Wednesday, April 06, 2005
A Composer’s Idiom : Stylistic Lineage, part #1
This is a follow- up to my multi-part question of March 17th:
“Is there a preferred interpretive style/lineage for your music: a manner of playing
which best reveals it? ( For example: 'Mozartean', ‘Brahmsian', 'Skriabinesque') Or not?
If so, should performers be aware of this?”
While I defer to my next post discussion of some of the (heart-breaking) tales concerning ‘performances that were mishandled interpretively’, I offer here two foundational bits:
[1] I know for a fact that my own music benefits greatly from an interpretive approach similar to that for high-Romantic music. (There is, in fact, a right and a wrong way to play my music.)
I do sincerely believe that composers comprise – each and every one of us – a “non-renewable natural resource”, and we need to be savored, understood, and performed in a manner consistent with the central artistic nature of our own particular music.
So (wearing my hat as national board member for composition for the College Music Society), some years ago, I began a CMS project for composers called My Idiom. Here, composers get to speak directly to performers.
At “My Idiom” composers post 2 – 3 paragraphs concerning the chief interpretive manner/main artistic and stylistic characteristics to be found in their works. Composers may NOT discuss how they find their notes, just how those notes should be delivered. Participating composers are also invited to list 4-5 representative works (max); post their personal contact info; and post direct links to other places on the web where their score excerpts and sound samples are readily available.
Among the interesting sub-emphases are declarations as to whether humor/cabaret/theatre are important to a particular composer’s style (or not); whether a person declares allegiance to a minimalist approach, or shies from it; whether the composer specializes in works for small or large forces; whether texted music is central to that composer’s artistic world, or not; etc.
There are a fair number of composer entries already at "My Idiom," and by the end of ’05 the site should be searchable in any number of ways (by technical, interpretive adjectives; by genres; etc.)
[2] In 2003 I happened upon a masterclass given by Martin Katz at the Manhattan School of Music that turned out to hinge on just those ineffable aspects of apt performance style that can make or break the piece.
Katz was discussing the difference between rubato and word sensitivity in performing seemingly-equal 8th-notes in the art songs of Berg and Strauss--as distinct from the painstaking rhythmic carving meticulously written out by Wolf. Katz made sure to underline that in Strauss and Berg’s time elements that bend the delivery of the 8th-notes in their songs were certainly operative, but would never be put onto the page -- because these performance idioms were so automatically, intrinsically understood by the artists of the composers’ own age. It was an amazing display of subtle stylistic distinctions in "performance" traditions.
These are of course things that studio teachers take such pains to impart during lessons. And performers relish and magnify the distinctions of the ‘personal musical voice’ in the works by composers of past eras – because they understand these exist, and know where the style boundaries are.
Today’s composers too have individual manners, voices – and, once these become understood and appreciated, they become the basis from which performers seek out other, suitable works.
posted by Judith Lang Zaimont
7:27 PM
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