# Does the tradition of interpretation still have sense?



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

I mean, we are (from quite some time now) in the era of recorded music. If in the past the work of a composer was known only through a musician or a orchestra playing it and adding their own interpretation to the score, why now that a composer can have the absolute control of the result and say "ok, that's what I meant, that's the finished work as I meant it to be" there are still a lot of different versions of the same piece? 
Don't get me wrong, different interpretations of the same piece can bring something valid even disrespecting the will of the composer. But is it good for the music that certain pieces are recorded again and again instead of giving attention to the material that maybe has not been recorded even once?


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I wonder if composers have a single view of how one of their pieces should go. Those composers who got recorded conducting or playing their works often seem to vary their approach and ignore some of the instructions in the score. Personally, I think of great music as having a range of interpretive possibilities and that part of being a great work is the capacity to tell a "variety of truths". Certainly, I can't think of a single recording I have that I believe to be closer to the composer's intention than the others.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

This is a question very much worth considering. It does seem to me as if a lot of new recordings of the warhorses don't bring anything at all new to the table interpretively. I say, if you're just going to go through the motions and regurgitate the score, why not focus on more obscure and/or contemporary composers who deserve publicity. That being said, I would not say that "the age of new interpretations is over" - if you have a truly unique take on a repertoire piece, go for it. It's not like all the exciting possibilities for performance were exhausted in the good 'ol days; modern performers just have to get more creative. As far as interpreting the work of contemporary, living composers; I highly doubt that many of them have dogmatic standards of "how it has to be done." I've spoken about this attitude in performance before, and it drives me crazy. Maybe if the composer tells you directly about how he wants it done, but otherwise the tradition of interpretation deserves to be kept alive, for it is a sub-art of music.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Enthusiast said:


> I wonder if composers have a single view of how one of their pieces should go.


sometimes yes, sometimes no I guess.
But even for the music of the past, do we really need hundreds or even thousand different versions of the pieces of Bach, Mozart, Puccini, Chopin etc?


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

It is true that many new recordings add little to our knowledge about the works ... but there are quite a few performers and conductors of character who bring something new and different. I have spent some time recently listening to recordings by Currentzis and Vanska and both seem to me to be in the game of finding new things and identities in pieces that have already been recorded too often. There are many others but those two are just from my recent listening.

If I were a composer I think I would be writing works that are partly vehicles for gifted players and singers of talent and imagination ... and I imagine there will always be a few of those!


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Enthusiast said:


> It is true that many new recordings add little to our knowledge about the works ... but there are quite a few performers and conductors of character who bring something new and different. I have spent some time recently listening to recordings by Currentzis and Vanska and both seem to me to be in the game of finding new things and identities in pieces that have already been recorded too often.


does it mean that you listened obsessively to hundreds of different versions of the same piece to know that those versions were different? onestly I don't think I could do that even for my favorite pieces.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

^ Obsessively? I don't think so but there are many works that I enjoy hearing in many different interpretations ... and, yes, discovering them can involve also exploring ones that don't say anything new to me or convincing. But this ruling out of some/many can all be quite fast and there are times when a performance of even Beethoven 5 that shows the work (a work I love) in a new but convincing light or from an apparently different angle is as rewarding for me as discovering a new piece. Just think of the difference between the symphony in Furtwangler's and in Toscanini's hands! The same work and yet not the same at all. Both are "right" and both are great. And there are many others that differ from both of them. Which is the true Beethoven 5? Many of them are. And more that are still to come. And then you come to the individuality of different soloists and singers, their voices and what they can do with them. Getting to know some of this variety is for me a big part of loving music and, judging by this forum, I don't think I'm alone in that.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

I think now that the golden age of recording is over that there is very little to add. Not that recordings of the future are bad but they will not add very much to what we already have heard. For example will a recording of Beethoven’s fifth add much to what we know from Furtwangler, Klemperer, Toscanini,Karajan, Kleiber, Gardiner et al? That is not to say it will not be a good recording but it will not probably add much to what we know already


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Enthusiast said:


> ^ Obsessively? I don't think so but there are many works that I enjoy hearing in many different interpretations ... and, yes, discovering them can involve also exploring ones that don't say anything new to me or convincing. But this ruling out of some/many can all be quite fast and there are times when a performance of even Beethoven 5 that shows the work (a work I love) in a new but convincing light or from an apparently different angle is as rewarding for me as discovering a new piece. Just think of the difference between the symphony in Furtwangler's and in Toscanini's hands! The same work and yet not the same at all. Both are "right" and both are great. And there are many others that differ from both of them. Which is the true Beethoven 5? Many of them are. And more that are still to come. And then you come to the individuality of different soloists and singers, their voices and what they can do with them. Getting to know some of this variety is for me a big part of loving music and, judging by this forum, I don't think I'm alone in that.


but (according to the numbers I've seen in a thread here about the most recorded pieces) there are 238 recordings of the fifth symphony. 238. It's not like there are just the popular ones like Furtwangler and Kleiber or whoever you want.
Even listening just once (a thing that to me does not have any sense) to all those versions does it have all that sense to spend all that time listening to all those versions and to use those orchestras to record the same thing again and again?


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

No, no - I am not claiming to have listened to 200 recordings of Beethoven 5 or any other work! That _would_ be obsessive. But those by performers I have loved in the past and recordings that have created a stir with people who seem to have experience and a taste I appreciate ... these I might try out. I believe (with some reason) that the majority of recordings of a work I know really well have little to offer me but every so often another special experience comes along.

