Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Hello, Mr. Composer. I'm going to overthrow you now, if you don't mind.

I've heard that back in Beethoven's days, it wasn't at all uncommon to add some small easy listening pieces between the movements of symphonies or concertos, just to make the listening experience a little less heavy. Also, Liszt regularly performed only the last three movements of his transcription of Beethoven's 6th in his recitals. Guess those were the most effective movements, the movements that the audience wanted to hear. If classic fm wishes to play only part of a work, that's fine with me. But I do hate those "best of" CD's that don't feature a single whole work, only single movements from larger works.

The issue discussed here is quite complicated. Of course, the text should be respected, but I also think the performer should be allowed some personal freedom. I actually find it quite refreshing when someone takes a new approach to an old work. Of course, Mozart always sounds good if you play it well according to the tradition, but that's not necessarily the only way it can be fascinating music. To appreciate the beauty in an alternative interpretation, the listeners must be able to switch of their sence of tradition and listen to the performance as it is, not in comparison to what they are used to hearing, a feat many classical musicians aren't capable of. This is why there are so many performers who are hailed by the masses but despised among other classically trained musicians.

Personally, I don't understand why there must be so much anger towards anyone who makes something a bit different. There is already millions of pianists who perform classical music the traditional way, why shouldn't a few be allowed to something else? The totalitarianism that seems to be the goal of many people (not refering to anyone in particular on this forum, but I'm sure you all know the "play it right or don't play at all"-people) is certainly not healthy for classical music as an art form. All forms of art depend on artistic freedom. Performing music is an art form, therefore nothing should be forbidden. The art of the actual compositions was created a long time ago and it already exists in the form of sheet music and often hundreds of recordings, and this work of art does not suffer any great damage from being treated differently at some occasion.

So what about respecting the composers intentions? How many directors respect Shakespeare by trying to put up authentic performances? Are those who don't strive for authenticity violating Shakespeare? The difference between music and drama is of course that the essential message is easier to find in Shakespeare. Therefore it's easier to alter it greatly while still preserving the essentials. I guess this is why we allow the great masters more freedom, they can understand the music and they can understand the impact of their changes. Students should of course study the music exactly as written. It's a bit like learning to compose, only when you are very fluent in the rules of voice leading, you can start learning how to break them.

If a performer knows what he's doing then I see no reason why he shouldn't do it, if it ends up being a good interpretation. Saying that performers shouldn't make their own interpretations because it opens up the floor for tasteless interpretations is like saying that composers should never write music because it opens up the possibility of tasteless music coming into existence. We wouldn't be close to where we are right now.

I agree with that better. And it is certainly not impossible to study a work thoroughly. Also I for one think that music is written to be expressed. If the composer writes some detail in his music and not one performer or listener, even after thorough studying, picks it up, it might as well not be there.

To me, this seems to revolve around issues about what the composition is and what the performance is. My attitude about it is basically the most radical option: the performer is free to do anything at all with a score. The score still remains intact for other performers and score-readers, so essentially, no score is harmed, whether the performer changes it a little or a lot. And anyway, the whole worshipping-of-the-score thing is a fairly recent development in music history (even though composers have always complained about what performers do).

But even if I think performers are completely free to do whatever they want (and how are you going to stop them if you don't agree?), I don't automatically think it's a good thing for every performer to stray far from the score. There are all sorts of issues of taste, context, the performer's musicality, etc. that enter into the picture. All sorts of performance can appeal to me, though, from the most straitlaced score-honoring one to the most I-just-gotta-be-me type that essentially is an improvisation on what's written. I don't see the point of deciding that one way is the only way.

wr

I could see a Piano Police existing in the near future.

Ahh piano big brother. Always watching. Maybe there should be some Piano rebels out against the man?

I could see the piano rebels, locking themselves away in a concert hall, waiting for the piano police to storm the hall, putting up one last stand...

I could see the piano rebels, locking themselves away in a concert hall, waiting for the piano police to storm the hall, putting up one last stand... </strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">...While playing as LOUD as possible and as FAST as possible the 1st movement of Beethoven's Moonlight sonata!

I could see the piano rebels, locking themselves away in a concert hall, waiting for the piano police to storm the hall, putting up one last stand... </strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">...While playing as LOUD as possible and as FAST as possible the 1st movement of Beethoven's Moonlight sonata! </strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Just remember, in the end, there can be only one!*insert queen music on piano here*

By changing the score because one thinks it would sound better thus is dangerous as the thinking it's better thus is probably a result of not understanding the composer's intentions.

