Classical music performance: come è scritto or not?

[John F]

Come è scritto means "as it is written"; in music it's playing only what is written down in the score or musical text, as correctly and precisely as possible. This is a credo of modern musical life, but it was not always so - far from it. When Mozart played one of his concertos, he played a great many notes that he had not written into the score, in addition to lengthy cadenzas he improvised on the spot. This was normal in the 18th century; it would be crazy to accuse Mozart of not being faithful to his own music. Present-day historically informed performers of 18th century music, such as Robert Levin in Mozart's concertos, add many, many notes and play their own cadenzas instead of Mozart's, and are praised for it.

In the 19th century, music was mostly though not always performed fairly strictly according to the written notes, but other instructions such as dynamics and tempo were often ignored or contradicted, and new unwritten interpretive ideas of the performer's were freely introduced. When the composer pinned down the tempo with a metronome setting, this was seldom if ever precisely obeyed, and often the performer would speed up or slow down as he wished in the course of the music though the score didn't say so.

Composer/performers did this too. Even Beethoven, an early adopter of the metronome, endorsed this flexibility of tempo. His specifying a metronome mark "is no evidence that he wanted metronomic regularity throughout the piece. In fact there is ample evidence to the contrary. In the autograph of his song 'Nord oder Süd' he wrote, '100 according to Mälzel, but this applies only to the first measures, as feeling has its own tempo.'" (Nicholas Cook, "Beethoven Symphony No. 9") This flexibility of tempo continued well into the 20th century, for example in the performances of Wilhelm Furtwängler, until a new, simpler style of performance exemplified by Arturo Toscanini came to dominate, which forbade such interpretative ideas because they were not written in the score.

In my view, this simpler (I'd say simplistic) modern style of performance is not required or even appropriate for music from before the 20th century; it is anachronistic and unstylish. Indeed, even modern composers as Stravinsky and Prokofiev did not necessarily perform their own music come è scritto. Stravinsky demanded that his music be performed without interpretation, and claimed that his own recordings were models for all other performances. However, those recordings often contradict his own metronome marks (with "Zvezdolicki," by a huge margin), and differed from each other in recordings of the same music.

This deviation from the tempo written in the score may not seem like such a big deal, but some modern composers went much further than that. I've mentioned Prokofiev. Here's his gavotte for solo piano, opus 32 no. 3, in a straightforward recording by Boris Berman with just one slight touch of rubato:



Now here's Prokofiev, recorded in 1932:



I stole this example from a talk by Richard Taruskin, and now I'll steal some of his discussion of it.

The composer plays the opening pair of staccato quarter notes with a hesitation that leaves no doubt that they are an upbeat (meanwhile identifying the genre: eighteenth century gavottes begin with an upbeat of a half-note's duration). The slurred eighth-note arpeggio that follows on the downbeat is rushed in compensation, seemingly in accordance with the old rule of tempo rubato, which Prokofiev may well have learned from his piano teacher, Anna Yesipova, not only the pupil but the former wife of Leschetizky ("who studied with Czerny who studied with Beethoven" etc.), or picked up from the performances of any number of virtuosos active in Russia in the first decade of the 20th century...

These features are completely absent in the recent recording by Boris Berman... To hear it is to be finally convinced that, since texts outrank performers even when the performer is the composer, texts outrank composers, too. Of the oral traditions in which the composer participated so conspicuously, the younger pianist is oblivious. (One can even imagine him setting the composer straight on the matter of tempo: "It says here Allegro non troppo, Seryozha, non troppo!") For him dots and slurs are just dots and slurs, not tempo indications; he plays "just what's written," assuming the adequacy of what's written to the definition of the music as played even in the face of audible evidence to the contrary...

Sometimes one hears it said that deviant authorial performances like Prokofiev's of Prokofiev or Debussy's of Debussy are valuable because they establish or clarify the limits of acceptability. But that is no help. I still wonder why we are so obsessed with setting those limits. What makes the whole matter doubly ironic is that study of Prokofiev's performance in conjunction with the score shows his apparent licenses to be perfectly consistent - that is, rule-bound - readings of the notation. There are even treatises that put such things in writing, though of course they do not mention Prokofiev. No, I do not mean that we are to accept Prokofiev's performance of his own piece because it is corroborated by Türk (author of "School of Piano Playing," pub. 1789), only that blind modernist prejudice against the unwritten is also deaf.

As a thought experiment, let's imagine for a moment that Prokofiev's version was played by Berman, and Berman's by Prokofiev. Would not "Berman" now be dismissed out of hand as "mannered"? But more to the point, would not "Prokofiev's" literalistic rendition now assume immense authority, because it could now be used to bolster notions of Werktreue? It would now simplify rather than complicate our idea of what, exactly, defines or constitutes "the piece.".. It is plainly tautological (though, like all tautologies, irrefutable) to argue that a genuine stroke of genius can occur only to the composer [not to the performer in the act of performance]; yet that tautology is the very root of the Urtext ideology, and it is among the factors that have so stifled the creativity of classical musicians since Mozart's time.