Writing it like this makes it sound like I spend my life searching for yet more great accounts of much loved works. I don't - much more of my listening time is spent on exploring new (to me) music - but life is long and over time I do get to hear very many accounts of some works. I feel that some works are much more fertile than others in yielding up a range of interpretive approaches (Mahler 2 or 6 but not 5, for example) and there are many great and beloved pieces that I rarely seek out yet more new accounts.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

It's an interesting question. I do think that after a while the well can run dry and it starts to take on a "I need to prove myself by doing that too" sort of feeling. I mean, how many recordings of the Goldberg Variations do we really need? Yet they just keep constantly popping up.


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## Malx (Jun 18, 2017)

Enthusiast said:


> *No, no - I am not claiming to have listened to 200 recordings of Beethoven 5 or any other work! That would be obsessive*. But those by performers I have loved in the past and recordings that have created a stir with people who seem to have experience and a taste I appreciate ... these I might try out. I believe (with some reason) that the majority of recordings of a work I know really well have little to offer me but every so often another special experience comes along.
> 
> Writing it like this makes it sound like I spend my life searching for yet more great accounts of much loved works. I don't - much more of my listening time is spent on exploring new (to me) music - but life is long and over time I do get to hear very many accounts of some works. I feel that some works are much more fertile than others in yielding up a range of interpretive approaches (Mahler 2 or 6 but not 5, for example) and there are many great and beloved pieces that I rarely seek out yet more new accounts.


I'm not sure Merl would agree with that statement :devil:


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

"By the 1930s, even the 90-year old veteran pupil of Liszt, Francis Plante, who heard Chopin play, and won his first piano and won his first piano prize in 1850, had been recorded for posterity on wax and celluloid. These films now serve as a window into a lost age of performance, where personality, improvisation, and a sense of harmonic structure were at least as important to performers as technical precision."


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

consuono said:


> I mean, how many recordings of the Goldberg Variations do we really need?


I don't know why you use the words "we" or "need". Anyways, I have about 150 discs of the Goldbergs and stopped buying discs at least 2 years ago. Do I need so many? Of course not. Actually, I don't really need any of them; I wanted them. I just don't think in terms of needing any particular works.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Malx said:


> I'm not sure Merl would agree with that statement :devil:


But he probably has listened to all 200! Along with his perceptiveness, I must also admire his ability to listen to hours of music making that he doesn't care for all that much ... and all to find those gems.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

Bulldog said:


> I don't know why you use the words "we" or "need". Anyways, I have about 150 discs of the Goldbergs and stopped buying discs at least 2 years ago. Do I need so many? Of course not. Actually, I don't really need any of them; I wanted them. I just don't think in terms of needing any particular works.


Rhetorical figures of speech obviously. Replying that you have (I take it) 150 different recordings of the same work begs the question.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Once a work is published, it's out of the composer's hands, for better or worse. Modern composers could (and do) offer suggestions and work with conductors for performances and recordings, but when they aren't around their wishes are pretty much ignored. Sometimes composers are shocked to hear performances that found more in the music than they knew was there, or intended. Stravinsky's reaction to hearing Bernstein's first recording of The Rite of Spring comes to mind. So different from his own recording. Sometimes conductors try to wring more out of a work that was intended, and it's usually vulgar. Bernstein's last recording of the Tchaikovsky 6th for example. 
I like Erich Leinsdorf's approach: the job of a performer is to present the music as closely to what is in the score as he can, and should not add anything that isn't there unless he has some authority to do so. It's all in his book, The Composer's Advocate. In the olden days conductors really interpreted - quite freely, too. Stokowski is prime example. Other conductors were more chaste - like Monteux. There is no exactly one way to play anything, or anything of value. The human touch is necessary. That interpretation can be magical.


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## Brahmsianhorn (Feb 17, 2017)

In my experience, the better the music the more subject it is to interpretation


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Brahmsianhorn said:


> In my experience, the better the music the more subject it is to interpretation


On the other hand, merely so-so music often benefits greatly from a really fine performance. A good performance might supply a great deal of whatever the music itself lacks in the score.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

JAS said:


> On the other hand, merely so-so music often benefits greatly from a really fine performance. A good performance might supply a great deal of whatever the music itself lacks in the score.


For sure. I deeply admire the Sawallisch/Dresden recordings of Schumann's symphonies even though I think the music itself is dreadfully boring. In fact I just got done listening to the 2nd from that cycle, and, well...I didn't fall asleep for once.

Also, I haven't come across an interpretation of Cage's 4'33 that has satisfied me yet, even though there are literally infinite ways to perform it On a serious note, musical value aside, is there any piece (or anti-piece) with more interpretive possibilities?


