *to* the
traditions of the Japanese? Certainly we're not responsible *for*
those traditions (or, if we are, the Japanese are in serious
trouble :-)
Few of us are going to become licensed teachers, none of us is
likely to take up residence in a temple and being the life of a
komuso. Given that we live in the west and are subject to the
interpretive affordances that cross-cultural studies make possible,
I suspect that the answer to that question is fairly ambiguous.
So I'll toss it out there for you.
bj
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