https://www.rosiebennet.com/blog daily 0.75 2026-04-02 https://www.rosiebennet.com/blog/the-myth-of-selling-out-aristotle-lydia-goehr-and-frameworks-for-excellence monthly 0.5 2026-04-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/680e0d9765a1b02510f06104/1ba5a436-f8e2-4846-b216-0b9c8da71539/TheThreeTenors.webp Blog - The Myth of Selling Out: Aristotle, Lydia Goehr and frameworks for excellence - Martin Bernheimer, for instance, interviewed by Paul Arendt for the Guardian, wrote “The Three Tenors-era Pavarotti was a creation of the PR industry and his own ego. Somewhere along the line he lost his sense of adventure”. To some, Pavarotti’s efforts were an act of cultural diplomacy, ensuring opera’s survival in an age of the decline of its popularity. To others, they marked a betrayal of the art’s higher aspirations and served as evidence that even the most revered musicians are not immune to the seductions of commerce. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/680e0d9765a1b02510f06104/422318c7-91cc-4e2d-bc71-a01f619724be/weston-m-3pCRW_JRKM8-unsplash.jpg Blog - The Myth of Selling Out: Aristotle, Lydia Goehr and frameworks for excellence - In The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works, Goehr refuses the traditional idea of music as an autonomous entity with unchanging purpose or a reflection of an immutable, transcendental ideal, and instead proposes that musical works are ‘invented’ through performance, that only live insofar as they are experienced and that evolve with each act of interpretation. This interpretation is not shaped by the musician’s choices, but by the audience’s expectations, societal norms and even the cultural ‘moment’ in which the performance takes place. “Musical works”, Goehr writes, “are not timeless objects that can be grasped or understood in isolation; they are created, performed and interpreted within a specific context, defined by the conventions of performance and the needs of the audience”. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/680e0d9765a1b02510f06104/f73b8234-0172-4b4a-a73d-6bc0dc6bfc63/mick-haupt-uMCP-NReC2c-unsplash.jpg Blog - The Myth of Selling Out: Aristotle, Lydia Goehr and frameworks for excellence - The artist becomes, in essence, a conduit for the audience’s desire, a creator whose identity is (re)shaped by the public’s reception of the work. Thus Pavarotti’s commercialism is an expansion of his art, not a betrayal. Yet, as the critics of Pavarotti’s Three Tenors concerts might argue, this framework places the musician at the mercy of the audience’s whims, reducing the artist to nothing more than an instrument of reception. It is here that the limits of Goehr’s relativism become apparent. If music is defined solely by its reception, if a musical work only exists in the context of its audience, then the artist becomes nothing but a facilitator of cultural trends, an artist for the sake of the marketplace. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/680e0d9765a1b02510f06104/2cd5f73b-c3cd-4554-a0aa-ca6b99444957/gilles-gravier-WP-cA4wO4XQ-unsplash.jpg Blog - The Myth of Selling Out: Aristotle, Lydia Goehr and frameworks for excellence His answer is the flute should go to the best flautist and the best flautist is the one most capable of actualising its telos. For Aristotle, this is a reflection of natural order; the good of the community is best served when each thing fulfils its purpose and is placed in the hands of those most capable of realising it. Where Goehr would argue that the flute’s purpose is contingent on how it is used, whether for high art or popular entertainment, Aristotle argues that its telos is fixed, independent of circumstance. In Goehr’s framework, which defines music by its reception, the act of ‘selling out’ fundamentally alters the nature of the artist’s craft. For her, a poor musician who ‘sells out’ is no different than the virtuoso who does the same; both are equally defined by their relationship to the audience. https://www.rosiebennet.com/blog/transcription-as-resurrection-plato-nietzsche-and-musical-truth monthly 0.5 2026-04-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/680e0d9765a1b02510f06104/c1e9ca53-97c6-4adf-9f26-9a759fc08833/Screenshot+2025-11-30+at+16.13.58.png Blog - Transcription as Resurrection: Plato, Nietzsche and ‘musical truth’ - One of the dogmas prevalent in the institution of classical music is that some musicians, so-called ‘true musicians’, have access to, or at the very least pursue the path towards, a kind of ‘ultimate musical truth’ through faithfulness to the score. The idea of the musician as a vessel is part of this trope; the musician should be nothing more than a conduit through which the music flows without interfering with the music’s ability to (re)present the ‘Truth’. This interference can occur through any form of the musician’s creative addition, including transcription or any other type of interpretational trace. In this manner, the institution of classical music follows Plato’s view on truth, which he sees as consisting in the unchangeable, the eternal and the ideal that is elevated above the contingencies of the given world. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/680e0d9765a1b02510f06104/8adc9a4b-3f20-4086-9713-17a22dc4c009/nietzsche+portrait.jpg Blog - Transcription as Resurrection: Plato, Nietzsche and ‘musical truth’ - For Nietzsche, the obsession with fidelity to the unchanging original, whether in philosophy or in music, is a form of mummification. Like the process of embalming, it preserves perfectly and intact, but as static and lifeless. In Nietzsche’s eyes, the Platonic ideal is a tomb. To worship the original, to hold it up as an untouchable relic, is to deny the very essence of life: change, growth, becoming. Transcription, then, is not a betrayal, it is an act of vitality. It is not a reduction but a transformation, a resurrection that breathes new life into the work. When an orchestral piece is transcribed for guitar, it does not mimic the original—it imagines the work as alive. Nietzsche’s view dismantles not only the sacralisation of the original score but also the intent of the composer. The Romantic era saw the rise of the ‘cult of genius’ which sought to enshrine the composer as a vessel of divine inspiration. Figures such as Bach or Beethoven were not seen as musicians or composers, but ‘prophets’ whose scores were regarded as sacred texts. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/680e0d9765a1b02510f06104/883be0ae-1fd3-4bcf-812c-b1a183dfb727/transcription+artist+photo+funny.jpg Blog - Transcription as Resurrection: Plato, Nietzsche and ‘musical truth’ - Thus, to attend a concert by Yamashita and appreciate his live performance of works originally written for guitar, whilst simultaneously condemning his transcriptions of orchestral pieces, reveals a form of intellectual inconsistency. This stance assumes that an interpretation which seeks to replicate the original score with strict fidelity is closer to the so-called truth of the work than an interpretation that intentionally diverges from it. Such a view rests on the flawed assumption that the Platonic model of unchanging truth can be applied in any meaningful way to music, an entity whose entire existence relies on flux. In reality music is never a perfect replication of an ideal. Every performance is always already interpretation. https://www.rosiebennet.com/blog/from-legnani-to-laufey-the-guitars-classical-role monthly 0.5 2026-04-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/680e0d9765a1b02510f06104/14d90a73-0145-4f24-b153-04fdf6fc4f23/Vittorio-Reggianini-amusing-song-guitar.jpg Blog - From Legnani to Laufey: the guitar’s classical role - For centuries, plucked strings accompanied song and dance, blurring the line between art and every day life, and the guitar inherited that lineage of accessibility. Even as it moved into the salons and conservatories of the 19th century it carried with it the aura of the personal. Whilst the violin and piano became symbols of bourgeois aspiration, the guitar remained the companion of poets and singers, an instrument to be played anywhere. This cultural position shaped the way the classical establishment received it; a beautiful but modest instrument, a little too close to popular music to be fully ‘serious’. Conservative views of the time clashed with more appreciative reception of the guitar as a classical instrument. During his illustrious career, the famous violinist Juan Manén lamented of Francisco Tárrega “Why did his artist’s soul long for such an unworthy instrument? Why were so many patient hours […] misspent on such a poorly-accepted instrument?”. At the same time an article in the Mercantil Valenciano on 21st December, 1888 illustrated an emerging change of attitude towards guitar’s role in the classical world: “Tárrega, without exaggeration is a genius on the guitar, which he has raised from its former humility to the heights”. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/680e0d9765a1b02510f06104/be91314f-79e9-4f56-a23d-b23299727253/Laufey+artwork.jpg Blog - From Legnani to Laufey: the guitar’s classical role - When I first heard Laufey’s music, I immediately thought that a classical guitar arrangement would be possible because her music is so lyrical, the lines are so melodic and are coloured with harmonies that are rich and textured. The closeness to her voice, the interplay between melody and accompaniment and the gorgeous jazzy swoops of the phrases all beg for interpretation on an instrument that has always thrived on intimacy. Just as Tárrega transformed operatic works into something new, a classical guitar arrangement of Laufey’s music allows the songs to inhabit a new space, something a bit quieter, more tactile and more personal. This arrangement of her song ‘What Love Will Do to You’ was a joy to work on. In the process of translating the essence of the piece for the guitar, the guitar felt like both a vessel and a lens. https://www.rosiebennet.com/blog/rubato-in-debussys-arabesque-no-1 monthly 0.5 2026-04-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/680e0d9765a1b02510f06104/fe0de2b8-c03e-4ed7-8c18-728003a6392a/Screenshot+2025-11-05+at+13.12.22.png Blog - Thoughts on Rubato in Debussy's Arabesque No. 1 - Henri Bergson, the French philosopher, viewed this segmentation of time into measurable, countable units as a distortion of the lived experience of time. He wrote that time is not divided into equal parts, but that it flows continuously; time is lived and experienced personally rather than something that can be evenly divided into a series of measurable moments. When we start to think of time like this, we start to realise that the actions of a performer who stretches a phrase, lingers on a few notes, rushes through an intense passage, are not temporary violations of time, they are revelations of its true nature. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/680e0d9765a1b02510f06104/6bf596ed-7966-4850-9850-a87dd42f4fcd/Screenshot+2025-11-05+at+13.15.22.png Blog - Thoughts on Rubato in Debussy's Arabesque No. 1 - To perform with this understanding of rubato is not to indulge or decorate, but to reveal the life within time. Each gesture, each pause, each acceleration becomes a way of making audible the flow of experience rather than imposing an external, mechanical measure upon it. The performer becomes a guide through the landscape of time as it is felt, not as it is counted. This understanding of time and musical flow finds a natural home in Debussy’s Arabesque No. 1. From the opening to the very last note the piece floats, effortlessly suspended between resolution of what has just been and the driving forward motion of what is to come. The melodies spiral gently in all directions, creating an intertwining, overlapping tableau of musical phrases. 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