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

mbhaub said:


> Once a work is published, it's out of the composer's hands, for better or worse. Modern composers could (and do) offer suggestions and work with conductors for performances and recordings, but when they aren't around their wishes are pretty much ignored. Sometimes composers are shocked to hear performances that found more in the music than they knew was there, or intended. Stravinsky's reaction to hearing Bernstein's first recording of The Rite of Spring comes to mind. So different from his own recording. Sometimes conductors try to wring more out of a work that was intended, and it's usually vulgar. Bernstein's last recording of the Tchaikovsky 6th for example.
> I like Erich Leinsdorf's approach: the job of a performer is to present the music as closely to what is in the score as he can, and should not add anything that isn't there unless he has some authority to do so. It's all in his book, The Composer's Advocate. In the olden days conductors really interpreted - quite freely, too. Stokowski is prime example. Other conductors were more chaste - like Monteux. There is no exactly one way to play anything, or anything of value. The human touch is necessary. That interpretation can be magical.


even if like in popular music or jazz, the composer would put a recording out and that becomes THE work there would be the human touch. 
Instead it's like we have a movie, and an endless series of remakes similar one to another with slight differences: in a scene the actor of one version is a bit more convincing, in another version the colors are more vivid, but it's still again and again the same movie.
And it's not like in jazz where sure, there are standards but the tune is really transformed in something very different a lot of times.

In classical music there are a lot of works (old and new) that are still unrecorded. I think it would be better to see those things recorded instead of the fifth symphony of Beethoven number 239 or another Rite of Spring.
I think I'm starting to symphatize with what Boulez said about the theaters (before becoming a opera conductor himself of old operas).


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

I don't really get this thread. Who are "we?" No one is in a position to judge the whole of what exists. The excessive number of Beethoven's Fifth versions is always cited, yet obviously a lot of people want/have wanted it -- maybe has to do with the special association of the Fifth and WW2, I don't know. I do know that recordings go out of the catalogue and then people complain and want them restored. There are not only different interpretations, but composers come from different countries, same with performers, there are different performance practices, different eras of recording fidelity and technology. There's wanting the recording by the performer(s) you just heard, or the one your friends like, or the one that Gramophone recommends. I certainly don't want a Central Planning Committee setting out to rationalize what gets recorded.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

norman bates said:


> In classical music there are a lot of works (old and new) that are still unrecorded. I think it would be better to see those things recorded instead of the fifth symphony of Beethoven number 239 or another Rite of Spring.
> I think I'm starting to symphatize with what Boulez said about the theaters (before becoming a opera conductor himself of old operas).


The question is, will any of those recordings turn a profit? I can think of lots of music that would probably not even cover the expense of the recording.


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## Knorf (Jan 16, 2020)

Enthusiast said:


> I wonder if composers have a single view of how one of their pieces should go.


Speaking only for myself, definitely not.

I've been writing these short, unaccompanied pieces for my instrumentalist friends who have asked for them, as something to work on during the pandemic. The most recent was for trumpet. I made the piece publicly available, and shortly thereafter both the trumpet player I wrote it for, and another player, made recordings. Both are quite different, yet totally valid, and to me absolutely delightful!


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Knorf said:


> Speaking only for myself, definitely not.
> 
> I've been writing these short, unaccompanied pieces for my instrumentalist friends who have asked for them, as something to work on during the pandemic. The most recent was for trumpet. I made the piece publicly available, and shortly thereafter both the trumpet player I wrote it for, and another player, made recordings. Both are quite different, yet totally valid, and to me absolutely delightful!


When you write a score, do you have a mental image of the sound you're trying to notate?


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## Knorf (Jan 16, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> When you write a score, do you have a mental image of the sound you're trying to notate?


Absolutely, it is totally necessary. But musicians surprise you, and if their heart is in the right place, those surprises are everything.

I compose with specific performers' sounds and personality in my head. I think I have to. The aforementioned little trumpet piece was composed with the sound and style of the player who requested it in my head. But the other player who recorded it has a different sound concept, and approached the piece differently. Different sound, different pacing, different articulation... Nonetheless, I couldn't be happier! Both are excellent.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I believe with the more rhythmically complex music now, there is less room for interpretation than the older stuff say pre 1850. Performers aren't expected to play anything straight in the older stuff, and are expected to have tempo changes, rubato, and freer rein over dynamics, or else the music sounds mechanical. But with a lot of music now in general, especially with say Ferneyhough, it's hard for the performer to just keep up with incredible flexibility inherent in the score.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Phil loves classical said:


> I believe with the more rhythmically complex music now, there is less room for interpretation than the older stuff say pre 1850. Performers aren't expected to play anything straight in the older stuff, and are expected to have tempo changes, rubato, and freer rein over dynamics, or else the music sounds mechanical. But with a lot of music now in general, especially with say Ferneyhough, it's hard for the performer to just keep up with incredible flexibility inherent in the score.


That's not what either the composer or the performers say, paradoxically



> [the goal] was not virtuosity but a sort of honesty, authenticity, the exhibition of his or her own limitations.





> The music is strangely liberating. It changes the concept of what it means to master a phrase, for there is an infinite depth to perfection. The individuality of the player must come forward.


By the way, do you mean 1950, not 1850?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Knorf said:


> Absolutely, it is totally necessary.


You've never wrote indeterminate scores, e.g, using time brackets? Of graphic scores?


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Roger Knox said:


> I don't really get this thread. Who are "we?" No one is in a position to judge the whole of what exists. The excessive number of Beethoven's Fifth versions is always cited, yet obviously a lot of people want/have wanted it -- maybe has to do with the special association of the Fifth and WW2, I don't know. I do know that recordings go out of the catalogue and then people complain and want them restored. There are not only different interpretations, but composers come from different countries, same with performers, there are different performance practices, different eras of recording fidelity and technology. There's wanting the recording by the performer(s) you just heard, or the one your friends like, or the one that Gramophone recommends. *I certainly don't want a Central Planning Committee setting out to rationalize what gets recorded.*


I don't want anything like that either; but still I think there's something that I think it's at least questionable if not wrong in how the world of classical music still works today. It's like what was basically a real necessity in the past (the score) was brought in the era of recordings without questions. 
In few words, the score that was just a means to an end has become the end.

