BaL 27.12.14 - Schubert: Symphony no. 8 in B minor

[edashtav]

This surely is the issue in a nutshell!

I fully concede that if I (or EA) like a performance that doesn't make it a good performance. But if I, EA and the whole of the RFH, Albert Hall or whatever audience, plus maybe all the wonderful music critics attending agree it is a good performance then surely it is a good performance? That's all the term can mean: a helluva lot of people rate it as a good performance.


[...]
In short, fhg's attempt at forming a mathematical identity between 'good performance' and 'exact following of the score' just won't work, and seems the kind of ultra-objective, pseudo-scientific approach to matters of taste/ value-judgment that is so favoured today.
[...]

Yes, I, too, am worried by the tempting simplicity of fhg's identity theorem, but that doesn't worry me as much as your blind popularism, LMP! What does the crowd understand by "good" ? Is it rating "effectiveness" ? A performance can be affecting and/or effective, yet miles away from being true to the composer's score.

[Roehre]

..... The consensus view is what makes 'a good performance'. ...

I am sorry. That does not make it a good performance. Then it is perceived as a good performance.

Whether it exactly follows the score (whatever that means) is a completely different, independent question,

Indeed a different question - but not as independent as is suggested. An adapted or amended score can be the basis of a performance which is perceived to be great. A disservice to the composer can be achieved at the same time by the same performance.

... even though we're probably justified in predicting that will have a big influence on fhg's own (personal and subjective) rating of it.

as it does to anyone else's (personal and subjective) rating of it. That FHG's rating is or isn't shared by others doesn't make it less valuable.

In short, fhg's attempt at forming a mathematical identity between 'good performance' and 'exact following of the score' just won't work,

As far as I can see the only point FHG makes is that exactly following a score is likely to make a composer's intentions clearer than a super-ego-interpreted one.

and seems the kind of ultra-objective, pseudo-scientific approach to matters of taste/ value-judgment that is so favoured today.

a) what is wrong with an objective or ultra-objective approach?
It's just another way of interpretation, one which btw goes back to the sources and the scores as nearly as possble to the ones produced by the composer
b) thank you for calling musicology a pseudo-science - now we safely can bin approximately everything from before Bach and all the Gesamtausgaben, for instance all the Bruckner symphonies as edited by the Nowak team, as these are all based on pseudo-science.....

fhg: this isn't a personal attack - you're entitled to like whatever you like, but you really mustn't elevate your own tastes/ decisions, however right they seem to you, into a canon that others are wrong not to follow.

In my opinion the only point FHG insists to make is that it might be not a bad idea to listen (and listen, and listen again)
to strongly diverging performances/recordings, before deciding that HIP, or traditional, or historic, or how one could classify a type of performance otherwise, is below (one's own) par.

[vibratoforever]

"A good performance is determined by the extent to which the performers present the score that Schubert gave them. This score in its raw state is better than any performance of it can be - Schubert a greater Musician than any of his performers; the closer the performance gets to the Music he imagined, the better it is. And the score in its raw state is the nearest evidence we have of what he imagined."

I wonder if you would get more enjoyment from reading cookery books than eating the food? Recipes and musical scores both lack all the information needed in the delivery of the final product. Take the use of rubato- reportedly Brahms was unhappy on hearing Hans Richter conduct his fourth symphony because of the inflexibility in his chosen pulse and equally unhappy with Von Bulow for the opposite reason.

When Mahler conducted Schubert in Vienna and New York, was this an example of a performer with at least an equal ability as a musician as the composer? He certainly had no hesitation in adding to the original conception.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

fhg: this isn't a personal attack

I know.

- you're entitled to like whatever you like

I know. Try stopping me!

but you really mustn't elevate your own tastes/ decisions, however right they seem to you, into a canon that others are wrong not to follow.

I really wasn't. I was putting Schubert's (in this case) tastes and decisions before those of his performers. Or those of the Albert Hall audience.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

As far as I can see the only point FHG makes is that exactly following a score is likely to make a composer's intentions clearer than a super-ego-interpreted one.

In my opinion the only point FHG insists to make is that it might be not a bad idea to listen (and listen, and listen again)
to strongly diverging performances/recordings, before deciding that HIP, or traditional, or historic, or how one could classify a type of performance otherwise, is below (one's own) par.

Sort-of, yes; when people make comments on the lines of a "tempting simplicity" of adhering to a score, it does rather suggest that they don't really understand how difficult this task is. Seventy different performances can follow the score precisely and still there will be seventy different performances: and the same performer can give different performances of the same work even on different nights. Additional "interpretive"/"expressive" alterations to the score, unsupported by traditions which the composer would have taken for granted, or comments by his/her contemporaries, are superfluous and immature.

