Of course, yes. You go from copying what's actually there to trying to do it
yourself -- best possible training. There's the old tale of JSB as child,
getting up at night to copy out some treasured music his elder brother
owned, and getting caught, and having his nearly-complete copy taken away.
But by that time he must have learned quite a lot from it.
How far do we reckon this sort of thing helps with becoming a poet, then? I
mean copying leading to imitation, and then on to using the skills learned.
And yes, I know and own the Galloway book. The Schumann/Wieck story seems to
have sparked quite a few artistic spin-offs. There's a song cycle by two
women, poet and composer, about Clara -- I don't actually know it but heard
the two of them talking on the radio about the process of working on it. I
hope Peter at least knows what I'm talking about, because it's irritating
the hell out of me that I can't remember their names! I'm glad to see though
that Clara is at last receiving acknowledgement as a musician, and indeed a
composer, in her own right rather than just as an adjunct to her husband.
joanna
----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Cudmore" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2007 2:42 PM
Subject: Re: Bach
> Do you know Janice Galloway's novel _Clara_, which is about Clara
> Wieck/Schumann? It is very much about that question of domestic
> circumstances, and personal/professional conflicts.
>
> I guess helping with the deadlines will have been part of the children's
> education -- copying was one of the things JS did to learn. I was copying
> a
> couple of poems yesterday, which prompts the thought that while learning
> from copying isn't automatic, it naturally focuses your attention on the
> material you're working with.
>
> P
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
>> Behalf Of Joanna Boulter
>> Sent: 20 August 2007 12:38
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Bach
>>
>>
>> It hadn't actually occurred to me, but yes, I should be surprised if Anna
>> Magdalena hadn't had some sort of skivvy or scullery-maid. But she would
>> still have had a considerable weight of domestic duties, including
> probably
>> teaching the little ones, and it must have been a nuisance sometimes,
> having
>> to drop everything to copy parts and help her husband meet his deadlines.
> I
>> can substitute the phrase "domestic duties", unspecified, if you think
> that
>> would be more accurate and scholarly. But what I was really wondering was
>> whether the thing worked as a poem. This business of writing about other
> art
>> forms and media can be a bit fraught.
>>
>> joanna
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