It's like if in architecture people would obssess with the drawings more than the finished building itself, or in art people instead of admiring the paintings of the masters would take their drawings and producing from the drawings a lot of different versions. 
I don't know if this is necessarily a wrong thing, but I wonder why this practice is just simply accepted as normal in the era of recordings.


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## Boychev (Jul 21, 2014)

I think classical music is defined by the written score and this process of interpretation. I think if classical music turned into studio music, or into a composer on his MIDI keyboard in front of a piece of software, that would fundamentally change the music. 

I don't see the reliance on recordings as the "definitive versions" of pieces as a strength of popular music. Cover versions are with a few exceptions useless and annoying because the band does not try to record their own interpretation of the material but instead tries to ape the "original" version.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

JAS said:


> The question is, will any of those recordings turn a profit? I can think of lots of music that would probably not even cover the expense of the recording.


and this is sadly a very good point. Probably consumerism is the answer to the whole thread. We just keep producing unnecessary things just because that's the way many musician can earn money to live.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Boychev said:


> I think classical music is defined by the written score and this process of interpretation. I think if classical music turned into studio music, or into a composer on his MIDI keyboard in front of a piece of software, that would fundamentally change the music.


I don't think it will change the music and I don't think that classical music is defined by the written score. Written scores were a necessity, a means to an end in periods when it wasn't possible to record the music.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Knorf said:


> Speaking only for myself, definitely not.
> 
> I've been writing these short, unaccompanied pieces for my instrumentalist friends who have asked for them, as something to work on during the pandemic. The most recent was for trumpet. I made the piece publicly available, and shortly thereafter both the trumpet player I wrote it for, and another player, made recordings. Both are quite different, yet totally valid, and to me absolutely delightful!


That's understandable. But I'm curious to know if you would be happy to have instead of a couple of different versions, like hundred versions of the same piece. Theorically I think that one could make an infinite series of subtle variations in terms of dynamics and colors and pace all equally valid. But would you consider positive to see the world inundate with endless variations of the same work?


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## Eclectic Al (Apr 23, 2020)

No one seems to be arguing against continued live performances. I would hope it is the same with a recording. Just trust that the performers are trying to deliver.
Do you want to ban Angela Hewitt from recording some Bach because it's been done many times before? Until the performance is done you don't know whether it will be one for the ages or not. Indeed, you can't really know until it has had wide exposure via general release. You can't rely on hindsight to say that shouldn't have been recorded because it turned out not to be great. Well, it might have done, and I would trust the performers to be trying.
Much of the discussion in this thread is more about market issues than musical ones. If people keep recording a piece then it's a market issue about how to cope with that, whether to promote it, how to price it, what reliance a purchaser might place on reviews, whether to allow it on streaming services as a delivery mechanism, etc. The ongoing production of new recordings of the old warhorses is not a good thing or a bad thing, and is just a feature of living in a world where people can continue to perform and record, and put it out there. Consumers then have to deal with that.
I wouldn't want some sort of United Nations of Music to say "That's enough Goldberg Variations now; we must have more Cage". That seems a little on the totalitarian side for my taste. I would prefer the slim chance that a new Goldberg may be exceptional to 100 recordings of something that I'm not going to listen to anyway.


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## Boychev (Jul 21, 2014)

norman bates said:


> I don't think it will change the music and I don't think that classical music is defined by the written score. Written scores were a necessity, a means to an end in periods when it wasn't possible to record the music.


But they weren't a necessity, they were a conscious choice. The vast majority of music throughout human history and up to this day has not relied on written scores.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Boychev said:


> But they weren't a necessity, they were a conscious choice. The vast majority of music throughout human history and up to this day has not relied on written scores.


of course scores were a necessity! When a painter has to make a work he could put simply the colors on the canvas. He could have made a preparatory drawing, but the work is the canvas.
A composer before recording was possible didn't had his "canvas". That why they wrote scores with a lot of details.

And that's also why a lot of music that didn't rely on written scores that existed before the recording era is simply lost.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_I think classical music is defined by the written score and this process of interpretation. _

That's the point of every conductor recording the Beethoven 9th or Mahler 5th certainly: leaving his or her mark on the music in the overcrowded field of recordings. The question here seems to be is it necessary anymore to do that. I think most conductors would say yes.

Herbert Russcol wrote this in his 1968 book on discount recordings about Beethoven's 9th symphony: "The Beethoven Ninth is the great touchstone for conductors, an all-embracing work that separates the men from the boys, and the podium posturers from the musical thinkers. In sizing up a conductor musicians always ask, 'His Debussy sounds OK, as does his Beethoven Fifth; but how is he in the Ninth?'"

True or not I think the challenge still exists today, the reason so many conductors now take on Mahler's monolithic symphonies. That composer has become so popular in our time he is more that test now than Beethoven.

Yet what changed most in the past 100 years is not Mahler becoming Beethoven's equal but the way conductors interpreted music. You might say the art of interpretation has become the art of banality, or of corporate compliance, compared to what it once was.

