On Authenticity And Responsibility

On Authenticity and Responsibility

Preston Hawes Washington Adventist University Fall 2009

Any curious and interested student of music should experience a troubling conundrum when attempting to realize in practice and performance what they imagine were the wishes of a composer of whose works they perform. performance “authentic”?

What is authentic performance?

What will make a This question is the

wellspring of the dialogue encompassing the issue of “Authentic Performance”. To be authentic, one must address the individuality of a work. Stephen Davies simplifies this view by citing William Webster’s view1 that a work could be seen as simply a set of “pure pitch relationships” and that as long as those relationships are maintained, the work has been performed (Davies, p. 26). On this level of discourse it would not matter if the piece were performed in a different key or on an instrument of an entirely different family than intended.

This raises the issue of pitch.

A440 didn’t

become standardized in America until 19362 (Weinstein, p. 349). Pieces composed in the 17th C emerged from an era of no standardized pitch and may have been heard in a key that would be unfamiliar to us. If we play them at standard pitch is the performance authentic? To help answer these questions there exists a wealth of knowledge available from the study of autographed manuscripts and period treatises.

The study of which

illuminates much about the time in which they were created, the culture, the social Davies points us to William E. Webster’s A Theory of the Compositional Work of Music in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Autumn, 1974), pp. 59-66 1

2

Although internationally there is still variance

condition, the political environment, and even the process of how people of that period processed their history. But the fact remains that when we attempt to authenticate (that being, to make more authentic) a performance by using this knowledge and information to inform and reform a performance, we in turn heighten the sense and awareness to the degree of which the performance has moved out of 21st Century context. In regards to studying manuscripts and attempting to remain true to the autograph, we still must understand that musical notation is far from a comprehensive and complete method of conveying intent. This, of course, complicates the issue even further. If we cannot glean the intent of the composer from the documents in his or her own hand, how are we to do it? In her short expose Authentic Listening, Margaret Bent attempts to solve this problem by likening this problem to issues of grammar.

“To mend a damaged

sentence, or a damaged musical piece, one needs to know its grammar.

An

underpunctuated sentence, like undernotated music, has to be grasped grammatically before it can be communicated intelligibly by performer to listener as sense and not merely as sensibility” (Bent, p. 567). It is not even that music is must be ”undernotated” to be bear the possibility of being misunderstood or perhaps more contentiously, misinterpreted. It is that the method of notation is simply incapable of entirely imparting the express wishes of the composer. In this inevitability does creativity and inventiveness play a role? Bent continues with her analogy urging performing musicians to use their knowledge and understanding of “musical grammar” to inform their decision much in the same way “as actors convey grammatical understanding or misunderstanding of a text by punctuation and inflection” (Bent, p. 567).

This may explain why we cannot assign

equate authenticity with accuracy. Using the analogy of grammar, we know that a “p” in Bach does not mean the same thing as a “p” in Beethoven. Neither will it necessarily mean the same in thing in the first subject as it will in the second subject of the same piece.

“If ‘authentic’ means ‘accurate’, then many different-sounding performances

could be equally and thoroughly authentic” (Davies, p. 23). Although Stephen Davies may not agree with this application, one can see its application to this issue. Assuming that the limitations of notation by using the grammar analogy are adequately addressed from the perspective of a performer, it is consistent to compare this narrative to that of a composer approaching a score? Richard Taruskin reports that Brahms allegedly passed up on offer to attend the opera on the grounds that he’d hear a better performance of it if he just took the opera score home and studied it. This noted musicologist/performer goes on to note that Stravinsky—eschewing “interpretation”— and Babbitt—using electronic means—alike showed similar distain for performers as “middle men, whose elimination would further communication between composer and audience.” (Taruskin, p. 339). Here Taruskin and Bent expose on a very problematic issue. If manuscripts are inadequate channels of intent, and performers are meddlesome “middle men”, what possibly can be the role of a performer when approaching (with intent to perform) a work—specifically a work well known, loved, and established within the repertory? A musical performer must first realize that this issue is multi-faceted and cannot be solved merely by putting gut strings on a violin and tuning down a harpsichord before performing a Bach Cantata.

