Performer Freedoms in Contemporary Music

[Mandryka]

Is there a good study somewhere of "performer freedoms", I mean the idea that the composer has when he hands to the performer the decisions about rhythm, dynamics, phrasing, tempo? You have examples of this in French baroque music, unmeasured music, and then as far as I know the idea dies a death until after the war.

I want to know what the composer thought he was doing -- I mean, did Cage have some idea about how the Piano Etudes should go? Did Stockhausen have an idea about how Kstk XI should go? When you play this sort of music, is it harder than playing Beethoven or Mozart -- I mean in terms of how you have to use your imagination?

Was there an ideological or political aspect, in modern times or indeed in baroque times? Why do they do it? Is it really composing?

Has any performer written about how they made their decisions in very under-determined score? It would be fun to have a blog of musicians who are rehearsing Cornelius Cardew's Treatise or something.

[jochanaan]

I've played some of that music.  A local composer once gave the woodwind trio with which I was playing a composition based on "cells," short motifs that we played as written but could--well, I forget exactly the rules that governed the playing, but every time we played it, it came out differently but interestingly and rather beautifully.  This sort of music encourages out-of-the-box thinking and on-your-toes playing; you've got to be ready for anything!

But as for "performers' freedom," that has always existed.  Even with such modern masters as Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Varèse, there is room for personal style, greater or lesser dynamic intensity, very slight differences in tempo; all this may change the experience beyond what you would think even though all the notes played are identical.  Stravinsky's own recordings of the Firebird, for example, are not identical in style at all.

[Mandryka]

But as for "performers' freedom," that has always existed.  Even with such modern masters as Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Varèse, there is room for personal style, greater or lesser dynamic intensity, very slight differences in tempo; all this may change the experience beyond what you would think even though all the notes played are identical.  Stravinsky's own recordings of the Firebird, for example, are not identical in style at all.

Yes I'm sure that's true but the sort of radically underdetermined score you find in Louis Couperin's preludes, or in Cage's Atlas Eclipticalis, seems quite a different kettle of fish. As if the composer has just specified the note pitches and order in each voice, the instrument and given some broad guidlines about how the voices relate. All the rest let to the performer's imagination (someone please conform or deny.)  Even more so in a graphic score by (eg) Cornelius Cardew. These things  is a quantum leap away from the sort of performer led decisions you get in Schoenberg, or in a Bach organ piece where the performer can chose registrations. I think you could seriously question whether Cage and Couperin and Cardew were really composing.
.

[some guy]

I think you could seriously question whether Cage and Couperin and Cardew were really composing.

What I would seriously question is this idea.

[Mandryka]

What I would seriously question is this idea.

Let me explain what I was getting at using some Wittgensteinnian ideas.

This is true: both Chopin and Cortot made a contribution to the music in a performance by Cortot of Chopin's op 10. Both Cage and Grete Sultan made a contribution to her performance of the Etudes Australis.

And I think this is true: there's a family resemblance between what Chopin was doing and what Cage was doing.

There are degrees of resemblance.  Cage's  type of composing may be so importantly different from Chopin's type of composing that we might usefully see them as different activities. Subsuming them under the same concept masks too many important differences. We may be stretching existing concepts too far when we call what Couperin and Cage did "composition." It may be better to focus on the differences.

The example of those Cage etudes is a bit like a "hard case" in jurisprudence, where the previous linguistic practice is hard to extend to the new facts.

Just to make sure I'm not wasting everyone's time here, can someone please explain how closely the relevant scores by Cage, Couperin, Stockhausen and Cardew determin the musical performance. Let's get clear about the facts first.

[amw]

Every piece that's not a fixed media installation involves a fair amount of performer freedom. When a composer using traditional notation writes down four eighth notes she's leaving those same decisions about rhythm, phrasing, dynamics etc up to the performer—no performer will play all four notes identically. Those decisions however likely don't matter much to the composer; her mental audio file of the piece would have involved just an approximate sense of eighth-note-ness. It's the same if you imagine the notes with the stems taken off, or arranged in some other less determinate way: those pitches or sounds, somewhere, arranged in a way that makes sense to the performer. If the composer wanted to fix the phrasing etc without leaving anything up to "chance" she would perform the piece herself.