In the past conductors took great liberties with scores, sometimes to the point of rearranging them to suit what they wanted. This is why Toscanini was so revered -- he was the first 20th century giant to adhere (for the most part, he made occasional cuts) to the printed score. His famous comment about Eroica, "...to me it is simply allegro con brio," made his point.

I read about a radical interpretation of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto in recent years by one Patricia Kopatchinskaja. I listened to some of it on YouTube; it has some individuality and eschews the kind of longing and romance we know in the music. This kind of thing is done more easily by a solo artist and people like Glenn Gould and Rosalyn Tureck made their names this way.

The conductor Leopold Stokowski was probably the last living link to the old way of conducting -- arrange the music any way you want. He made famous (and sometimes reviled) recordings of the Tchaikovksy 4th symphony, Pictures At An Exhibition (he completely reorchestrated it) and other music that set critics either a-twitter or left them horrified.

But this is the way it once way when people made their mark on the music as much as the interpretation. Today in the period-induced movement where the score seems sacrosanct it seems almost illegal for a conductor to do this.

I read a recent piece in Opera News on the Beethoven bicentennial from a college conductor in love with John Eliot Gardiner who made a big deal of that conductor's period approach. In particular he was most impressed by the way two bassoons reintroduced a theme at the end of the finale of Beethoven's 5th; he said in the past conductors would have covered this over with brass because they thought squawking bassoons unflattering.

I listened to Gardiner's 2012 performance on YouTube and could clearly hear (and see) the section the guy talked about at 31:14:






If you watch you'll note Gardiner also has some players standing, something his period investigator learned about performances back in the day. Gardiner first made noise about this in his first recording of the Schumann symphonies.

If you listen to this recording you'll hear more woodwinds and fewer strings than in any traditional performance of the 5th. You may also hear less brass. This is one way the period performance practice crowd has changed interpretation: focus away from bathing romantic era music in 101 strings and hearing the other instruments more clearly.

I think it inevitable down the line there will be another way to conquer classical music in this vein. We went from conductors doing whatever they wanted to music for a century, then to the literalism movement started by Toscanini, to period performance and so you know something else is coming next.

Whenever that happens that generation of recordings will re-record chestnuts in the light of their new day.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Eclectic Al said:


> Much of the discussion in this thread is more about market issues than musical ones.


both actually. The point if the score is a means or an end is one of the things that seems more interesting to me.



Eclectic Al said:


> If people keep recording a piece then it's a market issue about how to cope with that, whether to promote it, how to price it, what reliance a purchaser might place on reviews, whether to allow it on streaming services as a delivery mechanism, etc. The ongoing production of new recordings of the old warhorses is not a good thing or a bad thing, and is just a feature of living in a world where people can continue to perform and record, and put it out there. Consumers then have to deal with that.


well, is consumerism good?



Eclectic Al said:


> I wouldn't want some sort of United Nations of Music to say "That's enough Goldberg Variations now; we must have more Cage". That seems a little on the totalitarian side for my taste.


As I've already said, I don't want that either. Just because I don't want totalitarian control about recordings it doesn't meant that I can't think there's something at least questionable about the endless production of variations of the same works.


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## Eclectic Al (Apr 23, 2020)

Not sure whether consumerism is good, but (like the quote about democracy) it's perhaps better than the alternatives.
Sometimes regulation is needed in markets, to water down the problems with natural monopolies (for example), but I don't see any problems with the way the market for recorded music works that would justify any form of state intervention. It's more that we have an embarrassment of riches.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Eclectic Al said:


> Not sure whether consumerism is good, but (like the quote about democracy) it's perhaps better than the alternatives.


I don't think it's the same kind of dichotomy. Consumerism can be changed with culture and awareness I think.
Or at least, I hope so.


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## Boychev (Jul 21, 2014)

norman bates said:


> of course scores were a necessity! When a painter has to make a work he could put simply the colors on the canvas. He could have made a preparatory drawing, but the work is the canvas.
> A composer before recording was possible didn't had his "canvas". That why they wrote scores with a lot of details.
> 
> And that's also why a lot of music that didn't rely on written scores that existed before the recording era is simply lost.


Improvisers don't need scores, folk musicians don't need scores, people singing in the fields didn't need scores, jazz and rock bands jamming don't need scores, electronic producers don't need scores, etc etc. Scores are not a necessity, they're a choice to give your music an expansive structure and depth that can't possibly be achieved otherwise.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Boychev said:


> Improvisers don't need scores, folk musicians don't need scores, people singing in the fields didn't need scores, jazz and rock bands jamming don't need scores, electronic producers don't need scores, etc etc. Scores are not a necessity, they're a choice to give your music an expansive structure and depth that can't possibly be achieved otherwise.


Since the 1960s people have challenged the boundary between composition and improvisation, between composer and performer. There are scores with a level of performer discretion which had been previously unheard of, using notations which are deliberately vague. The idea has been to unleash some more of the creativity, commitment and authenticity of free improvisation.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Boychev said:


> Improvisers don't need scores, folk musicians don't need scores, people singing in the fields didn't need scores, jazz and rock bands jamming don't need scores, electronic producers don't need scores, etc etc. Scores are not a necessity, they're a choice to give your music an expansive structure and depth that can't possibly be achieved otherwise.


well, actually jazz musicians use scores a lot.
But you're not getting what I'm saying: of course scores are useful because complex, long and layered music needs to be written (altough if an electronic musician is using a sequencer probably he doesn't need that too). 
But that's not what I was talking about.