The problem with message-board-type responses is that we don't write essays; we engage in conversation; we chat. Impolitely, I was taking for granted that such provisos (?"provisi"?) which I have made many times before over the years would be understood - my apologies.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I wonder if you would get more enjoyment from reading cookery books than eating the food?

Do you?

Recipes and musical scores both lack all the information needed in the delivery of the final product.

Ah, the dangers of hyperbole!

Take the use of rubato- reportedly Brahms was unhappy on hearing Hans Richter conduct his fourth symphony because of the inflexibility in his chosen pulse and equally unhappy with Von Bulow for the opposite reason.

Brahms "reportedly" had so many different ideas about his Music that it's astonishing he ever took such pains to write it. He "reportedly" wanted it to be played faster, slower, louder and quieter than he wrote in his scores. Everybody who saw him on the other side of the street has reported how he ran across the road to let them know how the scores were all wrong and that they should play it differently from what he wrote.

When Mahler conducted Schubert in Vienna and New York, was this an example of a performer with at least an equal ability as a musician as the composer? He certainly had no hesitation in adding to the original conception.

Mahler the composer might have equalled the mature Schubert in Musicianship. Mahler the performer "rewrote" the Music he wrote in his own image of what Music should be. I would be interested in hearing Mahler's idea of Schubert, but I doubt (from hearing his arrangement of the Death & the Maiden Quartet) whether the result would be nearly as good as Schubert's idea of Schubert.

[edashtav]

[QUOTE=ferneyhoughgeliebte;458893]


[...] when people make comments on the lines of a "tempting simplicity" of adhering to a score, it does rather suggest that they don't really understand how difficult this task is. Seventy different performances can follow the score precisely and still there will be seventy different performances: and the same performer can give different performances of the same work even on different nights. Additional "interpretive"/"expressive" alterations to the score, unsupported by traditions which the composer would have taken for granted, or comments by his/her contemporaries, are superfluous and immature."

I understand and accept much of your thinking in that paragraph, FHG,but wonder whether you reduce its force with your final word "immature"? From your "purist's" standpoint "superfluous" fits but immature is scornful and contemptuous of others who live and practise outside your chosen ivory tower.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Brahms "reportedly" had so many different ideas about his Music that it's astonishing he ever took such pains to write it. He "reportedly" wanted it to be played faster, slower, louder and quieter than he wrote in his scores. Everybody who saw him on the other side of the street has reported how he ran across the road to let them know how the scores were all wrong and that they should play it differently from what he wrote.

But this is, surely, human nature. People reconsider, change their minds, contradict themselves. A musical score may only represent a thought on a single day in a long life.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

But this is, surely, human nature. People reconsider, change their minds, contradict themselves. A musical score may only represent a thought on a single day in a long life.

I don't follow you, Alpie - you appear to be suggesting that Brahms (or Schubert) composed their work by the page, jotting ideas down one day and then continuing with something else the next. There may well be composers who work like this, but is there evidence that Brahms did? (The B major Piano Trio, for example - do you believe this to be evidence of "reconsideration", "changing his mind" "contradicting himself"? )

[richardfinegold]

This is an interesting discussion. fwiw I think that Performers should have some freedom to put their own stamp on the music they recreate, even if it means deviating from the printed page. There are boundaries and limits of course; for example I don't wish to hear a Jimi Hendrix like guitar solo during what should be the expostion repeat of the First Movement of the Italian Symphony. If we limit interpretations to rote like recreations of an urtext then Music will truly be limited to a Museum like status and cease to be a living vital entity. I realize that there is a danger of generations of interpretative freedom shifting perceptions from what may have been the intent of the Composer and therefore find the HIPP movement often revelatory in freshening up warhorses, but I object to the notion that such an approach is "Scientific" and therefore by implication the only "objectively correct" way of doing things.
I am grateful that we have so many choices in purchasing recordings to accomdate all the various points of view. Hopefully such freedom of choice will continue in the Concert Hall as well. One unfortunate byproduct of the HIPP movement is that traditional Orchestras for years felt almost apologetic about playing Mozart or Haydn. I think that attitude is receding as well.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I don't follow you, Alpie - you appear to be suggesting that Brahms (or Schubert) composed their work by the page, jotting ideas down one day and then continuing with something else the next. There may well be composers who work like this, but is there evidence that Brahms did? (The B major Piano Trio, for example - do you believe this to be evidence of "reconsideration", "changing his mind" "contradicting himself"? )