(Taruskin, "Tradition and Authority," in "Text & Act: Essays on Music and Performance")

I'll add to Taruskin's comment on Prokofiev's recording that the gavotte's pastoral B section, marked espressivo but with no tempo change, is played in tempo by Berman but slightly slower by Prokofiev. It seems he agreed with Beethoven that "feeling has its own tempo." To the objection that if Prokofiev really wanted his music played as in his recording he would have written it so, the answer must be, "How?" And the example of Toscanini and Verdi I gave in a different thread provides one composer's answer to just that question.

http://www.classicalmusicguide.com/view ... 88#p468688

[lennygoran]

Come è scritto means "as it is written"; in music it's playing only what is written down in the score or musical text, as correctly and precisely as possible.

I can see this will be a highly technical discussion but if you get a chance does it have any impact on all those people who love classical music in a layman sort of way but who don't read music and can't really tell the difference of how a great symphony, concerto, etc was originally scored-where would it leave a person like me? Yesterday I was listening to 2 Mozart as I worked in the kitchen-the Prague and the Haffner-I loved them. Regards, Len

[John F]

Come è scritto means "as it is written"; in music it's playing only what is written down in the score or musical text, as correctly and precisely as possible.

does it have any impact on all those people who love classical music in a layman sort of way but who don't read music and can't really tell the difference of how a great symphony, concerto, etc was originally scored-where would it leave a person like me?

No impact at all. You experience music through your ears, as most people do; you've no way of knowing what's written in the score, and you don't need to. This topic should interest only music professionals - performers, critics - and obsessive amateurs like me.

[lennygoran]

No impact at all. You experience music through your ears, as most people do; you've no way of knowing what's written in the score, and you don't need to. This topic should interest only music professionals - performers, critics - and obsessive amateurs like me.

Thanks, I'm much relieved. Regards, Len

[John F]

With all the historical evidence against it, the only substantial esthetic basis for literalistic, come e scritto performance is the concept of Werktreue, fidelity to the musical work. But that begs the question, what is the musical work? This isn't splitting hairs, it's a fundamental issue in musical esthetics.

Is the musical work the written score and nothing more? That, literally, is the assumption behind come e scritto, it's what the Italian words mean. Nelson Goodman's "Languages of Art" takes this assumption to its logical but nonsensical conclusion: a single wrong note and the performance is no longer of the work but of something else. Even short of that, the question not as simple as it might seem. Which written score do we mean? The composer's final autograph score? A copy or copies, handwritten or printed, whose preparation he supervised or approved? A posthumous edition that corrects any errors the composer may have overlooked? Do revisions by the composer or approved by him supersede the first version? Seems to me that whatever option one chooses, it's more or less arbitrary.

But the work may logically be more broadly defined. Does it include the composer's performances of his work, which obviously reflect a later view and, in a sense, a revision? How about performances by others which the composer approves or doesn't disapprove? Does the work incorporate the common performance practices of the time when it was written? That's an article of faith of the Historically Informed Performance movement, and it justifies or even compels departures from the written score of the kind the composer took, or might have taken for granted. How about the common performance practices of our time? That would justify the otherwise anachronistic and simplistic approach Toscanini and we call come e scritto, which has reigned for the best part of a century. And if the latter, then there's no sound basis for putting out of court the common performance practices of the period between the work's composition and the present day.

And then there's what might be called the spiritual content of the work, and in a more mundane sense, its expressive content. Richard Taruskin again: "The difference between [Furtwangler's] performance of Beethoven's Ninth and Roger Norrington's...illustrates the way in which the notion of the work, and of fidelity to it, has narrowed over the course of the twentieth century, squeezing the spiritual or metaphysical dimension out of the work-concept until work-fidelity did finally become coextensive with text-fidelity." (Taruskin, "Last Thoughts First," in "Text & Act: Essays on Music and Performance") That impoverished view of music and its performance is what I protest against, and try to combat by posting examples of earlier musicians' conceptually more individual and expressively richer recordings here in Classical Music Guide.

This thread is inspired or provoked by the thread "The Golden Shower of Musicology," the article by "Throwcase" which BWV 1080 linked to and partly quoted, and Clive Brown's "We’re playing classical music all wrong – composers wanted us to improvise," the subject of Throwcase's tendentious and scatologically titled rant. I agreed with Brown's conclusion without discussing his essay point by point. maestrob didn't specifically disagree with what Brown and I've said; he didn't need to as he's made his point of view clear many times, as have I. Maybe it's no more than a difference in taste, to which each of us is entitled without needing to defend it. But if it's more substantial than that, and in the musical world it definitely is, I'm on the case.

Next, I'll take up Clive Brown's essay, to see what merit there may be in his argument and in Throwcase's dismissive polemic.

[Heck148]

interesting discussion of course, and one that has prevailed over many years -

music printed on a page is merely a "blueprint" of what the composer wanted to sound. composers have at various times, tried to get super-specific regarding their instructions [Stravinsky, Hindemith, Schuller spring to mind], but these efforts are not usually effective....
There will always be room for the performer/interpreter to apply his/her own feeling and expression onto any work....
A good example comes from "jazz" notation - frequently printed as straight eighth-notes, but it is understood that the eighth-notes are "swung" - ie - played more as dotted rhythms, rather than straight, even eighth notes...at times, certain arrangers will try to write out, in laborious detail, exactly what the rhythm should be - with all sorts of nit-picky rests, dotted notes, detailed complex rhythmic figures that are supposed to produce the jazzy effect. usually, they don't...they just sound like performers trying to pick their way thru complex, confusing rhythmic figures...it doesn't swing, it doesn't rock...it sounds static...
often - better to just say "swing the eighth notes".
a good example - Gunther Schuller's Suite for Woodwind 5tet features a "Blues" mvt - Schuller goes to great length to instruct the performers to not play in a jazzy fashion, but to observe the rhythmic figures absolutely strictly....it is a joke - when done that way - it sounds stiff, rigid, not the least bit "bluesy"....just play it like Duke Ellington Muddy Waters, or John Lee Hooker - with the right, "low-down swing", and it comes off great...audience loves it.

