The Composer and Recording

[Serial_Apologist]

It isn't really a question of being objective but of having some kind of vision of how the music could sound.

Going back to the question of notation: it's a medium of communication between composer and performer, and as such is characterised by the complexities and ambiguities at the heart of any form of human communication, which composers (and/or performers) may see as a restriction or limitation, or (more fruitfully I think) as an opportunity, to create the conditions wherein every interpretation potentially renews the music in some way. Even in the case of fixed-media electronic music where sounds composed in the studio are projected directly into the performing space, quite different experiences can arise from different acoustics, choice and placement of speakers, how active the live diffusion of the sound is, and so on, as MrGG I'm sure will confirm.

There's an enormous range of degrees of specificity in musical notation, from the precisest possible indication of every sound and/or action (as in Stockhausen's Klavierstücke I-IV), to a few brief words (as in the same composer's Aus den sieben Tagen) describing some particular way of thinking about improvisation, but explicitly specifying no sounds and/or actions at all. (Something that interests me particularly is the interweaving of these extremes in the same composition.)

And going back further to recording: it becomes very easy to confuse a recording with "the work", particularly since in a huge amount of the music we hear (ie. popular musics from the early 20th century onwards, to name only these) the recording actually is the work. But I think it's in the end restricting to think we know, or need to know, what "the work" actually is, and what "the composer's creation" actually consists of, let alone what Brahms may or may not have preferred.

From what I understand, Stockhausen's insistence upon fidelity to the intentions inscribed in his scores was one of the things that led him to the electronic tape medium; around the time of composing Studies I and II he was in the process of "rejigging" serial "parametrisation" to allow for performer inaccuracy, which could logically be read presumably as interpretive freedom, though ironically he later insisted on other performers of his works listening to his own recordings of them before so doing.

Slightly off-topic I've never really understood Ferneyhough's views regarding accuracy of interpretation for his own, meticulously notated works. Fermey has posted some very useful links to pieces of his which simultaneously display the score. The performances sound so delightfully spontaneous and expressive of their interpreters' personalities and skills, one would have to be a right meanie to want to employ accurate means of measurement to test for fidelity!

[Richard Barrett]

The performances sound so delightfully spontaneous and expressive of their interpreters' personalities and skills

That's because the relationship between notational precision and interpretational freedom is not the simple reciprocal one many people might think it is. Notation can in itself be a vehicle of unlocking an interpreter's spontaneity and individuality.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Yes, ferney, regarding Brahms, yes there are a large number of anecdotes about him tolerating different styles of interpretations of his music.
I would suggest that it must be due to a trait that possessed which you find difficult to believe--, namely, he was tolerant to different
approaches to his music. Not every Composer was as controlling as Benjamin Britten.

Oh, but rfg - you yourself used the word "reportedly": when did Brahms make this comment to the teenaged Monteux? In what context? Was he just jollying along a group of young French students who had prepared one of his works for him? Was the French version faster or slower, louder or softer (you referred to "different tempo and dynamics") than Brahms' markings? Do you really believe that there are performances of Brahms' works (Brahms in the name of all that's holy!) which succeed by ignoring the scores' instructions, which "improve the Brahms experience" in so doing? That's what I "find difficult to believe".

Regarding the objectivity of a Composer concerning his or her own creations, personally I think it would be very difficult to be objective about one's own work.

Again, I find this very difficult to understand. Do you mean that Britten's own recordings of his works are "suspect"? Or are you contradicting what you've just said about Brahms and suggesting that we shouldn't pay any attention to the comments he reportedly made to Monteux (et al) because he wasn't really being objective about his own work?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I don't know why the Brahms anecdote which richardfinegold mentioned should be so implausible. Surely it is perfectly possible that a composer could value two different interpretations of his work - not all of them have been fanatically controlling and demanding to require only one kind of performance. As you yourself indicated with Stravinsky's recordings, composers may change their performances as their compositional style changes (and they may indeed change the works themselves, as Schumann was constantly doing).

There has grown up a belief in the score as a kind of holy text, that there is contained the ideal product of the composer's imagination which performers can strive to bring to life. But the comments of two composers here, Richard Barrett and ahinton, show that it is by no means as straightforward as that. And there was a time when the score was not treated so reverentially, but more variable according to the requirements of different circumstances (as Handel reworked his Messiah for different performances), where composers would reorchestrate works from an earlier generation, where improvisation and ornamentation was part of the completion of a work - and still today, cadenzas are places where performers are invited (in some cases, compelled) to make their own contribution to the music.