In The Keyboard Music of J.S. Bach David

Schulenberg’s view of the issues surrounding historical performance practice are of a

philosophical nature and are no longer solely concerning the intent to perform the music in an historical manner, perhaps with authentic instruments (or even authentically reproduced instruments). Instead, these old concerns have launched a curiosity that “has consistently led to new ideas about how much can be performed today, opening up previously unimagined possibilities of interpretation (Schulenberg, p. 9-10). With the copious amounts of information available to us ranging from treatises on style and practice to the fortuitous preservation of manuscripts showing the beginning sketches of certain compositions through to their completion, to the few actual untouched instruments that have survived, we can be assured that with original instruments—in collaboration with the cumulative knowledge of style and practice—the physical aural experience, most simply, the sound we can presently create must be similar to what the composer must have experienced and perhaps (if we are lucky) even intended. But we cannot assume that the performance at all the same as experienced by the composer upon its first aural realization. If a treatise on Baroque music identifies the music as singularly expressive, “how this expression was achieved we have only the vaguest information” (Leech-Wilkinson, p. 14).

But more pointedly, how they perceived

“expressive” is even further beyond our reach. Taruskin and Leech-Wilkinson will likely argue that the ambiguity we face now in regards to what is not expressly laid out in manuscript or treatise must be the same ambiguity that performers faced then and that their ingenuity and creativity were and are incorporated into the perceived authenticity of

a performance.3 Perhaps concept this is best addressed by studying how we view and perform contemporary works in the absence of the composer. Contemporary works are perhaps most relevant to us in that they are infused with the ‘everythingness’ that encompasses existing in the present. In this context “works of past epochs are given new life by their incorporation into the present, by being ‘infected’, as it were, with our present-day musical awareness” (Lissa, p. 19). Taruskin attempts to solve this “infection” by elevating the value of creativity in authenticity. “It’s fine to assemble the shards of a lost performance tradition, but how much better to reinvent it” (Taruskin, p. 343). If new music is, or at very least can be, the product of creativity, it is reasonable to assume any responsible performer has a certain respect for the work as a (somewhat) autonomous creation and as such it is logical to conclude that there occurs a transference of a similar respect for the composer of the work. This respect demands an examination of the creativity Taruskin suggests.

Does the creativity in and of itself

blossom authenticity? It does, perhaps in the spirit of creativity as an agency of authentic composition.

But does it respect the fact that it is the composer who initiated the

creativity and in due process birthed the work? One may look at the reworked operas produced by either Stefan Herheim or Calixto Bieito. As reported by Joy Calico, these two carry with them a certain notoriety bred from scandal over their treatment of

See the entirety of the cited works by both authors in addition to Taruskin’s The Pastness of the Present, and the Presence of the Past in Authenticity and Early Music ed. N. Kenyon. Oxford; 1988 3

“beloved masterpieces”4 (Calico, p. 140).

Surely their treatment is certainly original—

and we hear that word in reference to original instruments in so called ‘authentic performances’—but here it exposes the dichotomy of “original = authentic”. By virtue of their creativity is their performance, as Taruskin might argue, authentic?

In the

Correspondence section of the Early Music journal, Howard Schott responds with criticism to the use of the term ‘original’ in describing a recording label “claiming its use of original instruments” in a recorded performance when in fact the performance was done on a reproduction instrument. “Something can be said to be original if it is novel, not derived from what has been done before. But something may also be termed original if it is primitive, ancient or pristine” (Shott, p. 269). This same concept can be applied to performances as “original”. Herheim and Bieito reword and restage operas in a very creative and ‘original’ way.

But we cannot claim their productions to be ‘original

performances’ beyond the definition of original as novel. One might consider the composer John Cage.

He employed the ultimate in

freedom of expression and creativity in creating a ‘musical’ work without music. His composition 4’33” has been described as ‘anti-music’. One wonder if perhaps it was his intent to show what music isn’t in order to show what it is. This freedom of creativity is a part of this works authenticity. If the same creativity is expressed in the performance of this piece, say it is staged next to a gurgling brook or in the middle of Times Square in

Their staging and reworking of operas, according to Calico, seems to be the claiming of an ideological inheritance left to staged works by the German playwright Bertolt Brecht (b. 1898-d. 1956). See the entirety of Chapter 5, Brecht’s Legacy for Opera: Estrangement and the Canon in the cited work. 4

New York City, is it the same piece? And how authentic is it?

If a student rightly

improvises a cadenza in Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto in E-flat and inserts the theme to Star Wars, or the Mexican National Anthem, is it authentic?

After all, Haydn did not

expressly restrict radical displays of pop culture or patriotism in the improvisations of inserted cadenzi. There are strong hints of something more beyond creativity. In her essay Historical Awareness of Music, Zofia Lissa states that “historical awareness of music is in itself a phenomenon of a historical nature; it varies in different periods of the past and there are periods when it is not expressed at all.” We must allow for the possibility that authenticity is not achievable by applying historicism—by (as presented earlier) contextualizing the ideology in the present day—for what we are doing now with historic pieces may well one day be considered historic itself, rather than definitive.

