It’s been suggested (by Charles Rosen) that a pianist who plays difficult passages notated in Robert Schumann’s piano music,
to today’s standard of accuracy, is not giving an “authentic” reading. No one in the early nineteenth century could have done it, so, the argument goes, “mistakes” would be part of “authenticity.” (We might speculate on the impact the sounds made or make…)
In Ghent, a year and a half ago at the Orpheus Institute, we had a similar discussion. A cellist showed how, with help from technicians at IRCAM, he’s made new versions of interactive pieces by Brian Ferneyhough so that the vagaries of early computer technology can be vanquished. He showed, as well, how he replaces with new notation, the enharmonic and possibly-hard-to-read pitch notation in Morton Feldman’s Patterns in a Chromatic Field. But, a young composer asked, wasn’t Ferneyhough “future-proofing” his music? The stumbles are part of it! Failure is the music. And, I asked, how did Franz Liszt sound when he played Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier”?
When I read Roland Barthes’ “The Grain of the Voice,” I long to be Charles Panzéra, not Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. At least in that reckoning, I want direct, powerful “expression,” not artifice, not virtuosity — not art! (The “grain of the voice,” where the “rubber meets the road.”) Puzzling some of my colleagues, last spring, I wrote in my comments about a student’s end-of-the-year playing exam, “Less art, more truth!” Presumptuous, but that’s it.
so true, so true. i have a good friend, a cellist, who coined one of our favorite expressions in this vain:
“Stop being so damn musical and JUST PLAY!”
how refreshing to hear someone acknowledging failure as part of the process to find real truth and art, a real winner!
I agree wholeheartedly: I think some 19th-century music exploits the imperfections of performance. Paganini’s 6th caprice would not be so spooky if it weren’t so difficult; the thin scrape of the bow, almost necessitated by the music, smacks of the Gothic other-worldly. (Listen, for example, to the disconcerting recording of the Caprices by Ruggiero Ricci.)
On the subject of contemporary expectations of the “perfect” performance, I am reminded of Malcolm Bilson’s wonderful video “Knowing the Score”, in which he must repeatedly offer the disclaimer that his advice about interpreting eighteenth-century notation will not win anyone any competitions. As Bilson points out, often what we think is “perfect” is, in fact, wholly disconnected from musical conventions inscribed in the music we play.