I have to reject the implication that the literalist conductors - Toscanini, Weingartner, and their followers - performed music unexpressively, or condoned or promoted a sterile, rigid style of music-making...the recorded performances simply refute that. it is certainly possible to stick closely to the printed score, and still play very expressively.
the ultra-Romantic style of performance - 19th century, and into 20th century with conductors like Mengelberg and Furtwangler can rightfully, IMO, be accused of applying excess expressive license. some of the devices they apply may well be far off from the composer's intention....rhythmic imprecision, abrupt tempo changes, luftpauses, ritardandos, etc that are not marked in the score are not all automatically welcomed by the composer, who made no such indication in the score...

that said - obviously, the performer is going to have his/her input on the music-making, since the printed page is, in fact, only a blueprint of the sound the composer heard in his/her own mind.

[maestrob]

interesting discussion of course, and one that has prevailed over many years -

music printed on a page is merely a "blueprint" of what the composer wanted to sound. composers have at various times, tried to get super-specific regarding their instructions [Stravinsky, Hindemith, Schuller spring to mind], but these efforts are not usually effective....
There will always be room for the performer/interpreter to apply his/her own feeling and expression onto any work....
A good example comes from "jazz" notation - frequently printed as straight eighth-notes, but it is understood that the eighth-notes are "swung" - ie - played more as dotted rhythms, rather than straight, even eighth notes...at times, certain arrangers will try to write out, in laborious detail, exactly what the rhythm should be - with all sorts of nit-picky rests, dotted notes, detailed complex rhythmic figures that are supposed to produce the jazzy effect. usually, they don't...they just sound like performers trying to pick their way thru complex, confusing rhythmic figures...it doesn't swing, it doesn't rock...it sounds static...
often - better to just say "swing the eighth notes".
a good example - Gunther Schuller's Suite for Woodwind 5tet features a "Blues" mvt - Schuller goes to great length to instruct the performers to not play in a jazzy fashion, but to observe the rhythmic figures absolutely strictly....it is a joke - when done that way - it sounds stiff, rigid, not the least bit "bluesy"....just play it like Duke Ellington Muddy Waters, or John Lee Hooker - with the right, "low-down swing", and it comes off great...audience loves it.

I have to reject the implication that the literalist conductors - Toscanini, Weingartner, and their followers - performed music unexpressively, or condoned or promoted a sterile, rigid style of music-making...the recorded performances simply refute that. it is certainly possible to stick closely to the printed score, and still play very expressively.
the ultra-Romantic style of performance - 19th century, and into 20th century with conductors like Mengelberg and Furtwangler can rightfully, IMO, be accused of applying excess expressive license. some of the devices they apply may well be far off from the composer's intention....rhythmic imprecision, abrupt tempo changes, luftpauses, ritardandos, etc that are not marked in the score are not all automatically welcomed by the composer, who made no such indication in the score...

that said - obviously, the performer is going to have his/her input on the music-making, since the printed page is, in fact, only a blueprint of the sound the composer heard in his/her own mind.

To put it more succinctly, the score is the map, not the territory. On this, at least, I agree with you and JohnF.

There are three, no four, recordings that I would like to point to in this discussion:

1) Debussy's piano rolls of the composer playing his own music vs. Gieseking or Bavouzet

2) Copland's own recording of his Third Symphony vs. Bernstein's

3) Prokofiev's own recording of his Third Piano Concerto vs. Szell's 1960's interpretation

4) Ormandy's Rachmaninoff II (1930's Minneapolis or 1950's Philadelphia) vs. Ormandy's RCA recording which opens the cuts in the previous versions.

Finally, I have no problem with leading tones and improvisation in Mozart: of course they belong there. Good grief!

[John F]

There will always be room for the performer/interpreter to apply his/her own feeling and expression onto any work....

But:

the ultra-Romantic style of performance - 19th century, and into 20th century with conductors like Mengelberg and Furtwangler can rightfully, IMO, be accused of applying excess expressive license. some of the devices they apply may well be far off from the composer's intention....rhythmic imprecision, abrupt tempo changes, luftpauses, ritardandos, etc that are not marked in the score are not all automatically welcomed by the composer, who made no such indication in the score...

Excess by what standards? Not the composer's; he's dead and it's impossible to please or annoy him. I believe you're ignoring what I've written about Beethoven's dictum that feeling has its own tempo, and the extended discussion of what constitutes a musical work, which can extend well beyond what's indicated in the score. Would you care to take that on?

I have to reject the implication that the literalist conductors - Toscanini, Weingartner, and their followers - performed music unexpressively, or condoned or promoted a sterile, rigid style of music-making...

