[CITTERN] Re: Memorization...

[Kevin McDermott]

Dear Andrew (and Kevin)
Good point(s). To me, at least, a performer (who is, as I said  
previously, a re-creative artist, not a creative one, if he/she is  
playing someone else's composition) is presented with a fait accompli:  
the score_as it stands_.

But, if the piece as written always represented the last word, there  
would be no such things as pentimenti, revised compositions, or  
revoked/recalled opus numbers: and, of course, there are. So even  
composers don't necessarily consider the published version the only  
possible version--and we know from the reports or recordings of  
composers playing their own compositions that they changed them "on  
the fly" as well. This is their right, of course: but not ours (as you  
so rightly point out in Dowland). It would be a brave soul who would  
ornament a Bach aria (where, very exceptionally for the period, it  
seems everything is written out just as Bach wanted to hear it) and a  
very pusillanimous one who would NOT ornament a Handel slow movement  
(where, from everything we can know, neither Handel nor anyone else in  
period would think much of the performance without it). There's so  
much that goes into making the decision about what's right for a given  
piece: conventions of the era, who the piece was written for, what  
circumstances, et c., et c.

Faced with that fait accompli, (again, it seems to me) a performer  
must make it his or her own; let's take it as a given that, at least  
at the moment it was presented to the publisher or written down for  
the last time in autograph, it represented a finished task to the  
composer. But that moment, and (usually) that composer are long gone:  
the audience is sitting there, and so are you. It's your task as a  
performer to reanimate that long-gone moment....and make it yours, as  
a living, breathing experience. The latter is all the ears of the  
audience can appreciate or that can move their souls. As Edith  
Borroff, a very wise musicologist I once had the privilege of studying  
under back in the nascent days of the early music boom, used to say:  
there is NO excuse for boring an audience. Yes, this stuff is  
intellectually interesting....to you; but it has to be more than that  
to be performed music.

The thing which makes this possible is that it is clearly true that  
pieces of music can be performed very effectively in ways very  
different from whatever expression marks the composer might have left  
on the score, and without doing violence to the conventions of the  
period,  either: Russell Sherman, a remarkable Boston pianist, has  
made a long career of his extremely idiosyncratic and extremely moving  
performances of the standard solo piano repertoire (they work because  
they're not idiosycratic to BE idiosyncratic; they express what  
Russell Sherman feels, and feels deeply).

In OUR world of very few marks of expression, if any....we are thrown  
on our own resources even more. While I can't play the Dowland  
fantasies, it's clear they are music of extreme depth, and I believe  
capable of being played successfully many, many different ways.

Perhaps things are different for me as a singer, because....my body IS  
my instrument: if I feel sad, or tired, or happy, or sick on a certain  
day, there's almost no way that won't show up in my performance--the  
physiology makes that a given, above and beyond any exercise of will I  
might expend to counteract the fact. But, honestly, I don't try to  
fight it....but rather go with it. This may make me a hard singer to  
accompany, because the only way to judge what will come next is to  
build on what's gone before--and I've been blessed with a long-time  
pianist who can read me like a book. The important thing to me, and to  
my audiences, is that the noises I'm making with my mouth convey my  
soul, if you will, authentically and immanently. The vehicle for that  
soul is....the composer's attempt at writing down what HE or SHE was  
having as an authentic experience when THAT was immanent. It's the  
picture vs. the portrait sitter thing again.....

Or so a true, yet unprofficient schollar of the Citheren thinks.
Kevin


On Apr 8, 2008, at 11:53 AM, Andrew Hartig wrote:



At 02:42 AM 4/8/2008, Kevin Lawton wrote:
[...]However, if the musical notation
has been written well then I feel that a purely
'mechanical' rendering of all the information which
has been written is still a valid performance.
This, I think, is quite different from improvisation
(or 'extemporisation') where the performer actually
departs from exactly what has been written in an
attempt to interpret some of the original musical
ideas.
I guess in some ways it could be likened to the
performance of a play or reciting of some poetry. [...] I
think it is pretty unusual for orators or actors to
improvise their own replacements for some of the
written words (ad libbing) unless particularly called
for in the script.


Kevin, Kevin, et al,

This really begs the question of intent. Is the music analagous to a
poem or piece of composed prose that is to be considered "finished"
from the author's perspective and intended to be delivered "as is"?
Or is it more akin to a topic of discussion? While I would hesitate
to improvise upon a Dowland fantasia (I would consider his work
"composed," "intended," and "finished" or "complete"), I would be
rather wary of "sticking to the script" in repeating a telephone
conversation to someone else.

I think that at least for the Renaissance cittern repertoire (which
is the one I am mainly concerned with at this point), very few of the
compositions might be considered "finished" (there are probably fewer
than a dozen fantasias in the entire literature); rather, many more
of them I would view as "an" interpretation on a given topic/theme.

When improvisation is an expectation for the performance of a given
music (as it is with most jazz), it is difficult to talk about a
"definitive" version of a piece. One must consider both original
intent (was this music intended to be performed "as is" or was it the
framework for further musical interpretation) as well as our own (do
I want to play jazz with my own ideas and inspiration, or am I trying
to master one of Coltrane's solos?).

-A:



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