tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post6077200284588959864..comments2024-03-27T23:06:03.736-05:00Comments on The Music Salon: InterpretationBryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-39275954381333642812016-01-15T11:46:44.792-06:002016-01-15T11:46:44.792-06:00A friend of mine who is a composer (he did a docto...A friend of mine who is a composer (he did a doctorate with Morton Feldman) attended a concert of mine once and brought some Villa-Lobos scores with him. I think he was studying how the guitar worked as he was going to be writing for it. In any case, afterwards we were talking and, after complimenting me on the performance, he asked "why is it that in every performance of such and such a piece (and I think it was the Villa-Lobos Prelude 1 or 4), everyone always leaves out all the glissandi? They are clearly marked." I looked and by gosh, he was right. There they were and I had been leaving them out, just like everyone else.<br /><br />As I have moved from being primarily a performer to being primarily a composer, I suppose I have gotten to be a bit more of a literalist. Please guys, could you just play what I wrote? But of course, when you are talking about Bach or pre-Bach, the scores are very open to a lot of different interpretive ideas.<br /><br />But you are absolutely right in relying on your ears to tell you what works and what doesn't.Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-85386919637380039022016-01-15T11:14:21.410-06:002016-01-15T11:14:21.410-06:00It was so cool to find your blog (on that Haydn sy...It was so cool to find your blog (on that Haydn symphony 39 post) that I jumped back to the beginning to start reading. So that's why I'm hitting old posts (think of it as a compliment :) ).<br /><br />I guess what I was driving at, though, was not just about changes in tempi. The Williams and Isbin recordings have a really different feel to them. Or another example might be the Villa-Lobos prelude #4. Do you take the middle section as an abrupt change in tempo, or as a gradual accelerando? I do the latter, but a lot of performers do the former. To my ears, the abrupt change sounds completely wrong, but there's vertainly nothing in the text that I could point to to justify that opinion.<br /><br />Of course there's a zone, just as in language interpretation, where you have to balance multiple things (fidelity to the meaning, fidelity to the feel, etc). But in performance, I think there's a balance between tempo, bringing out voices, etc. For example, I don't think anyone plays Rodrigo's fandango as slowly as Bream, but I also don't think anyone else is as successful at bringing out its contrapuntalism. So that's totally a balancing act, just as, say, in translating Homer you have to choose if you want a strict or loose meter, do you want the style to sound archaic (because to his audience some of it was archaic), etc.<br /><br />as you can tell, I'm just noodling a bit here, so hopefully this makes some kind of sense.Gavinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17128934036234470413noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-85729089383938346572016-01-15T10:48:10.445-06:002016-01-15T10:48:10.445-06:00As the post is over four years old, I'm not ev...As the post is over four years old, I'm not even sure if I agree! Thanks very much for the comment.<br /><br />This is quite a subtle question, I suspect, which is why I was interested in talking about it. Yes, depending on what piece you choose you might find much greater variation in things like tempo. I guess my basic point is that while there is variation, there is a zone in which most good performances will tend to fall.Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-68742265182373220032016-01-15T08:36:41.860-06:002016-01-15T08:36:41.860-06:00I very much disagree with this. Partly, it may be...I very much disagree with this. Partly, it may be my interest in early music, where even the instrumentation can vary from performance to performance, not to mention the ornamentation choices. But I also think you've stacked the deck a bit with your choice of the Cello Prelude, which I think happens to be much more uniformly performed than a lot of other pieces (not saying that you were deceptive, of course, just that the prelude is exceptional).<br /><br />But I have 3 recordings of the Bach lute suites on guitar, and they're pretty different. Sharon Isbin takes a highly ornamented, relatively slow approach (her allemande in e minor is just over 3 minutes), whereas John Williams takes a much faster tempo, with no ornamentation at all (his allemande is under 2 minutes).<br /><br />And the lautenwerk recording I have is even more different, and not just the timbre. (By the way, I think anyone interested in the lute suites should listen to a lautenwerk recording or two. Although my last guitar teacher disagreed with me :) ).<br /><br />On the piano, there's the never-ending debate of how much pedal to use in playing Bach, which again can lead to substantial differences in the sound.Gavinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17128934036234470413noreply@blogger.com