Digging In: Part III - The Crisis of the Age

In Part II, we defined our “accent” as classical musicians a little more (Werktreue) and drawn out some positive and negative implications of it. But what does all this philosophizing matter for performance? 
 
This loss of creative authority on the part of the performer meant that musicians became extremely literate, but lost their natural ability to improvise. I do not mean “improvise” strictly in terms of adding melodic content either. Even our ability to add unmarked musical shadings (dynamics, rhythmic nuance, tempo changes, or character) has atrophied as well. I am in no way criticizing musical literacy but that our preoccupation with literacy has deliberately suppressed creative expression for performers. And the degree to which performing became more impersonal, performers naturally become less and less emotionally involved in performance. In a documentary by Derek Bailey on improvisation called On the Edge, pianist and musicologist Robert Levin remarked said that that our…

…basic level of music making… isn’t terribly interesting anymore. Many of our performances are interchangeable, they are middle of the road, they are not challenging, they are, above all, concerned with the outlines of compositions but not with their inner content. Our society has lionized this kind of predictable performance in the same way it has lionized being standard with toothpaste and laundry detergent. We want certain things that are reliable.

Greg Sandow, a well-known music critic, speaker, and writer remarked in a blog post entitled “Boring, boring, boring” that, after Googling “orchestra” and clicking on “images”:

The results were ghastly. Utterly boring. Pointless. And these (most, if not all) are official photos released by the orchestra managements.

What’s the point of them? What do they tell us? An orchestra is made up of musicians, probably in formal dress, who play in a concert hall. These musicians play violins and flutes, all the standard orchestral instruments. Well, everyone knows that! What these photos don’t tell us…Their concerts will be gripping, passionate, irresistible. Or, more simply, that anything even remotely interesting might be going on.

The modern Werktreue approach also can create anxiety about performing decisions. Classical musicians often feel there must be a “right” way to play a certain piece – this is particularly true for conductors – and unless we find this right way, we will be failing as musicians. Listen to Arturo Toscanini, one of the most famous conductors of the late 19th and early 20th century:

For forty years and more I’ve been hearing words of admiration, exclamations of wonder, and I’ve always been and will always be the same wretch, always unsure of myself, worried and anxious over the choice of a tempo or a coloring! That’s your Artu!! Poor devil!!

It is impossible to read these words and not feel the oppression that gripped this conductor. Tragically, his feelings, I believe, are shared by many. The other extreme is to give up entirely and just play as safely as possible with little to no nuance, sensitivity, or emotion. 

Removing the Veil

But what does all this mean? Is all the classical music produced in the last 200 years “wrong”? Is our approach totally misguided? I don’t believe so. We need not “throw out the baby with the bathwater” but we do need a grid to sort out what is the “baby” and what is the “bathwater.” For if we simply throw out Werktreue altogether and insist that the performer should be central, it can often result in celebrity-driven, shallow music making. In fact, this was the reason for Werktreue in the first place. Composers became frustrated with the showmanship of performers (particularly opera singers) who seemed primarily motivated by their desire for praise. We might call this a more “humanist” approach because it puts the performers in the center. Richard Wagner wrote in The Art-Work of the Future, “There are even many of our most popular artists who do not in the least conceal the fact, that they have no other ambition than to satisfy this shallow audience.” Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk “total-art-work” aimed to remedy this problem by insisting that every aspect of an opera (or musical drama as Wagner called it) should work together to serve one dramatic end. But, as we saw earlier, Werktreue merely lead to a different set of problems.

In other words, Werktreue is not the fundamental issue. It is only a surface layer. Nicholas Harnoncourt, in his book Baroque Music Today writes:

…if music disengages itself from its public, neither music nor the public is to blame. Nor can reason be sought in art in general, or in music in particular, but rather in the spiritual condition of our time. It is in the present spiritual climate that changes would have to occur. Music is necessarily a mirror of the present; if we wish to change music, we must first change the contemporary world. There is no crisis in music; rather music is reflecting the crisis of an age. So endeavoring to change music would be just as absurd as a doctor treating a patient’s symptoms rather than his illness. (Italics mine)

Before we can rightly sort out what is right and wrong about Werktreue, we must understand what led to it in the first place. What was the spiritual and philosophical undercurrent at the time Werktreue took its hold on classical music? What led to Werktreue in the first place? We’ll explore that more in Part IV.