The score is a piece of paper. It's not the music. It's like an approximation of the music, because while a composer could try to be very precise before the recording era he still wasn't able to control what the musicians could have played, especially if those musicians were playing the piece in a distant place, or years or decades after the piece was composed, maybe after the death of the composer. Basically when we listen to a work written before the recording era we're listening not to the work as the composer wanted, but as the musicians played it, that maybe could even be something that the composer could have not liked at all. 
The ability to record something means that a composer is able to say that a work recorded corresponds to what he wanted. And after this, a score could even been burned, because we know that what we are listening to is the music that the composer wanted.


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## Boychev (Jul 21, 2014)

I don't understand the problem. The recording is also an approximation of the music. A composer could try to be precise in the process of recording a piece, and still not get the result they wanted. Hell, even when it comes to moviemaking there are dozens of directors who come back to something they made decades ago and mess with it, adding effects, making significant changes in pacing, etc. Plus, a subsequently recorded version could still be better than the first one that was recorded, it's only in pop and rock circles where the first recording is fetishized to the detriments of all other artists who play the piece.

You'll never get what the composer wanted, probably not even the composer knows with absolute certainty what he wants.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

It's true that we get far too many recordings of warhorses and presumably true that this reflects the market. But at the same time this is a golden age for being able to get recordings of obscure and very recent works, often performed really well.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

I think that there is a more complicated process in composition going on. In the beginning, the composer has an idea, and that idea transforms as it becomes translated into a more tangible form, whether that is a written score or simply a performance. For a long work, the idea presumably gets modified by the act of rendering it in a written form, and problems or weaknesses become apparent and are worked out, or new ideas get into the mix. Whenever the composer revisits the idea, it is likely that modifications occur. Nothing is quite so flexible as an idea, and the process by which that idea is given form is always going to be somewhat unsatisfactory, but what is the alternative?


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Boychev said:


> I don't understand the problem. The recording is also an approximation of the music. A composer could try to be precise in the process of recording a piece, and still not get the result they wanted.


Well no, the recording is the music. 
And a composer can say "yes that's exactly what I want", "yes that's good enough" or "no, that's not what I want, that's not my composition". And therefore we would consider that the finished work, in a way or another. Like we consider the paintings of the great artist the works we see on the canvases and not the preparatory work of the drawings.



Boychev said:


> Hell, even when it comes to moviemaking there are dozens of directors who come back to something they made decades ago and mess with it, adding effects, making significant changes in pacing, etc.


but in that case it's still the author of the work the one who's changing his work, and not dozens or hundreds of other people. Boulez did it many times, but at least we know it's still his work.



Boychev said:


> Plus, a subsequently recorded version could still be better than the first one that was recorded


sure, but recorded and approved by the composer of someone else?



Boychev said:


> it's only in pop and rock circles where the first recording is fetishized to the detriments of all other artists who play the piece.


well, it's better to fetishized a recording or a score producing hundreds of recordings all similar with slight differences, that makes also classical music look just like a museum?



Boychev said:


> You'll never get what the composer wanted, probably not even the composer knows with absolute certainty what he wants.


How do you know that? How could you say that for all composers? There are those who could be happy with more than a interpretation and there could be those who could consider a version perfect.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

norman bates said:


> Well no, the recording is the music.
> And a composer can say "yes that's exactly what I want", "yes that's good enough" or "no, that's not what I want, that's not my composition". And therefore we would consider that the finished work, in a way or another. Like we consider the paintings of the great artist the works we see on the canvases and not the preparatory work of the drawings.


It doesn't work that way. Why do you think composers have, or should have(?), an idea of "exactly what [they] want?" Do you think playwrights envision every nuance of every possible performance and that they're incapable of being surprised by interpretations they never imagined? Of course not. Same with composers. Musical performers are like actors. Good ones will always be able to make composers see potential in their compositions that they never fully anticipated. It would be really boring for composers were this not so.

Music is a performing art. Painting is not. One has finished, unitary aesthetic objects. The other doesn't. You are equating a painting's preliminary sketch studies with performances that might be less than ideal. This is silly. Obviously, the proper comparison for art sketches is musical sketches, like what might find in Beethoven's sketch books, not performances a composer might find less than optimal.


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## Knorf (Jan 16, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> You've never wrote indeterminate scores, e.g, using time brackets? Of graphic scores?


I have. Depending on the degree of indeterminacy, it's no different.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

EdwardBast said:


> It doesn't work that way. Why do you think composers have, or should have(?), an idea of "exactly what [they] want?"


well, for instance for jazz composers it works exactly that way. Someone like Mingus decided that Black saint and the sinner lady was his work. Frank Zappa decided to release or not release his music.
While we have classical composers who don't like at all how certain versions are played. If Stravinsky says that he didn't like at all a performance of his work, should we still consider it his own work?



EdwardBast said:


> Do you think playwrights envision every nuance of every possible performance and that they're incapable of being surprised by interpretations they never imagined? Of course not. Same with composers. Musical performers are like actors. Good ones will always be able to make composers see potential in their compositions that they never fully anticipated. It would be really boring for composers were this not so.


but again, it's good to see hundreds versions of the same piece and having a lot of music that is still unplayed?