I wasn't being at all specific - just pointing out the generality of humans to change their opinions on many things throughout their time on earth.
When I was arranging and scoring a stage musical in 1991, I obtained permission make choral arrangements of some of the songs. The piano accompaniments were my own and approved by the composer. Several performances of the songs later, I suddenly had the urge to change the accompaniment's style and did so, to the surprise and mirth of the conductor. Did I do wrong?
r

[edashtav]

This is an interesting discussion. fwiw I think that Performers should have some freedom to put their own stamp on the music they recreate, even if it means deviating from the printed page. There are boundaries and limits of course; for example I don't wish to hear a Jimi Hendrix like guitar solo during what should be the expostion repeat of the First Movement of the Italian Symphony. If we limit interpretations to rote like recreations of an urtext then Music will truly be limited to a Museum like status and cease to be a living vital entity. I realize that there is a danger of generations of interpretative freedom shifting perceptions from what may have been the intent of the Composer and therefore find the HIPP movement often revelatory in freshening up warhorses, but I object to the notion that such an approach is "Scientific" and therefore by implication the only "objectively correct" way of doing things.
I am grateful that we have so many choices in purchasing recordings to accomdate all the various points of view. Hopefully such freedom of choice will continue in the Concert Hall as well. One unfortunate byproduct of the HIPP movement is that traditional Orchestras for years felt almost apologetic about playing Mozart or Haydn. I think that attitude is receding as well.

A thoughtful and helpful contribution.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Alpie - what in blazes has your #161 got to do with Schubert or Brahms? Do you mean to suggest that there are performers whose "urges" can improve on what Schubert wrote in his score of the B minor Symphony? Do Brahms' revisions of his Piano Trio give performers carte blanche to do their own revisions of his other works? Do you (or anyone else for that matter) believe that a performer can improve on what's written in a score by any of the Greatest composers?

I do not.

I believe that there are certain composers whose Musical imaginations and intelligence(s) stretched far beyond what the rest of us could begin to conceive - that is why they are referred to as "great"; because time and again they wrote things that redefine what sound can do in time, works that stun the mind and stir the passions far more than other Musicians. I don't think that there is anything controversial in making such a statement. I also believe that there are individual works of Music that also reveal insights into Music that surpass other works. The truest (most honest) way to lay bare these astonishing creations to an audience is to present them as closely as possible to how the composer has expressed their ideas in the score. That means the performer reads Allegro in the score and doesn't decide it would be better played Adagio; reads p and doesn't think it's an improvement to play ppp.

To apply to these works (and the B minor Symphony is one such) the same standards as one might approach Kiss Me, Kate (or whatever) doesn't do the works, the audience or the performers themselves any favours. Would it be pertinent to a discussion of Ian McKellen's performances of Richard III to mention his ad-libbing in pantomime? Would Buckingham's arrest be improved by the audience being invited to call out "He's behind you?"

[teamsaint]

As Ferney says in his #163, the greatest creative minds operate in startlingly complex fashion, and have a tendency to create startlingly complex works.

Time changes things though. It may not change a score, or the text of a Shakespeare play , but it can change, for example, the circumstances under which a performance might be staged. It is not impossible, for example, to imagine a staging , or elements of a production of a great Shakespeare play, which might have been inconceivable to the Bard, but might comfortably be thought of as being likely to have been approved of by the playwright. Similarly, a great Shakespeare text has many threads running at once, where academic study reveals them all in great clarity, but where in production certain choices of emphasis need to be made. Part of the problem here is that, in my opinion, the multi layered/ multi themed aspects are probably in part at least, subconscious on the part of the playwright, by which I mean that there might be more going on in the text than he could reasonably expect to be brought out satisfactorily in performance.....or even than he himself realised , at a purely conscious level,was present in his writing.

I would have thought that some of the above also applies to music scores, and performance practice.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I believe that there are certain composers whose Musical imaginations and intelligence(s) stretched far beyond what the rest of us could begin to conceive - that is why they are referred to as "great"; because time and again they wrote things that redefine what sound can do in time, works that stun the mind and stir the passions far more than other Musicians. I don't think that there is anything controversial in making such a statement. I also believe that there are individual works of Music that also reveal insights into Music that surpass other works. The truest (most honest) way to lay bare these astonishing creations to an audience is to present them as closely as possible to how the composer has expressed their ideas in the score. That means the performer reads Allegro in the score and doesn't decide it would be better played Adagio; reads p and doesn't think it's an improvement to play ppp.

Taking extreme examples does not really enhance your argument (Allegro - Adagio), but more subtle ones do, I think, back mine. Dynamics can never be precise, so the score can only be an approximation; it is up to performers to make what they can of what it written. Stokowski-style rewritings are not the issue here.