Watching several programmes related to the Britten centenary recently prompted this question: to what extent should performers be influenced, or even governed, by recordings made by the composer? Those who interpret the works of composers who lived before the age of recording have only the score and other historical information about performance style to guide them, but those who are performing C20 works often have the additional pressure of knowing that the composer has recorded them: for instance, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Bartok, Rachmaninov, Britten, Tippett, Boulez, Stravinsky to name a few.
So has the presence of composer interpretations helped or restricted the interpretations of succeeding performers? I don't get the impression that in many cases it has prevented later performers from departing significantly from the composer's recordings - especially for instance with Elgar and Vaughan Williams. But there is one particular composer whose recordings cast a long shadow over the efforts of later interpreters: Britten, not just because he was an expert conductor of his own works, was very meticulous about getting exactly the results that he wanted and had - unusually - one long-standing preferred singer for the recordings, Peter Pears, but also because he clearly believed that future interpretations should attempt to match as closely as possible those that he had laid down. Here is Professor Roger Parker in his recent Gresham College lecture:
"Britten seemed to leave remarkably little to the discretion of the performers, and as if to demonstrate this further, he jotted down precise timings (timings accurate to the second) for each movement. What is more, we have ample evidence that the composer became increasingly intolerant of performers who strayed from what he considered the exact letter of the text. The vocal score of Death in Venice, for example, contains the following, rather threatening instruction: “[the opera] has been recorded complete on Decca under the supervision of the composer. It is recommended that all those involved in a production of the opera should acquaint themselves with this recording”. And when in 1975 Britten heard the Canadian tenor Jon Vickers take the protagonist’s role in Peter Grimes at Covent Garden, and perform it in a vocal manner whose robustness was many leagues away from the then-standard interpretation of Peter Pears, he was incensed, commenting “Why does this man not observe what I wanted?”"
Was Britten right to be so keen to influence future performances in this way? I don't think so, and I think the Colin Davis/ROH production of Peter Grimes with Vickers in the title role was a brave repudiation of that approach. Many people have admired that production as reflecting something of more elemental force in Grimes' character, something at least closer to the character in the Crabbe poem and arguably the libretto. And the more general point is that in an artist's work there is much over which the artist has conscious mastery, yet there are also qualities of his unconscious mind over which he does not have control. I certainly feel this when reading Dickens, that he is relentlessly pursuing secret themes which he could not consciously acknowledge (to do with his childhood and his treatment by his parents). It ought to be possible for later interpreters to bring out elements in the work which the composer did not, perhaps could not.
So has the presence of composer interpretations helped or restricted the interpretations of succeeding performers? I don't get the impression that in many cases it has prevented later performers from departing significantly from the composer's recordings - especially for instance with Elgar and Vaughan Williams. But there is one particular composer whose recordings cast a long shadow over the efforts of later interpreters: Britten, not just because he was an expert conductor of his own works, was very meticulous about getting exactly the results that he wanted and had - unusually - one long-standing preferred singer for the recordings, Peter Pears, but also because he clearly believed that future interpretations should attempt to match as closely as possible those that he had laid down. Here is Professor Roger Parker in his recent Gresham College lecture:
"Britten seemed to leave remarkably little to the discretion of the performers, and as if to demonstrate this further, he jotted down precise timings (timings accurate to the second) for each movement. What is more, we have ample evidence that the composer became increasingly intolerant of performers who strayed from what he considered the exact letter of the text. The vocal score of Death in Venice, for example, contains the following, rather threatening instruction: “[the opera] has been recorded complete on Decca under the supervision of the composer. It is recommended that all those involved in a production of the opera should acquaint themselves with this recording”. And when in 1975 Britten heard the Canadian tenor Jon Vickers take the protagonist’s role in Peter Grimes at Covent Garden, and perform it in a vocal manner whose robustness was many leagues away from the then-standard interpretation of Peter Pears, he was incensed, commenting “Why does this man not observe what I wanted?”"
Was Britten right to be so keen to influence future performances in this way? I don't think so, and I think the Colin Davis/ROH production of Peter Grimes with Vickers in the title role was a brave repudiation of that approach. Many people have admired that production as reflecting something of more elemental force in Grimes' character, something at least closer to the character in the Crabbe poem and arguably the libretto. And the more general point is that in an artist's work there is much over which the artist has conscious mastery, yet there are also qualities of his unconscious mind over which he does not have control. I certainly feel this when reading Dickens, that he is relentlessly pursuing secret themes which he could not consciously acknowledge (to do with his childhood and his treatment by his parents). It ought to be possible for later interpreters to bring out elements in the work which the composer did not, perhaps could not.
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