Invoking Wagner’s term Zukunftsmusik (Music for the Future), Lissa

acknowledges that there is now an “historical awareness of music [that] now involves two infinite dimensions of time, the past and future” (Lissa, p. 20-21). In a somewhat caustic, though insightful, view of history Wagner states, “error is the Mother of Knowledge” and that the “birth of Knowledge out of Error is the history of the human race” (Wagner, p. 12). What one must discern is how to use history (error?) to inform our present. However, over and above textbook knowledge history still yet remains illusive. Without time travel it is impossible to fully integrate within our expectations the context of social, cultural, artistic, and modern (for that is what it would be at the time) information that would inform a present day performance of a piece. Even if time travel

were possible or were to become possible the learning would have to be done with an erasure of all modern context. For instance, if someone 1000 years in the future were to travel back in time to visit our present day, they would view our time from a context of their time and knowing that time travel is possible. This would colour their experience here and now in every way. Most simply, one must be born (or re-born) into the time and culture and at that point, the experience is no longer historical and the knowledge being gathered is no longer historical knowledge, but rather contemporary knowledge being learned. Lissa substantiates this issue recognizing that when listening to works from another period indeed “we cannot clearly separate the qualities they [the works] owe to the special period to which they belong from the music ideas that modern man forces upon them” (Lissa, p. 22). So where does that leave the performer? Helmuth Rilling is quoted responding to a question regarding trends in ‘authentic performance’, “It is very interesting…but we have no original listeners”5 (Schubert, p.3). Is it enough to be an original listener? The relatively new—new in terms of the history of music—technology of recording has added what may be for some performers an unwelcome burden to their art. What we do now has greater durability. We listen to Heifetz perform the Bach Chaconne and perhaps nod forgivingly, because he is Heifetz. But insight into the linear qualities of performance history and tradition are being revealed and those qualities upset. What we do now will either remain relevant for future generations, or will become a curious artifact. Our duty

Author Peter Schubert was quoting Rilling in an introduction to a totally different topic, that of approaching analysis in an authentic manner (see cited work), but the quote remains relevant all the same. 5

as performers has become more weighty in that it is not only the temporal satisfaction of a performance that must be satiated or the fickle nature of stylistic trends that gain ratings, it is the duty to find quantifiable conviction in what we do so that we may be content to memorialize it for future generations. “Authenticity steps from conviction. Conviction in turn stems as much from belief as it does from knowledge” (Taruskin, p. 344). The performer must become an academic, without throwing away the expressive nature of the performing artist. Indeed, a performer must “think of music not only as an expressive entity to be interpreted, but as a complex structure to be articulated” (Lockwood, p. 502). This may seem like an over elaborate way of articulating that no one single method or ideology will solve this ever changing issue of Authenticity, but it is nonetheless true that a performer has a responsibility to go beyond “what they feel” and delve into the realm of intent ranging beyond instinct.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Calico, Joy H. Brecht at the Opera. University of California Press; 2008 Davies, Stephen. The Ontology of Music Works and the Authenticity of their Performances in Noûs, Vol. 25, No. 1 (March, 1991), pp. 21-41. Blackwell Publishing Leech-Wilkinson, Daniel. What We Are Doing with Early Music Is Genuinely Authentic to Such a Small Degree That the Word Loses Most of Its Intended Meaning in Early Music, Vol. 12, No. 1 (February 1984), pp. 13-16. Oxford University Press Lissa, Zofia. Historical Awareness of Music and Its Role in Present-Day Musical Culture in International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Vol. 4, No. 1 (June 1973), pp. 17-33. Croatian Musicological Society Lockwood, Lewis. Performance and ‘Authenticity’ in Early Music, Vol. 19, No. 4, Performing Mozart’s Music I (November, 1991), pp. 501-508. Oxford University Press Schott, Howard. The Origin of ‘Original’ in Early Music, Vol. 8, No. 2, Keyboard Issue 2 (April 1980), p. 269. Oxford University Press Schubert, Peter. Authentic Analysis in The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Winter, 1994), pp. 3-18. University of California Press Schulenberg, David. The Keyboard Music of J.S. Bach 2nd ed. Routledge; NY, NY. 2006 Taruskin, Richard. On Letting Music Speak for Itself: Some Reflections on Musicology and Performance in The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 1, No. 3 (July, 1982), pp. 228-249. University of California Press Wagner, Richard. The Art-Work of the Future: Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, Vol. 1, 1895, pp. 69-213. Translated by William Ellis, original source published by Wigand; Leipzig, 1849 Weinstein, Jerry L. Musical Pitch and International Agreement in The American Journal of International Law, Vol. 46, No. 2 (April, 1952), pp. 341-343. American Society of International Law