Grice and Sarah Bernhardt

---- By J. L. S.

---- JASON! Sorry about the intrusive 't': the worst thing about an intrusive 't' is when it's final. So, now you should be motivated to post a post on this blog with Thomas properly-spelled surnamed. Etc.

I'll continue to read your post now.

Sarah Bernhardt I don't think was Austrian.

---- Consider "ACTING".

Grice has an example from music:

"Miss Buttie's rendition of "Sweet, Sweet Home"
corresponded pretty closely with the score"

(WoW:ii).

He wants to say the critic (in this magazine at Roedin, of course) is

"She sucked"

i.e. in Grice's parlance: There is some 'hideous' thing being covered here.


--- Now transpose that to Sarah Bernardt.

I love the woman because she gave "Tosca" to Puccini. Sarah was playing "Tosca" in Firenze, which gave Puccini the idea for this over-the-top Italianata thing.

----

But Grice's example invites the question:

What _is_ music?

What _is_ a peformance act?

Surely "Sweet, Sweet Home" (The phrase "Home Sweet Home" never occurs in score) is more than a score, and Miss Buttie did her best. I'm sure Grice is trading on that. I wrote elsewhere on Grice's and his friend's performance of Raschmaninof (the worn-out piece as played by Grice's friend) and Ravel's Pavane -- back in Clifton of the day (1930). So I _know_! :)

Think of Scribe (?), "Tosca", the play.

We have Sarah Bernhardt doing the lines. That's the MOST we can hope her. The role "Tosca Floria", was possibly created for _her_, and she created, most likely the role, and the role possibly died with her, to boot.

So what kind of 'correspondence' (to score, to script, to play, ...) are we talking aobut?

They belong in different Ontologies. The play qua Platonic thing, the Song Qua Platonic Thing, is one thing, the performance of the thing is another. And surely there should be allowance for some _variant_.

In a way, midi destroyed all that. You hear automated, cybernetic, renditions of sheet music and that's exactly as played as per sheet-music.

When are we creating midi for "sung" things or 'acted' Tosca?

My literature prof's prof wrote a thing on this, in a book on "Drama"

"The best plays are meant to go _unrepresented_."

He claims, possibly citing someone authoritatively. He means "Faust" by Goethe. Apparently, it _is_ a play. But surely one may enjoy it better as a _read_? Don't know. I'm too operatic to allow for that, but I get their drift.