When I sit at the piano to play a composed piece I'm matching myself against a pre-determined set of musical requirements. Right? I'm trying to meet expectations or even excel to deliver a faithful account of the composition. If that's true, then one performance can be better than another. A performance with many faults might even fail to represent the piece that's written. What is that faulty music? Can it be overlooked or ignored, put out … [Read more...]
Product and Act
Let's not make a categorical distinction between 19th-century musical products -- publications for sale to a public of amateur players -- and the recorded musical products of the 20th and 21st centuries. The work of the "composer" notating sonatas for sale to ladies of the bourgeoisie is the same work as that of performers and producers of 20th-century sound recordings. Both endeavors are musicking, both bring a public into the process/experience … [Read more...]
Tumbling down
Every performance is an installation, every painting a performance. All poems are music, and every sculpture is a dance. Crayons and brushes are pencil and paper, or computer keyboard, or violin and bow, or space to fill-up on stage in a theater. A pianist is a singer, is a dancer, a maker of line drawings, a teller of tales, a weaver. The designs and stories are new and old. The spinning has never been done before, never … [Read more...]