That's not my implication. Toscanini's intensity, and the virtuosic playing he drew from his orchestras at a time when this wasn't common, swept all before them; otherwise he couldn't possibly have been as influential as he was. Not sterile, then - but in comparison with his predecessors, all of them, going back to Beethoven and before, pretty rigid, according to the historical record. I'm not going to discuss all other conductors of the come e scritto persuasion, having covered that topic already in general.

[John F]

There are three, no four, recordings that I would like to point to in this discussion:

1) Debussy's piano rolls of the composer playing his own music vs. Gieseking or Bavouzet

2) Copland's own recording of his Third Symphony vs. Bernstein's

3) Prokofiev's own recording of his Third Piano Concerto vs. Szell's 1960's interpretation

4) Ormandy's Rachmaninoff II (1930's Minneapolis or 1950's Philadelphia) vs. Ormandy's RCA recording which opens the cuts in the previous versions.

Their relevance to this discussion being?

[THEHORN]

Reports of how "literal " today's classical performers are have been greatly exaggerated . I wish I had a dollar for every review I've read in the past 40 or so years of live and recorded performances where critics mercilessly lambasted musicians for the liberties they took with the music . Also the option that today's musicians are "cookie cutter interpreters" with no individuality and how any given recording of a work by different conductors or instrumentalists, or singers is identical . Nothing could be farther from the truth .
"Come e scritto " is an urban legend .

[Heck148]

Excess by what standards? Not the composer's; he's dead and it's impossible to please or annoy him.....about Beethoven's dictum that feeling has its own tempo,

When the tempo, rhythm distortions disrupt the flow of the music, one must question them, esp if there is no indication in the score....not to say that composers may readily accept certain expressive devices which have become traditional with the composer's blessing. [ie -Elgar, V-Wms]

I have to reject the implication that the literalist conductors - Toscanini, Weingartner, and their followers - performed music unexpressively, or condoned or promoted a sterile, rigid style of music-making...

That's not my implication.

I didn't mean that it was "your" implication, per se, but the defenders of the Furtwangler/Mengelberg, etc conductors often try to advance this premise....

Toscanini's intensity, and the virtuosic playing he drew from his orchestras at a time when this wasn't common, swept all before them; otherwise he couldn't possibly have been as influential as he was. Not sterile, then - but in comparison with his predecessors, all of them, going back to Beethoven and before, pretty rigid,

I don't find it rigid at all, but extremely fluid, with marvelous flow and subtle tempo variations, performed precisely, with great orchestra control, that is extremely expressive and convincing. When I first began listening to concert music so many years ago - I was infatuated with the Furtwangler approach, it seemed so dramatic and intense...but as I listened more, and engaged in formal study, the distortions, the momentary effects, the lack of precision and ensemble became real distractions for me, which detracted from the enjoyment...I found greater fulfillment with conductors like Toscanini, Reiner, Solti, etc...

[Heck148]

"Come e scritto " is an urban legend .

always has been - Even so called literalists like Toscanini and Weingartner made alterations to scores...another myth like the "Big Five" mythology

[John F]

I found greater fulfillment with conductors like Toscanini, Reiner, Solti, etc...

Fair enough. Your answer to my question "Excess by what standards?" appears to be, by your standards, which means according to your taste, and I won't argue with that.

But I don't think you have really engaged with the issues I've raised. Listen to the two recordings of Prokofiev's gavotte, if you haven't already. Berman's conforms very closely to the score and has more "flow," it's exemplary come è scritto. But for Prokofiev his score is only a starting point, and his jerky rhythm for the first theme banishes "flow" right from the start. If the player weren't identified as the composer, would you dismiss his style of performance as you've dismissed Furtwängler's?

[Heck148]

I found greater fulfillment with conductors like Toscanini, Reiner, Solti, etc...

Fair enough. Your answer to my question "Excess by what standards?" appears to be, by your standards, which means according to your taste, and I won't argue with that.

there is certainly a large degree of subjectivity regarding standards....but...there does come a point at which objectivity becomes very real - ie - take tempo choice for, say, a Beethoven scherzo - these are usually pretty quick, bouncy, "giocoso" - with a staccato articulation [staccato =separate, not short]. there is certainly a range of tempo that allow this to work, with the separate notes presenting a bouncy, jocular effect....however, if the tempo is excessively slow [ie -Klemperer], then the desired effect is impossible to achieve....the separate notes are so separate that the line is compromised, and the separation so extreme as to produce an unintentionally comic effect - the "pop corn" effect - excessively short, "poppy" notes, separated by too much silence. the bouncy, jocular effect is grossly distorted and lost...the solution is to broaden the length of the notes, thereby reducing the excessive silence between them, but this invariably destroys the whole scherzo effect originally intended.

But I don't think you have really engaged with the issues I've raised. Listen to the two recordings of Prokofiev's gavotte, if you haven't already. Berman's conforms very closely to the score and has more "flow," it's exemplary come è scritto. But for Prokofiev his score is only a starting point, and his jerky rhythm for the first theme banishes "flow" right from the start. If the player weren't identified as the composer, would you dismiss his style of performance as you've dismissed Furtwängler's?

