second wind

[calimac]

Yeah, more about my SFCV article on the Stanford historical performances symposium, because a week has passed since publication, which means it's Letters to the Editor time!

My editors asked me to keep my article well under 2000 words. Why? Because people don't like to read stuff longer than that on the web. I think that says a lot about the web, but anyway ... So there was a lot said at the symposium that got left out of the article*, and sure enough the three published letters, all apparently from non-attendees, zero in on exactly those things. So I got to write a reply (in extreme haste, owing to odd editorial customs) trying to fill in the holes a little.

The first writer was shocked to learn that musicologists are actually giving historical credence to player piano rolls, which he claims are totally unreliable. In my reply I may have shown a little testiness at his having taken an 1800-word journalistic article as a full analysis of a complex musicological problem. But his complaints all came up at the time; some were accepted and some were considered and denied. The correspondent doubts the validity of piano rolls because sometimes they differ from sound recordings by the same person. Indeed they do, but the possibility was raised at the symposium that maybe it's the sound recordings which don't accurately represent the performer's concert style.

So who knows? Certainly not I. The third writer seems to mistake me for an expert on the subject. But I'm actually just a reporter and music-lover who was there to listen and learn, and only tentatively to offer a few opinions of my own, and those more on my personal taste than on musical or historical issues.

*as those of you who asked for my full notes now know; you did all get them, yes?

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

No, that's not naive. In fact the London computer whizzes who presented their analytical charts comparing tempo, dynamics, and regularity of notes in a few hundred recordings of Chopin mazurkas found that, for instance, three recordings of one mazurka by Arthur Rubinstein over the years differ more from each other than from some other recordings by different pianists. (The punchline that followed this was that when a recording by Joyce Hatto comes up as virtually identical to that by somebody else, it's not coincidence; and indeed that is how Hatto's recordings were proved to be plagiarized.)

There is, however, a family resemblance in all Rubinstein's playing, and you can also detect similarities between teachers and their pupils. The types of differences that the letter-writer was citing are not night-by-night variants, but fundamental differences in interpretive style. You don't expect someone to play like Jascha Heifetz one night and like Fritz Kreisler the next, not if he's being serious, not if he's making a recording.

Or do you? It was suggested at the symposium that the very act of going in and making a recording, *For Posterity* - and recording in those days was A Big Deal, not the casual act it is today - is what led to the rise of the more formal, literal playing style of later times in the first place. Piano rolls didn't have the heavy significance that sound recordings did in the 1910s and early 20s, largely because piano rolls at the time were easier to make. (It was also suggested that sound recording made performers anxious because short pieces had to be cut and/or speeded up to fit into the 4.5 minute maximum playing time of a side.)

So you can see these are deep waters. The letter-writer's mistake wasn't raising the question, but assuming that my short article had provided all the available answers.