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When I mentioned "intellectual property," I meant as a concept, not a legal doctrine.

Scientific "discovery" may well amount to naming, describing and explaining phenomena that already existed, but creative artists create; they don't just conjure up stuff that already existed in some inchoate form in the great expanse of collective unconscious.

If one wants to believe that all the colors for the Mona Lisa were simply arranged by Leonardo and all the notes for Beethoven's Ninth were merely assembled by Beethoven, then great literary works aren't original, either. The authors just put together words that were already out there, much like the proverbial monkeys at typewriters who, given enough time, would eventually produce War and Peace.

If that's how it worked, no human could possibly be credited with creating anything. I wonder if we'd even have a word for it that wasn't perceived as blasphemous.

Steven

Well, interestingly enough the mona lisa would probably have been a drastically different colour when the painted it. Similarly, when we look at a score we don't know how Beethoven saw it.

What percentage of young pianists even have ANY awareness of the fact that Beethoven changed tempo continually when he performed? Yet they will almost certainly bring the next generation up to believe that to slow down for a lyrical theme amounts to wiping your arse all over the score. It's just one example among many of where those who preach the loudest about the sole 'correct' way of playing are simply ignorant. Those who claim to speak on Beethoven's behalf are staggeringly arrogant to do so-especially with such limited knowledge about how he performed. They just do and teach what they were told to. There understanding of how interpret a text may have almost nothing to do with how Beethoven would have wanted it. Those who just play as they see fit have vastly more dignity. What could possibly me more humble- compared to those who impose ill-thought out, historically flawed rules? The only reason things sometimes have to be explained, is to illustrate to dissenting hypocrites that their basis for dismissal is generally deeply ignorant. If they're not interested in alternative ways of playing, you have to prove them wrong on their own terms about what is 'correct'.

When Beethoven beat pianos senseless and broke virtually every string, was he trying to illustrate his fidelity to the text? Or was there something a little more important going on?

tl;dr.

Anyway, your post followed mine by eight whole minutes. If you put more thought into what you write, it might not come across quite so uniformly as unedited bloviation with the tone of a haughty and pompous lecturer. Just sayin.

Steven

So it's okay for you to openly look down upon those who possess the audacity to change the odd marking in a score? But if somebody has the nerve to illustrate that the ground you occupy is perhaps not quite so high as you think, they the pompous ones? I see...

Incidentally, the point that you missed there is that what we see today does not necessarily illustrate the composer's intentions. When a performer follows a score literally that does not necessarily represent the composers ideas, any more than looking at a highly aged painting necessarily represents what the artist originally produced. Perhaps you would have made a stronger case for your side had you stopped to consider and then respond to that vital issue, instead of knocking out a few insults. Sidetrack things by attacking me if you wish, but could you also try dealing with my argument?

Intellectual property is a mirage created by government action and has nothing whatever to do with the creative process. As I said above, the vast majority of what we create is not original to ourselves. We are all "copyright violators". Has each and every composer who uses the so-called "Alberti bass" figure discovered/invented it himself/herself? Or was it copied time and again from time immemorial? You don't think that Polish folk music influenced Chopin's music? Or Russian folk music didn't influence Tschaikovsky's music? The lone heroic composer giving birth to de novo music, entirely original and without precedent or influence is pure myth.

Clayton -

You and your wonderful straw man arguments haven't changed one bit.

I resolve to stop toggling ignored posts into view!



Steven

It's funny, I have a Vienna Urtext edition of the etudes, and they have all the different ways he's had sections published in different editions........... and there are a lot of uh, varied things in there.



Do you do everything your teacher tells you?

At any rate, the issue when it comes to composing and performing seems to confuse a lot of people. Assuming for the sake of argument that there is some intellectual property in a score, it doesn't just go away when a performer performs the piece. It is still there. The score is still intact for anyone to look at and use. Composers don't "own" performances, in other words, their "property" is restricted to the score. The fact that composers can and do get royalty payments from performances may give the appearance that they also own the performance, but I think that's a kind of illusion.

In a very real sense, any performance is an arrangement of the score. Even a perfectly accurate MIDI realization of a score is still an arrangement - you cannot ever actually hear a score, you can only see it, so any audible representation of it has to be an arrangement of some kind or another.

Human performers rarely aim for MIDI-like mechanical accuracy, because it isn't musical (which seems rather odd, seeing that the score-worshippers seem to think the music is in the score, and not in the musician).

To be really honest and truthful, and to accurately represent what is really going on when a pianist performs a notated work of music, concert programs, CD booklets, etc., should always hyphenate the performer's name with that of the composer. For example, Sonata, op. 111 by Beethoven-Goode. That would clearly indicate what the audience is actually getting. And doing that would remind people that if they are truly concerned about "composer's intent", they would do well to avoid actually listening to music being performed by real people in real time, and should instead study the score itself.

If you re-read the first paragraph that you you quoted, you'll see that's what I was describing there.

Steven

However, if you look at the final paragraph, it's isn't. The problem is that in your first paragraph you falsely blamed it all on the editors. There are doubtless issues of inaccurate copying, but there are also countless issues upon which Chopin changed his mind- despite the factually inaccurate assertion you made in the final paragraph.

I'm talking about Chopin, not just any teacher.

But in the course of this discussion I think some may have misinterpreted my remarks or maybe I've not made myself clear. I do not feel that every marking has to be followed and do not mind occasional deviations, if well thought out, from the score. In other words, if one deviates from Chopin's markings it should be done with the utmost care and for a good reason.

