Klarinet Archive - Posting 000578.txt from 2003/10

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] Who speaks?
Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2003 06:24:10 -0400

On Wed, 22 Oct 2003 10:02:44 +0100, tony-w@-----.uk said:

> Dan Sutherland wrote:
>
> > Tony Wakefield said:
> >
> > > I can`t help but think of a 'more obvious?' teaching. *Learn
> > > about the composer, and how he/she may have wanted the music to be
> > > played*.
> >
> > What if the composer just got lucky and created something sublime
> > by mistake? What if the composer was of detestable character and
> > learning about him severely alters your ability to perform his work
> > well? Composers compose. Performers perform. Composers do not
> > necessarily know the best way to perform their work.
>
> True, and with this statement you have to add "and neither do a lot of
> pro players" to balance what seems to be some bias against composers.

That's the whole point of the discussion. Music is very often played
badly, even by pro players, because it's played self-centeredly. (It's
as though the performance is about the player, rather than being about
the piece.)

I don't think we want to turn this into something adversarial between
'composers' and 'performers'. Both categories contain a very wide
spread of ability, and any general description of the relationship
between the two categories must take account of the fact that a
work by Stravinsky, say, is (usually) of a different order from the work
of a student composer.

Indeed, avoiding the deadly adversarial question, 'how much of the
performance is the composer's, and how much of myself can I inject?' has
been my purpose all along.

Why I chose Stravinsky is that he was a famous example of a composer of
whom it was notoriously difficult to determine what 'he' intended, even
while he was alive to be asked about it. Indeed, so inconsistent was he
over the years that someone once expressed a doubt that there ever was
such a 'person' as Stravinsky.

There is little doubt that he wrote the music he wrote, however....

....which is why the *text* is the important point of reference between
him and us. (That's not to say that all the things he said about the
text aren't relevant, interesting -- and above all, generative.)

> > > What we have seen in this discussion is of course a break down of
> > > how to go about this. We may all have different ideas, but no
> > > matter how much or how little of our own personality or technical
> > > skill we input into our playing, the composer's intentions will to
> > > some degree become submerged by our own choices, which IMO is not
> > > too good. When we play, we always put ourselves on the line - to
> > > be judged - and we will always 'reap the benefit' of someone's
> > > comment, be it favourable or otherwise. So I would summarise in
> > > this way (as above) composer first and foremost, and performer's
> > > judgement to be always based on this.
> >
> > Regardless of what a composer intends it is his music we are stuck
> > with. There is enough not so great music which composers intended
> > to be played by great artists in filled concert halls. That was the
> > scope of their intention. I do not feel traitorous for not
> > fulfilling their wishes.
>
> Why then do we emphasise in colleges, in schools, in private teaching,
> in master classes and to a large extent on radio, the importance of
> searching for composers' intentions. Is this not important at all, for
> the reason that the composer may have been a real sod? This is silly.

That wasn't his only reason. The deeper one was that what a composer
produces is the result of the interaction of all his conscious and
unconscious processes, and not the result just of his conscious
intention. The 'happy accident' might not have been so accidental.

And no, it's not that a composer's conscious intention isn't important
*at all*. It's that the deepest parts of much of the world's greatest
music are available only by exposing our *own* conscious and unconscious
processes to our only unequivocal sources -- namely, the *texts* -- and
that includes understanding the conventions of notation and performance
practice that were in force at the time.

There are exceptions. Sometimes, especially in the work of lesser
composers, there are reparable defects in the text. A young composer
may lack the technique to realise what they dimly sense is possible,
and be helped to a better second draft by a more experienced teacher.

And people make mistakes, after all. Beethoven was said to have
sightread, in the work of some of his contemporaries, not what was
there, but what *had to have been intended*, and what had been written
wrongly by the copyist.

There are 'in-between' cases, too.

That bit is like a cat, but with only three legs. Should I supply the
missing leg? Or is a three-legged cat important to the argument, to the
extent that I have to make it work as part of my performance? (Compare
the famous 'wrong' horn entry in the Eroica.)

What I actually do in a borderline case will depend on the degree of
refinement of my own understanding, and on the degree of flexibility of
my own inner instincts and processes.

But for me as well as my students, I'd say that any refinement of
understanding, and any flexibility of instinct and unconscious process
that we may have, can only have arisen in the course of our attempts to
bring *faithfully* to life the great music texts of both past and
present. Those texts are our teachers.

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE http://classicalplus.gmn.com/artists
tel/fax 01865 553339

... While the Lunatic dreams the Earth changes.

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