Musical questions and answers thread

[teamsaint]

We tend to see classical musicians as following a set of instructions ( the score) , and make a critical response on that basis. Whereas our response to a literary text is a more direct one ( with no layers of interpretation by conductors or players to deal with) which invites more immediately a wider range of interpretive techniques?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

We tend to see classical musicians as following a set of instructions ( the score) , and make a critical response on that basis. Whereas our response to a literary text is a more direct one ( with no layers of interpretation by conductors or players to deal with) which invites more immediately a wider range of interpretive techniques?

There is also the point that people who cannot read Music rely on the performers to give them access to a work. With a play, this reliance is mitigated by the audience's ability to read the text and compare what the performers have done with what can be read: there is a greater democracy between what the performers do with a text, and how a spectator can judge and react to this in comparison with what they know of the text. Music literally needs reliable (rely-worthy) performers to empower the listener to engage fully in what the composer has communicated in the score, rather than putting a barrier of "interpretation" between the composer and the listener - causing a reaction to the performance that the listener believes is a response to the composer's ideas.

[teamsaint]

There is also the point that people who cannot read Music rely on the performers to give them access to a work. With a play, this reliance is mitigated by the audience's ability to read the text and compare what the performers have done with what can be read: there is a greater democracy between what the performers do with a text, and how a spectator can judge and react to this in comparison with what they know of the text. Music literally needs reliable (rely-worthy) performers to empower the listener to engage fully in what the composer has communicated in the score, rather than putting a barrier of "interpretation" between the composer and the listener - causing a reaction to the performance that the listener believes is a response to the composer's ideas.

But isn't there always a ( barrier of) interpretation, however faithful the interpreter may be trying to be to the score ?

And even if that wasn't the case, questions of how to interpret a work or performance still remain. For example, I would think that those who viewed musical activity through the lens of Feminist critical theory ( never read any of this kind of theory myself ) might throw very interesting light on many works with their origins in patriarchal, male dominated systems ( Haydn at Esterhazy ?), or forms which might be seem to have their origins in such systems, for example various kinds of dances, marches etc. And Marxist approaches might do something similar. And they might also have plenty to say about how performances and interpretations might be influenced by current systems of the same patriarchal kind.

Likewise structuralist or post structuralist theory might have interesting light to shed on cycles of works, for example replacing binary linguistic opposites with some perceived " opposites" in the score.

[MrGongGong]

But isn't there always a ( barrier of) interpretation, however faithful the interpreter may be trying to be to the score ?

I think this might have something useful to say about it

https://archive.org/stream/silencelecturesw1961cage/silencelecturesw1961cage_djvu.txt

P35

[Bryn]

I think this might have something useful to say about it

https://archive.org/stream/silencelecturesw1961cage/silencelecturesw1961cage_djvu.txt

P35

Trust you to bring the Bible into it.

[MrGongGong]

Trust you to bring the Bible into it.

[MrGongGong]

We tend to see classical musicians as following a set of instructions ( the score) , and make a critical response on that basis. Whereas our response to a literary text is a more direct one ( with no layers of interpretation by conductors or players to deal with) which invites more immediately a wider range of interpretive techniques?

How precise a set of instructions do you think a score is ?

[teamsaint]

How precise a set of instructions do you think a score is ?

How would one go about defining how precise a set of instructions a score is ? They would vary of course depending on the intention of the composer, and perhaps the conventions of the time, ( amongst other things) But we can only have an imprecise understanding of the intention ( even in a closely annotated score) , which inevitably throws the ( or much) responsibility for critical interpretation back to the performer or listener.

[doversoul1]

Mr GG
Now that the busiest time in the garden is over, I shall have many a happy hour going through the list.

Ferney
Wasn’t John Butt told by his tutor just forget it or something to the effect when he proposed to research performance? This was nearly 20 years ago and I imagine serious academic studies on performance have happened and developed since then. However, performance is still one stage before listening. What I am looking for may be something like musical equivalent to reader response theory (Yes, Mr GG. Ethnomudicology ). In more practical terms, I am wondering what the role of (non-academic) reviews in classical music are.

I don’t know if the following makes any sense. If it doesn’t please ignore it.

These expressions/descriptions are from The Guardian’s review of Prom19: BBCSO/Dausgaard

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/jul/29/prom-19-bbcso-dausgaard-review

- It's attractively scored and was slickly played.
- didn't quite sustain the anguish into the finale, which was elegiac rather than tragic in mood.
- probed the sardonic wit of its outer movements and the soured romanticism of its central moderato with great and detailed insight.

If this were a book review, the reviewer would refer to the particular elements in the narrative development or at least make it clear the reasons why s/he uses these expressions to describe the work. Also, it is assumed that the reviewer’s judgement is loosely based on some theoretical concepts. Can the same be true with musical performance reviews?

I enjoy reading reviews and some reviews seem to explain why I feel about a particular performance as I do. And I very much enjoy reading the forum members thoughts on performances and recordings. Increasingly though, I feel like asking if a lot of ‘reviews’ are in the same category as writings on wine tasting. How plausible or valuable is verbalisation (?) of musical performances?


