Klarinet Archive - Posting 000202.txt from 1996/04

From: Jonathan Cohler <cohler@-----.NET>
Subj: Re: Performance Lattitude
Date: Mon, 8 Apr 1996 16:36:45 -0400

At 2:38 PM 4/8/96, Ken Cook wrote:
>I have been reading the ideas by Leeson and Cohler on interpretation.
>
>I probably missed part of the idea, but I seem to hear a great deal
>of emphasis placed on period of composition and intentions of
>composers, to which I agree to a point.
>
>How many of us can understand, at least perfectly, the intentions of
>the composers without communicating with them?
>
>Is there no role for the individual in expressive performance?
>
>Is not the idea to balance composer AND period AND performer AND
>audience?
>
>If we were all to recreate the same piece the same way every time we
>played it we could hardly claim respect for the composer. We would
>be killing his work.

Taking your questions/statements one at a time...

The only way to attempt to understand what a composer wants is indeed to
communicate with the composer. If the composer is dead, the only way to
communicate with the composer is to read what he or she has written
(musically or otherwise) or recorded (in the modern era), and to read what
others who have had direct contact with the composer have written.

Perhaps *most* important is that we first and foremost read what they wrote
in the scores that we are performing. If a composer unmistakably writes
quarter=120 and we play it at quarter=80, then we are playing it
incorrectly. We are playing a different piece. We are making up our own
music.

Now, on the other hand, if the composer writes quarter=120 and we vary the
tempo between say 112 and 132 in various parts of the piece according to
our interpretation of the phrase shape and direction, then this is
interpretation. We are maintaining an average tempo of roughly 120 and we
are shaping the phrases according to our interpretation of the music.

Playing the piece 20, 30 or 40 percent slower or faster than what the
composer has explicitly marked is not interpretation. It is
bastardization.

Similarly, if a composer has carefully marked a section of music forte, and
then followed it by a subito piano, it is not "interpretation" to play the
entire phrase mezzo forte, or to make a long diminuendo from the first
section to the second, or worse yet to play the second section louder than
the first. Again this is quite simply incorrect.

The interpretation of the dynamics comes in to play in determining what
kind of forte to play and what kind of piano to play. There is no question
that the piano must be substantially softer than the forte, and that the
change to piano must be relatively sudden. The quality and intensity of
the sound and the timing of the change, and the stress of the various notes
are all elements of the interpretation.

As for audience, I don't see how the audience enters into how we interpret
music that we play. The audience is certainly a critical part of the
interactivity of a performing experience, but it has nothing to do with how
one interprets and analyzes a piece of music.

And finally, most certainly we should not all play music the same way. The
nuances of rubato, tone color, vibrato, air speed change, attack,
articulation, dynamic shapes, and subtle timing are the tools with which we
can craft totally unique performances. However, all of these tools must be
used inside the framework that the composer has constructed for us, or else
we are making up new music.

----------------------
Jonathan Cohler
cohler@-----.net