music as drama
May. 4th, 2007 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacI wonder if my article on the historic recordings vs. modern recordings question revealed my own opinion in the matter.
Maybe it didn't. I wrote an article on parodies for a Tolkien encyclopedia, and by keeping a straight and sober face on the subject convinced at least one observer that I looked down on the things. Actually, I think Tolkien parodies are often hilarious; otherwise I wouldn't have read enough to write an article on them.
I concluded the music article by observing, "The historic performance view of instrumental music is fundamentally dramatic. The music tells a story through emotion, as song and opera can. The modern view treats music as primarily architectural. It's a cathedral of sound, glorious but rigid."
This was sort of an original thought and sort of not. Nobody at the symposium made this comparison, but I picked up on the dramatic image by listening to symposium speaker Will Crutchfield advise instrumentalists to employ expressive devices, like rallentandos around section breaks, that are usually associated with singers. I'd also thought of Joshua Bell's self-description as a musician (in the infamous busking article): "You are a storyteller, and you're telling a story." And the architectural image comes straight from Goethe's dictum (and he wasn't the only one to make it) that music is liquid architecture.
I've always thought, that's exactly right. That's how I hear great music, as if I'm moving around inside a glorious building. And vice versa. I'm not a very visual person, but architecture is one visual art I can strongly respond to, partly because it's spatial: you can move around in it. And those great churches in Rome felt like vast works of silent music.
It was clear from the symposium that the historical performance style got its lasting bad reputation, that's only now being shed, because it had become stale and rote. And the modern style? It too can become stale and rote. But like the other it can also be played with freshness and conviction.
So let's put the bad performances of all styles aside, and just look at the good ones. And among those, I prefer my music architectural rather than dramatic. To me drama is a different art; it has its virtues but they're not what I'm looking for in music, which is why I don't much care for opera. The composer who proved my preference for me was Chopin. For many years I didn't much care for him. But one day about 15 years ago I heard some Chopin from a student pianist who played just the notes as written, instead of tossing and sloshing them around as almost everyone does (despite the supposed dominance of cool modernist playing). It was a revelation for me, and now I can better hear the qualities of Chopin even in more affected and mannered performance because I've heard him done absolutely plainly by a fine performer.
Maybe it didn't. I wrote an article on parodies for a Tolkien encyclopedia, and by keeping a straight and sober face on the subject convinced at least one observer that I looked down on the things. Actually, I think Tolkien parodies are often hilarious; otherwise I wouldn't have read enough to write an article on them.
I concluded the music article by observing, "The historic performance view of instrumental music is fundamentally dramatic. The music tells a story through emotion, as song and opera can. The modern view treats music as primarily architectural. It's a cathedral of sound, glorious but rigid."
This was sort of an original thought and sort of not. Nobody at the symposium made this comparison, but I picked up on the dramatic image by listening to symposium speaker Will Crutchfield advise instrumentalists to employ expressive devices, like rallentandos around section breaks, that are usually associated with singers. I'd also thought of Joshua Bell's self-description as a musician (in the infamous busking article): "You are a storyteller, and you're telling a story." And the architectural image comes straight from Goethe's dictum (and he wasn't the only one to make it) that music is liquid architecture.
I've always thought, that's exactly right. That's how I hear great music, as if I'm moving around inside a glorious building. And vice versa. I'm not a very visual person, but architecture is one visual art I can strongly respond to, partly because it's spatial: you can move around in it. And those great churches in Rome felt like vast works of silent music.
It was clear from the symposium that the historical performance style got its lasting bad reputation, that's only now being shed, because it had become stale and rote. And the modern style? It too can become stale and rote. But like the other it can also be played with freshness and conviction.
So let's put the bad performances of all styles aside, and just look at the good ones. And among those, I prefer my music architectural rather than dramatic. To me drama is a different art; it has its virtues but they're not what I'm looking for in music, which is why I don't much care for opera. The composer who proved my preference for me was Chopin. For many years I didn't much care for him. But one day about 15 years ago I heard some Chopin from a student pianist who played just the notes as written, instead of tossing and sloshing them around as almost everyone does (despite the supposed dominance of cool modernist playing). It was a revelation for me, and now I can better hear the qualities of Chopin even in more affected and mannered performance because I've heard him done absolutely plainly by a fine performer.
