# Performance paradox?



## Guest (Sep 23, 2014)

Prompted by a thought in another thread, I wonder how others' resolve the apparent paradox in determining how a work should be performed.

Until a work is performed, how do we know 'how' it should sound? Once it is performed, we still only know how that interpreter believes it should sound. Of course, composers sometimes oblige by telling us, and their scores give clues too, but that doesn't stop conductors and performers offering us their variations.

And that still doesn't stop every man and his dog telling us how fast/slow a movement 'should' be; how restraint or drama is most appropriate; whether something should be played with 'humour' or 'sincerity'.

I know I have preferences, but I'll not pretend that Bavouzet's way with Debussy is the 'right' way, or that Richter is 'wrong' (focus on the principle in the example, not the example itself).

Here's an example...



> "Jean-Yves Thibaudet's Debussy cycle is a cornucopia of delights. The 12 Etudes could hardly be presented more personally or vivaciously. Nos 6 and 7 are marvels of bright-eyed irony and humour, while Nos 8 and 9 contrast a haunting alternation of lassitude and hyperactivity with razor-sharp cascades of repeated notes. His timing in the central lento, molto rubato of No 12 is memorably acute; throughout, you're aware of a pianist with a penchant for spare pedalling and a refined brilliance, far remote from, say, Gieseking's celebrated, opalescent magic.


http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/r/Decca/4602472


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Everybody's different as to what constitutes a definitive performance and thankfully there are plenty of performances of most things to choose from.
I used to blindly buy what music critics recommended as "terrific performances." I quickly learned, what critics loved, I often did not.

There is no definitive "right way" to perform a work. Listen to as many performances of something you like as you can. Do not simply buy a recording because of all the hype, without auditioning it. You may be disappointed.

We are fortunate to have so many performances of all the masterworks to choose from. Whatever sounds right to you, go for it.

Don't blindly follow the music critics' choices as to "definitive performances". I have found many of them do not know their arses from their elbows!


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

With a text - book or play - we can read and build up an internal picture. Anybody can read Hamlet and build up their own picture of the Dane. They can then use that to judge a particular performance and, hopefully, to accept a challenge to their interpretation by a good actor or by a director's approach to the play or the transcription of the book. How many times have you heard somebody say that actor X is not their idea of character A, or that actor X doesn't "work" in part A?

When it comes to music, unless you are an accomplished score reader, then you lack some of these guidelines. You are constrained by your knowledge of the composer and performances of their work. In some ways, it's like going to a Shakespeare play that you don't know at all well, and having to judge the performance by your knowledge of his other works. The situation would be worse were you going to a play where you did not know the author's work.

However, you are helped by the fact that players and conductors will be aware of many different composers and how their works are usually performed. As you listen to "standard" works you will build a picture of what you like in a particular composer; you will have a sense of what they are trying to do; you will begin to understand their melodic and harmonic styles. You will have a sense of who the composer is. At this point, you will have the ability to state a preference for different performances in terms of tempi, dynamics, phrasing and so forth which reflects your understanding of the composer.

At the same time, looking at Current Listening, we can see people say "I've tried composer X in conductor B's performance and Composer X is not for me". Then somebody will reply, try conductor C or performer Q; and the original poster will suddenly say "I see what Composer X is about, thank you!" Others will chime with their preferences for different conductors and performers. 

Just as there is no one unique perfect Hamlet that suits everybody, there is no one unique perfect version of the Goldberg Variations that completely embodies what Bach was thinking at the time he wrote it, matches Bach's idea of the piece and appeals to everybody as the definitive version.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

There is the score, of course, but it is inadequate in denoting every aspect of the sound. Sometimes we are fortunate to have recordings conducted by the composer himself (but not all composers were good conductors). Sometimes there are recordings authorized by the composer or critical recordings done by students of or experts in the composer. There is also the historical context that can give clues to how things should sound. But sometimes, I think that it really doesn't matter how it is supposed to sound, since each performer decides for himself what form he wants the musical putty to take. There are many great recordings of the same piece that each present the work in a different tone and this diversity of vision makes the work even greater.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Sometimes there is 'negative evidence'. We may not know how a piece *should* sound but when we hear, for example, a baroque piece overlaid with musical elements fashionable in the era of its twentieth century performers, we know it's probably not authentic. It's a similar effect to Hollywood historical epics - when we see Liz Taylor as Cleopatra, we see a look that was popular in the 1960s, and we sense that wasn't what the ancient Egyptian queen actually looked like. 

