# Means of interpretation



## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

I've been wondering sometimes: what are the means that a musician or conductor has to shape their individual interpretation of a given piece? They're usually working with the same text, after all.

I don't mean logistic questions like: modern instruments or period instruments? full orchestra or chamber orchestra? contralto or countertenor? etc. These dicisions preceed the actual performance. I mean: what are the basic means by which a musical performance can be shaped?

I see three basic means:

1. Tempo.
Setting a basic tempo for a given piece of movement is perhaps the most obvious and the most effective way of giving a piece a certain character. Unless metronome markings are provided, there is, I think, much room for interpretative freedom.

1.2. Flexibility.
Related to tempo: the question of tempo shifts and rubato, particularly where no such change is indicated in the score. The spectrum ranges from firm beat throughout to constantly shifting tempi.

2. Dynamics.
Even if scores indicate dynamics from ppp to fff, it's still up to the interpretator to determine exactly how quiet ppp and how loud fff should be. Also: crescendi and decrescendi, indicated or not.

2.1. Balance.
The dynamic relationship between individual voices, instruments or orchestral sections. How to balance strings, woodwinds and brass, for example.

3. Articulation.
The question of staccato and legato and everything in between.

These are very basic and obvious means at a musician's or conductor's disposal. But are there more, perhaps more subtle means by which an interpretation can be shaped?


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

These are the basic tools. The score is the text of what you want to say. The next thing is to consider the meaning of the text. A simple joke will show how the same text can carry two meanings :

Stalin is addressing the people. He announces: 
Comrades, I have here a telegram from Trotsky. He states, "You were right and I was wrong. You are the true heir to Lenin. I should apologize." 
From the front row a (comrade) tailor rises and calls, "Comrade Stalin!" 
Stalin replies, "In our great free socialist state, even a tailor may address the head of state. What is it, Comrade Tailor?" 
The tailor replies, "You`re reading it wrong." 
"What," says Stalin, "what is wrong? How should I read it? Come up here and tell us." 
The tailor reads: "You were right and I was wrong? *YOU* are the true heir to Lenin? *I* should apologize?"

I also gave a Liszt story here where it seems that Liszt was using performance techniques to "tell a story".

So the basic point I'm making is that it's a combination of technical tools, performance style and personal understanding of the meaning of the text.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Phrasing: Deciding how to shape musical phrases. This partially encompasses some of the things you've already mentioned, and it takes place on the individual as well as collective level, but it's a vitally important difference between a mediocre reading of a score and a fantastic one.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

All you've mentioned are all in play, often to the subtlest and most finely nuanced of degree.

Articulation = phrasing in a way; articulation though, along with dynamics, is a huge part of what we hear. The dynamic contouring of a phrase, even a figure, plus the minutia of articulation, the slightest of rhythmic agogics (slight stresses, the most mini of 'rubato' if you will, on both the dynamic level and length of one note to the next, even within a rapid swept passage of continual sixteenth notes in a quick tempo_ are what completely alter the music, animate if from the page -- upon which none of this, or barely any, is ever notated.

It is that (Trained) ability which is known and expected from composers, expecting, at least in their own era, a certain 'given' musicality and innate understanding of what is notated on the page, without reams of written instructions as to delivery. [Performing music, the further away from our own era, the more 'historically informed' the performer must be.]

All of the above is also what 'individuates' one player from the next, even though they may be working maximum in concert within one section playing the same notes.

The amount of elements involved combined with the variables (staggering!), and the fact their import may as well be a sort of DNA / Fingerprint proof as to how we can tell that Fred, not Ginger -- or Ginger, and not Fred, both equal caliber players playing equal caliber instruments -- are playing the clarinet.


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