In the past week, I’ve had the opportunity to reflect on how interpretation can affect the performance of a composition – in both old music and new.
Back in the 17th century, interpretation was the order of the day in notated European music. Around the start of the century, a new notation system for instrumental music established itself: figured bass, a written-out bass line with numbers and symbols giving the corresponding harmonisation. It fell out of use throughout the 18th century, in large part due to composers instead writing out so called “obbligato parts”, indicating exactly how every part should be played.
Figured bass, on the other hand, required a great deal of interpretation – improvisation – from the performers. Very much like contemporary pop or rock bands playing from a lead sheet, a so called “continuo group” fleshed out the figured bass line in a stylistically correct and aesthetically pleasing way. A typical continuo group was made up of a combination of keyboard, plucked and bowed instruments, such as a harpsichord and a viola da gamba and perhaps also a lute or theorbo.
Whereas 17th and 18th century music written with figured bass has been adopted into the ‘art music’ family, most of the 20th and 21st century lead sheet-based music has not. Contemporary art music is generally more about playing technically demanding, intricate parts exactly as written, rather than improvising. There are of course some very obvious exceptions; I even discussed some of them in the same blog post as I introduced my etude game! But as a general rule, ‘classical’ musicians aren’t taught how to improvise – it isn’t considered an essential, perhaps not even desirable, skill.
In my eighth and final lecture on Western music history last Friday, I mentioned “Terpsichore”, Michael Praetorius’ collection of dance tunes published in 1612. One of the most common genres of notated instrumental music in the 17th century was the dance suite, typically consisting of two slow dances interwoven with two fast ones. Several of the more than 300 dances included in Terpsichore have been recorded over the past decades. I played three recordings of one of the dances, “Branle de Montirande”, with three different ensembles also playing on different instruments.
I don’t want to violate copyright laws unnecessarily, so I would rather point you to the streaming service of your choice to listen to the complete recordings, but I have put together this little supercut of all three recordings to give you a sense of the different interpretations.
In order, the three recordings are by the Baltimore Consort, New York Renaissance Band, and Musica Antique de Toulon.
This Sunday the 29th, you can hear me discuss recent album releases in Swedish national radio, in the programme “Musikrevyn i P2” (P2’s Music Review). One of the albums up for discussion is a selection of pieces by South Korean composer Unsuk Chin recorded by Ensemble Intercontemporain. Sandwiched between two multi-movement works is Chin’s “Double concerto for piano, percussion and ensemble”. The piano is to be ‘prepared’, i.e. stuffed with various items to affect the tone, timbre and volume. This preparation requirement seems to open up some level of interpretation to the performer as the new recording sounds rather different from another, much earlier recording – with the same ensemble.
On a 2005 recording of the same piece, Ensemble Intercontemporain – with the same two soloists! – the piano sounds more muted, more percussive, taking up less room in the acoustic space which also means the percussionist as well as the ensemble are better heard. It also sounds like the solo percussionist play on different instruments. While they are specified, to a degree, by Chin, the exact instrument matters more in percussion than in other instrument families. While one violin can safely be assumed to sound essentially the same as another, two cowbells or gongs or triangles will probably sound different. Also, what type of mallet or beater you strike that instrument with further changes the resulting sound.
Writing notated music with notation software such as Dorico or MuseScore that lets you listen to a virtual facsimile of what you’ve written requires you as a composer to be mindful of the difference between the computer’s playback and the actual performance by the players. In some cases, the virtual performance can come quite close, but most of the time it leaves a lot to be desired and some times it can’t even come close.
Knowing the possibilities as well as the limitations of the instruments you’re writing for means that you can picture what you actually want to make, irrespective of what the computer can generate. Freeing yourself from the mental restriction of having the virtual instrument as a sort of model for the finished sounding result also gives you the opportunity to allow for interpretative freedom from the performers. And while there are certainly performers who really enjoy the physical and intellectual challenge of learning to play a really difficult piece, there are also plenty others (as well as a certain overlap, I am sure) who relish the creative space offered by pieces that don’t simply ask them to do as they’re told, but to be more like co-creators.