Digging In: Part II - Werktreue, a big German word

In Part I, we briefly explored the modern approach to classical music through the lens of other musical genres and other “classical” musicians before the 1800s. Some of these assumptions (our “drawl”) we listed were things like playing music saturated with performance directives, the irrelevancy of improvisation in our performing abilities, or playing a select group of works repeatedly. 

Many of these classical assumptions stem from the notion of Werktreue – “work-fidelity.” It is the approach that music is a fixed “work” written by a composer to which the performer is supposed to be “faithful.” The latest edition of New Grove articulates this notion: “There is no single ‘correct’ interpretation but there may be many incorrect ones – those that manifestly defy the composer’s instructions.” Stravinsky, for example, hated the term “interpretation” in favor of “Execution: the strict putting into effect that which is explicitly commanded.” In other words, “Unless it is commanded, it’s forbidden.” (Hmmm... but who’s doing the forbidding?) Derek Bailey writes in Improvisation: Its nature and practice:

Music for the instrumentalist is a set of written symbols which he interprets as best he can. They, the symbols, are the music, and the man who wrote them, the composer, is the music-maker. The instrument is the medium through which the composer finally transmits his ideas. The instrumentalist is not required to make music. He can assist with his ‘interpretation’ perhaps, but, judging from most reported remarks on the subject, composers prefer the instrumentalist to limit his contribution to providing the instrument, keeping it in tune and being able to use it to carry out, as accurately as possible, any instructions that might be given to him. The improviser’s view of the instrument is totally different.

The “improviser’s view” is similar to the approach to music in the Baroque and Classical eras. But as music began to take on a more reified form and the role of the composer grew in power and distinction from performers, they eventually lost almost much creative freedom. Performers merely became transparent vessels through which the composer transmits his ideas.

As anything, this change had positive and negative effects. On the one hand, it allowed composers to stretch the boundaries of conventional performance practice in ways that were not possible before. Thus, composers like Berlioz could write Symphonie Fantastique with its wealth of extended string techniques, dynamic shadings, articulations, and moods. This kind of piece would not have been possible within the paradigm of the Classical and Baroque era because composers would not have been so specific in their musical notation. Music was able to take on new dimensions that deepened its expressive capabilities. But on the other hand, performers lost an element of participation in the creative process.

At this point one might argue that it is not fair to criticize the notion of Werktreue. After all, any actor is essentially following Werktreue – bringing to life someone else’s creation which implies a kind of fidelity to the play. And certainly in any situation where a leader gives direction to a group, the individuals in the group will have to submit themselves, to some degree, to the leader and his or her directives. This is not wrong but necessary for any group to function.

OK, good point. But what happened in classical music was not normal leader/group dynamics, neither was it similar to the actor analogy. It was motivated often by a cynical, suspicious view of performers (Notice the stunning graphic of the hand-drawn, suspicious look above designed to enhance the readability of this post). Remember the A.L. Crelle quote and his biting tone toward performers referring to their changing of a piece as “wicked” and “presumptuous.”  Richard Taruskin says, in his article On Letting the Music Speak for Itself in Text and Act:

Most of the idea of letting the music speak for itself implies a hostility, contempt, or at least mistrust of performers. It is what Brahms had in mind, for example, when he declined an invitation to the opera saying that if he sat at home with the score he’d hear a better performance. Or think of Stravinsky with all his raillery against “interpretation,” or Milton Babbitt when describing his motives for adopting electronic media as a way of compensating for what he called the “low redundancy” of his music. All three composers seem to share a view of performers as undesirable middle men, whose elimination would only improve communication between composer and audience. (Underline mine)

This is not representative of every composer, but certainly there were enough people who shared this sentiment to cause this transition from the performer/composer of the 17^th and 18^th centuries to the transparent performer of today. I can’t help but feeling that behind this idea lies a cynical motivation that seeks to honor musical works above the men and women who perform it. Think of conductors like Toscanini and Fritz Reiner who were known for constantly berating and demeaning their orchestras in service of “the music.”

But that’s not all folks. What was eventually wrong with Werktreue is that instead of meaning, “Fidelity to the spirit of the work” it came to mean, “Fidelity to the musical text.” Musicians forgot that the score is merely a blueprint to create a musical experience and mistook the score itself for the music. To return to the culinary analogy, musicians began “eating the cookbook,” so to speak. Think back on Stravinsky’s definition of “execution” and his insistence that fidelity means playing only exactly what is written.