I love this John Holloway version of a Ciaconna by Bertali, but I think it sounds a little 'groovy' for the 17th century:


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Taggart said:


> Just as there is no one unique perfect Hamlet that suits everybody, there is no one unique perfect version of the Goldberg Variations that completely embodies what Bach was thinking at the time he wrote it, matches Bach's idea of the piece and appeals to everybody as the definitive version.


... and I'm fairly certain that Bach would be amazed at the modern dilemma of 'which is the best interpretation,' because he would play his variations differently if he sat down to them, one month to the next.

We're all spoiled and conditioned to technical perfection via the editing of recordings, and hearing any repertoire as 'set' in that one performance.

If it could be afforded, going to hear a good symphony orchestra with the same conductor and players perform the same program, Thursday evening, Friday matinee and evening, Saturday evening, Sunday evening, or whatever programming has the work performed days in a row back to back, would already show at least some slight variations in how it was played one performance to the next.

Certainly, there is an ideal performance often enough in the composer's mind, and sometimes we even hear from them that this performance was 'closer to their ideal' than another... but that is actually relatively rare to find.

Otherwise, just as any playwright has to trust first to their craft, secondly to the craft and wisdom of the performers trained in that craft, so does a composer have to strive to make their score as clear as possible, perhaps with some extra-musical directives written in here or there, and otherwise trust that the performers are 'musical.'

An untrained audience member needs nothing but their ears to tell them if they thought a piece 'went exceptionally well,' or sounded -- probably -- more like it was supposed to on any given evening.

The rest is quite a matter of faith, trust in others, and results among the very best of performers are at best, variable.

I've heard performances I thought 'definitive' in that they could not be bettered, but without thinking that 'another' could not be nearly as good or also definitive.

Since music is inherently flexible, I'm sure there is more than 'one definitive' interpretation of many a work, such are, within limits, the parameters of 'what works,' and that most convincingly.


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## Guest (Sep 24, 2014)

Thanks for replies so far. There's an encouraging unanimity around the idea that listener preference is an acceptable determinant (something so often challenged in some quarters here).

So why, for example, do people get so het up about Chailly's Beethoven tempos? Can someone explain why it caused a stir for him to observe the metronome markings, or, conversely, why previous renditions were lauded for ignoring them? Or have I misunderstood the technical details of the debate?


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

I find that the score is the actual work, and any performance of it is a work in its own right. One could say: there are no recordings of the Beethoven 5th symphony, only recordings of performances of the Beethoven 5th symphony. But that's obvious, I guess. Especially since the written score and the performance are two different media: the score is an asensual notation, the performance is a sensual experience.

But even if one can read scores and hear the music in their head, so to speak, similar to the way we see the action when we read a play, we ourselves produce a performance, if you like, in our heads, no different from the way an orchestra and a conductor would. We read a cello line in a score and hear the cello play in our head, but the sound of that head-cello is produced by us, our knowledge of what cellos sound like, and we probably pick a specific cello sound in our head that might be very different from the sound another person reading the score would hear in their head.

I guess it's possible that the composer has a very precise notion of how their work should be performed, how it should sound. Ideally, the composer can create the performance themselves, as an individual or with an ensemble or even orchestra. "Definitive" performances of the War Requiem conducted by Britten himself, for instance, or Glass playing his own piano music. But even this would presuppose the ability within the composer to perform their works the way they would like to. Who knows if even Chopin ever manages to play his works exactly the way he wanted to play them, the way he heard them in his head?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

MacLeod said:


> Thanks for replies so far. There's an encouraging unanimity around the idea that listener preference is an acceptable determinant (something so often challenged in some quarters here).
> 
> So why, for example, do people get so het up about Chailly's Beethoven tempos? Can someone explain why it caused a stir for him to observe the metronome markings, or, conversely, why previous renditions were lauded for ignoring them? Or have I misunderstood the technical details of the debate?


I think you've understood them near perfectly. Those discussion are, primarily, about _one recording of the work only,_ perhaps that somewhat to very different from the live performances involving the same group and conductor. "Traditions," sometimes right _but also at times wildly incorrect_, become established.

One of my favorite citations of some 'traditional take' on a tempo completely out of whack with the composer's tempo marking is the Chopin Étude Op. 10, no. 6.







