# What is the art work: the composer's creation or it's performance?



## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

In the Netherlands there is much ado about opera right now! Perhaps even the prime minister will utter his opinion about it, because the discussion tends to get very political. Recently there has been a similar very hot political debate about street names and such because some activists (which the right calls 'social justice warriors') urge to change all street names and remove all statues of basically all national's heroes because all those heroes were guilty of racist or sexist views or actions or at least didn't spoke out against it! 

And now the same kind of political debate in my country is about opera! For some people have likewise discovered that librettos of operas of the past, especially Mozart's Zauberflöte, contains sexist and racist phrases and they find this intolerable! Even some (young female) opera directors demand removal of these phrases from the libretto!

I don't want to repeat this political discussion here (actually the political discussion is simply explained: conservative people want to conserve the past as it is the basis of what we are now and demand respect for it in the same way parents demand respect from their children and progressive people hate the past because otherwise there wouldn't be anything to progress upon). But I would like to take a more philosophical approach to the current opera debate: what is the art work here?

Because I think an art work is a 'closed' or 'absolute' object that shouldn't be changed by others than the artist. You don't go a museum with a paintbrush in your hand to improve the paintings, do you? So I think the question about the opera director who wants to change Mozart's opera or libretto to make it non-sexist or non-racist is: is the art work here Mozart's or the director's? What may not be changed?

I would like to hear your thoughts about it!


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Agamemnon said:


> You don't go a museum with a paintbrush in your hand to improve the paintings, do you?


Don't give them ideas! Actually for photographs it is already happening, with portraits of smoking celebrities airbrushed to remove the cigarettes.

Art should always be seen in relationship with the time it was created, and not with a 21st century mindset of some people projected back. With opera there is one complication though. When an art director opts for contemporary stage settings for an old opera, I can imagine some confusion occurs. Even so, some remarks in a programme booklet would do the job. No need for censorship.


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

It's getting too crazy and out of control. Reminds me of notions how 9th symphony is about rape. History needs to be known and works of art need to be preserved, and also respected, if they have merit. You don't have to AGREE with everything that's expressed in a certain work of art, but if it is a valuable work of art, it needs to be preserved and respected. Comments and criticism are always OK, but changing the work of art, censoring it, or disrespecting the artists because of things like that, it's total madness. Probably everyone in 19th century or earlier had some views that for our todays understanding was backwards, racist, or some other -ist... Does it mean that we should spit on everyone who's born before 20th century?
I for one am AGAINST imperialism, colonialism, racism and things like that. Our countries here in Balkans were under Turkish occupation for several centuries. It probably retarded our development a lot, kept us from experiencing renaissance and other progressive European movements.

Still, even I would feel bad for them, if Turks decided to rename all their streets that are named after the important people in their Ottoman past. It's like spitting on your own past, renouncing your own identity... Yeah, they are "guilty" of occupying foreign territories etc, but at that time it was modus operandi in the whole world, and the recognition they get by having streets named in their honor can be for all sorts of different reasons, like spreading culture, bringing about advances in administration, education, sponsoring arts, architecture, preserving the culture, etc...

Now, of course, some people should NOT have streets named in their honor, this includes ideologues of genocides, dictators, etc... but I guess this problem doesn't exist because such people don't have streets named in their honor anyway.


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

To answer the question:

I think both the composition and the performance are work of art. Conductors and performers are artists just like composer is.
But this doesn't include fundamentally changing or censoring works of art.

Of course you can make your own version of some work of art, but you don't have the right to call it original. It's Magic Flute by XY, not by Mozart anymore.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

With art forms that involve performance for a work to be realised surely both the writer/composer and the performer(s) are the artists? 

The greatest music seems able to be give rise to a huge number of different approaches in performance. Klemperer's Beethoven is not the same as Vanska's or Furtwangler's but all can be great. I can't read music, however. If I could I think my experience might be different. I might have ideas about what all those dots mean and how the music should go. But, even then, I think I would be happy when a good performer showed me something different.

I think it probably is important for a performance to be "true to the work" - making the Choral a work full of jokes would surely not be funny or moving - but I am comfortable with an animated debate about what being "true to the work" actually involves. I don't think it means following the composer's markings for speed etc slavishly - I can think of lots of recordings made by composers of their own work that do not follow their own markings - or always performing works using the instruments and performing practice of the time. 

I am also comfortable with fashions for how to perform the music of the past changing over time. All of these things make music more interesting. I would hate music to be treated as museum pieces. I guess a more difficult area is with works where a performer would have been expected to improvise in performance, like with Mozart's piano concertos. I love it when the improvisation is imaginative and sounds like it fits with the period. But I don't think I would be that keen on obviously anachronistic improvisations.

I tend to ignore critics who choose the "best performance" of this or that by reference to what the composer intended or the supposed "programme" of the piece. If it works, it works. But I do sometimes come across performances of loved works that do sometimes feel wrong to me. So it is a matter of taste. And, as I know that my tastes can change over time, I do tend to keep recordings that I don't like. One day I may find them marvelous.

I must say, though, that I am no fan of the tendency over the last 50 years for dramas (plays and operas) to be "explained" by putting them into a historically new situation so as to shine a new light on the work's meaning. I feel that is clumsy and seems to suggest that the director was bored with the work as s/he found it. Probably, though, this is just because I know less drama than I do pure music.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Agamemnon said:


> Because I think an art work is a 'closed' or 'absolute' object that shouldn't be changed by others than the artist. You don't go a museum with a paintbrush in your hand to improve the paintings, do you? So I think the question about the opera director who wants to change Mozart's opera or libretto to make it non-sexist or non-racist is: is the art work here Mozart's or the director's? What may not be changed?
> 
> I would like to hear your thoughts about it!


