Wow. One day, five posts (four not written by me), and a lot to think about. As I read each post the first time through, I diligently made notes. Unfortunately, if I attempted to address all of the points in them that intrigued me, at the end of the week I’d no longer be a professional pianist, special or otherwise. One thing I’ve noticed which I do want to address, though, is the very wide variety of attributes/activities/priorities landing under the “special” umbrella. That’s natural, and good, given the different perspectives the five of us bring, but I think at this point some clarification/classification is in order.
In my initial post, I referred to myself as being “sort of unspecial.” What I meant is that my suspicion is that the vast majority of my audience comes to my concerts simply because they like the music that I play, and they are inclined to think that they might like the way I play it. The latter might be the case for many reasons; I have never thought of any activity that would help communicate my feelings about music to my audience as “specialness,” but I can see why it might fall into that category. So let me be clear: that, I’m unequivocally for. (Though, like Matthew, I’m very conscious that it only works when it is done really well: the line between advocacy and apology is curiously thin.) I do think that a great musician is defined by his or her ability to convey his feeling for music through playing, but if blogging/interviews/lectures/etc. on the music help bring the audience closer, that’s all to the good.
(Sidebar: I’m ignoring the important question of specialness in programming, just because it seems separate to me. I’ll try and come back to it before the week is up.)
Then there is a whole other kind of special: the human interest special. The feature-story-in- another-section-of-the-paper special. The “get-to-know-the-artist-away-from-his-instrument” special. And while I see the value in this, at least from a marketing perspective, it makes me uneasy. This is a blog about PR, and so I know I’m outlining a rather radical position here, but I feel it’s important, so here goes:
Sunday night, while stranded at the Toronto airport, I found myself watching the Golden Globes, of all things. Meryl Streep, in accepting her award, made a charming comment about being mistaken for an extraordinary woman because she’s played such a long string of them, and then, as a corollary, said that she thought of herself as a vessel, through which these characters came to life. And it occurred to me that while I’ve seen her in plenty of movies, I know very little about her, and that that mystery probably makes it much easier for her to disappear into a role – and for me, her audience, to buy it. I won’t name names, but I imagine we probably all can think of certain fine actors – likely of a younger generation – in whom it is very difficult to suspend the disbelief necessary to appreciate their performances (or, rather, appreciate them as something deeper than “performances”). Their every move is broadcast to us by the media; they never become characters because they are always their personae. (We don’t really know them, of course, but we are encouraged to think that we do, and that’s the point. And I assume this happens because everyone in the equation – the actors themselves, their representatives, the people marketing their movies, and the media – feels they are gaining something by it.)
Now, the analogy to classical music is an imperfect one, but not so imperfect that it isn’t worth making. We performers are interpreters. Re-creators. Vessels, if you will. The performer’s feeling for the music comes into it – how could it not? – but in the greatest performances I’ve heard, the person or people playing have seemed to disappear, and my feeling that I was connected purely to the music I was hearing was absolute. And the more of a persona the person onstage has cultivated, the harder it is for this magical disappearance to take place. To put it bluntly, rather than a vessel through which the music is communicated, he or she becomes an obstacle between the audience and the music. I’ve painted this issue more in black and white than seems fair, just to clarify the argument. But I do think this is an aspect of the performer’s contract with the music, and with the audience, which would benefit from a serous discussion.
Of course, as a performer, I’m more protected from the commercial aspect of music than any of my fellow-bloggers. So I’m very curious to hear everyone’s thoughts on this question. –
(Further sidebar: for the sake of clarity, I’ll respond to Amanda’s question in a separate post.)
Here from Greg Sandow’s blog:
I’m of two minds on this: sometimes I want to hear the music of a well-known composer interpreted well, and the “vessel” idea is a good one.
But sometimes I want to hear what YOU have to say as a musician, or any “rhetorical-you.”
Actors are people who are paid to become someone else on stage … but sometimes we want to see who someone IS on stage, too. So ideally, we would have both — maybe in the same person. Montero’s like that; I have a bunch of her stuff, and I love listening to her whipping out Rachmaninoff, but I really love listening to her improvisations, because then I’m getting a look into her.