EdwardBast said:


> Music is a performing art. Painting is not. One has finished, unitary aesthetic objects. The other doesn't. You are equating a painting's preliminary sketch studies with performances that might be less than ideal. This is silly. Obviously, the proper comparison for art sketches is musical sketches, like what might find in Beethoven's sketch books, not performances a composer might find less than optimal.


no, I'm comparing a preparatory drawing to the score, not to a poor performance, in the sense that both are project for a work and not the finished work (the painting and the actual music we could listen with our ears). I'm saying that in a era where it's possible to record music, the composer has the possibility to record his work and decide if it's good enough, instead of putting a score that has to be interpreted, maybe in ways that are not satisfying to the composer. And that with an approved recording of the music, we could maybe see recordings of music that is still unperformed instead of another Rite of Spring.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Knorf said:


> , it's no different.


Well now you have got me interested. What sort of indeterminacy?

If you decide that, for example, the duration of a note doesn't matter (within limits) then you can't have a mental image of what it'll sound like - just an understanding of the range of possible sounds. And even less so if you leave the instruments up to the performers, or with a graphic score.


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## Knorf (Jan 16, 2020)

For me, composing is almost like playing chess. Everything starts with open potential, but as you start making choices, the direction of what is happening starts to coalesce. Nonetheless, every choice leads somewhere unknown and unbound. You can pursue the choice as far as you like, but there are always further unbound choices ahead, and many behind that were bypassed. Unlike chess, in music you never run out of choices. 

A composition in my head is usually very nebulous to begin with. There is a vague notion of the kind of music it might be, what instrumental, vocal, or electronic forces might be assigned; some themes and gestures appear. As these coalesce, paths forward come into focus, always branching, and never, ever ending. When I make an end to it, it is always in a very concrete sense arbitrary. One could always keep going, but knowing when to stop is critical. 

It's quite an amazing thing, music.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Very interesting!


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

larold said:


> _I think classical music is defined by the written score and this process of interpretation. _
> 
> That's the point of every conductor recording the Beethoven 9th or Mahler 5th certainly: leaving his or her mark on the music in the overcrowded field of recordings. The question here seems to be is it necessary anymore to do that. I think most conductors would say yes.
> 
> ...


But that kind of highlights the question. Are these hundreds of recordings of various warhorses sufficiently different from one another to justify having hundreds of different recordings of the same work? It seems it would become less about the music and more about the performer/conductor ("but how is he in the Ninth?"). It turns music into a set of gymnastics routines and we're just judging if this or that player/conductor can nail that landing or if they slip and fall and then we have to deduct some points. I think in large part this ritualistic aspect is one reason classical music "ossified" somewhat. No one is saying Angela Hewitt should be banned from recording this or that Bach work for the umpteen hundredth time, but after a while you do ask, what's *really* the point? Also it seems that it would encourage "quirky" interpretations not necessarily because such an interpretation is artistically valid and heartfelt, but rather just for the sake of being quirky and standing out in an oversaturated field. The "radical interpretation of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto" might be an example of this. Sort of like saying "Hamlet's soliloquy has been recited millions of times. OK, time for a fresh, new approach. I'm going to mix up the words and make an exciting verbal collage."


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## Knorf (Jan 16, 2020)

norman bates said:


> That's understandable. But I'm curious to know if you would be happy to have instead of a couple of different versions, like hundred versions of the same piece.


God, no.

Wait, what am I saying? Sure, I would! It would mean I was a huge success, instead of laboring in semi-obscurity and competing with dead people for jobs.



> Theorically I think that one could make an infinite series of subtle variations in terms of dynamics and colors and pace all equally valid. But would you consider positive to see the world inundate with endless variations of the same work?


I still enjoy hearing new recordings of old repertoire, because I do actually think what there is to be said about even standard repertoire can never be exhausted. There are distinctive recordings of old music being released every week.

Having said that, the balance of attention given to old repertoire at the expense of the new is totally whacked.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_But that kind of highlights the question. Are these hundreds of recordings of various warhorses sufficiently different from one another to justify having hundreds of different recordings of the same work? It seems it would become less about the music and more about the performer/conductor._

That's what classical music recordings have always been about -- the performer. It's about the music in other forms such as popular music where everyone doesn't record the same music.

I have books going back to the 1930s that graded recordings against each other. It's the basis of classical music listening -- hearing the same 200 warhorses over and over again.

Every new conductor that comes along wants to be compared to all the greats of the past.

Also, recording companies tend to sell what they think will make money. That is typically not unknown music.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

larold said:


> _But that kind of highlights the question. Are these hundreds of recordings of various warhorses sufficiently different from one another to justify having hundreds of different recordings of the same work? It seems it would become less about the music and more about the performer/conductor._
> 
> That's what classical music recordings have always been about -- the performer. It's about the music in other forms such as popular music where everyone doesn't record the same music.
> 
> ...


For some, but not for all. There's also the economic principle of "diminishing marginal utility". The market becomes so oversaturated that the worth of individual items decreases. That's one reason it's probably even more difficult these days to make a living as a professional classical musician, when everybody and his brother can post recordings of themselves and others on YouTube.


