Wits and Interpretation
Keyboard Thoughts
Summary
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Table of contents
- Preface
- Chapter 1 On scores and works of music. Interpretation and identity
- Introduction
- Nelson Goodman’s ontology of the music work
- Notational/non-notational vs. structural/interpretative signs
- Categorical production and categorical perception
- Recovering scores from performances
- Metric signs are non-notational and structural
- The beginning of Alban Berg’s Piano Sonata
- A musically inclusive ontology of the music work
- Chapter 2 Sonate, que te fais-je? Towards a theory of interpretation
- Introduction
- Fidelity to the notes
- More on structural and interpretative signs
- Fidelity to the style
- Fidelity to the text
- Fidelity to the content
- Fidelity to the work
- The contribution of the interpreter
- Remarks on the interpretation of a Beethoven theme
- Conclusions
- Chapter 3 Directions and compliance
- Introduction
- Two passages from Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Op. 110
- Observations from the recordings
- Conclusions
- Chapter 4 Loyal disobedience. When is it OK not to play as written?
- From fidelity to loyalty
- Adding and omitting notes
- Compensating for the lack of keys
- Matters of proof-reading
- Voice-leading and manual rearrangements
- Two problematical transitions
- Disregarding the composer’s indications
- Structural or interpretational signs?
- Matters of embellishment and variation
- Problems involving developments, codas, and introductions
- Further problems involving repeats
- Re-compositions
- Getting rid of embarrassing passages
- Omitting ill-matching movements
- Chapter 5 Recycling the Symphonic Etudes
- Coherence and unity in cyclic works
- Schumann’s “Symphonic etudes/variations”
- A re-ordering process in three stages
- Evaluation of all possible pairs
- Evaluation of privileged groups
- Evaluation of integral sets
- Three attempts at corroboration
- Chapter 6 A comprehensive approach to musical idiomatic
- Introduction
- Idiomatic – a multifarious concept
- Schumann’s Albumblatt and Brahms’s variation
- Brahms, Intermezzo in E♭ minor
- Scriabine, Prelude in G♯ minor
- Chopin, Prelude in B major; Prokofiev, Piano Sonata No. 8
- Poulenc, Intermezzo in A♭ major; Prokofiev, Piano Sonata No. 8
- Idiomatic differences between instruments
- Chapter 7 Distant listening
- Introduction
- Distant listening – two conditions
- Evaluation of “Distant listening”
- Chapter 8 Reduction and interpretation
- Introduction
- Salzer’s reduction of the antecedent
- Drabkin’s amended reduction
- An alternative reduction
- The consequent
- Formal overview; the transitions
- The second theme
- The varied repeat of the first theme; the coda
- The entire movement
- Conclusions
- Chapter 9 Dissentient views on a minuet
- Introduction
- The first four bars and beyond
- The first period and beyond
- The second period and beyond
- The middle section
- The value of reduction when it comes to interpretation
- Starting from scratch
- Conclusions
- Chapter 10 Interpreting a bagatelle
- Is the form of Beethoven’s Op. 126, No. 5 binary or ternary?
- A closing structural rise?
- Form or tonal form?
- The transition
- Conclusions
- Chapter 11 Tonal structure vs. modes of continuation
- Introduction
- Schenker’s analysis
- The outer sections
- The middle section
- Motivic content and interpretation
- Preliminary observations
- An alternative bottom/up reduction
- Modes of continuation
- Options of interpretation
- Conclusions
- Chapter 12 Prelude to the art of continuation
- Introduction
- Interpretation and modes of continuation
- General premises for the analysis
- The F-minor Prelude: general observations
- Options of continuation; the first part of the prelude
- The second part of the prelude
- Interdependence and constraints; consistency
- The influence of interpretation on form
- Elements of variation
- Chapter 13 Interpretation as continuation
- Introduction
- Some preliminary observations on the Brahms Intermezzo
- The first thematic period
- The second thematic period
- The middle section
- The stringendo episodes
- Concluding remarks
- Chapter 14 Musical dialogue in a Romantic violin sonata
- Impersonation and dialogue in music
- Structural dialogue in Brahms’s Violin Sonata Op. 100
- The first theme – initial statement
- The first theme – second statement and transition
- The second-theme episodes, the piano interlude, and the transition
- The third theme and the transition to the development
- Expressing a sense of dialogue
- Cues for a sense of dialogue in performances of the sonata
- Conclusions
- Chapter 15 Chopin themes
- Introduction
- A theme starting seven times
- An introductory theme and its culminating return
- A bass theme and its possible sequel
- The Three D1’s
- Chapter 16 Keyboard commentaries on K. 282
- Introduction
- Youthful mistakes
- The main theme
- The first phrase
- A sense of elision?
