The Composer and Recording

[Roehre]

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?

The composer being present is not a guarantee that the rehearsed and later on publicly performed work sounds identical with other performances with the same musicians but with another conductor.
I have seen and heard that happening twice during conducting concourses for which an orchestral work had been commissioned.
Both times the 3 finalists were to perform that approx 8 minutes work.
In both situations the composer was present at the rehearsal and gave advice (both requested and on his own initiative).
In both finales the commissioned works were performed adequately (according to the composers), but there were a lot of differences between these performances, not so much so in the tempi, but more in orchestral balance and details.

[aeolium]

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!

Yes, I find it interesting that there seems to be much more consensus over the performance of, for instance, C18 works in matters like tempo, vibrato (lack of) etc even though we cannot ever know what it sounded like then and even though there may well have been great differences in performance styles between different countries or even regions. Yet for C20 works where we have the composer's interpretation there is often much less consensus - strange.

[ahinton]

- 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"!).

I seem to recall (though the particular source now escapes me) that Copland had a thing or two to say about when a piece is "finished" (if ever), though that had to do also with draftings and redraftings up to the "final" draft and then revisions arising from he experience of performances - but of course the whole business of listening to the music of the distant past alongside the more recent past and the present has indeed coloured attitudes to all of this.

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!

As, yes, those "instruments Bach would have preferred"! - as if Bach, outside his own internal imaginings, could possibly have "preferred" instruments that he'd not heard because they'd not yet been designed and manufactured!

But the composer as performer in more recent times seems to have given rise to such misapprehensions of "authenticity". In what some might loosely term the "grand manner" of Romantic pianism, for example, the perception that Rachmaninov's or Godowsky's performances of their own works could not be bettered or should somehow remain as permanent benchmarks is, I suspect, one that would have met with no small amount of puzzled perplexity from Rachmaninov and Godowsky themselves (the latter in particular as he seemed always to be at his best as a pianist when playing before a handful of people in his apartment rather than to a concert audience). Then there's the case of Busoni, who participated in most of the performances of his massive piano concerto that occurred during the remainder of his short life after completing it, yet in some of these (including its première) he was the soloist but others he conducte. OK, there are no recordings of either as there are with Rachmaninov, but whilst studying Rachmaninov's recordings is very useful for pianists, their influence should never become disproportionate.

[Richard Barrett]

even though there may well have been great differences in performance styles between different countries or even regions.

For sure. Performance styles (and instruments) are massively more standardised now than they were three hundred years ago when musicians and their work travelled (in every sense) a lot less. But on the other hand just because these things are more standardised now that doesn't mean that performances need or ought to be standardised too. I don't think there needs to be a consensus.

[Roehre]

For sure. Performance styles (and instruments) are massively more standardised now than they were three hundred years ago when musicians and their work travelled (in every sense) a lot less. But on the other hand just because these things are more standardised now that doesn't mean that performances need or ought to be standardised too. I don't think there needs to be a consensus.

An excellent example of both the differences in sound and how performance styles are now more standardised are the horn sections in Easterneuropean and especially Russian orchestras e.g.