On 6 Oct 2003 at 9:49, David H. Bailey wrote: > Michael Edwards wrote:
[] > But if you are of the "composer-notated-it-so-play-it-as-it-is" > school, then why would you think you have the right to make ANY > judgements about how his music should sound? . . . ??? The logical extension of that argument is that the performers should wear ear plugs and not listen to what they are playing so there can be no pollution of the performer making judgments about how it's sounding and adjusting the sound as they go. In reality, Dennis's point of view is not really much different from Bach's. Both of them had certain ideas in mind about the range of possibilities inherent in the written notation and to get a proper performance, you have to know that Bach expected certain things that are not explicitly notated and Dennis wants *nothing* put in that's not there and nothing that is there omitted. It's a difference of degree, not of kind. > > Now, in good conscience, what should I do here? Follow the > > instruction > > because the score tells me to, and produce a performance that sounds > > ridiculous and uncomfortable to me, out of keeping with the spirit > > (as I perceive it) of Scriabin's music? - or ignore it and produce a > > performance that sounds just right and where the two bars in > > question fit in well with the rest of the piece. > > I am strongly tempted to do the latter - but I do so with a > > guilty twinge, > > because I know it violates the principle I believe in, at least 99 > > percent of the time, of following the composer's intentions. > > But why should you have a guilty twinge? Why can't you accept that > your interpretation IS the composer's intentions? . . . How in the world can we ever know the composer's intentions? All we can ever have is a general idea of what the performer is supposed to do with the score. The notational system we use is very specific in notating some things and not so specific in notating others (pitch and rhythm are pretty specific; agogics, accentuation, phrasing, pedalling, dynamics, Why can't you > accept that there truly is a partnership between composer and > performer? And realize that in any partnership when one partner no > longer trusts the other partner, that distrust goes both ways and > before long the former partners are antagonists in an us-vs.-them > situation, such as you so eloquently outlined in your previous post. I very much agree with this sentiment. And I think Dennis's hostility towards performers is unwarranted. Indeed, it's not universal, as he has praised many performers. He has, however, greatly criticized the general attitude of performers in general in regard to fidelity to the score. This past summer I was on the faculty of the California Music Festival (http://californiamusicfestival.org -- website is functional but not good and soon to be replaced), and I was coaching young Conservatory-trained musicians in Mendelssohn chamber music and Lieder. I was rather surprised at how much work I had to do to get decent performances out of them. With both instrumentalists and singers, I did a lot of things with correcting performances (e.g., pronunciation for the singers, rhythm, tempo & bowing for the instrumentalists). But there are a lot of things that are just not notated. You can have very explicit bowings in a string part, but it's still up to the player to decide on bow division and bow speed, since bowing is a lot more than just which direction the bow goes. I don't know of any method for notating anything beyond how many notes under one bow and what direction the bow goes, but all that other stuff is absolutely crucial in getting music out of the piece! Certainly, well-trained musicians with good habits will probably get it right, but these young kids all tended to be trained to go for a big sound that projects at all times. This is understandable as for string teachers it's always a fight to get young string players to project, to keep a good solid line. But the problem is that these young students then think that *all* the notes have to be projected equally strongly. I had to be constantly asking them to use LESS BOW, LESS BOW! And others just didn't have any kind of variety of color or vibrato (two other things that aren't notated, BTW). One player in particular, the violinist for the Mendelssohn C minor piano trio (a splendid work), was technically quite skilled and rhythmically very solid -- he read well, his musicianship was sound and he played in tune. But he had insufficient variety of tone, and he had no sense of how to adapt his tone to the context of the music. In many places in that particular piece the violin part is high above the piano part (and, of course, the cello), all on its own, and at loud dynamic markings. He was screaming in those passages, and I had to tell him to back off, that he was going to project naturally without forcing it because of the pitch separation between him and the other instruments. And when he did that, it sounded lovely again. He was playing what was in the score, but not taking account of how what was in *his* part related to what was in the other parts. Maybe Mendelssohn shouldn't have put a FORTE in there, that if he'd written MF the player would have done something more appropriate. I don't know. In any event, the player has to make adsjustments in ways that can simply not be notated, and in my opinion *shouldn't* be notated, as they will be specific to the performers involved, the hall, the instruments, etc. The idea that the score can include everything performers should do is simply impossible. And not only that, it's highly undesirable, in my opinion, as it would make the score much harder to understand. Now, I'm not entirely unsympathetic to Dennis's point of view, but I think the solution would be to not have *a* score, but to have multiple "scores." One might be The Score of the work. The other would be a performing score, with tons of annotations in it to indicate specifically what the composer was looking for in particular passages. This latter would not necessarily need to be complete, just including passages in need of clarification or amplification. A third score might consist of a MIDI performance, with, perhaps, a printed version of it with key velocities and durations indicated on the printed page, all that perhaps printed below a running score. This combination of scores would more fully convey the work of music than any single printed score. Of course, it's all very impractical from a publishing point of view, unfortunately. But I just don't see how anyone could pack everything essential into a single printed score. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