The original poster and some of those those arguing for frredom from the score seemed to me more like they were talking about playing everything and everywhere how one felt like playing. Kind of like a poster on the member's recordings section who said they had not looked at Liszt's dynamic markings and just played the piece the way they wanted to in terms of dynamics. Although this poster gave a thoughtful performance IMO, I think his approach to the score is not really good.

Do we need care about the approach to the score If we enjoy what we are hearing?

Can we enjoy what we're hearing if we don't care about the approach to the score?

I think it's abundantly clear from this thread that some people can and some people cannot.

I wonder how many different ways there are to say that (and that haven't already been said repeatedly in this thread).

Steven

I think it's also abundantly clear that everyone posting in this thread is already aware of how abundantly clear it is that some people can and some people cannot. What is extremely interesting however, is the fact that such an overwhelming majority of people seek to impose the idea that ocassionally disobeying a score is not acceptable- as though it were an indisputable crime against morality. The point is that while some people can and some people can't, an enormous number of people continue to push the view that you SHOULDN'T accept something, unless it's supported by the score. THAT is the kind of issue under debate here. Pointing out such a glaring obvious fact about subjectivity (with the evident implication that you feel that it is not already obvious to everybody else posting here) is hardly likely to end such debate.

If you're not interested in thinking it through in any more detail (preferring to classify anything that goes into greater depth as mere repetition) that's up to you. However, if you think that the blindingly self-evident statement you made is going is supposed make everyone go 'Ah!' and end the discussion, I have to wonder whether you've actually looked beyond the surface in the first place. There have been a number of interesting posts here, from both sides of the argument- very few of which are so simplistic as to fall under "different ways (...) to say that". On the contrary, each and every poster has gone considerably beyond your (distinctly less than revelatory) statement. Perhaps you think that sums everything up, but I think it's a staggeringly superficial summary of the complex issues- particularly considering the fact that such issues basically dominate the musical approach of virtually every single present-day teacher and performer.

Vasa inania multum strepunt.

Steven

So once more, you have absolutely nothing to add to the discussion? If you're not interested in thinking it through any further than "some people like stuff and others don't" perhaps you could simply refrain from posting- rather than behave patronisingly and rudely towards those who like to think a little beyond that? If I'm not interested in a particular discussion, I tend to walk away from it- rather than make a staggeringly over-simplified summary and then tell the group of people ionvolved that they're basically just repeating it.

I don't think someone enjoying what they're hearing is a good criterion for judging how good a performance is unless perhaps the person listening is incredibly knowledgble. The person who posted the recording I mentioned enjoyed their own interpretation, but there were things wrong with it (besides not even looking at the composer's markings). He wasn't aware of them or he would have played things differently!

Even in a master class where the students are from a conservatory setting, the teacher will often point out things that were undeniably wrong with the student's performance. I'm sure the students enjoyed their performance or they would have played things differently. That doesn't mean that the teacher shouldn't care about their approach.

Yes, but that's because music is a kind of language with its own grammar, syntax and vocabulary and the student is usually giving mixed signals or using inappropriate phrasing, etc. In the master classes that I've watched on Google Video or YouTube, the instructor rarely, if ever, points to the score. Rather, he or she says something like, "Why are you playing staccato? Is this section happy or giddy? The music is full of yearning and sadness, but you're stomping over it with a staccato as if you're prancing through the meadows." The correctness of the instructor's criticism is plainly there for all to hear, no score is needed to check whether the student or the instructor is right.

Technique (as in, technical faithfulness to the score) is the servant, not the master. And it is the music which technique must serve. I'm an engineer at my day job, and a geek term which might be used to describe the score is "low bandwidth" - the score is a low bandwidth description of high bandwidth content. It is a "lossy compression" of the music. That means that a lot of detail is dropped for the sake of brevity. Even the dynamic markings, such as p, f, crescendo or decrescendo, utterly fail to describe the intricacy of what's occurring throughout a phrase where the breaths, commas and periods in the phrase cause the dynamics to vary at a microscopic level from note to note and voice to voice. And this variance will not likely be the same every time through, that is, if the performer is something other than a robot.

</rambling>

Clayton -

Undeniably? That's really a very strong word. The problem is that even some of the most widely accepted 'truths' are highly disputable, if you look to history. As described before, most people would say that playing the left hand before the right hand in Mozart is a 'romantic' gesture that has no place in a classical style and counts as a disrespect to the composer. This is almost universally accepted as being "undeniable". Yet history reveals that not only is inaccurate to dismiss it as 'wrong', but that it is exactly what Mozart asked for. No rational person could honestly look at the source evidence with an unbiased mind and draw the opinion that it's an alien gesture. Yet it's been indoctrinated into everybody to the point where very few people are willing to question their 'rule' about what is inadmissible for Mozart- even with such overwhelming evidence against it.

I repeat the above example as it is a particularly strong, factually supported example of how an almost universally accepted premise is actually the very antithesis of what history actually suggested. The 'rule' is nothing more than a modern idea, falsely attributed to the composer. There are countless other examples- notably the discrepancy between how Rachmaninoff performed and how his music is taught now (considerably less than a century after his death!). When you realise how many flaws there are in the notion than things are "undeniable" and start exploring with an open mind, you start to realise just how many things that have been presented to us as undeniable absolutes are actually a complete load of hokem. Is it any wonder that performers generally sound so boring these days- when they restrict their style according to 'intellectual' rules that often have no intellectual grounding? Similarly, is it any wonder that few people have an interest in classical music- when we need a dubious intellectual justification before we can go ahead and be moved by something? And when we construct pseudo-intellectual arguments to write-off performers who produce distinctive sounds- instead of simply enjoying them? Yeah, that'll get the kids interested...