Some philosophers of music and writers on music have also been sceptical about the excessive veneration of the text. Roman Ingarden, in his The Work of Music and the Problem of Its Identity, argues that the musical work does not exist fully in score: the composer cannot specify all the work's details because notation is not adequate for the task. As a result we cannot know which performance best represents the work as an ideal aesthetic object; we can't know enough about the ideal work to know that. "The composer's artistic achievement is...the creation of the work as a schema subject to musical notation...that displays a variety of potential profiles through its performance." Daniel Leech-Wilkinson agrees, writing "It is far from clear that composers have always, or even often, believed that their works were fully conceived by them, having a single ideal form, which they would specify fully if only notation were adequate to the task.....By tying our view of a work to a composer's intentions we are putting ourselves in a position where we can only fail to perform the work. The composer's intentions can never be known sufficiently."

Then what is to be performed? If a composer writes Allegro molto, in 2/4 time with a PP dynamic, does a performer "tie his/her view to a composer's intentions" and therefore put his/herself "in a position where we can only fail to perform the work" if s/he actually plays very quickly, very quietly with a sense of strong-weak pulsation? Can the only way to reveal the splendours of the work be to play it slowly, loudly and with the sense of a Waltz? What have Leech-Wilkinson's comments to do with richardfinegold's story of Brahms reportedly patting Monteux on the head for playing one of his String Quartets with different tempi, dynamics and phrasing than those marked in the score?

But does this mean that you think Britten was right when he condemned the Vickers ROH production of Grimes, the composer being the ultimate arbiter?

I've covered this in #18.

[edashtav]

That's because the relationship between notational precision and interpretational freedom is not the simple reciprocal one many people might think it is. Notation can in itself be a vehicle of unlocking an interpreter's spontaneity and individuality.

I agree. Perhaps, this section of an interview between Pendrecki and Duffie (c. 2000) has some relevance:

KP: Yes, absolutely. I don’t like to do the first performance myself. I would rather give it to another conductor who is doing it. I can really then have a distance from my own piece.

BD: Then you come it to later?

KP: Yes. Because I wrote the piece, I know the piece, but maybe my concept is only one of the interpretations. Maybe it’s not good, because there are many, many possibilities to conduct a piece, the same piece.

BD: If you come back to your own score a number of years later, do you look for more of these possibilities?

KP: There is something that I think happens, not just to me, but also to many, many others. My imagination is much richer than I am really able to write. When I am tired, sometimes I am dreaming about the very particular piece I'm working on, and I wake up with some fresh ideas, and I am not able really to write everything down. Just some percentage of it. So conducting my own piece is going back to something which has been lost, something which you can’t really describe the color, especially the color of the orchestra, because the form is fixed. But there are many ways to conduct the same piece as far as the tempo is concerned.

BD: And they’re all right?

KP: Yes. It depends on the place. If I would do my piece in a church, the tempi are different than in a very dry acoustic. And the mood, also, yes.

BD: The mood at the time you wrote it, or the mood you are in at that performance?

KP: My mood in the moment I am conducting.

[richardfinegold]

... the education I received was literary rather than musical : but one of the things you learnt very early on was that writers were very often not the best judges of their own works. It's as if some of what they were writing when they were creating 'works of genius' emerged from parts of their brain which were doing things of which they were not directly conscious in their more mundane lives. And often a subsequent critic is able to shed light on the values and significance of a piece of work of which the originator may have been only dimly aware.

I don't see why composers would be different in this.

I took some theatre classes in Undergraduate. I had workshop where all the participants wrote a couple of short plays and the other students would direct and act, and you could not direct and act in your own play. I remember being very frustrated with the other students for the way they were misinterpreting my vision, and of course they would feel the same way. The Professor was a referee of sorts, deciding when the interpreters were within some sort of correct boundary and when they had crossed an artistic line. In many cases the other students input improved the original, and in others they did damage. At least I learned that a playwright has to account for the artistic visions of his interpreters.
If a piece of music is sent into the world for other musicians to interpret, surely some bounds must exist for the performers to impart their own vision?