I'm dissappointed in the lack of response to my last post above, in which I posted a summation of T. S. Elliot's essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent."

It bears very much on this thread, and offers a new and fully articulated perspective on this subject.

It's long, I admit, and maybe a difficult read--but it's worth it.

Tomasino

Pianists presuming to "improve" a composer's original works are the epitome of arrogance in my opinion; they are indicative of the increasingly self-centered society in which we live.

It seems to me these pianists want more of the limelight, to show how equal they are to the composer (or worse, how much better they are than the composer).

The cold fact is: one hundred years from now people will still be discussing these composers, whereas an exceedingly few concert pianists will be remembered. If you want the lion's share of history's limelight, you might as well start composing!

As a disclaimer I will admit that as an accompanist I occasionally modify a score to suit the situation - however these are most often orchestral reductions, which are only approximations of the composer's intentions.

When I do play a solo composition all of my experience is brought to bear in delivering the most faithful rendition of what I understand the composer's intentions to be. This takes much study and preparation.

Any artist naturally brings their own personality to a performance - it almost cannot be helped. But respect is shown when the pianist excercises restraint in deference to the composer.

A virtuoso might choose certain works which allow them a little more leeway to show off their talents.

No risk of offending dead composers? Can any of us be so sure about that?!

Much better to honor the dead, to whom we owe so much.

It happens to me all the time, don't worry! (of course this is a joke).

I can't say that it bears a lot with this thread though, because the issue here is not the poets (which in music's case would be the composers, right?) but the performers (in which there is no equivelant in poetry, not in such manner as performers are here).

I found this essay and these ideas highly interesting however. I do think that I agree that one has every last drop of tradition inside (from Homer to today) and goes on being contemporary however. It is exactly what I've been blabbering about to young composers, who only wish to stick to strict tonality... (but this, again, is totally off topic, which I am SO used to doing so many times)

On the matter at hand, something, which I don't think has been brought up yet:

We are all talking about solo performances right? Cause otherwise a solist in a concerto would seriously be in trouble, was (s)he not following the score "exactly". And to contrary to what some people may think (not in here, but in general), it's not that the pianist will walk in the room and state what he wants to do and the orchestra + conductor will follow.

In such cases one needs to follow the score, right? Actually in any case with more than 1 performer all performers need to follow the score. Of course in chamber music they can all agree to some issues, and in orcehstral music, they all follow what the conductor says. But I wouldn't image that the parts would read "FF" and the conductor would ask for a "p" instead...

Nikolas,

Of course there is an equivalence to performers. Don't performers work in a "tradition" of performance practice? This essay has everything to do with this thread. Simply substitute the word "artist" for "poet," and you'll see that T. S. Eliot's essay encompasses all traditiions, from pottery making to performance art, and certainly has everything to do with the subject at hand.

Tomasino

Ummm, how can it be indicative of the increasingly self-centered society in which we live when in fact it was much more common in times past? For example, I don't know of any pianist today who messes with the ending of Liszt's La Leggierezza, but long ago pianists frequently played a different loud and flashy ending to that etude composed by someone else (I forget the name right now, but it was some famous pianist).

I think that in general performance today is extremely chaste and rather depressingly puritanical, compared to the times in which much of the music we play was written. Where's our modern equivalent of Dreyshock playing the Chopin Revolutionary etude with the left hand in octaves? Or, for that matter, Brahms' version in sixths of another Chopin etude? Or all those concerts where it was considered okay to play just one movement of a multi-movement work? And the thing that is important to remember is that composers prior to our current composer-centric era actually expected that their music would as likely as not be subject to all sort of changes by performers and might be "repurposed" in any way a performer could think of. After all, in the 19th century, there was a whole industry of composers creating piano works out of other composers' operatic output, and that's a pretty major departure from "composer intent", jumping from vocal and orchestral stage productions to parlor piano, but I don't think many composers complained. And I dare say most composers from that time would be utterly flabbergasted at the kind of reverential attitude towards scores that is currently in vogue.

wr

Hi wr,

Just to add that the cadenza prior to Beethoven pretty much was... an imporvisation from the pianist (not many written cadenzas for Mozarts concertos as far as I know, and certainly not from the composer himself).

This has eclipsed and it is a pity, but then again contemporary classical music has moved so much further than I would imagine it being difficult to temper with it, even on the fly.

(i'm cursed to being right in the middle and not having a much biased opinion for myself... ah well).

