TexTuba wrote:Ok this has been taken WAY out of context.
Yes, that sometimes happens. But readers will do it even if they don't ask about it. That is what makes writing hard, heh, heh.
A cadenza is marked as such and permission to make changes is expressly granted by the composer, depending I suppose on the period of the music.
An example: I once heard a well-known tuba player perform the Vaughan Williams (no, nobody you've ever heard me talk about by name). The closing notes of the first movement go from a low F to a low Eb to a low F. He changed that to match the line of the opening of the movement. It didn't sound bad, but my first reaction was--why did he do that? What artistic purpose was served? I was distracted through half the second movement mulling over his apparent need to out-compose the good Dr. Vaughan Williams. I still can't find any reason to justify his choice.
But on the recently provided recording of Bill Bell playing the Vaughan Williams, he purposely left off the high bits of the first-movement cadenza, which I though was a good decision on his part and it was musically appropriate in addition to being practical. Again, it was a cadenza, which is designed to allow the soloist to show off his technical ability.
Now, if my first exemplar had played the entire work with so much mastery that he could really see a next step, then it would be easier to justify. But he did not demonstrate such mastery, and that made the choice seem rather presumptuous to me. If it had made the work sound worse, then the audience would think it Vaughan Williams's fault, and not the performer's. I don't think the performer has that right.
Bell, on the other hand, remained true to what Vaughan Williams wrote, and in some ways truer than subsequent recordings that show more technical polish.
I was once in a quintet that had a trumpet player who thought a lot of himself (that should identities safely anonymous, heh, heh). I suggested that we end a particular work (it was a Canadian Brass arrangement) in the way written and performed by the CB. He said, "We should seek our own style and not just copy what others have done." My response was that when we were playing all the notes, phrasings, articulations, dynamics, and other written instructions correctly, then we had earned the right to "seek our own style." Until then, application of some schmaltzy stylistic trick would just highlight what we were not doing. Again, the musical expression, which is the basis of style, starts where the instructions leave off.
I once played under a super conductor who told our group: "Professional musicians play the right note at the right time, with the right articulation and the right dynamic. They must do a lot more to be any good, but they nearly always do that much." He was warning a bunch of amateurs not to take too many artistic liberties before establishing mastery over the music.
Rick "who has never mastered anything that well" Denney
All I'm saying is that a soloist has the creative freedom to change what he/she sees fit, no matter on how small or large a scale. And as far as making a walking bass line out of two notes, well you'd look like a complete jackass for doing it. 
