Wittgenstein offers this advice to philosophers, Culture and Value (p. 80e), "This is how philosophers should salute each other: 'Take you time!'" This kind of advice usefully applies to music critics, philosophers of music, and music enthusiasts - "Take your time: Listen and re-listen!"
I have described Andrew Porter's routine for approaching new music in a previous post. Richard Wollheim, the philosopher of aesthetics whose thing was the visual arts primarily, writes somewhere that his routine for contemplating a painting consisted of sitting in the gallery containing the painting he was interested in viewing; just sitting there for a long time so as to unburden himself of unpainterly distractions and to prepare himself aesthetically (as a surgeon might prepare to operate) to regard the painting with the right attitude. Clement Greenberg, the high-priest of modern art critics, would back into the gallery, turn around quickly, quickly take in the painting with his (critical) eyes, and judge there and then and there whether the painting was worthy of his continued critical regard.
Of course, in either case - painting or music - robust experience is necessary; in addition to slow looking or slow listening, repeated visual and auditory experiences of the works under consideration. With new music performances, whether recorded or live, there are problems inherent in the partnership relation that exists between the composer and performing musicians. A composer composes a piano sonata (say), she (Sofia Gubaidulina, say) messes around with the emerging work at the piano, commits her experiments to paper, takes her brand new sonata to a new music specialist (the pianist Ursula Oppens, say) to work out the performance details. And to put the vitally important finishing touches - accents, phrase markings, tempo indications &c. - on the extant score. Sometimes these indications are incorporated in subsequent editions of the score - however with contemporary works, what one first sees in a score is all that one will ever get. There's also a further problem: some composers are pianists, and know there way around a piano keyboard; other composers haven't a performer's clue about writing for the piano. Beethoven knew what made the piano and pianists tick; Schoenberg didn't have a Beethoven pianist's sense. See Mitsuko Uchida's discussion of Schoenberg's piano music on YouTube.
Point. (We're almost there.) Experiment in slow listening. Collect as many recorded accounts of Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Piano as is feasible - a small sample might consist of Gould, Wolpe, Pollini, Hellfer, Jacobs, and Spooky Actions. If one can find even earlier recordings, it's even better for our experiment. Now the outcome of this listening experiment will be increased musicality, because the performers have learned what Schoenberg's work is about, and have helped to shape the pieces. It's more than interpretation; it's articulation of the music both in and out of the score. Try it.
Comments are always welcome.
Thanks to Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers for helping me with this post.
I have described Andrew Porter's routine for approaching new music in a previous post. Richard Wollheim, the philosopher of aesthetics whose thing was the visual arts primarily, writes somewhere that his routine for contemplating a painting consisted of sitting in the gallery containing the painting he was interested in viewing; just sitting there for a long time so as to unburden himself of unpainterly distractions and to prepare himself aesthetically (as a surgeon might prepare to operate) to regard the painting with the right attitude. Clement Greenberg, the high-priest of modern art critics, would back into the gallery, turn around quickly, quickly take in the painting with his (critical) eyes, and judge there and then and there whether the painting was worthy of his continued critical regard.
Of course, in either case - painting or music - robust experience is necessary; in addition to slow looking or slow listening, repeated visual and auditory experiences of the works under consideration. With new music performances, whether recorded or live, there are problems inherent in the partnership relation that exists between the composer and performing musicians. A composer composes a piano sonata (say), she (Sofia Gubaidulina, say) messes around with the emerging work at the piano, commits her experiments to paper, takes her brand new sonata to a new music specialist (the pianist Ursula Oppens, say) to work out the performance details. And to put the vitally important finishing touches - accents, phrase markings, tempo indications &c. - on the extant score. Sometimes these indications are incorporated in subsequent editions of the score - however with contemporary works, what one first sees in a score is all that one will ever get. There's also a further problem: some composers are pianists, and know there way around a piano keyboard; other composers haven't a performer's clue about writing for the piano. Beethoven knew what made the piano and pianists tick; Schoenberg didn't have a Beethoven pianist's sense. See Mitsuko Uchida's discussion of Schoenberg's piano music on YouTube.
Point. (We're almost there.) Experiment in slow listening. Collect as many recorded accounts of Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Piano as is feasible - a small sample might consist of Gould, Wolpe, Pollini, Hellfer, Jacobs, and Spooky Actions. If one can find even earlier recordings, it's even better for our experiment. Now the outcome of this listening experiment will be increased musicality, because the performers have learned what Schoenberg's work is about, and have helped to shape the pieces. It's more than interpretation; it's articulation of the music both in and out of the score. Try it.
Comments are always welcome.
Thanks to Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers for helping me with this post.
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