What is interesting is that "classical music" (concert hall music) takes up a small part of music today. Nobody will mind covering... Radiohead or eminem and doing whatever you wish. It's been done repeatadely. Things are NOT so bad then.

I did certainly read your quotes Tomasino, and thank you very much for posting them. In fact, I feel it's the most revealing group of ideas of this thread because it face us to the troubles of art, individuality, life, time, tradition and uses.
I'm coming back to the forum, because I feel I have a couple of things to say about this theme.

I did certainly read your Eliot's quote Tomasino, and thank you very much for posting it. In fact, I feel it's the most revealing group of ideas of this thread because it face us to the troubles of art, individuality, life, time, tradition and uses.
I'm coming back to the forum, because I feel I have a couple of things to say about this topic.

Double post. Sorry.

Some spare thoughts on persons, time, context, music nature and the burden of traditions.

We can find three persons or music protagonists in the musical communicative process:

The composer.
The interpreter.
The listener.

And we deal with several correspondent historical, social and contextual times:

The time and context in which the composer composed the work.
The time and context in which the interpreter interprets.
The time and context in which the listener hears the piece.

These times and contexts do not always coincide.
When I say context, I mean that each moment of human history brings it’s own uses, it’s own way of doing the things and perceiving and representing the reality. We modulate our individual perceptions accordingly our contemporary time context and it’s usually difficult, if not impossible, to completely escape from it.
One way of considering tradition is as the historic weight and inertia of certain human uses. May times we feel it as a burden that pushes us to advance to the future but looking backwards. It’s reserved for the brave, or the irresponsible, to truly depart from traditions. We feel protected by traditions because they gives us a direction, a sense and relates us with the past from where we come.

Then it happens that the music is a very spiritual art which is represented by a score, a reasonably precise written representation of sounds. Changing the old uses and interpreting the music in a new way will not harm the original score, something that don’t happen with other forms of art, like painting or sculpture. I mean, if we brake La Pietá into tiny pieces of marble, besides changing the original meaning, we change for ever the original form. Of course for doing such we may certainly be jailed. Not so with the music. Music nature is spiritual and, as an art of time and memory, is newborn each time it’s performed and listened. No risks to ruin the score. Just the actual performing.

Another important fact is that music lives by itself. Many times the composer (as noted by Eliot) impersonates his epoch and re-presents it musically becoming the vehicle of higher and bigger social energies. Music has it’s own embedded tempos and dynamics, an existence of it’s own, intimately related to the time and the context in which it was created. A simple example: we can’t change the dynamics of the opening piano solo in the second movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto N° 23. It would be ridiculous to play those initial bars fff because the music itself (minor tonality, sad mood, loneliness of the piano solo, insisting pulse over a pastoral elegiac tempo, etc.) asks to be played p.

So, abruptly departing from traditions or breaking the nature of music figures and themes is possible but extremely dangerous. When we change some music parameter we change the meaning, superimposing our own contemporary and personal times and meanings.
Of course its factible; we are free persons. I remember hearing a huge symphonic piece, very extended and chaotic, from a German composer, in which small fragments of Mozart music appeared here and there totally out of context. It was like seeing rests of some famous monument after a devastating nuclear war and you ended up feeling somewhat sad for all that was lost. Interesting. Mozart’s music, although rooted in old and venerable traditions was manipulated at the cost of breaking the temporal, historical and contextual original figurations and thus depriving it from its former sense. It was used. Well used, I must accept.

That’s an extreme example of deconstruction, I know. To constrain this subject to the more punctual problem of interpreting a piece of music, I would say that the weight of traditions (time, uses, historic inertia, contextual influences, etc.) added to the embodied meaning of the music “creature” both create a force, a very difficult and dangerous to change driving vector. Can we do it; can we twist the music form? Yes, we can. What for? May be to use it as a quote, to add something else to others music, to say something personal and contemporary, etc. Is it worth? Why not? It depends on our intention.

What I finally think is that nothing in art should be the result of just individual whims. We can change or even deny our traditions if we want, but it’s better to do it with a precise and exhaustive knowledge of what we are doing, why we are doing it and the risks we run when we do it. After all those are family jewels.

No, with Pianojerome.

Yes, many of the composers are dead. The piece, however, is not. The piece was written with an intention, a thought and an emotion. A performer should bring out that in their own way. However, radical changes for the heck of it is not something that should be done.

this i agree with...
yea jeff you are pretty right there