# What is soul in music, thinking about performers



## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

When somebody plays mechanically, or they play "from the heart." Do you feel you can you tell? Do you really appreciate that genuine musical feeling? Do you have it yourself as a listener and a performer?

Sometimes I feel like the mechanical routines in my intellect get in the way of really feeling the flow when I'm listening and performing. I hate that. I'm becoming increasingly sensitive to what I'm perceiving as a lack of feeling in my experience as a musician and listener right now. Maybe I'm just tripping on that. But sometimes I really "get it" and it's never quite the same. Maybe it's just different levels of depth in different ways.

Certainly some performance emulate soul by loosening up and not playing metronomically, but with consistent rhythm. Others really feel it and are actively using a high level of intuition, aren't just loosening up. It's hard to know any of this for sure on an intellectual level.


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## CypressWillow (Apr 2, 2013)

You're right, it is hard to 'figure it out' on an intellectual level.

I believe I can tell the difference by listening with both my ears and my heart open. Sometimes, if I'm not sure, I can close my eyes and that often gives me the missing insight.

But it's so subjective. So I tune in to the effect the performance has on me physiologically: my heart rate may speed up or slow down, I may hear ambient noise or be oblivious to it, I may be 'transported' to another realm or not - very hard to put it into words. So, to return to the second sentence, let me just add emphasis: I *believe* I can tell the difference....


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

I tend to think that if the music isn't great when you listen to it as a computer-generated midi file, then it's not great, period.

Beyond shaping phrases to give them form and controlling tone and balance and deciding tempo, anything that a performer might do is play with expectations, which I don't find to be a high form of art or artistry.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

I disagree with you there. I think that notation can't capture a lot of elements of music. In Debussy for example, there is a lot implicit lost in a midi.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Chordalrock said:


> I tend to think that if the music isn't great when you listen to it as a computer-generated midi file, then it's not great, period.
> 
> Beyond shaping phrases to give them form and controlling tone and balance and deciding tempo, anything that a performer might do is play with expectations, which I don't find to be a high form of art or artistry.


I once input the exposition to Mozart's clarinet concerto into Sibelius software and listened to the midi playback...which made it sound like dull, predictable second rate classical music with nothing really interesting in the way it sounds. It's up to a perfomer to delve into the music and bring out the things which are compositionally very interesting through dynamics and various forms of articulation (including types of vibrato).

One thing I learnt from doing this is the importance of understanding analytical/theory stuff present in any piece of music in order to create an informed, relevant and terrific sounding interpretation. It's all the difference between playing something robotically 'as written' on the score and shaping the music properly with an idea of what's going on harmonically etc.


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## D Smith (Sep 13, 2014)

clavichorder said:


> When somebody plays mechanically, or they play "from the heart." Do you feel you can you tell? Do you really appreciate that genuine musical feeling? Do you have it yourself as a listener and a performer?


Absolutely. Though only as a listener, my performance skills are extremely limited. I've been privileged to hear artists like Mutter, Perlman and Shaham live in concert and their passion and commitment to the music raised everything to a new level. Without a human artist to realize the composer's dreams, music is just notes on a page.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

I think most of it is minor ajustments to tempo, rhythm and dinamics and I dare to postulate these transformations are consistent, can be formalised and therefore can be notated precisely.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Richannes Wrahms said:


> I think most of it is minor ajustments to tempo, rhythm and dinamics and I dare to postulate these transformations are consistent, can be formalised and therefore can be notated precisely.


Yes, but this knowledge is best when it is intuitively grasped and acted on. The difference is real I believe.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Robert Schumann said that the important thing in performing music is not the notes but how one gets from one note to the next. 

Those of us who "speak music" as a natural medium of expression know that the score is only the blueprint from the composer, and that the erection of the building is our responsibility. The choice of those "minor ajustments to tempo, rhythm and dynamics" is no small matter, and, depending on the music, can make all the difference between a vital experience for the performer and the listener and a merely interesting (or even boring) succession of sounds.

