Klarinet Archive - Posting 000249.txt from 2007/02

From: Tony Pay <tony.p@-----.org>
Subj: RE: [kl] Kell
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 14:12:23 -0500

On 26 Feb, "Keith Bowen" <bowenk@-----.com> wrote:

> The question of "individualised" performances is interesting and
> paradoxical. The performer has to project the conviction that comes from
> the music, not himself as a show-off. But the paradox is that one cannot
> eliminate the personal in performance, since the musical sensibility of
> each performer, however skilled, comes from the unique background of
> listening, study and ability that they bring. Your interpretation of say
> K622 is undoubtedly different from that of anyone elses, which at first
> sight contradicts your objection to "individualized" performances. They all
> are individual, yours included. But I think you would insist (and I would
> agree) that we are listening not to "Tony Pay's Mozart Concerto", but
> "Mozart's concerto, projected through the musical sensibility of Tony Pay"
> - a subtle but important point. Is it saying that the person must focus on
> the music rather than him/herself?

My reply to you falls into two bits; it's easiest to take the second one
first:

> "Humility in the face of the score"?

There are clearly some scores in the face of which humility isn't necessary;
I need only cite the half-page that my 8-year old nephew has just produced.
(His effort needs all the help it can get from me:-)

However, there are some scores that are quite different. Rather than take up
a lot of space, I refer you to a post I made some time back, called
'Composers as Teachers' that tries to explain my idea of the relationship
between me, Mozart and my nephew:

http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/2005/08/000322.txt

As to the first bit -- and this bit too:

> I am trying to understand the paradox between the impossibility of an
> impersonal, non-individual performance and the point you are making, with
> which I instinctively agree, that the performer should not be seeking to
> "individualise" his/her performance.

....here's an edited version of something I wrote for a seminar I led for the
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment last year, that is a sort of summary
of my position.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
FUNDAMENTALS

When I play in the OAE in the classical style, I don't think that I should
have to do anything fundamentally different from what I do when I inhabit the
style of ANY period. Even if the details of the furniture are different, so
to speak, the process of entering the room should be the same. So what I
would like to put forward, and argue for, is a view of the situation that can
be seen to apply both to the performers of the past and to ourselves.

The issue goes right back to square one -- to the different answers we may
give to the following questions:

First, how do we approach a score when we perform it?

Second, looking behind this, what philosophical stance do we bring the asking
and answering of the question? (What did we ASSUME?)

And third, where does answering the first two questions get us?

It would be good if our answers were to show why we don't want to emulate ALL
the qualities of the performers of the past (we want to emulate only the good
ones:-). Some philosophies might claim that we should emulate even the bad
ones, because they were part of what constituted the musical life of the
time -- just as some of them say we ought to consider having noisy
audiences:-(

If you want to ask, "...but how do we KNOW what are the good qualities we
should emulate?" -- then I'm reminded of the story about Stockhausen, who
when asked by a performer, "...but maestro, how will we KNOW when we are
playing in the rhythm of the Universe?", replied: "...I will tell you."

Actually, I think everyone must find their own truth in these matters -- and
Stockhausen thought so too, probably -- but nevertheless going about finding
that truth in the way I shall describe minimises the risk, as I hope to
explain.

So, these are what I say are the most satisfactory answers to the three
questions. In a way, this is a sort of counterpart to my claim that
classical stylistic structures (CSSs) are most simply thought of as being
'speechlike'; here I claim that the performance of written music -- ANY
performance of written music, including so-called 'Historically Informed
Performance' (HIP) -- is most simply thought of under the following analysis.

(1) How do we approach performing a score?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I say we begin by seeing what is in front of us as what it indubitably is:
namely, something rather like a map. Just as a score is a representation of
a possible performance, a map is a representation of a piece of the real
world -- a territory -- that inevitably leaves out a good deal of what
constitutes that territory. Importantly, it leaves out any aliveness. So a
map or a score, by comparison with the territory/performance it represents,
is something DEAD.

Obviously we need to get to know the meaning of the symbols on the map. Some
of them we will know already, but others we may not; moreover, some of them
may have changed their meanings between the date that the map was constructed
and the present day. Some of them may be particular to the composer.

Then, I say we need to ask what the music that the map represents 'wants to
be' -- how it is to be alive in performance. This is still a question about
the territory. Answering it involves looking in detail at the structures (eg
CSSs) in the map; asking what sort of aliveness each may possess, whether it
may best be thought of as expressive or Normal,...and so on. It involves
further asking how what is in the part we are responsible for relates to what
is in the other parts. Whatever we can know about the other music of the
composer, the nature of the instruments of the time, or the cultural context
of the particular piece, will also serve us. This is the 'study' part of our
job.

The other part of our job, performance, is different. It is a real-time act
of creation; but not creation in the sense of ADDING something of our own to
the map, or changing what is there -- unless of course that sort of
embellishment is presupposed by the 'conventions of mapmaking' in operation
at the time.

It is creative rather in the sense that it brings something into being. That
something still corresponds to the map; but most importantly, NOW it TRULY IS
alive! It is truly alive in the sense that it responds to context; not only
the sorts of context like "Allegro Appassionato" written by the composer, but
also the context of what the other performers are playing, and what they or
ourselves have just played. A series of performances by the same group of
performers may differ, one from another; but they don't differ because the
performers are TRYING to make them different. They differ because things
that are truly alive always behave somewhat unpredictably.

