Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2008-10-06 01:09
Alex wrote:
>> 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. >>
Whenever I have discussions of this sort, it always strikes me that I have a very different view from most people here about what 'playing what the composer wrote' consists of.
Alex characterises it as 'completely straight'; and Ed Palanker wrote:
>> If it was played exactly as it’s written with no other interpretation it might as well be played on a computer instead of a clarinet. >>
That's not the way it seems to me at all.
Somebody once said that there is a difference between complex simplicity and simple complexity. The first is superficially simple, but has a deeper structure that acts to draw a listener in and convince them of the sense of what is being presented.
The second is superficially complex; but after a bit the listener can detect that it has no depth, and becomes bored.
Now of course, I have no way of knowing, without hearing it, whether Alex's performance of the Copland cadenza is the one or the other. It might be that his 'pulling' from all these ways of playing it DOES have a sense that I would find convincing.
But somehow I doubt it. Copland's music, for me, has very little to do with that sort of indulgence. (And, by the way, don't think that I can't myself 'pull' that sort of trick. It's the easiest thing in the world to do, for an expert player.)
I choose, rather, to have both surface and depth reflect the directness and simplicity of what Copland wrote. I don't think it a bad idea to regard Copland as a musician who merits my starting by privileging the expression of his ideas over what I might randomly happen to come up with on a given occasion. And I totally reject Ed Palanker's notion that 'playing it as written' means that there is not available to you an infinity of nuances in the dimensions of tonecolour, diminuendo, accent, energy, laidbackness and so on -- NONE of which contradicts the notation, but which may serve to bring alive more fully the musical ideas that are already there.
They are there, that is, only if you take the trouble to think about, and discover, what they are. The great conductor Rudolf Kempe wrote:
"One must not search, one must find. Searching implies conscious manipulation. Finding is the result of devotion to a composer and his music."
The notion that playing what is written must be boring perhaps goes along with the sort of teaching I seem to encounter here -- mostly American teaching, I have to say -- that reduces clarinet playing to ONE GOOD SOUND (as though there were such a thing) and CORRECTNESS of approach to the instrument.
For example, I was startled to read Ed's notion that his ideas of tongue position gave 'a darker sound', which he preferred. Well, sure -- but what about when the music requires a brighter sound, which it often does?
So, given that you have just the one, 'good', dark sound available, I suppose it's not so surprising that if you don't mess about with the rhythms, it gets a bit boring.
There are many other dimensions of variation that don't contradict the notation, like the sorts of subtle variations of tempo that aren't perceived as such, but rather heard as 'heaviness' and 'lightness', all within one overall speed. Then, the simple structure of the triadic arpeggios is preserved; and the way they are presented and then distorted as the cadenza progresses (they have, right from the outset, the intriguing quality of going both up and down SIMULTANEOUSLY; think about it) serves to unify what is clearly a connected discourse.
Apart from all that, what in my view is reprehensible here is the notion that INDIVIDUALITY is to be sought as a positive quality in and of itself. That's an approach to music that has you, right from the outset, tend to want to CHANGE what is there.
The alternative is to take the trouble to find the musical arguments that lie both behind and in the notes, and SPEAK them -- using whatever technical resources you have, or can develop -- in what after all cannot be other than your own voice.
The truth is, if your palette is rich enough, you cannot avoid individuality. C.D.F. Schubart wrote of the harpsichord playing of C.P.E. Bach:
"One is aware of witchcraft without noticing a single magical gesture."
That's an ideal that appeals to me much more than the manipulative Harry Potterisms that Alex purveys. And notice that he says, right at the outset, "I find *I* get more out of a piece when....."
How about the idea of getting US, the audience, INTO the PIECE?-)
Tony
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