Well, to a degree, a play, or an opera, is only a blueprint for what could be on stage. I've seen Madame Butterfly, for example, performed by a tiny crew, with electronic instruments substituting for a full orchestra. So, a necessary edit due to limited resources. Rearranged music, etc. So was it still madame Butterfly? Or had it become something else?

What you're also wondering on top of this, is (to my mind), can a director edit the opera because he disagrees with its supposedly racist or sexist content, and still claim to put on The Magic Flute, or Cosi Fan Tutti, and say it's by Mozart and his librettist? Well, they tampered with Mozart's operas in the 19th century, out of their own prudish morals. They felt they should correct the Maestro, who obviously wasn't well, or something, when he composed divine music for such depraved topics.

It's a risk we take when we attend performances. Sometimes a director will take certain steps to clarify some ambiguities in the text, but seasoned opera goers will be appalled by this innovation. I've sat through a few performances of Don Giovanni where I was bitterly disappointed by the ideas of those who staged it. I still considered it a performance of Don Giovanni,. however, despite the tamperings. A middling, so-so effort at staging it, but it was identifiably the same opera.

But now, what about the thorny topic of political interference? As you say, it's a hot topic. Should old plays and operas be censored? Just like, should old contentious statues be removed from the public square? perhaps the old statues should be removed, and placed in museums, so people can see their nation's past, but not have to face it in a the public piazza and feel that some old colonialist racist was still being held up as a paragon of the nations values?

But with fiction? With opera? With old classic plays? I don't see any harm in presenting the pasts own fictions as they were given us, but I also think the director has some leeway to interpret things too - and let the audience beware!


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

This would be a tough question for George Crumb, I think.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

The composer's creation is a musical text. The aesthetic object is its performance.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

The artwork is the artist's creation. The performance/staging/moustache/etc. is just interpretive commentary on it.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

If you can't read words, you need to have somebody read the book for you. If you can't read musical scores, you need to have somebody hire a whole durn orchestra and play it for you!


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

I'd like to see historic operas left the way they were written to show the changing values in society through the ages. Different generations have different values. It's history in the raw without tampering with 20/20 hindsight. 

Rather than messing with past librettos because of political correctness, I'd rather see humanity get off its duff and write the operas of today that reflect society's current values—it might occur to them that it's not so easy. 

The minute someone starts messing with a work of art, the change becomes an overriding distraction that alters the balance of the whole. It's like putting a fig leaf on Michaelangelo's David because of shame and a failure to view humanity's landmarks of development through the history that includes its failings and shortcomings. All that's required is another Mozart or Bizet if today's crowd can develop them when not on their iPhones.


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## St Matthew (Aug 26, 2017)

Trick question because it's both


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

On the one hand, there seems to be a modern tendency to confuse _depicting_ something unpleasant with _condoning_ something unpleasant. Unquestionably there's misogyny _in_ The Magic Flute, but is it a misogynist opera? I wouldn't say so. (Certainly not in comparison to Cosi fan tutte!). Is the opera company being misogynist by putting it on? Surely not. So you could dismiss the complaints as a step too far. But on the other hand, if the misogyny therein can be easily excised without any significant impact on everything else, then why does it need to be there? Which brings us to the question of whether classical music is a dead thing to be preserved as museum pieces, or something alive. If it's dead, then sure, put it on exactly as its creators intended it, maybe with a "warning" to the effect that some aspects may be offensive to some members of the audience. If it's a living thing, though, then I see nothing wrong with changing the libretto to get rid of bits that could be seen as reducing its merits. I suspect that if Mozart - or _any_ composer with half an eye on his own wallet - were told that audiences were starting to turn away from his operas because the librettos contained outdated and unwelcome ideas, he'd have no problem making the changes.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

The best method is: leave things alone and explain them. 

That's the short rule-of-thumb. On the other hand there are going to be difficulties. If you have an opera with a very crude stereotype of, for example, a Jewish person and it has historically been portrayed in the worst possible light, do you just wheel that stereotype out in all its hooked-nosed, hand-rubbing, beady-eyed glory? Easy to do if you aren't affected personally, less easy if you're on the receiving end.

I suppose the general assumption is that anyone watching an opera will be of sufficient intelligence to recognise these issues, without needing censorship. On the other hand, experience has shown me that even among opera lovers there are the same people who subscribe to the idea that any attempt to tone-down or give an extra-explanatory dimension to potentially offensive elements is 'cultural marxism' (deep yawn).


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Agamemnon said:


> In the Netherlands there is much ado about opera right now! Perhaps even the prime minister will utter his opinion about it, because the discussion tends to get very political. Recently there has been a similar very hot political debate about street names and such because some activists (which the right calls 'social justice warriors') urge to change all street names and remove all statues of basically all national's heroes because all those heroes were guilty of racist or sexist views or actions or at least didn't spoke out against it!
> 
> And now the same kind of political debate in my country is about opera! For some people have likewise discovered that librettos of operas of the past, especially Mozart's Zauberflöte, contains sexist and racist phrases and they find this intolerable! Even some (young female) opera directors demand removal of these phrases from the libretto!
> 
> ...


The problem applies to literary art too. Indeed perhaps most dangerously there, because of the_ prima facie _antisemitism of _The Gospel according to St John. _ I've been engaged with these things recently because I've been reading a book about the religious ideas in Bach's music (Michael Marissen's _Bach and God_.)

Another very interesting example to think about is the Zionist, anti-Palestine, undercurrents in John Adam's _Death of Kinghoffer._


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> Another very interesting example to think about is the Zionist, anti-Palestine, undercurrents in John Adam's _Death of Kinghoffer._


I thought the controversy _there_ was that it was too _pro-_Palestine and even anti-Semitic!

(But then the Israel/Palestine situation seems to be a profound case study in how people perceive bias...)


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