Screwed

[Richard Barrett]

These are very strange questions, Dave, which I would have thought you could work out the answers to yourself without much difficulty.

There are many performances where there are clear deviations from the scores. Does this indicate that the performers did that deliberately, or were they simply less competent?

Those are two possible reasons; there are others.

Composers themselves also take the works of others and modify or "improve" upon them. Are they to be prevented from doing that?

No. How would they be "prevented"?

The world won't cave in if performers do what they think is best. Sometimes a performer may discover or illuminate something different or new in a piece, and even the composer might admit that and approve.

That is of course true.

I don't know why so many people are so seemingly concerned with "what the composer would have wanted". That seems to me at best a side issue, at worst an unknowable factor. We should be able to assume that a composer has put as much or as little specification into a score for it to be realisable by performers of its time - I add the last bit because there are always unspoken aspects of interpretation which the composer can trust performers to provide, and this only becomes a major problem when music is performed at a time far removed from its original circumstances, so that either those circumstances have to be inferred from whatever information is available, or ignored (often on the spurious grounds that the composer "would have preferred" the supposedly improved instruments and playing techniques of a later era, which is so unknowable as to be a pointless subject of speculation).

Returning to the music of John Cage, there are plenty of people around who saw him perform (I did, on many occasions) or worked with him on his compositions, and his love for sound, and the extreme care with which he set up situations where that love could be enacted, is clear from all his work, which contains absolutely nothing ironic, or nihilistic, or flippant, or insincere. He lived a life devoted to music, with a devotion that very many musicians don't come anywhere near, really.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I don't know why so many people are so seemingly concerned with "what the composer would have wanted".

In my case, it's shorthand for "I presume the composer was competent enough to communicate in notation what s/he imagined during the composition of a work" - you're doubly right "wanted" isn't necessarily helpful; "imagined would be best for a piece", perhaps better? And with much Music, where the composer was writing down the barest minimum for a work whose performance they were involved in (and so could fill in details verbally during rehearsal), performers do need to pay attention to literary documentation as well as the score(s) of the work.

Returning to the music of John Cage, there are plenty of people around who saw him perform (I did, on many occasions) or worked with him on his compositions, and his love for sound, and the extreme care with which he set up situations where that love could be enacted, is clear from all his work, which contains absolutely nothing ironic, or nihilistic, or flippant, or insincere. He lived a life devoted to music, with a devotion that very many musicians don't come anywhere near, really.

[MrGongGong]

There are many performances where there are clear deviations from the scores. Does this indicate that the performers did that deliberately, or were they simply less competent?

At one level (standard) music notation is fairly precise - but there is still a great deal of possible variation, which interpreters exploit, and that is presumably why many listeners prefer some performers in some music than others.

Composers themselves also take the works of others and modify or "improve" upon them. Are they to be prevented from doing that?

Yes - I do on the whole prefer to listen to performances which attempt to get closer to what "someone" thought was close to the composer's intentions,but
often that is very much unknown, and sometimes very worthy performances are just plain dull. So I don't think there is any absolute requirement to attempt to second guess what a composer might have wanted, and to perform accordingly. The world won't cave in if performers do what they think is best. Sometimes a performer may discover or illuminate something different or new in a piece, and even the composer might admit that and approve.

I think you probably need to read this

https://archive.org/stream/silencele...1cage_djvu.txt

Particularly this bit ......II. Indeterminacy I 35

[Pulcinella]

Straying somewhat off topic, so perhaps better suited to 'Musical questions and answers', do we know anything about styles of interpretation of figured basses in, say, Corelli's as opposed to Handel's Concerti Grossi?
Did continuo player A in band B in place C have a very different technique (more florid, say) than continuo player X in band Y in place Z?

[ardcarp]

...or did continuo player A in band A and place A 'do it differently' according to circumstances or his/her [!] whim? My slight problem with the HIPP movement in general is its tendency to be categorical. Possibly not entirely off-topic.

[MrGongGong]

...or did continuo player A in band A and place A 'do it differently' according to circumstances or his/her [!] whim? My slight problem with the HIPP movement in general is its tendency to be categorical. Possibly not entirely off-topic.

There is a problem with getting rubber erasers for some of Cage's preparations these days
BUT I suspect (as with things like Revox pinch rollers) the demand will create a niche martket for someone to make them


I do think that many folks who don't play music often assume that composition consists of deciding what "notes" to have and the precise order and pattern of those "notes". Which CAN be the case, but not always (as Cage says).

[Pulcinella]

...or did continuo player A in band A and place A 'do it differently' according to circumstances or his/her [!] whim? My slight problem with the HIPP movement in general is its tendency to be categorical. Possibly not entirely off-topic.

That's certainly what continuo player A (me) did in band A (Fredericton Chamber Orchestra) in place A (Fredericton Cathedral) for a performance of JSB's Magnificat.
The reviewer for the local newspaper asked me after the concert whose ornamentation/realisation I had used, and I had the youthful arrogance (but at least honesty) to say mine!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

That's certainly what continuo player A (me) did in band A (Fredericton Chamber Orchestra) in place A (Fredericton Cathedral) for a performance of JSB's Magnificat.
The reviewer for the local newspaper asked me after the concert whose ornamentation/realisation I had used, and I had the youthful arrogance (but at least honesty) to say mine!