Stop press
ts
How do those ideologies/theories influence how composed works are performed? And would you be able to explain to the likes of me how for example, Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony in Feminist or The Planets in Post colonial performances (not that The Planets is particularly colonialist but it was a creation in that era) sound different from how these works are usually performed?
(I am dead serious).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

But isn't there always a ( barrier of) interpretation, however faithful the interpreter may be trying to be to the score ?

Indeed - but there are paper walls and nuclear bunkers. The same is true of a theatrical company performing a text-based play -and, indeed even when a fluent reader reads a poem or a novel: the text can remain the same, but our changing moods and experiences enables us to respond to aspects of a text that we'd "underlooked" in previous readings. Which leads on to:

And even if that wasn't the case, questions of how to interpret a work or performance still remain. For example, I would think that those who viewed musical activity through the lens of Feminist critical theory ( never read any of this kind of theory myself ) might throw very interesting light on many works with their origins in patriarchal, male dominated systems ( Haydn at Esterhazy ?), or forms which might be seem to have their origins in such systems, for example various kinds of dances, marches etc. And Marxist approaches might do something similar. And they might also have plenty to say about how performances and interpretations might be influenced by current systems of the same patriarchal kind.

Likewise structuralist or post structuralist theory might have interesting light to shed on cycles of works, for example replacing binary linguistic opposites with some perceived " opposites" in the score.

An analysis - either of a text, or of the cultural context in which that text was produced - might be seen as another type of "performance", responding to given information in a written from (rather than with the more orthodox actors/instrumentalists "playing" a work). And this creates another text, requiring "interpretation" by the reader. So we can take the study further - and come up with a cultural history of cultural history.

The work of Art is there for our individual and communal delight and empowerment. Art reminds us how vast we are as a species, how great is our capacity for joy, grief, love, and cruelty - to create connections between people, and (perhaps more importantly) within ourselves - and this has never been more important, at a time when commercialism/Capitalism/The Market keeps trying to tell us how small we are, how our lives cannot be complete until we buy this toy or that. Any performance (played or written in response to a "text" [the inverted commas, because visual Art is included here]) that brings us closer to a work of Art - and closer to this self-discovery and self-awareness - has done its job.

Anything else is just deception.

[teamsaint]

?


Stop press
ts
How do those ideologies/theories influence how composed works are performed? And would you be able to explain to the likes of me how for example, Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony in Feminist or The Planets in Post colonial performances (not that The Planets is particularly colonialist but it was a creation in that era) sound different from how these works are usually performed?
(I am dead serious).

I don't think I have the tools to answer in regard to your two examples, DS, though I'll try to think of some other suggestions.

But this article that I just read does touch on some of the areas that I had in mind . Not at all sure about the final paragraph, but an interesting read nontheless.

https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/cumr/1990-v10-n2-cumr0503/1014882ar.pdf

https://music.case.edu/faculty/susan-mcclary/

[teamsaint]

Any performance (played or written in response to a "text" [the inverted commas, because visual Art is included here]) that brings us closer to a work of Art - and closer to this self-discovery and self-awareness - has done its job.

Anything else is just deception.

But that judgement depends on your own interpretation of a performance, and the "text". A performance that performs that function for you, might not for somebody with a different critical perspective, and vice versa.

[teamsaint]

I think this might have something useful to say about it

https://archive.org/stream/silencelecturesw1961cage/silencelecturesw1961cage_djvu.txt

P35

Thanks. Very interesting.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

But that judgement depends on your own interpretation of a performance, and the "text". A performance that performs that function for you, might not for somebody with a different critical perspective, and vice versa.

Of course - as the Forum demonstrates vividly every day! That is, I think, part of our social condition - to survive as a species, we needed communities made up of individuals with separate talents: those with excellent eyesight, those with more acute hearing, those who could run faster, throw further, etc etc. There have been experiments (a couple were shown on David Eagleman's series on The Brain a few years back) which suggests that different groups of people literally see the same things in different ways - it would not be surprising if we literally heard differently, too.

Which is why one critic can say of the same performance of a Beethoven Quartet movement that it is "soaked in grief", another that it displays the composer's "sardonic stoism" - the responses are subjective. But to comment that the movement begins in the Tonic minor and moves to the flattened submediant major is objective - either this is a accurate account of what happens, or it's not. Similarly, we can dislike a performance, but cannot fairly claim that it is a "bad" one if nothing is done that isn't justified by the text. Nor can we justifiably claim that a performance that alters details in the score - cuts sections out, changes instrumentation, adds (or omits) expressive details - is a "true" representation of the composer's work, no matter how much we enjoy the results.

Perhaps it doesn't matter - perhaps the important thing is that we reach that point of self-realization/self-discovery, not fidelity to a writer's text. But that seems to me to be the stance of the Nazis who renewed their "spiritual" batteries by listening to Beethoven, Wagner, Bach, etc etc

At which point I reach the frontiers of my understanding ... if I hadn't already done so some sentences ago!

[ardcarp]

A useful thought about the nature of a musical score might be to compare it with another method of prescribing how music should be played, that is the player piano (aka pianola) roll. The latter allows almost nothing in the sense of interpretation. Interesting that Nancarrow used paper rolls directly as his 'score'.