Blind Comparison: Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit

[MishaK]

At one point you specifically disavowed the sanctity of authorial intent.  I find it difficult to understand how that is in keeping with an emphasis on looking at the score.

I said: "Secondly, I am not a believer in the sanctity of authorial intent, as it cannot ever be reliably ascretained beyond the mere open-ended notes on the sheet, and because the work and its myriad interpretive possibilities are always greater than the author himself or his momentarily expressed ephemeral intent."

When people talk about authorial intent in music, and especially program music, you get into several layers of interpretation way beyond the music on the sheet. Because what happens is that people sort of try to reverse engineer the creative process of the composer without actually having his mind at their disposal. So they take a few words from a poem or some comments or biographical notes of a composer, assume this to be the verbally expressed intent and then impute that intent to the music instead of first looking at the music itself. (For laypeople who can't read a score this is of course also the easier way of making sense of music.) My comment on the divergent opinions here in relation to following the score had more to do with presumed inaccuracies and observation of structure and dynamics etc. that are comments on what is or supposedly isn't in the score, not what scenery the music is allegedly supposed to evoke or what the composer presumably "wanted" it to "mean".

I've only had time to listen to Ondine #1, and I think I see a few flaws with this process, which could explain the controversy over Le Gibet.

I wasn't a fan at all of pianist #1's Gibet, but after listening to their incredible Ondine and then listening to the same pianist's Gibet, I got a totally different impression of it, and liked it a lot in the context with the first movement. Perhaps it's not possible to have an accurate impression of any performance of an isolated movement without the context of the piece as a whole. Isn't this why Classic FM in the UK is so terrible (they only play single popular movements)?! Also, I loved #1's Ondine so much, that I don't think it's now possible to hear their Gibet truly objectively any more. If this was really going to be a blind comparison, the order of pianists would need to be shaken up for each new movement.

This is an excellent post!

I think we should maybe keep more than five Scarbos, given the vast controversy over Gibet, and then have a runoff among the five who totalled the highest number of points across all three movements, and see how their interpretations hold up when reviewed as a complete three part work.

[Beale]

As for distribution, there are 5 pianists between 6.5 and 7.5, one higher (8.75), and four lower (one of them 6.47, the others in the 5-6 range).

Is the one with a 6.47 average #1? I actually had him as 6.53, noting that Neal scored it 9.75. If I am correct you have SIX guys within the 6.5-7.5 range!

Perhaps one could remove the influence of the out-liners, i.e. delete the worst and best scores for each pianist, then see what does the rest of the statistics tell you. Ok, a quick analysis shows that if you do take away the extreme scores, then you are left with

• One at 8.75
• Four between 7-8
• Three between 6-7
• Two between 5-6

This gives you justification to proceed ahead with only the top five pianist, if you so chooses. The two that got pushed out by this exercise had original averages around the 6.5 mark. These did not change much when you remove the out-liners, i.e. the scoring for them were pretty consistent, they belong to where they are. In contrast the four below the leader all got substantive boosts in their averages when the out-liners were removed. 

[Todd]

I say be merciless and cut it down to the top five.  If there's a tie, flip a coin.

[Brian]

No ties, though we have two players 0.05 apart.

Perhaps one could remove the influence of the out-liners, i.e. delete the worst and best scores for each pianist, then see what does the rest of the statistics tell you. I am having a play with it right now, not sure if anything interesting could come of it.

Is the one with a 6.47 average #1? I actually had him as 6.53, noting that Neal scored it 9.75. If I am correct you have SIX guys within the 6.5-7.5 range!

Oh, goodness, you're right about pianist #1 being 6.53. Whoops!

Looking at the elimination of outliers, this is most helpful to pianist #19, because someone gave him/her a 3 and all the other scores are 6-8. But #19's in the top five anyway. It's also kind to pianist #14, who was our collective first-place performer for "Ondine," but (s)he is also advancing. And #2 and #7 are doomed however you slice it.

[Todd]

And #2 [is] doomed however you slice it.

This is an outrage!

[Madiel]

I've only had time to listen to Ondine #1, and I think I see a few flaws with this process, which could explain the controversy over Le Gibet.

I wasn't a fan at all of pianist #1's Gibet, but after listening to their incredible Ondine and then listening to the same pianist's Gibet, I got a totally different impression of it, and liked it a lot in the context with the first movement. Perhaps it's not possible to have an accurate impression of any performance of an isolated movement without the context of the piece as a whole. Isn't this why Classic FM in the UK is so terrible (they only play single popular movements)?! Also, I loved #1's Ondine so much, that I don't think it's now possible to hear their Gibet truly objectively any more. If this was really going to be a blind comparison, the order of pianists would need to be shaken up for each new movement.

I definitely think you're onto something here. To me, it's a fundamental axiom of music listening that what you heard before affects your experience of what you're hearing now.

This is basically because of how the human brain works. Our brains are generally far, far better at judging relative values - faster, slower, higher, lower, softer, louder - than they are at judging absolutes - 72 beats per minute, the frequency or decibels of a given note (although obviously people with perfect pitch are a bit of an exception here).

So yes, context is extremely important, and there is something different about listening to a pianist's Le Gibet not after that pianist's Ondine.  Put back into context the sense of pacing and proportion and volume might be quite different.

In terms of the order of pianists, I quite deliberately ask my iPhone to shuffle up the order for me in these blind listening sessions, because I know that if #2 is always after #1, and #2 is slower than #1, my brain will register #2 as 'slow' even if it is in fact faster than average.

[Brian]

This is an outrage!

I'm shocked by what's happened to pianist #2, even more so than I'm surprised by the receptions for 14, 15, and 17.

[Madiel]

Looking at the elimination of outliers, this is most helpful to pianist #19, because someone gave him/her a 3 and all the other scores are 6-8.