No real musician would agree that the achievement of a great performance of a musical work is "not a high form of art or artistry." The greatest performing artists, who achieve the feat of revealing the depths of meaning music can hold for listeners, inspire something like veneration for good reason, and no one has more reason to be grateful to them than the composers.


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> No real musician would agree that the achievement of a great performance of a musical work is "not a high form of art or artistry." The greatest performing artists, who achieve the feat of revealing the depths of meaning music can hold for listeners, inspire something like veneration for good reason, and no one has more reason to be grateful to them than the composers.


I wonder how Bach performed his own harpsichord pieces. It might sound very mechanical and not much different from a machine performance.

But it's needless to argue extremes. I agree that it takes great skill to perform post-Bach type of music adequately due to an increasing emphasis on dynamics and nuance, but everyone would also agree that an exciting performance can hide compositional deficiencies in weaker music and make it sound far better than it is.

What I suspect is that too much focus on the nuances of performance make people look too kindly on the kind of music that has been and is being created, and contributes to keeping relatively low standards for compositions as such. Maybe I'm wrong, and we live in the best possible world with regards to its music and composers, but I find this to be unlikely.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Chordalrock said:


> I wonder how Bach performed his own harpsichord pieces. It might sound very mechanical and not much different from a machine performance.
> 
> But it's needless to argue extremes. I agree that it takes great skill to perform post-Bach type of music adequately due to an increasing emphasis on dynamics and nuance, but everyone would also agree that an exciting performance can *hide compositional deficiencies in weaker music* and make it sound far better than it is.
> 
> What I suspect is that too much focus on the nuances of performance make people look too kindly on the kind of music that has been and is being created, and contributes to keeping relatively low standards for compositions as such. Maybe I'm wrong, and we live in the best possible world with regards to its music and composers, but I find this to be unlikely.


I think you are making an error in so clinically separating composition from the music we hear as it enters our ears. It is a multistep process, and if at the end of that process from writing notes to interpreting notes to playing it, it sounds good, then I don't think that should reflect negatively on the composition.

Because, the composer might have heard it that way in his head, the way the performer who plays it best renders it to us. And he was powerless to communicate the nuance of his idea into sheet music except for additional markings to provide hints.

Think, if you were to transcribe some Ahmad Jamal solos and play them very studied and mechanically without feeling, let alone the feeling Jamal had when he was generating his ideas on the spot, it might not be very interesting. Is that a weakness in Ahmad Jamal's musical skill? Not at all.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Chordalrock said:


> I wonder how Bach performed his own harpsichord pieces. It might sound very mechanical and not much different from a machine performance.
> 
> But it's needless to argue extremes. I agree that it takes great skill to perform post-Bach type of music adequately due to an increasing emphasis on dynamics and nuance, but everyone would also agree that an exciting performance can hide compositional deficiencies in weaker music and make it sound far better than it is.
> 
> What I suspect is that too much focus on the nuances of performance make people look too kindly on the kind of music that has been and is being created, and contributes to keeping relatively low standards for compositions as such. Maybe I'm wrong, and we live in the best possible world with regards to its music and composers, but I find this to be unlikely.


Of course we can never know exactly how Baroque musicians played, but documents make it clear that they were much concerned with expressiveness. I doubt that Bach sounded like a machine when he played.

I agree that a mediocre work can sound quite interesting when an imaginative artist takes hold of it. My best personal example is how deeply moving the music of some Italian operas can sound when sung by Maria Callas and certain other great operatic artists, and how merely pleasant it can sound when sung by the average performer. I don't mean to say that I find all such music mediocre. But a Callas could make even vocal exercises interesting.

I'm not sure what to make of your last statement. Surely performance is an essential aspect of the experience of music, and some music - such as that Italian opera I cited, but much popular music of today as well - is written in full cognizance of the creative contribution of the performer. I don't agree with the idea, which I've seen expressed, that the "best" music is that which is complete in its notation alone and can be fully realized just by sounding its pitches, without interpretation. Is that what you're implying?