Taruskin defines this as “Text-fetishism: the exaltation of musical texts over those who read or write them.” Taruskin tells a funny story about how he mimicked unmarked rubato that Prokofiev himself plays in a recording of Prokofiev's Gavotta Op. 32, No. 3 composed in 1918 and recorded in 1932. When Taruskin's teacher criticized him for playing something unmarked Taruskin retorted that that is how Prokofiev himself played it. His teacher responded: “I don't care. It's wrong.” Taruskin concludes, “…since texts outrank performers, even when the performer is the composer, texts outrank composers, too.” Oh the irony. 

Well, we’ve defined our “accent” as classical musicians a little more clearly (Werktreue) and drawn out some positive and negative implications of it. But what does all this philosophizing matter for performance? We’ll explore that question a bit more in Part III.

Digging In: Part I - The Classical Drawl

In this first post, we'll explore what makes our modern performance approach as classical musicians fundamentally distinct, not just from other musical genres, but from "classical" musicians of the past. But are we conscious of those distinctions? Are good differences, or not? Does it even matter??

Yes sir, it does matter. Your general mindset about classical music shapes everything from your most abstract theories about music to the daily grind of how you practice. Don't believe me? Read on. 
 

As classical musicians, our training must look strange compared to other musical genres. Typically, we have a very structured musical education. We are told exactly what notes to play, how to play them, and when. Instilled in us in from the very beginning is the sense that there is a right and a wrong way to do everything. It is rare that classical musicians begin their training like a rock guitar player begins, for example. When a ten-year old boy starts to learn the guitar, he will often begin learning by ear. He pulls the guitar out of the case, starts fiddling around on it, learning riffs to rock songs from magazines in a generally unstructured manner. Eventually there are basic directives given – technique, reading chord changes, style, and rhythm. However, the details of exactly which notes to play are not set in stone. He has to have a flexible approach to written music since improvisation is integral to genres like rock or jazz and chord changes supply only a basic outline of the music.

Modern Baroque performers call this kind of musical writing “thin-writing”, written music that is just the essentials of the music with the expectation that the performer will add shadings, dynamics, articulations, tone color, rhythmic nuances, and melodic embellishments. To put it another way, music for the Baroque or Classical musician was more descriptive, rather than prescriptive. To make a culinary analogy, descriptive writing is like saying to chef, “I’d like a dish with some kind of fish, a starch and a vegetable. Now, use your skill as a chef to make it.” Contrast that with a prescriptive approach, “Here is the recipe. Just prepare it exactly as written.” In fact, musicians in the Baroque and Classical era would have had much more in common with the folk, jazz, or rock musicians of today than with an orchestral musician. The late Bruce Haynes, scholar and early music specialist, writes in The End of Early Music:

Jazz doesn’t worry about the “intentions” of a composer, rock doesn’t give much weight to who “composed” a piece, pop doesn’t get hung up on a prescribed and immovable repertoire. Nor were they an issue for our ancestors before 1800 either.

For many classical musicians, this might come as a shock. After all, our training has imbedded certain presumptions inside of us that we assume are shared by our musical ancestors. Similar to an accent in speech, when one is surrounded by people of the same accent, it is difficult to recognize. The classical “accent” involves ideas and practices such as:

•         Playing music saturated with performance directives (dynamics, articulations, tempos, etc.)
•         Performing a certain select group of works repeatedly (the Canon)
•         There is a right and wrong way to play each of these works
•         Musical works are fixed and shouldn’t sound very different from performance to performance
•         Composers have specific intentions in music to which performers are supposed to be faithful
•         These intentions are completely expressed the written score
•         A piece is finished prior to performance rather than through performance
•        The performer and composer are separate people
•        It is not necessary for performers to compose or improvise