- The second phrase; metric peculiarities and virtual delays
- The second phrase; linear connections
- The Coda – the main theme revisited
- Formal variety and matters of transition
- Inherent tempo shifts
- Ornamentation
- Matters of performance
- The theme as a tonal hierarchy
- Tensions in tonal space; attractions and yearning
- A bottom/up implicational analysis
- Remarks on Meyer’s commentary
- A gambit and the Gambit
- Music examples
- References
- Bibliography
Preface
Music cannot be the art of sound unless someone plays or sings it, and this applies even when we read a score. Notated music bears the implicit demand that it must be performed, audibly or silently, and this in turn means that someone has to understand, to interpret, what is written. No matter whether we contribute to our musical culture as listeners or as musicians, interpretation emerges as a core activity, engaging a wide range of cognitive abilities – our intuition as well as our wits.
The sixteen texts presented in this book do not make up a whole, but there is a common thread leading from philosophical issues via music analysis to artistic decision-making. Some of the essays take up a critical standpoint, and some proposals may appear controversial. The music to be discussed is piano music since this is a domain of which the author may claim to have hands-on knowledge, but most of the thoughts are valid beyond the keyboard.
Adopting the musician’s point of view, the first essay makes up a contribution to musical ontology while the following one discusses the prerogatives of the composer and the duties of the musician. The next three texts present various aspects of the musicians’ freedom vis-à-vis the score.
Then follows two excursions dealing with two fundamental conditions of music making: the way you feel the music with your body, and how you hear it.
It is often held that tonal reduction is of great value when it comes to interpretation. Four Schenkerian analyses are subjected to critical scrutiny, and the outcomes indicate that this view is contestable. There are other, less theoretically committed approaches that emerge as more productive if you want to probe into a piece of music.
It seems that a core aspect of interpretation is to find out how the music continues from moment to moment. This approach to analysis, opening up for a sharpened sensitivity to musical change and for the inclusion of elements of human import, is applied to three works.
The two final texts are case studies, showing how analytic observations of various kinds may lead to insights of relevance for interpretation.
I wish to express my gratitude to Sten K. Johnssons stiftelse which has generously supported the printing of this book.
Lund, 19 August, 2022
Bengt Edlund
<046.131466be@gmail.com>
Chapter 1 On scores and works of music. Interpretation and identity
Introduction
According to a widely held view in 20th-Century aesthetics, a music work is equivalent to the performances that conform to a certain score. And this notion complies with at least three requirements of a satisfactory ontology of the music work, or so it seems.1
Thus, although a Beethoven manuscript would command a very high price, it is not very interesting as a unique physical object from a musical point of view. It may of course be valuable for collectors or have affection value, and it is indispensable as a source, but unlike, say, a van Gogh painting it has no value that any uncorrupted copy of it does not have as well. Beethoven scores in general, on the other hand, are musically crucial because they are records of compositions, and because they may give rise to performances.
The association between a score and its performances means that the focus of the ontology is transferred from signs on paper to the domain of sound events. This is certainly a step in the right direction since (leaving some varieties of esoteric music out of account) an association with sound appears to be necessary.2
Finally and perhaps most importantly, the reference to the class of conformant performances amounts to acknowledging, albeit by implication, the need in ←15 | 16→music ontology to take account of interpretation. A music work must have some musical properties, but scores, unless they are somehow interpreted, are devoid of such qualities.
Nevertheless, the current idea of the ontology of the music work is deeply problematic.
It seems that an unreasonably heavy burden is placed on notation when it is both used to secure the correspondence between a score and its performances, and to guarantee the identity between the members of the class of performances that are to constitute a certain music work. On closer consideration it appears that this kind of ontology entails some serious mistakes as regards the purpose and nature of musical notation.
Furthermore, whether due to a fear of getting too involved in mental issues or to ambitions to provide a water-tight argumentation, the musical properties that are actually allowed to enter into the interpretation process, and thus are included into the performances making up the music work, are quite restricted. And this restraint turns out to be well-advised, indeed necessary, since if interpretation in the current and quite comprehensive musical sense were allowed, the identity between the performances constituting the music work would be at risk. The reluctance to open Pandora’s box indicates that the notion of ‘identity’ used when construing the ontology of the music work is unduly impoverished from a musical point of view. It seems that we are dealing with the “identification” of the work involved, rather than with its “identity”.
