Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Question about composer's intent.

There are a lot of reasons cuts or interpretive changes might be made- in plays, music, etc.

Any film version of a Shakespeare play will usually have cuts fro time reasons. Many stagings of plays for the same reason.

I don't understand this blind adherence to the score. It's not very smart or interesting, and in some cases could go against the composers' actual intentions. Beethoven, for example, might stop a descending line, and raise it up an octave because of the limited number of keys on the piano of his day.

What does FF mean on his piano vs a modern instrumnent, and how does that affect how you play FF?

For this type of thing it takes intelligence, judgement, and knowledge. I think a lot of people hide behind the idea of adherence to the score, and use it as an excuse for thinking.

Well, maybe you're on to something here.

I have no education in music, and my knowledge pales in comparison to that of experts and professionals. For me, then, "blind adherence" is erring on the side of caution; I lack the requisite background to make informed decisions about doing otherwise, and would never choose to do so capriciously.

I value skillfulness, and playing safe is far more prudent than risking bad choices.

Steven

Piano performance has been around for 250 years. I'd say the last 80- 100 years or so there has been a very strong trend towards following the score. That not very modern and it's 40% of the piano's history.

Don't worry! You..like composers and, indeed, myself (who often trips up over the use of English) ..do not belong to the race of gods.

Quite true, but notated music has been around a whole lot longer.

I think that since there is a dearth of directions in Baroque music, it's understood that the composer meant for the performer to choose the articulation, dynamics etc. It's not assumed that the dearth of indications means the composer meant to do nothing.


It's up to the performer to know/figure out what "pp" meant to each composer. Why would one assume they must mean the same things(I think they mean reasonably close for all composers)? I think a notation of ppppp just means "as soft as possible" and doesn't mean one has to be concerned about the relaitve level of an ff marking.



I don't think being faithful to the score means "overly concerned to every hairpin".


The composer can do what he wishes in any performance of his own work. When things are changed by a performer other than the composer, it is not necessarily a disaster or wrong IMO. Remember this whole discussion began about Lang Lang where many people feel his changes are (a) frequent and (b) not musical. It's a question of degree and frequency.



Your statement implies that a work cannot "live and breath" if it is faithful to the score. "Slavishly following a set of directions" has a negative connotation, but "following the score" sounds far less negative IMHO.

Wouldn't you agree that the huge majority of professional pianists in the last 70+ years follow the score the huge majority of the time? If not, which pianists would you say don't follow the score a lot of the time?

In the 150 or so master classes I have gone to I have often heard the teacher say something like "Chopin wrote p there, why didn't you play it p?" I have never heard a teacher say "Beethoven wrote f, but I really think you should play that mf".

Please forgive me if I'm wrong, but I think you've missed my point about Baroque music. I agree with your conclusion.

Here's a repost of my original question.

"Does anyone have any thoughts on the origin of "composer's intent?"

My guess is that it first came about in connection to Mendelssohn's revival of interest in J.S. Bach about 1830. The recovery of other forgotten composers, beginning with say Schubert, may have further reinforced the idea. Musicology and music history being recognized as academic disciplines would also have reinforced the concept. I'd guess that happened in the 1930s. My first real awareness of the concept of composer's intent came from reading Albert Schweitzer's Bach biography when I was in college. I believe that was also written in the 30s. The antiquarian music movement started in the 60s, and that movement too was certainly interested in composer's intent.

Anyone have any thoughts along these lines?"


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So far I'm not getting a lot of response to my query. Mostly we should, or we shouldn't. It's like I just dropped a hockey puck and everybody is hitting it with a stick. That wasn't my "intent."

Perhaps if we understood the genesis of composer's intent we might be able to discuss this without arguing ourselves into corners and ending by agreeing to disagree. But few musical scholars touch on it as far as I have been able to determine. That's why I put the question out there. To see if any of you had any speculative thoughts, or better yet, some real knowledge.

We need to understand its history and tradition. With out that, composer's intent seems like a dictum without authority.

Tomasino

There's something important that's being lost in this conversation, and that's the fact that composers aren't of a single mind on the issue, either.

Some composers intend for you to follow the score very carefully, and others do not. There are also many instances where composers changed their minds on things. I've worked with many composers and ALL of them welcomed suggestions and alternate interpretations.

I'm actually playing something tonight that I've added octave doublings and changed several dynamic markings - all with the composer's blessing. Even the printed score I'm playing from differs from a 2007 recording of the work.

A person familiar with the 2007 recording, the printed score, and my performance tonight would have a very difficult time answering the question "which of these most closely represents the composer's intent?"

All 3 were intended.

I'm also playing a piece that is meticulously engraved with very specific notes on articulation, tempo, and character. I will be following that score VERY closely, but there are still things in it that are almost impossible to play as written. Most of the recordings of the work sacrifice dynamics and articulation for tempo. I'm going the other route - sacrificing tempo for articulation and shape.

I will report back with the number of people who come up to me after the concert and say "gee, it's a shame you didn't follow the composer's intended tempo, otherwise I would've applauded."

I will also report back with the number of minutes it takes the Artistic Police to arrive and arrest me for Compositional Non-Compliance and throw me in Music Jail.

I guess you could define what you mean by "composers' intent." I have an idea, but i'm not really sure what you mean.

Does it mean a composer having an idea of how he wants his works performed, or performers becoming aware and sensitive to the printed score?

Also, it's the nature of internet forum threads to go in different directions on and off topic.

Suppose you made a suggestion and the composer said he didn't like it. If you real;y thought it was a good idea, would you still play it your way in a performance?

Yes, I think that performers are very VERY faithful to the score. They said that Horowitz took liberties, but I don't know all that many cases in which he actually changed notes (different from adding lower octaves) in composers who weren't writing for mainly the pianistic effect or virtuosity (Liszt, etc., whose music needs changing sometimes (Vallee d'Obermann, some paraphrases), in my opinion)

Most pianists in the 20th century that I have heard took very few liberties, and some took none: Arrau, Kempff, Argerich, Michelangeli, Perahia, etc.

I think many pianists ignore difficult expression markings, or perhaps don't see them when they are beyond their abilities to play, hence the rampant lack of observance of piano or pianissimo markings. I think it is clearly a technical issue.

Also, with the unbelievable lack of good editions until fairly recently, who knows if a pianist was being faithful or not? One recording I have been wondering about to no end is Glenn Gould's recording of Scriabin's 5th sonata. The chords he blatantly plays wrong I have to assume are wrong in his edition, because he didn't record wrong notes, did he?

No. I'll go ahead and do it their way. Not all the wisest choices come instantly, and I've learned to be a good sport about setting my initial ideas aside and searching for something better.

Of course for non living composers it might be harder to know which category they fall in, but do you have an idea about which category some of the major composers for piano from around 1800 to the present fall into(I guess they could be somewhere in between also)? Are some known to have told people they were or were not particular about how closely pianists followed thier score markings?

I'm guessing Debussy and Ravel were in the category of "follow the score very carefully".

Sorry for all the questions, but I like to pick the brains of knowledgable people.

It's an amusing parallel that the Original Poster's Intent seems not to be being followed very closely in this thread!

And in that spirit (sorry!) - touching on the comparison with theatre, if you buy a published script of a play, it's typically the lines that were spoken around about opening night, which could have evolved quite a bit from what the playwright originally produced before casting and rehearsals - and he (/she) will often have had rather little input beyond that stage. Playwrights may argue with directors, but by this stage the director tends to get their wish, even if a playwright states clearly that the director's interpretation is wildly different from their own.