That’s what’s so fun about a lot of the best popular music; it’s a direct look straight into the very person singing or playing, especially if they wrote the song they are playing. I loved to hear the LACO do Mendelssohn’s Italian when I went to their premiere this year, but I also ADORE watching Tina Turner’s old concerts, not because she’s being someone else but because I’m watching her having a blast being Tina Turner.
I just wish it weren’t so polarized, where you get a look into the performers only in popular music, whereas the classical performers are always “vessels.” If classical performers are just vessels all the time, then there will never be any more classical music.
Janis – You’re getting at an issue which I think is one of the principal problems in classical music: the separation of the composer and the performer. We would be better off for so many reasons if these roles re-merged. But in the “vessel” analogy, it’s not that the audience doesn’t get to hear what the performer has to say: rather, the performer tries to access a place where his/her personality merges with the music. Not unlike acting, I imagine – surely an actor can’t give a good characterization without feeling empathy/sympathy for the character. -JB
Again, I feel divided… I’d like to believe in the metaphor of the vessel, but it leaves me wanting. It seems to imply – the performer as “transparent” soul, disappearing in order to allow the music to reveal itself – that there is something such as “the work in itself”, floating beyond all interpretation, waiting to be revealed. It is not, in my mind at least, how we experience music. It is not only that the performer’s feelings come into it, it is that this is precisely what we are searching and hoping for: an interpretation. And this is by no means a re-creation (of, supposedly, the “work in itself”): on the contrary, I want to be conscious that what I am listing to is an individual’s interpretation, an individual telling me (so to speak) “This is how I read of the world as text if the text of the world was a musical score.” And there are certainly times when knowing something about the performer will guide me into reading what he or she is reading in the text. I know, for example, that when I became aware of Brendel’s thoughts about humour and read some of his witty and humorous poetry, I understood his Beethoven much better and listened with renewed insights to his interpretation of the Diabelli Variations – certainly different than if interpreted by a humourless performer…
Granted, there are degrees of knowledge: I can’t see how knowing that such performer likes flying kites and collects miniature trains would give me much insight into his interpretation of Berg’s Piano Sonata. But still, I do think audiences would gain a lot if efforts were made to reveal pertinent facts about a performer’s personality, as anecdotal as they may at times seem.
I receive year after year biographies of performers for insertion in program booklets, and, with their endless list of orchestras, conductors, concert and opera houses, they have become irrelevant (as well as perfectly interchangeable…). Surely – and here my question is more for Amanda – one could find a way here to put forward aspects of the performer’s personality that would help guide the listener through his vision of music in general, if not of the music he or she is performing on that particular concert?
Alex Benjamin
Artistic Director
Festival de Lanaudiere
Alex, hopefully I’ve addressed this somewhat in my response below. It’s a big topic, which I’ll revisit either here or on my own blog. But you certainly identified the gray area which I deliberately skated over in my post. But I think the Brendel example falls squarely on the “fleshing out the performer’s relationship with the music” side of things. I’ve often been asked to talk about things that by no stretch fit that description, and that’s when I get uneasy. But I, too, would like to hear Amanda weigh in on this. -JB
Yeah … I keep thinking of what people will listen to when they want to get into our minds, and the minds of our great composers, when music students and people want to examine life in the mid-to-late 20th century. What will people in the future listen to who want to get into our minds?
They’ll have to go outside classical music, because classical performers are too busy getting into the minds of the people who came before them. I’m crazy about a lot of good classical performers, but … in two hundred years, how will someone get into Itzak Perlman’s mind when he was so busy getting into Bruch’s? People of the future who want to learn about us will have to give what we call “classical” music a pass, which is a real shame.
I do get what you mean and I’ve known actors who have said exactly what you said about how they get into a person and let that person into them, but that’s more the actor’s own internal process for doing their job. It’s not really supposed to be perceived by the audience. It’s the technical means by which the actor does what they do … and that’s sort of “under the hood” for the people observing, like a singer doing scales and vocal exercises. That’s vital to how they do what they do, but it’s not what the performance consists of. It’s very different from, say, watching an extremely personal singer-songwriter (like Carly Simon, Steve Perry, or Annie Lennox) showing you exactly what’s in their guts at any one time.
There’s got to be room for both … especially given that classical music is public domain, for pete’s sake. How we ever arrived at the idea that this music should be hands-off when it’s precisely the stuff we can all play with as freely as we want escapes me … 🙁