Author: EEBaum
Date: 2008-10-04 15:38
I do a lot more unwritten than that when I play it, and I do something different every time. Sometimes I fermata that D, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I cut the tempo to 1/3 for a few bars a couple phrases later. As far as I'm concerned, it's a cadenza and is free territory for the performer to to do whatever s/he wants with it.
That said, I do appreciate the value of playing it "as written" and think that the performer would be at a loss without at least occasionally playing it strict to the page.
I find I get the most out of a piece when I've played it in as many different ways as I can think of. If I've played it completely straight, I'll have the completely-straight interpretation to pull ideas from when I play it. If I've swung it, I'll have that to pull ideas from. If I've swung it one eighth note offset, I'll have that to pull from. If I've played it littered with fermatas and obnoxious tempo changes, I'll have that to pull from. If I've played it with some notes prolonged making each bar of 4 into two bars of 3 such that it sounds like a Strauss walts, I'll have that to pull from.
Then, when it comes time to actually perform it, I have a lot of different ideas and interpretations to choose from.
I think that we lose a lot in music if we restrict ourselves to one interpretation. What's on the page, I consider to be the composer's indication of "This is a way to make the music sound really cool, and I recommend you play it that way." So I learn it that way first and see what's there.
As a composer, though, I also find value in a few other concepts that others may or may not agree with.
First, any given piece of music put in front of a performer only has one suggested interpretation written on it, but while I'm writing, I may have heard it a few different ways and just picked the one I liked best when it came time to polish the piece off and send it to performers.
Second, I've been pleasantly surprised by what performers have done with my music that I never considered and that isn't written on the page, often so much so that I think "If I were revising this piece, I'd put that in." I generally don't like putting out revisions for various reasons, but that's a different topic.
Third, there are a lot of things that a composer might assume the performers will do in accordance with performance practices of his time and possibly even of his local area and/or the soloist the piece is for. It is very very possible to put too much information on the page (I've done it, to performers' dismay) and so I'll leave things off that I assume the performer will do themselves.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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