Now, there is a particular quality of performance as a creative act, to do
with this aliveness, that is almost always left out of discussions about
playing in general, and HIP in particular, because it's difficult to know how
to talk about it. Nevertheless, it's what is fundamental to us as players,
even though we seldom talk about it either. The best discussion of it that I
know -- a discussion that goes some way towards characterising the problem
whilst still leaving the mystery of it suitably intact -- occurs in an essay
by the English anthropologist Gregory Bateson, called 'Style, Grace and
Information in Primitive Art'. I've put a copy of it in the Archive section
of the OAEOctober website, and hope to discuss some aspects of it in a later
post, particularly Bateson's key notion of 'grace': "Art is a part of Man's
search for Grace". [Unfortunately, this isn't available to Klarinet
subscribers]

Essentially, a performer brings aspects of both their conscious and their
unconscious selves to the act of performance -- even to the point of the
performance being in some sense ABOUT the interface between their conscious
and their unconscious selves in interaction with the music in front of them.

It's possible to say more, but a flavour of the matter can be had by noting
that PRACTICE, for example, is a process that 'sinks' elements of performance
beneath consciousness, so that in the end those elements occur partly outside
our control. This notion sits rather suggestively with the notion that other
aspects of our inner lives -- emotions and so on -- also occur partly outside
our control. It also shows us that there is another aspect of 'study' --
namely, the process of familiarising ourselves with HOW the tools of our
trade (our instruments) may produce the 'tools' of the style in all their
multiple varieties, including (but not confined to) their expressive
possibilities.

(2) What view of the situation lies behind this answer to question 1?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
What I want to point out about the admittedly rather sketchy analysis above
is that in it, an analytical knife-cut is used to split the TEXT from the
PERFORMANCE, and the discussion is then in terms of a particular sort of
relation between them -- namely, the map/territory relation.

Readers of Robert Pirsig's brilliant 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance' will perhaps remember his lucid discussion of how more or less
appropriate analytic cuts may yield (respectively) insight, or confusion.
(The insightful split he made was between the 'University' and the
'University location', or between the Church (idea) and the Church
(building). See:

http://www.math.metu.edu.tr/~dpierce/courses/Pirsig/Church_of_Reason.html

...for a relevant extract.)

Other analytic splits in our material are possible -- for example, one often
made is between 'the composer' and 'the performer'. THAT particular split
generates endless debate about what is then the appropriate relationship to
consider. For example, how much are performers entitled to 'follow their own
inclinations', as opposed to 'obeying the composer's text'? We have to find
out 'what the composer would have wanted' (difficult), 'what we want'
(sometimes even more difficult), and some way of mediating between the two
(50%-50%? 100%-0%? 0%-100%??)

We could also make a split between 'us' and 'them', as performers of two
different periods. How much should we try to do what 'they' did?

The same sorts of problem arise.

The advantage of the split that I've described is that it characterises the
job of a performer -- any performer -- in an explicit way. It makes clear
what we can prepare, and how that preparation relates to what we eventually
do. Further, on this description we are no less 'authentic' than a performer
of a previous era.

In particular, in the act of performance -- on the non-TEXT side -- we find
OURSELVES, because in the moment of giving the (creative) answer to the
question of what the text 'wants to be', WE are inevitably involved -- yet
not the focus of attention.

I find this is a very useful formulation to give to students, who are so
often desperately concerned with their own worth. "How much of myself should
I put into the music?" they ask. The possibility of labelling this as a
'non-question' is a great relief to many.

And because a very important part of our creativity comes from our
unconscious, which contains both what we have constructed by practice AND
what we possess naturally as the fundamental structures of our inner life, we
can see how and where the 'Norrington effect' arises: Roger's musicality is
unquestionable, but what he often cannot do is let go of his conscious
control -- he cannot see himself as more than his ego. So he is embarrassed
to be just a part of the flow of great music, and has to play the showman
instead.

(3) Where does this get us?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
It seems to me that the point of view developed here supports the notion that
it's possible to inhabit a style effectively, naturally and gracefully ONLY
if we have its tools as part of our stock-in-trade. Varying phrase-shapes,
varying appoggiaturas, varying degrees of bar hierarchy have to be at our
disposal without needing to be thought about.

Isn't it a sort of paradox, then, that I've been recommending all along that
we think about them? Not really -- any fluency acquired in adulthood must
start in this way. It might have been better to begin earlier, but....

I find it significant that deep musicians who direct us often achieve a
required stylish nuance by using some metaphor that engages with a natural
feeling or gesture ('natural' equals 'unconscious':-) -- this shows that
classical stylistic structures have close connections with other parts of our
inner lives.

We might become more expert at finding those connections in real time
ourselves if we are prepared to take CSSs more seriously. We could think of
this as an ongoing project, generated from within the orchestra.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tony
--

_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE
tel/fax 01865 553339
mobile +44(0)7790 532980 tony.p@-----.org

... Where there's a will, there's an Inheritance Tax.

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