However, before the Romantic era, virtually none of these assumptions were generally shared by the musicians of that time. New music was constantly in demand, much like it is in the pop world of today. Musicians in the 17^th and 18^th centuries often complained that music 30-40 years old was out of date, like a band today playing in exactly the same style as the Beatles. Johann Matheson writes in 1739 in Der volkommene Capellmeister that he couldn’t understand how Corelli’s music published in the 1680s and 90s could still be admired in his time due to how old it was. And since improvisation was a fundamental part of the music of that time, the written score was never viewed as a fixed object, completed prior to performance. A piece could be so radically different from one performance to the next, even composers didn’t recognize their own works at times. A piece was only completed through performance. Another bi-product of improvisation was the fluid relationship between performer and composer. Since composition is a kind of written improvisation, nearly all performers composed and vice versa. “[The performer should play] so that one believes that the music was composed by the person who is playing it,” writes W.A. Mozart in a letter in 1778. Contrast that with the Romantic era thinking of A.L. Crelle in Einiges uber musicalischen Ausdruck und Vortrag in 1823: “It is in fact wickedly presumptuous for a player to alter a work of art according to his mood, since in doing that he suggests that he understands the work better than the composer who invented it.”

Does this resonate with you? It did for me. When I realized how radically different the my approach was from musicians of the 18th and 17th centuries, it was like realizing I had a thick accent I never heard before. 

So, we've realized that we have an "accent" and it's quite distinct from our musical ancestors and cousins. But how can we summarize and examine this approach we've been taught? Is a good one? Tune in for Part II.

30 Theses

As I thought through some of the changes I would like to see in our classical music culture, I decided to put those thoughts in the form of principles - my "Theses" (alla Martin Luther) if you like of the classical music world. Only 30 right now, not 95...

THE NATURE OF MUSIC

1.      A piece of music is not an unchangeable, fixed object but a lively, expressive activity which changes with every performance. “There is no such thing as music” – Christopher Small from Musicking

2.       Since music is not an object, we don’t need to fear damaging it by how we perform or the artistic decisions we make. “It’s just music. You can’t break it.” Nicole Brockman – Professor DePauw University

3.       Since music is not a fixed object, there is no one right way to play a piece of music.

4.       Although a performance is important, the process of music making is more important.

5.       Music is an expression of human experience and cannot be thought of merely in technical terms (short-long, loud-soft, fast-slow)

6.       Musical notation is vague, leaving the most essential elements of performance un-notatable. Therefore, performance can never be reduced to the explicit markings in the score.

7.       Music becomes oppressive as soon as it becomes a religion. It can never fill the need for a supreme being.

8.       All music is a product of the cultural, personal, political, and philosophical ideals of a society. Music cannot exist in an autonomous state isolated from its non-musical connections.

THE COMPOSER

9.       Composers are gifted humans, not divine gods.

10.    It is impossible to serve dead composers or to have any effect on them. While composers have/had profound musical ideas, since they are only human and we are not morally bound to them in any way.

11.    Composing and performing are not separate roles but one, fluid role involving a two-way exchange of musical ideas.

12.    Music is meant to move, challenge, and speak to living audiences not to “serve” dead composers.

PERFORMING CULTURE

13.    Performers are creative artists, not merely transparent vessels for another artist. Therefore, expression of personality is not necessarily a display of egoism or showmanship but a necessary and inevitable element of performance.

14.    Performing should always have risk and spontaneity. Thorough rehearsing is necessary to facilitate freedom and flexibility, it should never result in safe, careful performances.

15.    Improvisation is a vital part of a vibrant musical culture.

16.    Music isn’t always supposed to sound effortless and beautiful. It reflects all of human experience and therefore is sometimes ugly and grotesque.

17.    Rhythm shouldn’t always be metronomic but be nuanced and flexible.

18.    Music is fun. It’s not always serious.

19.    Fear is never a proper motivation for performing well.  

20.    A poor musical decision or technical mistake is not, in itself, a kind of moral failing.

21.    While technical mastery is essential to expressive music-making, technique is a means to an end not the end itself.

22.    Performers are not bound by the score or historical correctness when making musical decisions.

23.    Music is primarily a means of communication from musician to musician and musician to audience, not an abstract representation of a work of art.

THE AUDIENCE

24.    The audience members should be participants in the concert in some way, not always spectators.

25.    Performer/audience interaction is the essential element in live performance that distinguishes it from recordings.

26.    The measure of a performance is its affect on an audience, not its objective qualities.

THE ORCHESTRA

27.    Each member of the orchestra is an active part of the musical process, not cogs in a machine.  

28.    The conductor is a facilitator and leader, not a dictator.

29.    Healthy relationships amongst orchestra members are vital to a vibrant artistic atmosphere within the orchestra.

30.    An orchestra is only one part of the artistic community and should integrate and collaborate not only with other musicians of difference genres, but other art forms as well.