- and I hope that the reviewer mentioned that in the review!

I wouldn't be at all surprised if performers did different things - both from each other, and from what they'd done before - when works were repeated: that's people for you. Some were probably a lot more florid than others.

But, to come back to ardy's "HIPP movement in general" - is there such a thing? Haven't there always been "HIPP movements", with individuals responding to the factual evidence in (sometimes widely and even wildly) different ways? There isn't a "general" attitude - there are individuals, some of whom have a "tendency to be categorical" (in ways that don't correspond to how we might prefer the Music to sound) - but this is true of "the non-HIPP movement in general". One wouldn't use a performance Celibidache to generalise how Toscanini performed Music.

[Dave2002]

To revert, perhaps briefly, to instruments - are there many examples of "damage" being done to instruments during or for performances? In some cases the damage has been permanent, in others not so severe. The French pianist who had his grand piano dropped into a lake - not a musical performance perhaps, but some might consider that a "work of art". What about other types of instrument?

I think rock musicians have smashed guitars to bits (hopefully not very vauable ones) during their shows. Perhaps they were "making a statement", or perhaps just trying to increase their revenue.

Apart from pianos I can't think of many instruments which have been deliberately tampered with for individual performances - tuning a string higher or lower doesn't count!

[MrGongGong]

Apart from pianos I can't think of many instruments which have been deliberately tampered with for individual performances - tuning a string higher or lower doesn't count!

Nor can i (that took me 5 minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex57oiPSxKc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQgP61HavwU&frags=pl%2Cwn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtzkeWnqdNQ&frags=pl%2Cwn

I can't think of many instruments that haven't been "deliberately tampered with for individual performances"

and of course this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENzw0XGAX2Q&frags=pl%2Cwn

[Bryn]

I would just add that a piano technician of my acquaintance insists that even touching the strings in a piano causes serious damage, due to the moisture and oil from the fingers leading to corrosion of the strings. However, the piano is a machine that can be repaired. I recall the excess bill for £200 we got from Steinway as a result of damage to the dampers caused by Roger Smalley's heavy-handed playing during his St John's, Smith Square Memorial Concert (this was on April 24, 1970, decades before he died).

[vinteuil]

I would just add that a piano technician of my acquaintance insists that even touching the strings in a piano causes serious damage, due to the moisture and oil from the fingers leading to corrosion of the strings. However, the piano is a machine that can be repaired. I recall the excess bill for £200 we got from Steinway as a result of damage to the dampers caused by Roger Smalley's heavy-handed playing during his St John's, Smith Square Memorial Concert (this was on April 24, 1970, decades before he died).

... I'm surprised that dampers wd be affected by heavy-handed playing. Hammers perhaps, but surely the dropping-down of the dampers is not affected by any heroics on the keyboard?

.

[Serial_Apologist]

I would just add that a piano technician of my acquaintance insists that even touching the strings in a piano causes serious damage, due to the moisture and oil from the fingers leading to corrosion of the strings. However, the piano is a machine that can be repaired. I recall the excess bill for £200 we got from Steinway as a result of damage to the dampers caused by Roger Smalley's heavy-handed playing during his St John's, Smith Square Memorial Concert (this was on April 24, 1970, decades before he died).

Back in the late 1980s a bunch of us hired a venue, one of the few in the locality in possession of two concert grand pianos, for a performance to be given by Keith Tippett and Stan Tracey - an improvising duo well known in the free jazz world since the two recorded an album titled "TNT" from the Wigmore Hall in the early 1970s. Afterwards, the very irate caretaker accused us of ruining one of the pianos, and told us he would be recommending to the venue owners that either they block us from ever using their premises again, or charge us for repairs to their wonderful instrument. I seem to remember that a ban was put in place. All that had happened was that Keith had, as was customary, "modified" sounds by the placement of various objects on the strings - marbles, pebbles, folded newspaper, various plastic toys - in line with the ways in which he was able to extend the sonorous range of the instrument without, as he put it, "preparing" the instrument beforehand.

There is a sequel to this story. I don't know if Keith had been informed of the ban, but several months later he played in the Bristol Arnolfini Gallery. Afterwards we gathered for a post-gig drink in the gallery bar, and someone related what had happened; upon which, a member of our gathering said, "It was probably the first time the ******* piano had ever been played properly!" We all laughed, apart from Keith, who said "I've never been so insulted in my life", and immediately walked out into the pouring rain. Yours Truly rushed out to assure him that the comment had only been meant as a joke!

[Dave2002]

I don't know why so many people are so seemingly concerned with "what the composer would have wanted". That seems to me at best a side issue, at worst an unknowable factor. We should be able to assume that a composer has put as much or as little specification into a score for it to be realisable by performers of its time - ....

I agree with almost all of what you have written here.

Hot news - now we (in the UK) are truly "screwed" - or not - depending on your POV!

[ardcarp]

Surely...you're not referring to...ah...um....you know....er