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## caracalla (Feb 19, 2020)

larold said:


> _ I have books going back to the 1930s that graded recordings against each other. It's the basis of classical music listening -- hearing the same 200 warhorses over and over again._


_

I think you are conflating 'classical music' here with CM's mainstream (or 'traditional') repertoire. This discussion has largely ignored the Baroque and EM booms which have substantially expanded CM's boundaries in recent decades (I mean from the pov of ordinary listeners), and now account for a high proportion of new recordings.

There is some overlap, largely confined to the Late (18thC) Baroque. Over-recorded warhorses certainly include Handel's Messiah, Bach's Brandenburgs and Vivaldi's Four Seasons, and several of Bach's other efforts aren't too far behind.

Beyond that rather restricted group, over-recording ceases to be any kind of issue - partly because there simply isn't undue duplication as yet. More importantly, I think - and this applies particularly to EM and the Early Baroque - unprescriptive scores, permissive performance practices and provision for extensive improvisation make interpretation all-important and always will. I have multiple recordings of some pieces which are all highly distinctive (I mean to a degree unimaginable with Beethoven 5), yet still only scratch the surface of what might reasonably be done with the music. In this sector of the CM market, If we ever get to the point where there are 100 competing recordings of the most popular repertoire, I certainly won't be among those complaining._


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_I think you are conflating 'classical music' here with CM's mainstream (or 'traditional') repertoire. This discussion has largely ignored the Baroque and EM booms which have substantially expanded CM's boundaries in recent decades (I mean from the pov of ordinary listeners), and now account for a high proportion of new recordings._

I don't think so in part because there was authenticity movements in the 1930s and 1950s as well as the 1990s. The one in the 1950s dealt almost exclusively with early music. Those movements substantially expanded recordings and modes of interpretation; so did new ways of playing the new recordings -- gramophone to record players to LPs.

The reel-to-reel then cassette tape then CD then download then streaming did more to expand the number of recordings and music being recorded than interpretation; so did the availability of scores for different music. So did the number of new musicians being cranked out by conservatories and universities. So did the expansion of the number of people worldwide, especially in Asia, that bought those products.

I don't know what you mean by early music; perhaps music that wasn't recorded before? If so yes there is more music being recorded today. But I don't believe there are more ways to play it, interpret it, if you will. In fact there only seems to be one way to interpret early music today.

I find this akin to Boulez's pronouncements in the 1950s and 1960s that there was only one kind of music that could be created in classical music that was legitimate -- the kind of music he created. This conformity was same as men wearing hats in the post World War II era. They all did it until John Kennedy didn't wear one at his 1961 inauguration; then hats were out.

My point is there has always been this form of corporate compliance, uniformity or falling in line, however you want to characterize it, that has been prevalent in classical music for as far back as books go that talk about it. Everyone does things the accepted way until someone like a Toscanini comes along and creates a better way.

If there is a limit on interpretation, that is it in my opinion. However that does nothing to stop every Johnny or Jenny Come Lately from recording the same old music everyone else has to put his/her stamp on it.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Knorf said:


> God, no.
> 
> Wait, what am I saying? Sure, I would! It would mean I was a huge success, instead of laboring in semi-obscurity and competing with dead people for jobs.


:lol:
fair enough, ok it sounds I asked you if you'd like to be rich and famous.



Knorf said:


> I still enjoy hearing new recordings of old repertoire, because I do actually think what there is to be said about even standard repertoire can never be exhausted. There are distinctive recordings of old music being released every week.
> 
> *Having said that, the balance of attention given to old repertoire at the expense of the new is totally whacked.*


that's the point. And not just at the expense of the new, but also at the expense of old music that is basically forgotten.
It happened many times to read some of my composers talking of pieces that they considered absolute masterpieces that have never been recorded.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

Knorf said:


> For me, composing is almost like playing chess...


Both chess and music concern the search for beauty and truth, and both also involve a sportive element.

Another good analogy might be music and cooking. You take the recipe and you find ways to adjust the seasoning:too little seasoning and the food taste like nothing; too much seasoning and then the food taste like nothing but seasoning.


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## Gallus (Feb 8, 2018)

From an interview with Boulez:



> BD: There are also broadcasts so that we can listen a hundred or even two hundred years from now to exactly how Boulez conducted and performed his own music.
> 
> PB: Yes, but it does not mean that it was the only way of performing my own music. I see the difference between my own performance thirty years ago and now of my own works. When I listen to the old recording of Le Marteau sans Maître, which I made in '56 [shown at right], I am appalled by the kind of uneasiness, and rather stiff tempi and so on and so forth. Now I am much more at ease with the music because I have a distance. I've played it quite a number of times, so now I can take that in my hand and make something out of it. [Boulez would make four subesquent recordings of this work.] But thirty years ago I was still uneasy, and I'm sure that's with the first performance. I am very aware of that. The first time I perform a work of mine is like new shoes or a new jacket. You are feeling you have to move into it before it feels comfortable, before you feel that you can manage a performance. I remember very well the first time I played Notations. I was not too used to how to do that, how to rehearse it properly. Even if you have quite a lot of experience, when you are writing a score it's like making the swimming movements out of water. There's no resistance in the air. When you have water, your movements go in a different way because you have the resistance of water.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Gallus said:


> From an interview with Boulez:


That sounds like he's saying he gets better as he gets more familiar with the possibilities of the music. And yet - I enjoy his earlier Marteau recordings more than the later ones! So it's not that simple.


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