[MrGongGong]

If a piece of music is sent into the world for other musicians to interpret, surely some bounds must exist for the performers to impart their own vision?

Why would someone compose a piece of music and then decide to have no involvement with it's presentation ?

I'm not suggesting it's NOT a valid way of working but maybe the idea that somehow the COMPOSER sits in a room creating masterpieces that are then passed on to lesser mortals to realise is the exception rather than the way in which composition has taken place historically ?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

If a piece of music is sent into the world for other musicians to interpret, surely some bounds must exist for the performers to impart their own vision?

"If". But there are some works that need no "interpretation" - they "just" need other Musicians to perform them. And I keep putting "just" in inverted commas because the human involvement (physical, imaginative, psychological) in realizing the notes in such works is enormous and goes far beyond the superficial, unimaginative cosmetics of what is frequently meant by "interpretation". I mentioned earlier six conductors who lead their players through very different realizations of the Beethoven Symphonies whilst paying scrupulous attention to the details of the scores. If this is what you mean by "imparting their vision", then I agree with your comment entirely.

[Sir Velo]

Why would someone compose a piece of music and then decide to have no involvement with it's (sic) presentation ?

I don't think anyone was suggesting that a composer would not wish to have some input over presentation of their material, but the following points might elucidate why complete control over all aspects of performance might be neither possible nor desirable:

1. The composer can't live forever and, therefore, may have no choice in whether they are able to superintend every performance!
2. They may prefer to see how performers interpret their vision without interference;
3. Aleatoric elements in the composition may predominate;
4. The work may receive so many performances that they are unable to attend every performance in person, and therefore have "to let go".
5. Audiences don't go to the theatre expecting (or even hoping) to see a play enacted the same way every production or performance. By the same token, other aspects of a composer's score may be revealed by a less prescriptive approach to musical interpretation.
6. Collectors who own multiple versions of, for example, Beethoven's fifth do not purchase alternatives just in order to hear the notes played in exactly the same way as each of the other recordings. Any work of high merit will be of sufficient complexity that no one performance can possibly be considered to have said it all.

[Hornspieler]

Why would someone compose a piece of music and then decide to have no involvement with it's presentation ?

I'm not suggesting it's NOT a valid way of working but maybe the idea that somehow the COMPOSER sits in a room creating masterpieces that are then passed on to lesser mortals to realise is the exception rather than the way in which composition has taken place historically ?

Lesser Mortals? Now I've really been put in my place!

The late Graham Whettam, for whom I have the greatest respect as a composer, was barred from attending rehearsals and recording sessions because of his constant interference. If I read a book, I don't expect to find its author leaning over my shoulder, telling me what his ideas were when he portrayed a certain character. I have my own vision of what a character looks like and my own opinion of his behaviour and motivation.

That is why I avoid seeing a film if I have already read and enjoyed reading the book. I know that I will be disappointed.

HS

[Richard Barrett]

If I read a book, I don't expect to find its author leaning over my shoulder, telling me what his ideas were when he portrayed a certain character.

Although that's surely a matter of literary style, isn't it? I'm sure that if you read a novel where characters are described in greater-than-usual detail you wouldn't skip over those parts on the grounds that you know better than the author? Or maybe you do, who knows.

Again, it's as meaningless to generalise about composers as it is about any other group of people who happen to be involved in some activity or other. Some are excessively humble, others are "control freaks"; some might see intervening in rehearsals and performances as exercising control over the results, others as helping the performers to get to grips with the music (especially when rehearsal time is limited, as it often is). I've learned more from listening to and working with performers than from any lessons in composition.

[ahinton]

Although that's surely a matter of literary style, isn't it? I'm sure that if you read a novel where characters are described in greater-than-usual detail you wouldn't skip over those parts on the grounds that you know better than the author? Or maybe you do, who knows.

Again, it's as meaningless to generalise about composers as it is about any other group of people who happen to be involved in some activity or other. Some are excessively humble, others are "control freaks"; some might see intervening in rehearsals and performances as exercising control over the results, others as helping the performers to get to grips with the music (especially when rehearsal time is limited, as it often is). I've learned more from listening to and working with performers than from any lessons in composition.