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

clavichorder said:


> I think you are making an error in so clinically separating composition from the music we hear as it enters our ears. It is a multistep process, and if at the end of that process from writing notes to interpreting notes to playing it, it sounds good, then I don't think that should reflect negatively on the composition.
> 
> Because, the composer might have heard it that way in his head, the way the performer who plays it best renders it to us. And he was powerless to communicate the nuance of his idea into sheet music except for additional markings to provide hints.
> 
> Think, if you were to transcribe some Ahmad Jamal solos and play them very studied and mechanically without feeling, let alone the feeling Jamal had when he was generating his ideas on the spot, it might not be very interesting. Is that a weakness in Ahmad Jamal's musical skill? Not at all.


Well, that's my beef with our very 19th century culture - it emphasises aspects of music that I would rather de-emphasise, the exciting heroic performer and crowd-pleaser over the basic structure of the music.

I'm tons more interested in harmony and sequences of notes than I am in dynamics and other nuances. The prevailing culture of course judges me deficient in that respect, and it may be right to an extent, but I think the culture itself isn't necessarily ideal.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Chordalrock said:


> Well, that's my beef with our very 19th century culture - it emphasises aspects of music that I would rather de-emphasise, the exciting heroic performer and crowd-pleaser over the basic structure of the music.
> 
> I'm tons more interested in harmony and sequences of notes than I am in dynamics and other nuances. The prevailing culture of course judges me deficient in that respect, and it may be right to an extent, but I think the culture itself isn't necessarily ideal.


That's one angle on it. But I'm not talking about artificial overdone nuance. You can have rhythmically consistent, upbeat music that still abounds with expression and creativity in performance.

Really, notation is a very new practice brought into music. Live music is the soul of music and always will be. And I think that's much older than the 19th century.

Have you listened to a lot of renaissance music for the keyboard? Lots of clavichord music? You will know then that not only are the right notes and tempo markings on a sheet of paper important, but the right equipment(as in a suitable instrument) and then some intelligent, feeling, and technically skilled musicians to render it, maybe even embellish on it a little to(hopefully without detraction) maximize the musical product. I think the 19th century is when they got stricter about notation and less encouraging about improvisation except from the very best and most technically astounding.


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> I agree that a mediocre work can sound quite interesting when an imaginative artist takes hold of it. My best personal example is how deeply moving the music of some Italian operas can sound when sung by Maria Callas and certain other great operatic artists, and how merely pleasant it can sound when sung by the average performer. I don't mean to say that I find all such music mediocre. But a Callas could make even vocal exercises interesting.


The best example I can come up with of an incredible performance in terms of the emotion it communicates would be Du Pre & Barenboim in their 1970 recording of Elgar's cello concerto, specifically the first few minutes. Remembering that now almost makes me regret what I have written so far. What can you say in front of such music and music making?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

"Soul" is when the true quality of great music speaks to you because the performer "gets is right". Pure and simple.


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## Gaspard de la Nuit (Oct 20, 2014)

I've never understood the cult of performers and I'm a firm believer that, if the music has enough interest on its own, then it's the composer who is doing 90% of the work.

*However*, some performances do seem to have an extra punchiness to them......I don't know if I would attribute this to the performers or some numinous energy that's difficult to account for, but it's clear to me that some performances have an extra-dramatic, operatic, or super-sensitive quality that makes them stand out as moments that cut through the BS of ordinary life and into things that are impossibly deep.



Chordalrock said:


> Well, that's my beef with our very 19th century culture - it emphasises aspects of music that I would rather de-emphasise, the exciting heroic performer and crowd-pleaser over the basic structure of the music.
> 
> I'm tons more interested in harmony and sequences of notes than I am in dynamics and other nuances. The prevailing culture of course judges me deficient in that respect, and it may be right to an extent, but I think the culture itself isn't necessarily ideal.


I'm with you, I don't really understand the importance of exactness regarding dynamics and other various minutiae that some audiences harp on, unless it has a truly visceral effect (like maybe hairpins over tremolo strings on a mysterious-sounding chord.....or something).


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