Yay! I am an independent thinker! 

[Madiel]

So they take a few words from a poem or some comments or biographical notes of a composer, assume this to be the verbally expressed intent and then impute that intent to the music instead of first looking at the music itself. (For laypeople who can't read a score this is of course also the easier way of making sense of music.)

It is worth noting in response to this that actually printing entire poems at the front of the score, as Ravel did here, is rather rare. I find that significant. I don't normally go searching for the texts related to music, but in this case I didn't have to. It's sitting right there in the book that I learnt Ondine from as a piano student.

[MishaK]

It is worth noting in response to this that actually printing entire poems at the front of the score, as Ravel did here, is rather rare. I find that significant. I don't normally go searching for the texts related to music, but in this case I didn't have to. It's sitting right there in the book that I learnt Ondine from as a piano student.

Yes, but what did that poem mean to Ravel?  Surely not the same as to us 100 years later.

[Madiel]

Yes, but what did that poem mean to Ravel?  Surely not the same as to us 100 years later.

We've already established in this thread that the poem for 'Le Gibet' doesn't mean the same thing to all of 'us' to begin with, never mind Ravel.  Other people have got mental images of a dying man when my mental image is of a man that is already dead.

EDIT: We could just as happily argue about what 'tres lent' meant to Ravel when he wrote it on the score, as opposed to what it means to each of us.  As already indicated, there's at least one performance, probably two, that my mind simply won't accept as being within the bounds of 'tres lent' and yet the performances in question are ones that a lot of people seem to quite like.

[Madiel]

To return to the question of how many Scarbos to have, I have to confess I'm not especially fussed about it.  The overall results will be interesting, but in the end I am probably going to pay more attention to my own individual scores when making any more Gaspard purchases (I really must listen again sometime to the one I already have, which I'm not sure is even in the list).

One observation I'd make is that the 'average' you're using, the mean, is really only one out of 3 different kinds of 'average' that are often used.  If the median (the middle score) or the mode (the most frequent score) gives you a clearer means of deciding which pianists should progress than I see no harm of using them.  Or possibly even looking at all 3 kinds of average and assessing which pianists most consistently 'win' across all 3.

For example, the median tends to reduce the effect of outliers...

[mc ukrneal]

I'll listen to however many are included. It is easier for me to find time to listen to piano blind listening, because I can listen in the evening (I don't like to listen to something too bombastic too late at night - get's me too excited! .

Context is important, which is why I would not mind an extra 1-2 in the final, expecially if there was significant disagreement. Those make for interesting reading and understanding.

Personally, I would vote for the piece as a whole in the third round. Or alternatively, we have 6-7 in the third round that narrow to 3-4 in a final round where we listen to the whole piece. But as I said, I'll listen to whatever is posted.

[Beale]

I just combined up the averages from Ondine and Le Gibet, it didn't help to clarify the ranking. The only clear result was that the bottom two are definitely out. The leader still leads, and there is now a clear second, followed by six pianists all within 0.5 of each other. That makes a total of eight for the Scarbos round.

[MishaK]

That makes a total of eight for the Scarbos round.

That's a good number. 

[Madiel]

Eight Scarbos could make an excitingly exhausting listen.

[Octave]

The manuscript currently resides in the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas at Austin.

Ours!

[Brian]

I've made the somewhat arbitrary decision that the gap between 6 and 6.5 shall be our cutoff. This means we'll have The Seven Scarbos. My reasoning was as follows:
- #6 and #7 are each very famous performances (or very famous performers).
- voters' rejection of 8-10 was much more decisive than their rejection of the next group; #7 was within 0.50 points of being ranked #3.
- the suggestion of having a broader final round for Scarbo and narrowing matters down even further for a superfinal across the whole piece appeals to me.
- you're still welcome to listen to as many or as few as you like.

So! Tonight I shall be uploading our seven Scarbo-ists and announcing the (in two cases very prominent) names of the eliminated pianists, #s 2, 7, and 15.

The Scarbo round will probably again last around 14 days. We will judge each Scarbo's success purely as a Scarbo. Afterwards, we will absolutely, no ifs ands or buts, narrow down to just the top three by average score and have a run-off to determine the grand champion over the whole piece. The only allowable exception would be if there's somehow a runaway winner. (This would require either 14 or 17 running the table in the final.)

@Octave: hey, I'm going to be in Austin two weekends from now! Maybe I should have a look. The HRC also holds the David Foster Wallace papers.

[Octave]

@Octave: hey, I'm going to be in Austin two weekends from now! Maybe I should have a look. The HRC also holds the David Foster Wallace papers.

Plz scan GASPARD for me.  PDF is fine. 
It will be fun to see the handwritten "What would Aloysius do?" notes in margins.

[Brian]

For those interested in autograph manuscripts at UT Austin. They have Debussy's Printemps and Khamma (and a sketch for Estampes), six works by Dukas including the piano sonata and the Sorcerer's Apprentice, Faure's Masques et bergamasques, songs by Brahms in the hand of Clara Schumann, over half of the complete works of Albert Roussel, and from Ravel, "autograph manuscripts for eighteen works, including Daphnis et Chloë, Gaspard de la nuit, Introduction et allegro, Ma Mère l'oye, Rapsodie espagnole, Shéhérazade, and the piano trio."

There is, also, the library of Michael Tippett, numerous letters by Stravinsky, and hymnals which used to belong to Alfred Cortot.

And this fascinating entry:
"Saint-Saëns, Camille. Septuor, op. 65, transcribed for piano, 4 hands by Gabriel Fauré, manuscript score with revisions, 40pp, nd. Cartoons and caricatures of Saint-Saëns by Fauré in score."