Nelson Goodman’s ontology of the music work
The most discussed and also most influential version of the score/performance notion of the ontology of the music work is no doubt the one advanced by Nelson Goodman.3 According to his account, paintings are “autographic” while works of music – being recorded by means of a notational system – are “allographic”. And further: “In music, the work is the class of performances compliant with a character [i.e. a score]”. (p. 210) In order to understand this properly it is necessary to recall the specific meanings that Goodman’s theory assigns to the terms “notation”, “score”, and “performance”.
In western standard musical notation it is only the subsystems specifying pitch and duration that qualify as “notational”. Only these inscriptions satisfy the syntactic and semantic criteria that Goodman lays down; only these signs ←16 | 17→have sufficient precision to define a structure, and consequently “scores” are exclusively made up of such signs. And it is the inscriptions specifying pitch and duration that must necessarily and with no exception or deviation be respected in order to produce a “performance” that exemplifies the work; indeed, there are no “performances” of a work but such strictly compliant, exemplificative ones.4 This implies that what a “score” defines, and thereby establishes as the basis of a music work, is a pitch/time structure.
Other inscriptions to be found in actual scores, for instance signs that refer to dynamics, are imprecise and therefore not “notational”. Such “characters” are not definitive of music works, and do not belong to the “scores”; consequently, they must not necessarily be respected when generating the class of compliant “performances” that make up a certain music work.
This essay aims at showing that Goodman’s ontology of the music work is untenable – the role assigned to notation is musically counterintuitive, and so are several consequences of his line of reasoning. As will become evident, the core of the criticism is that the preoccupation with notation and pitch/time structure conceals more important issues. Whereas it appears that Goodman merely accounts for a set of strict identification (rather than identity) conditions applicable to performances of a certain composition, a musically comprehensive approach will be proposed that includes the essential, constitutive traits that make up music works as the kind of phenomena we actually encounter and store in our minds.5
Notational/non-notational vs. structural/interpretative signs
Beyond being an exaggeration, it amounts to introducing an alien principle when Goodman claims that the “primary purpose” of the “notational” sub-systems found in a musical score is to make “possible recovery of score from performance” and to “ensure identity of work from performance to performance”. (p. 183) It is true that the standard musical notation has been used prescriptively by composers, but in order for the notation to serve as a key concept when defining what a music work is, the crucial and unexceptional agreement between a score and its performances taken for granted must correspond to a very strong normative authority on the part of the scores and a complementary, very loyal attitude on the part of the musicians – conditions that have not always been met. The composers have sometimes been quite permissive, and current artistic practice has from time to time and to various extent accorded the musicians the right to deviate from the scores.
In addition to such tendencies we must take into account the obvious fact that not all details and aspects of a composition are equally important. The exact reproduction of certain details of the score is immaterial, and this holds both with regard to their musical importance and their pertinence for correct exemplification/identification of a certain music work.6 And the distinction between work-defining and less important inscriptions is not congruent with the distinction made by Goodman between “notational” and “non-notational” signs. In other words, whether the signs to be found in a score are ontologically crucial is not a matter of their precision of reference.
Dynamic marks, for instance, may very well be constitutive of a work despite the fact that they are approximate, whereas signs exactly prescribing pitches or durational proportions may be non-structural. Two examples from Chopin’s nocturnes clarify this point. The dynamic marks in mm. 27–30 of Op. 32, No. 1 may very well have structural significance since they introduce a sense of dialogue; cf. Ex. 1a. Playing dotted note-values in the initial phrase of Op. 9, No. 1, on the other hand, cannot reasonably be said to change the structure and hence the identity of the work; cf. Ex. 1b. Whereas Goodman for his purposes must ←18 | 19→“categorically require full compliance with the specifications” (p. 187), neither musical reflection, nor musical tradition/practice demands quite that much.
One might think that what Goodman wanted to capture with his idea of “notational” and “non-notational” characters is the distinction between “structural” signs, which only composers are entitled to inscribe and which musicians are obliged to observe, and “interpretative” signs, which specify how the musicians are to render the structure and which are less binding since they may be regarded as being inscribed by the composer as an interpreter of his work. This distinction is very attractive for people involved in practical interpretation work rather than beset by ontological worries.7
That Goodman may have had an association between “interpretative” and “non-notational” signs in mind seems to appear from his remark that “tempo specifications cannot be integral parts of the defining score, but are rather auxiliary directions whose observance or non-observance affects the quality of the work but not the identity”. (p. 185) But while the imprecise tempo indications – or for that matter exact metronome specifications – are (correctly or mistakenly) regarded as “interpretative”, it should be pointed out that the tempo might in fact alter the identity of the work. A faster or slower tempo may suggest another pulse-bearing note value, and the changed metric framework may in turn give rise to perceptible, or even quite decisive, qualitative differences. Indeed, such tempo-dependent changes in character can be induced by the structure itself without any change of the actual speed of the music. The middle section of the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Op. 26 suggests a doubled pace rate, making for a fiery Presto within the otherwise smoothly flowing Allegro; Ex. 2.