(Also every piece counts as "contemporary music".)

[torut]

Irvine Arditti said that one of the merits of performing contemporary music is that you can ask the composer questions.

http://www.bruceduffie.com/arditti.html

BD:  You're working with the composers a lot of the time.  Do you have some who are more meddlesome than others, and some that leave you alone?

Irvine:  We don't consider it meddlesome.  We like composers to participate in our work and to influence us and tell us what they want, because we're here, in a way, to serve them and to play the music the way they want it.  If we disagree, then we'll probably make the final decision, but in general, we like to give authentic interpretations.  We consider that one of the great assets of playing new music.  After all, if you're playing music from the past, you can't ask the composer the way he wants it, but if you're playing music of today, you can; so why not?  We like that and we always try to work with composers before we play a piece for the first time.  I wouldn't consider it meddlesome; some composers have a lot to say about interpretation, and some are very happy to leave it up to us.  They might make the odd comment, which actually might be very useful.  Just the odd comment about which direction to go in interpretation is helpful.

BD:  Is this not something that's already on the page, or is it ambiguous?

Irvine:  I think it's always ambiguous; it's very hard to write down everything you want and it's equally very hard to see exactly what somebody wants.  After many years interpreting new music, you get a very good idea of what people want, but some people can just point you in the right direction just with a few comments.  Others have very specific ideas and are very clear about what they want, and it can be very revealing to work with them and find out their verbal ideas about what's on the paper.

Aki Takahashi was once discussing with other performers about how to interpret one of Cage's Variations. Then Cage stopped by, gave some simple instructions, and the problem was solved.

[Mandryka]

Irvine Arditti said that one of the merits of performing contemporary music is that you can ask the composer questions.

http://www.bruceduffie.com/arditti.html
Aki Takahashi was once discussing with other performers about how to interpret one of Cage's Variations. Then Cage stopped by, gave some simple instructions, and the problem was solved.

That's interesting, thanks Torut. What's striking there is Irvine Arditti's focus on what the composer wants. You see that in the thing on youtube which shows them working with Brian Ferneyhough on the 6th quartet. But then, Ferneyhough may write a fairly traditional score with more or less the normal amount of  underdetermination, if that makes sense.

I wonder if anyone here has played Stockhausen Klavierstucke XI, I wonder when you play it, do you ask yourself "what did Karlheinz want?"" Then there's this well known performance of X, I wonder how consistent this is with the score, and with what's known of Stockhausen's intentions

http://www.youtube.com/v/2pzkvhdDYYE

[petrarch]

Then there's this well known performance of X, I wonder how consistent this is with the score, and with what's known of Stockhausen's intentions

http://www.youtube.com/v/2pzkvhdDYYE

X doesn't have any chance or free elements, everything is precisely notated, apart from performance directions wrt to speed. Following the score is problematic due to the density and speed of notes, but there are some anchor points that could be checked for correctness. It is not a favorite of mine so I haven't spent that much time listening to it, and therefore cannot easily compare this performance with others.

[jochanaan]

...I think you could seriously question whether Cage and Couperin and Cardew were really composing.
.

"Composing" may take place to a greater or lesser extent.  Any musician who improvises is actually composing as s/he goes.  In earlier music it was assumed, first, that it would be mostly the composer who performed the music or was in charge of the performance; and second that if "first" was not the case, performers would add things during performance or even change them to imprint their own style.  (Cadenzas were originally all improvised!)  But as the written music became more complex, the performers lost some flexibility and more things began to be written into the music, such as tempo changes, dynamics and phrasing (which are in scant evidence in Baroque music and not at all indicated prior to about 1600).  So in some respects, Cage et al are simply re-inviting performing musicians to share in the composing process...