I don't necessarily take a composer's own interpretation of a work as gospel truth...that certainly applies to conducting...often, I think, composers may be hearing in their heads one thing, but that which is actually sounding is rather different. I'm also open to the premise that musical works may succeed very well with rather different interpretations, that there is not just one single approach which must be the "one and only"..

[John F]

OK, but specifically, what about the Prokofiev recordings?

This thread isn't about "definitive" performances, by the composer or anybody else. The opposite, in fact. If exact adherence to the score is the criterion, then the most precisely accurate performance would be "definitive." But the whole point of this thread is that such literalism is not the be-all and end-all of performance, that the score does not and cannot set strict limits to what the interpreter can and may do with it - and Prokofiev's recording is a vivid case in point.

As I've said, taste is not arguable, and if you just like one performance better than another, that's fine. But the moment you say one performance is better than another, the burden is on you to say by what standard or standards.

Richard Taruskin, whom I've quoted extensively in this thread, is a fan of Norrington's Beethoven recordings, especially of the 2nd symphony. But he devotes several pages to the Furtwängler/Bayreuth recording of the Ninth, showing that this interpretive approach is not arbitrary but revelatory.

Though full of surface distortions, Furtwängler's performance makes disclosure after spine-tingling disclosure of the spiritual content of the music by means of inspirational, unnotated emphases, pointing to unsuspected musical parallels that link widely dispersed passages. It was not until I heard Furtwängler's unnotated tenutos in bar 34 of the first movement, and his unnotated molto ritardandos two bars later, that I realized the significance of the enigmatic E-flat-major chord (a "Neapolitan," but in root position, not the conventional "sixth"), which moves to a diminished-seventh chord on E natural in bar 27. These are the precise harmonies that, in the last movement, introduce Beethoven's depiction of the "starry dome" [Sternenzelt] beyond which God makes his abode, the "denouement of the entire symphony," to quote Leo Treitler. It is the chord progression that, with the addition of A in the bass, leads finally and securely to the never-again-to-be-questioned D major of Elysium, the very progression the first movement never gets to consummate. It is the progression the timpani tries so hard to insist upon at the first movement recapitulation, but can never browbeat the bass instruments into vouchsafing: their unstable F# falls inexorably to F natural, and Elysium is lost. At bars 326-7, the "beyond the stars" progression is assayed once more, but again to no avail; D flat major again fails to materialize.

Again, it was thanks to Furtwängler - who with courageous initiative decided that the fortissimo for the brass's F at bar 132 in the Adagio should also apply to the low strings' D flat a bar later - that I was able, to my astonishment, to perceive another foreshadowing of the deity in the last movement: the chord progression here is the same heaven-storming submediant that no one can miss where the chorus proclaims, "Und der Cherub steht vor Gott!" Next to revelations such as these, textual and metronome matters recede to a somewhat secondary importance, and preoccupation with them seems evasive.

You may not hear what Taruskin does, and you may not agree that these are revelations. But I think you must concede that what Taruskin calls "surface distortions" aren't merely willful but can be intellectually analyzed and arguably justified, as he has just done. There's more to Beethoven's music than normally meets the ear, Taruskin argues, and it takes a Furtwängler to reveal it to us.

[maestrob]

There are three, no four, recordings that I would like to point to in this discussion:

1) Debussy's piano rolls of the composer playing his own music vs. Gieseking or Bavouzet

2) Copland's own recording of his Third Symphony vs. Bernstein's

3) Prokofiev's own recording of his Third Piano Concerto vs. Szell's 1960's interpretation

4) Ormandy's Rachmaninoff II (1930's Minneapolis or 1950's Philadelphia) vs. Ormandy's last RCA recording which opens the cuts in the previous versions.

Their relevance to this discussion being?

1) Debussy's piano rolls are full of rubati and slurred and even skipped notes, where the music is often played in what we would today consider highly a highly distorted manner. Gieseking's model, recorded much later, is that which performers follow now.

2) Copland's own recording of his Third Symphony (made with the London Symphony for Everest) was considered inferior by the composer to the Columbia recording made by Bernstein, even though Copland followed his score to the letter.

3) Prokofiev's own recording of his Third Piano Concerto changes tempo quite frequently with each new musical idea, whereas Szell's stricter rethinking is what is followed today in performance practice.

4) Ormandy's 1930's rendition of Rachmaninoff II retained pride of place until that conductor "evolved" and opened the (to me) cuts that made the music more effective. I still prefer the version with cuts Rachmaninoff sanctioned, even though it's fashionable now to play the complete score.

My point is two-fold: 1) Composers are not always the best at performing their own music: to me, they simply present a point of view, and 2) Come e scritto is not always how composers WANTED their music to be performed. (See Debussy and Prokofiev).

Personally, I find Toscanini preferable to Furtwangler (That's old news!), but as I age I'm becoming intrigued by the alternatives posed by the non-literalists, even though I still prefer "modern" interpretations. When I listen to Debussy, I still prefer Bavouzet, even though I have learned to respect Debussy's gauzy playing.

[John F]

Composers are not always the best at performing their own music: to me, they simply present a point of view

Recordings offer many examples of this. For example, Prokofiev gave the first performance of his 6th sonata, on the radio. I haven't heard it, though supposedly it was published on the Colosseum label, but with Prokofiev's performing career well past, I don't imagine he could outdo Sviatoslav Richter's titanic performances of the 1960s. Of course, since Prokofiev approved Richter's playing and dedicated the 9th sonata to him, he didn't have to.