The _dotted_ quarter is assigned a metronome marking of 69, yet just about every one of the world class performers who touch it play it at a much slower tempo, almost as if it were a nocturne... and that while _knowing_ the Études are all virtuoso knuckle-breaking _exercises_ as well as being presentable virtuosic solo pieces and music in their own right. I have heard recordings of this at its correct tempo, which does make quite the finger demands of brain central in not getting the hands in knots in order to render it well at tempo a real challenge, but can find none on youtube, including Pollini, Ashkenazy, etc. they each and all play it like a nocturne (and it is 'pretty' at the slower tempo, and I'm certain that was the only and overriding reason people 'just slowed it down,' because they liked it that way... "pure and simple. Nothing more, nothing less.")

Things like this, a beloved recording, one or more similar particular renderings, get set into place to a degree where the general public's association with the piece _as sounding 'right' that way becomes fairly set -- if not that rightness, familiarity and just assuming 'that is the way this piece goes,' becomes thought of as 'normal.'_ Along comes a conductor willing to actually believe the composer's markings (and Beethoven was the first to have the metronome, and it is proven that the antique metronomes were accurate enough and in line with the markings the more devices deliver) -- et voilà -- you get a flame war of critics, both professional as well of all those who were used to the piece the way they had repeatedly become accustomed to it, often enough through that repeat listening to one favored recording!

Von Karajan's tempo / tempi in the finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony _are not Beethoven's_, and many who love the big wall of sound he got out of the Berlin Philharmonic just love 'his' Beethoven nine. That take is broad, with a sweep near enough to being virtually "romantic." (not that Beethoven was 'romantic,' but why the hell pay any attention to little details like that? Lol.)

You can see where a lot of people would get at least their knickers in quite a twist over a leaner, meaner and tauter up tempo performance, having literally 'romanticized' the piece as Karajan did and having virtually married themselves to that one recorded performance.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

It's a matter of professional training and artistic taste how a work "should" be performed according to the performer. Obviously some guidance exist but it's a largely a matter of refined taste.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

A work should be performed by taking into account the whole history of performing and developing it further through the dialectic towards the _absolute_ performance at the end of Time.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I don't dare have an opinion on musical performance - if Gould or Pogorelich or Richter want to play it that way, I'd better listen than judge - except obliquely, by analogy from literature and theater.

I think we're all aware that there is a lot of freedom in theater. No one would blink if I said my students had decided to set _Hamlet_ in 19th century Korea. And even if we make some huge change... like start the play with the "to be or not to be" soliloquy, or have Hamlet visibly still alive but unable to speak as Fortinbras claims the kingdom, a lot of people would be willing to consider all that. It's actually normal to do things like that.

But in music, my lord! To be fair to us, we will allow a work composed for harpsichord to be played on a piano. But transposed for guitar? And if we admit we _like_ it that way? Inevitably there will be sneers. If I overstate the case it isn't by much.

I've long advocated that we relax a bit. Of course I want to see _Hamlet_ set in 16th-century Denmark, but seeing it set in something like contemporary Somalia might actually startle me out of some of my unnecessary assumptions, might enable me to realize something not only about what a clever setting some company did but about the play itself, or perhaps even about humanity.

I think this can happen with music more often than we have usually allowed ourselves to explore. Perhaps Mussorgsky's _Pictures_ shouldn't be the only work out there that dozens of different people have orchestrated dozens of different ways. Perhaps a Josquin motet would sound amazing performed by a wind ensemble.... Perhaps... well, perhaps we shouldn't even scorn someone's judgment if they prefer the wind version!

We have been slowly getting freer for a few decades, or so it seems to me. We've become more conscious of the fact that historically improvisation was normal, was even important. Still, we're evidently so conservative that we need that historical example to legitimize our own improvisation. It's a bit like early Renaissance explorers trying to legitimize their own exploration by citing Roman examples. Why not just... set out and explore?

There was a time when classical music was the music of a conservative elite, but that time is past - we'd all, I'd argue, do well to really internalize that fact - and that time's attitudes can go away too. Paraphrasing a man many consider the savior of all humanity, the music was made for us, not us for the music.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

It's hard to argue against respecting a composer's intentions, insofar as we can divine them from scores and knowledge of performance traditions. But what if a composer's intentions are indefinite? Many composers have sanctioned widely divergent performances of their works; Sibelius, for example, praised the very different Karajan and Ormandy in their performances of his symphonies. And even when composers perform their own music the results can be quite variable from occasion to occasion; we have timings of Wagner conducting the prelude to _Parsifal_ on two different occasions, and taking 13:00 and 14:30, respectively. How, then, did he "really" want it played? Most musicians understand that tempo cannot be rigidly fixed from performance to performance, and we can be absolutely certain that if Beethoven had conducted his own symphonies over the years he would not have adhered strictly to the infamous metronome markings that some conductors fetishize. But questions about "correct" interpretation extend far beyond setting the right tempo; we can listen to a rehearsal tape of Copland conducting _Appalachian Spring_ in which the violins make a little crescendo not in the score, to which Copland says something like "I don't know how that got started, but I like it."