My own experience and thoughts largely echo yours here. I suppose that, sometimes, it's almost a matter of luck (or seems that way); invariably when I've been invited to reheasals of my work I have ended up (as I'd always hope in advance that I would) sitting in a corner listening and feeling the need to say almost nothing beyond giving words of encouragement, but then almost invariably I've listened in such situations to performers doing just what I had in mind anyway and, when they don't, what they do instead is something better that leaves me with a feeling of "now why didn't I think of that?!". I remember on one occasion being asked "this is how you want this, isn't it?" rather than "how do you want this?". I don't want to sound fanciful here, but there have been times when, at rehearsals, I've found myself feeling as though the performers must have been eavesdropping on me when I was writing the music.

Control freakery in such matters can lead only to rancour, irritation and other negative things and is to be avoided at all costs; whatever my respect for Britten and Whettam, I don't think it makes any difference which composer tries to exercise this kind of thing at rehearsal, it will almost always backfire. I wonder if it's a character flaw that is illustrative - or perhaps a symptom - of a more general possessiveness - avarice, even - in its determination to impose its will on performers and, by association, listeners rather than having performers enable one to share the music with its listeners for whom it was intended?

[MrGongGong]

I don't think anyone was suggesting that a composer would not wish to have some input over presentation of their material, but the following points might elucidate why complete control over all aspects of performance might be neither possible nor desirable:

1. The composer can't live forever and, therefore, may have no choice in whether they are able to superintend every performance!
2. They may prefer to see how performers interpret their vision without interference;
3. Aleatoric elements in the composition may predominate;
4. The work may receive so many performances that they are unable to attend every performance in person, and therefore have "to let go".
5. Audiences don't go to the theatre expecting (or even hoping) to see a play enacted the same way every production or performance. By the same token, other aspects of a composer's score may be revealed by a less prescriptive approach to musical interpretation.
6. Collectors who own multiple versions of, for example, Beethoven's fifth do not purchase alternatives just in order to hear the notes played in exactly the same way as each of the other recordings. Any work of high merit will be of sufficient complexity that no one performance can possibly be considered to have said it all.

I wasn't suggesting a particular stance
more that when I make something out of sounds I would find it hard to imagine that I wouldn't want to be involved at the point where those sounds are played or recorded. For pragmatic reasons it does happen , obviously.


'Lesser mortals' should have read "Lesser Mortals " .....HS

[aeolium]

Then what is to be performed? If a composer writes Allegro molto, in 2/4 time with a PP dynamic, does a performer "tie his/her view to a composer's intentions" and therefore put his/herself "in a position where we can only fail to perform the work" if s/he actually plays very quickly, very quietly with a sense of strong-weak pulsation? Can the only way to reveal the splendours of the work be to play it slowly, loudly and with the sense of a Waltz? What have Leech-Wilkinson's comments to do with richardfinegold's story of Brahms reportedly patting Monteux on the head for playing one of his String Quartets with different tempi, dynamics and phrasing than those marked in the score?

But you are attempting to ridicule a different argument by exaggeration and distortion. No-one could imagine Brahms applauding players for really wayward departures from the score, but Brahms was, like some of his contemporaries, notoriously hostile to metronome markings and as Beethoven had earlier complained the old Italian tempo markings allowed for considerable latitude in performance.

I think Sir Velo has made some good points about the dangers of the composer seeking to control the performance too precisely. But I get the impression that for you there is an ideal performance of the work - one that has been present in the composer's imagination - and that the performers by following the score as precisely as possible can approach that ideal performance. For me I am not sure about that ideal performance (and if it existed we can have no access to it) and I think that diversity of interpretation, not least through cultural change, is at the very essence of any musical work of value.

[Richard Barrett]

diversity of interpretation, not least through cultural change

- indeed the performance history of a musical composition is to an important extent part of the music, which is thus never "finished", particularly since the early 19th century when performing music from past ages gradually became more prevalent - the idea of "classical" music now having taken such a hold that it's deemed to extend into the present ("modern classical music"!). As I mentioned before, in the more distant past, when composers were present for a performance they would have a very strong influence on it through performing in it, and when they weren't present their supposed preferences wouldn't enter into the musicians' heads. Nowadays, "the composer's intentions" (not to mention "the instruments Bach would have preferred") are the subject of close scrutiny and endless arguments, even when there exist recordings of their own interpretations!