In the same vein, I sometimes wonder what Bach, Beethoven and other classical composers would have come up with if they had had access to the digital software that is available today. Would they poo poo it as something for people who don't understand how to use tried and tested classical methods or embrace it enthusiastically and produce something amazing?
Even more to the point, you have to wonder what Bach or Beethoven would think of how their music sounded if they could actually come to life in the present day. The instruments of their day, particularly Bach's, were quite different in construction and thus sounded quite different. The piano of Bach's day had very little semblance in sound to the modern day instrument. There are professional orchestras that specialize in playing the works of these masters on what are called "period instruments". A side by side listen of one of them against a modern day orchestra is quite telling. The melodic and harmonic elements of the piece are intact in both renditions, but the overall sound and effect are quite different.
Probably the most performed piece of music in all of the western classical tradition is Handel's "Messiah". Today it usually performed with a large orchestra and a massive "festival" chorus of 100 or more voices. But Handel wrote it as a chamber piece to be performed by a small instrumental ensemble and a 20 - 30 voice chorus. Would he be distraught to hear it performed today in this fashion?
Musical scholars often have this debate as to what these original composers would think if they could hear their music played on present day instruments.
The performances of the present day uplift and bring joy to millions upon millions of people, regardless of the fact that the original composers did not have the instruments at the disposal to produce then what we experience now.
And no photograph is a perfect representation of the world we see. The ultimate example of that is Ansel Adams. He often equated the negative with a printed musical score and the print the final performance. He created hundreds chemical combinations and development techniques for both the film and print steps of the darkroom process in order to bring forth not what the camera saw, but what we saw in his mind when he took the exposure.
To me, that is no different than creating an internal vision of the scene, getting the best exposure you can of that scene, and than perfecting the outcome of that vision through the post processing phase.
