Klarinet Archive - Posting 000708.txt from 2000/11

From: "David B. Niethamer" <dnietham@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: [kl] Interpreting versus playing
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 16:35:21 -0500

on 11/19/00 6:15 AM, Tony Pay wrote:

>What do you think he means by the difference between 'playing' a piece
>and 'interpreting' it?
>
>It's a delicate but interesting subject. Stravinsky, one of the most
>magical twentieth century composers, famously said that he didn't want
>anyone to 'interpret' his music. What do you think *he* meant?

In the book "The Poetics of Music in the form of Six Lessons" (a
transcription of IS's Charles Eliot Norton lectures of 1939-40, given at
Harvard University) IS writes the following:

"The idea of interpretation implies the limitations imposed upon the
performer or those which the performer imposes upon himself in his proper
function, which is to transmit music to the listener.

"The idea of execution implies the strict putting into effect of an
explicit will that contains nothing beyond what it specifically commands.

"The conflict of these two principles - execution and interpretation
- is at the root of all the errors, all the sins, all the
misunderstandings that interpose themselves between the musical work and
the listener and prevent a faithful transmission of its message."

IS then proceeds to give his very articulate views on the subject. I
highly recommend this book - it has six lectures/chapters dealing with
"The Performance of Music", "Musical Typology" (another famous and very
lucidly thought out point of Stravinsky's) and a chapter about Russian
composers. My copy is old enough not to have an ISBN number, but is
published by Vintage (V-39).

It's interesting to read Mazzeo's more practical approach to playing
Stravinsky's "Three Pieces", which he played for the composer personally.
Stravinsky writes "the tempos, breath marks and dynamics should be
strictly adhered to" (or something like that - too lazy to trek upstairs
for my music). In his discussion of the interpretation of this music,
Mazzeo describes the *differences* between various sorts of breaths in
the first movement of "Three Pieces", which of course, can't be
accurately notated. This article is in a back issue of "The Clarinet".

For me this problem is a serious one, both as a performer and a
concert-goer. As a concert attendee, I often find myself distracted from
the music by the "performance" or "interpretation" of various performers.
As a player, I try to provide "a faithful transmission of its message"
for any music that I play. But that doesn't mean that I bring nothing of
myself to the music. Everyone has a backlog of experience with music in
general, and composers and musical styles in particular, that informs
their performances, usually to a great degree on a subconscious level.
Those experiences are different for every player, so the "faithful
transmission" can be at once faithful and different from other players.

David

David Niethamer
Principal Clarinet, Richmond Symphony
dnietham@-----.edu
http://members.aol.com/dbnclar1/

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