We know that at various times in history the performer has been expected to make more or less of a contribution to the sound of a work, from choice of tempo on up to embellishment or actual elaboration of the music as written. "Strict" adherence to a score, and the assumption that there is such a thing, is a rather recent ideal. Mahler made emendations to the orchestration of works he conducted, notably to Beethoven's symphonies; Stokowski bucked the trend toward greater literalism in the twentieth century and made conspicuous changes of instrumentation. Both men apparently felt quite free to express their views of pieces with dynamics and tempo, and in this they were representatives of the Romantic manner of conducting advocated by Wagner - a manner Wagner himself contrasted with the stricter style practiced by Mendelssohn.

It really does appear that "correct" interpretation of a musical work is a chimera which not even composers (or most composers) themselves greatly believe in. I fervently support the performer's freedom - guided by historical knowledge, technical understanding, and personal love for the music - to pursue his or her own vision of it.


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> It's hard to argue against respecting a composer's intentions, insofar as we can divine them from scores and knowledge of performance traditions. But what if a composer's intentions are indefinite? Many composers have sanctioned widely divergent performances of their works; Sibelius, for example, praised the very different Karajan and Ormandy in their performances of his symphonies. And even when composers perform their own music the results can be quite variable from occasion to occasion; we have timings of Wagner conducting the prelude to _Parsifal_ on two different occasions, and taking 13: and 14:30, respectively. How, then, did he "really" want it played? Most musicians understand that tempo cannot be rigidly fixed from performance to performance, and we can be absolutely certain that if Beethoven had conducted his own symphonies over the years he would not have adhered strictly to the infamous metronome markings that some conductors fetishize. But questions about "correct" interpretation extend far beyond setting the right tempo; we can listen to a rehearsal tape of Copland conducting _Appalachian Spring_ in which the violins make a little crescendo not in the score, to which Copland says something like "I don't know how that got started, but I like it."
> 
> We know that at various times in history the performer has been expected to make more or less of a contribution to the sound of a work, from choice of tempo on up to embellishment or actual elaboration of the music as written. "Strict" adherence to a score, and the assumption that there is such a thing, is a rather recent ideal. Mahler made emendations to the orchestration of works he conducted, notably to Beethoven's symphonies; Stokowski bucked the trend toward greater literalism in the twentieth century and made conspicuous changes of instrumentation. Both men apparently felt quite free to express their views of pieces with dynamics and tempo, and in this they were representatives of the Romantic manner of conducting advocated by Wagner - a manner Wagner himself contrasted with the stricter style practiced by Mendelssohn.
> 
> It really does appear that "correct" interpretation of a musical work is a chimera which not even composers (or most composers) themselves greatly believe in. I fervently support the performer's freedom - guided by historical knowledge, technical understanding, and personal love for the music - to pursue his or her own vision of it.


Now don't slap me, I may be botching the anecdote, since I'm not the most knowledgeable person on the planet about Haydn; but he supposedly said, "I wrote that?"-- after hearing his _Creation_.

The point I get from the story is that we can never really fathom the ramifications of everything we do, say, or create. Others may see possibilities and lacunae we never even imagined.

Great post.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

Marschallin Blair said:


> Now don't slap me, I may be botching the anecdote, since I'm not the most knowledgeable person on the planet about Haydn; but he supposedly said, "I wrote that?"-- after hearing his _Creation_.
> 
> The point I get from the story is that we can never really fathom the ramifications of everything we do, say, or create. Others may see possibilities and lacunae we never even imagined.
> 
> Great post.


Also Sibelius was reported saying that he - his conscious mind - hadn't written his symphonies. He believed they had come from somewhere else. No surprise then, that he enjoyed differing interpretations of them.

Also love the post by Woodduck.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

I think if you've listened to enough performances/recordings of a work (and I think 4 to 8 is enough, depending on popularity/availability of a work), you get an idea of what works and what doesn't...or even, what could work.

That doesn't necessarily mean you won't on occasion find two or more performances of a work that rock, though clearly interpretively different.

I have several or more conductors that I don't often go to the bank with, because I'm convinced they hear things so differently, that most of the time it's detrimental to a work.


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