My examples of Prokofiev's gavotte are not meant to exalt the composer's recording above all others, let alone suggest that every other performance should imitate Prokofiev's. My point is that the score does not necessarily tell us how the composer wanted his music performed, that his intentions as revealed in his performance may be very different from what we might infer from the score. If so, who's to say the composer's performance is wrong? But if it's not wrong, why would it be wrong from anybody else?

[BWV 1080]

I think Taruskin commented on the HIP movement something to the effect of 'its not historically accurate, but sounds good anyway' which would go with the golden shower bloggers point. I prefer Berman's more straight rhythm, but am an unrepentant modernist and not much of a Prokofiev fan. For contemporary performers it comes down to whether an informed audience likes it.

[Heck148]

OK, but specifically, what about the Prokofiev recordings?

unfortunately, the sound on my computer is not working...

This thread isn't about "definitive" performances, by the composer or anybody else....the score does not and cannot set strict limits to what the interpreter can and may do with it

we are in agreement.

the moment you say one performance is better than another, the burden is on you to say by what standard or standards.

there are objective standards - correct notes, correct rhythms, good intonation, precise ensemble, etc...objective assessments can be made quite readily - however subjectivity plays a big role, also - a cleanly played, completely accurate rendition which is totally devoid of any phrasing, expression or feeling may be of little musical value...a not so note-perfect rendition, that is played with great expression, and generates a response from listeners may have very great musical value.

Richard Taruskin, whom I've quoted extensively in this thread, is a fan of Norrington's Beethoven recordings, especially of the 2nd symphony. But he devotes several pages to the Furtwängler/Bayreuth recording of the Ninth, showing that this interpretive approach is not arbitrary but revelatory.

if it's the Furtwangler LvB #9 I'm thinking of, it's a bad example - the one with the total train wreck in the closing measures....the orchestra just falls apart, comes completely off the rails....maybe some find this revelatory, I hear it as a disaster, really sloppy execution....objectively - badly performed.

Though full of surface distortions, Furtwängler's performance makes disclosure after spine-tingling disclosure of the spiritual content of the music by means of inspirational, unnotated emphases, pointing to unsuspected musical parallels that link widely dispersed passages.

some may hear it that way, others may hear it as distorted, disfigured, over-wrought and plagued with mannerisms.

You may not hear what Taruskin does, and you may not agree that these are revelations. But I think you must concede that what Taruskin calls "surface distortions" aren't merely willful but can be intellectually analyzed and arguably justified

no, I make no such concession... whose symphony am I hearing?? Beethoven's?? or Furtwangler's?? I think Furtwangler thought that his interpretations were true to the spirit - but the arbitrary emphases, tempo distortions, accentuations, etc may be very questionable regarding what the composer actually intended.
all too often, such arbitrary affectations applied to a score come off more as mannerisms [habitual tendencies] rather than valid interpretive insights.
I also question the basic Teutonic assumption that every harmonic half note in Beethoven, Brahms or Wagner must necessarily be imbued with "cosmic significance"...
IOW - play the music, let it speak for itself...stop trying to overlay some ponderous spiritual meaning or significance to every note.

[John F]

I think Taruskin commented on the HIP movement something to the effect of 'its not historically accurate, but sounds good anyway' which would go with the golden shower bloggers point.

That's about right. Writing in 1988, Taruskin said, "All truly modern musical performance (and of course that includes the authentistic variety) treats the music performed as if it were composed - or at least performed - by Stravinsky." He went on to support this with recorded examples. But he concludes, "Modern performance is an integrated thing. Our performances of Tchaikovsky are of a piece with our performances of Bach. That is what proves that they are of and for our time." And according to Taruskin, that's a good thing.

[John F]

I think Furtwangler thought that his interpretations were true to the spirit - but the arbitrary emphases, tempo distortions, accentuations, etc may be very questionable regarding what the composer actually intended.

After all the preceding discussion, you're still after that will-o'-the-wisp, the composer's intention? This music is by Beethoven, the same Beethoven who said that even when he indicated tempo with a metronome mark, "this applies only to the first measures, as feeling has its own tempo." What you call tempo distortions are undoubtedly closer to Beethoven's own practice, what he actually said, than any performances or recordings of today. What's questionable, because it contradicts Beethoven's explicit instruction, is the literalistic one-tempo-fits-all approach that you and many others prefer. You're entitled to your preference, for sure, but the notion that it's what the composer intended is a proven delusion.

play the music, let it speak for itself

Which means the performer is a nullity, he shouldn't interpret the music but just execute it without the slightest departure from the text. Stravinsky felt that way and said so. It's certainly one way of performing Beethoven's 9th, and Christopher Hogwood actually said it was his and the Academy of Ancient Music's approach to their Beethoven cycle. If that's the way you like it, fine. But it is not the only legitimate way to perform music, as most composers other than Stravinsky would tell you if they could. (This is a preview of Clive Brown's article which I'll quote shortly.)

After I quoted at length an intellectual analysis and explanation of the effect of certain points in Furtwängler's recording, you can't deny that such analysis is possible, which you do with "No, I make no such concession." You may refute it, or say it makes no difference to you, but not that it can't be done, because it has been done and I've quoted some of it.