Thus, Goodman’s distinction between “notational” and “non-notational” characters is not congruent with that between “structural” and “interpretative” signs. The musical structure must be taken to include more than just the “notational” pitch/time structure since, for instance, inexact “non-notational” dynamic signs may crucially contribute to define the composition’s structure, whereas, say, the exact rhythmic signs sometimes merely suggest transient and inessential inflections in the performance.
Categorical production and categorical perception
William E. Webster has shown that not even the “notational” systems within the standard musical notation fulfil the criteria of water-tight reference required by Goodman.8 But devising enharmonic or rhythmic dilemmas is to miss a more fundamental problem, a problem that goes deeper than the annoying shortcomings pointed out by Webster. Goodman’s theory obviously takes the notation to be a sequence of discrete marks, but although musical notation may look atomic, music – essentially made up of relationships between sound events – is not.
There is no need to enter into niceties of intonation to bring out that the signs for C♯ and D♭ are non-redundant, and that even the seemingly non-equivocal character of, say, C(-natural) turns out to be ambiguous. To realize this, it is necessary to consider the semantic job done by the “notational” system specifying pitches. Jointly these characters do not denote the physical frequencies of sound events, but refer to tonal positions building up musical relationships and Gestalts, patterns that are mediated from composers to musicians, and from musicians to listeners by means of deeply ingrained conceptualizations.
Hence, in a consequential notation the character C♯ is chosen for good reasons, and it can very seldom be exchanged for D♭. Although the same key is to be played on a piano, these inscriptions do not refer to the same musical entity, and what they mean cannot be abstracted from the musical context. C as tonic is a world apart from C as leading-note to D♭, and the interval E/G, for further instance, may function as the upper third of a C-major triad or as the lower third of an E-minor triad; it may top an A7 chord or it may be part of an ambiguous diminished-seventh harmony. The interval F♯-over-C is an augmented fourth “wanting” to expand, whereas G♭-over-C is a diminished fifth promising contraction.
If this musical view is adopted, it becomes much less important (for musical ontology, not for music instruction) whether the pitches actually played on (say) a violin comply exactly with the pitch symbols or not, and whether the compliance classes intersect, thus violating the requirement of semantic disjointness, when the intonation is free, as it is when playing the violin. What matters (at least in tonal music) is how the tones are apprehended as musical, phenomenal entities; whether, say, an F♯ in a C-major context is understood and rendered so as to be ←20 | 21→about to rise to (and perhaps transiently tonicize) G, or played so as to suggest a forthcoming descent to F, which would be the proper thing to do for a G♭. Correct musical “spelling” is replete with meanings, and it cannot be simplified without loss or destruction of information.
Turning to the subsystem of durational notation, a similar picture emerges. Needless to say, there are many different and yet score-compliant ways to play a certain sequence of note values: just like pitch intervals, durational proportions is not only a matter of categorical perception, but also of “categorical production”. And just like tonality, rhythm is a relational phenomenon. Individually, i.e. when each sign is read in relation to the immediately preceding or following sign, every note value represents a certain, strictly defined durational proportion, but jointly the musical significance of these signs, and in turn the actual temporal values giving rise to the rhythmic qualities of a performance, stems from other sources, such as the pace of the music, the character of the melodic motion, the metric position, and the rhythmic grouping. Consider, for instance, the sequence♩ ♪|♩. It makes a great difference if the eighth-note is conceived of as, rendered as, and heard as an afterbeat or an upbeat.
Details
- Pages
- 464
- Year
- 2023
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9783631890943
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9783631890950
- ISBN (Hardcover)
- 9783631889688
- DOI
- 10.3726/b20238
- Open Access
- CC-BY
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2023 (February)
- Keywords
- Analytical methods Golden section Musical ambiguity Musical hermeneutics Musical plagiarism Musical similarity Schenkerian analysis
- Published
- Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien, 2023. 464 pp., 1 fig. b/w, 2 tables.
Biographical notes
Bengt Edlund (Author)
Bengt Edlund, trained as a pianist, has been active as a music critic, and as a lecturer at the Department of Musicology, University of Lund, where he was appointed a professor in 2000. His main elds of interest are music theory and analysis, music cognition and aestethics, and musical interpretation.