Furtwängler's Bayreuth performance of the 9th, with the Festival's pick-up orchestra which was also rehearsing the Ring cycle, Parsifal, and Die Meistersinger under other conductors, is far from technically perfect. Other Furtwängler performances have been published with top orchestras that are much better played. As for the coda of the finale, Furtwängler's breakneck tempo has always been controversial, but Beethoven marked that passage prestissimo, and that's how Furtwängler plays it.

[John F]

We’re playing classical music all wrong – composers wanted us to improvise
January 14, 2015
Clive Brown

After a very drawn out and fraught construction, the Philharmonie de Paris is finally open. The 2,400 seat concert hall was conceived with ambitious plans to democratise classical music, and is situated, in line with these aims, on the boundary between the city’s affluent centre and its banlieues. Whether it will succeed in these ambitions remains to be seen.

Classical music has always been the music of the educated classes, but today, despite the much more equal distribution of education in first world society, it is seen by many as stuffy, irrelevant and unappealing. The term “classical music” – coined in the 19th century to describe material that had been judged worthy of inclusion in the pantheon of great art – is now used somewhat misleadingly to apply to everything that might be performed in a concert hall or opera house, rather than in more informal venues. The old assumption that “classical” music has more cultural value than “popular” music is no longer orthodox – it has become one genre amongst many.

Current performance conditions do little to help this – tickets to opera theatres and concert halls, where the audience listens in unbroken silence, are generally expensive, and performers adhere conscientiously, yet often uninspiringly, to the notation in the score. But it wasn’t always like this. Performers of the past approached their task much more like popular musicians today, and this shift in style has almost certainly contributed to classical music’s lacking appeal to much of the population.

The popstars of the 1800s

A major factor in the diminished popularity of classical music is the failure of modern performers fully to understand what the musical notation of the past was expected to convey to them. Pre-20th century musicians approached performance much more like popular musicians still do. For them, it was more fluid, more personal – composers expected them to understand the hidden messages behind the notes. Even in the great music of the late 19th century such as that of Brahms, options in performance were hinted at rather than prescribed. The notation was merely a starting point – a great performer was expected to go beyond it.

But classical performance has lost much of the improvisatory element that was an essential part of its original character. This has resulted in a stiffly formal distortion of what the greatest composers and performers of the past expected.

The old musicians understood that there were many aspects of an effective and engaging performance that could not be embodied in the score. Tempo was often expected to be more flexible. Rhythms could be bent in a manner we still hear in jazz and other types of popular music. Notes weren’t always be taken cleanly, but often approached with various kinds of slides and tonal inflections. Vibrato was an ornamental effect rather than a continuous and regular oscillation of the sound. Parts that are notated vertically together in the score, were frequently expected not to be together in performance. In keyboard playing, chords that appear to be vertically together were mostly performed with various degrees of spreading.

These are just a few of the ways that musicians built on the raw notation in order to turn a merely correct performance into a fine one, making concerts much more exciting and vibrant events. But these practices were gradually eliminated in the early 20th century.

Classical musicians increasingly equated fidelity to the composer’s “intentions” with reproducing the text, the whole text, and nothing but the text. This transformation partly reflected the ideals of modernism, in which the rejection of the past was a first principle, but it may also have been motivated by a desire to distance “culturally superior” classical music from the popular styles in which these freedoms were retained.

Formal, rigid, unemotional

Already in the 1930s, voices were raised against this growing prioritisation of the literal meaning of the notation. In 1933 a reviewer in The Musical Times criticised rhythmic rigidity in a performance of Brahms’s Violin Sonata op. 78, complaining that it ran contrary to the composer’s tradition. And, with regard to another performance, the same writer, after remarking that it “pleased by its modest competence”, continued: "Neat as to technique, the players had so eliminated all superfluity from their performance that their Mozart sonata struck one as less interesting than they or it deserved to be."

But such mild admonitions failed to prevent classical performers from renouncing their old freedoms, in the misguided belief that the music on the page contained virtually everything the composer expected. So it is hardly surprising that many genuinely musical people are now deterred from engaging with classical music by a perception that it is formal, rigid, and lacking in emotional vitality.

As yet, few professional musicians have begun seriously to experiment with responding to the messages that lie behind the notes on the page as their predecessors did. But this core repertoire of great music must now be recreated in ways that return it to its quasi-improvisatory roots. It needs more than family friendly, state-of-the-art concert halls with innovative programming – though this is a good start.

If classical music is to regain its cultural significance, musicians must engage with it more courageously, learning once more to read between the lines of the score. Only then will they recapture the full measure of freshness, beauty and excitement that composers expected their notation to convey to skillful performers and, through them, to the listener.

https://theconversation.com/were-playin ... vise-36090

[John F]

This is the article that the anonymous "Throwcase" trashed in a hostile and offensive piece titled "The Golden Shower of Musicology," which BWV 1080 linked to and partly quoted with approval. Brown's piece is certainly not perfect, and its title is unfortunate - I'd be willing to bet that it's not his own title but was supplied by the publisher, just as the New York Times replaced another author's title, "The Modern Sound of Early Music," with the snappier but misleading "The Spin Doctors of Early Music."

More substantially, Brown does not make much of a case for his claim that returning to a freer, more flexible style of performance can help classical music regain such popularity as it has had in the past. He could be right, but his view would need more argument than the space it takes in conversation.com, a nonspecialist web site for nonspecialist readers. My feeling is that he probably isn't right, but that the idea is worth thinking about. Throwcase denies that, asserting that a mere musicologist, though also a member of the audience and sometimes a performer himself, has no business interfering in how musicians make music.

But Brown's account of the history of performance styles is correct and well put, and so is his critique of present-day performers, despite Throwcase's effort to discredit it at such insufferable length. Any who want to slog their way all the way through it, BWV 1080 has provided a link. Gustav Mahler said in other words what Brown says here, and not just about his own music: "What is most important in music is not to be found in the printed notes."

[BWV 1080]

The golden shower rebuke is well deserved - the diversity and quality of musical performances available today, either through recordings or concerts, dwarfs anything in the past. Music seems to be the only art that has this fetish about past performing practice. I do not see arguments for a lost golden age of Shakespearean acting practice that we must return to. Probably if we went back to the 19th century stage acting would seem overdone and melodramatic. Why not the same with musical performance practice?

I do think recording has changed the way we hear music. Irregularities in rhythm become much more apparent upon repeated listening. The Prokofiev recording, for example, really does not work for me - it seems mannered and affected. I have noticed some of the same issue within other genres - the sense of time in 20s jazz recordings vs. ones from the 50s or 60s or even in Indian Classical music where the first generation of recordings has a less strict sense of time, which again, I do not think is a good thing.

[maestrob]

If I'm reading it right, I disagree with the premise of the article, that performing music as written automatically produces a rigid and unexciting performance. What arrant nonsense! Toscanini's Beethoven was filled with passion, as was Solti's Brahms, or any number of modern performances. I compare this to the reading of a Shakespeare sonnet: surely the emotional content is in the reader, animated by great acting (and coaching of the reader/actor). The text is the starting point, it is up to the actor to find the passion in the sonnet and convey it. Just so it is up to the musicians to create the excitement and passion in the music.

It is indeed possible to create a fulfilling, passionate performance of whatever music within the discipline of the score, as modern (including HIP) performances show every night in concert halls around the world, or on recordings recently released. Like Heck, I hear the last bars of that Furtwanger performance of Beethoven IX as a train wreck referenced earlier.

Just as certainly there are many dull performances: just read the reviews in any CD magazine you care to name. That's not the fault of modern performance practice, it's the fault of the musicians involved.

'Nuff said.

[Heck148]

After all the preceding discussion, you're still after that will-o'-the-wisp, the composer's intention? This music is by Beethoven,

but the fact remains, if the composer wanted the music to be performed with all sorts of tempo fluctuations, out of the basic pulse and rhythm - there are clear ways of notating this or indicating it in the score...to just make stuff up, and then claim that this is somehow authentic, and the composer's true intent, is presumptuous in the extreme.

What you call tempo distortions are undoubtedly closer to Beethoven's own practice,

that is conjecture, pure and simple...you have no evidence that Beethoven wanted his pieces twisted and distorted when no such indications appear in the written score.

What's questionable, because it contradicts Beethoven's explicit instruction, is the literalistic one-tempo-fits-all approach that you and many others prefer.

faulty assumption not in evidence...I've never posited that one-tempo-fits-all....most of the great conductors/performers don't adhere to that dogma, either.

play the music, let it speak for itself

Which means the performer is a nullity, he shouldn't interpret the music but just execute it without the slightest departure from the text.

no, not at all...nobody said that...obviously the music is going to need phrasing and expression, since the music is simply a map, a blueprint of the sounds the composer imagined....what is questionable is the interpreter/performer adding, subtracting, or radically changing things when no such indication exists in the score...that begs the question - <<whose
Symphony #9 are we hearing?? Beethoven's, or so someone who thought he/she could re-write Beethoven's??

Stravinsky felt that way and said so.

I've already addressed various composers' efforts to explicitly detail every rhythmic and phrasing nuance thru meticulous notation - and illustrated how this often does not work.

I quoted at length an intellectual analysis and explanation of the effect of certain points in Furtwängler's recording, you can't deny that such analysis is possible,

It may be possible, but that does not make it valid, or true to the composer's intention. anyone can have an opinion...whether it is valid or worthwhile is a different issue.

Furtwängler's Bayreuth performance of the 9th, ...Beethoven marked that passage prestissimo, and that's how Furtwängler plays it.

[/quote]

some of the orchestra plays it...
others are on a decidedly different schedule...

[BWV 1080]

Another point - the composer is not the final word on his composition -the community of performers is. Prokofiev is within living memory - why has no one played his works like the example above? Why is prokofiev even considered worthy of performance? The answer to both questions is that the performing culture made these decisions. Which versions of Schumann's piano works are definitive? Again, most performers ignore the composers later revisions and use the first editions. A tension exists between the dispersed, evolutionary nature of performance practice and the desire of academics to impose their views by rhetorical force on performers. I continue to give the performers the benefit of the doubt and discount heavily the academic arguments. Clive Brown, by beginning his piece stating that his intellect is correct and the art created by the performing community is wrong, just shows himself to be the worst sort of academic blowhard and well deserving of both a rhetorical and literal golden shower.