That I May Forget That I Am
Gustav Mahler, Age 25
Anyone who has worked with me on performances or recordings should be able to tell you how very uncomfortable I am with addressing groups—either audiences or performers—with regard to my compositions. This reluctance is connected, no doubt, to my discomfort with detailed program notes, but it also has to do with a general shyness about public speaking, and I am certainly not a very good extemporizer on the subject of compositional background or inspiration. I have more than once demurred when given the opportunity to talk to performers who were preparing one of my works, although it is noteworthy, perhaps, that this reluctance usually extends only to groups—I seem to have no problem working with individuals.
Sometimes this is not an issue; when I worked with the Moravian Philharmonic on the recording of the first Mystic Legend, for example, there was no pressure to address the members of the orchestra, as I speak neither Czech nor German. I did, however, discuss the piece at length with the conductor. At other times, unfortunately, my nerves have gotten the better of me. When given the choice of addressing the members of the Lavenham Sinfonia in rehearsal for Der Singende Wald, and later the audience, I elected to remain silent. Whether or not I will be able to summon the courage required to effectively address the audience for the performance of Égloga by the Binghamton Community Orchestra remains to be seen, although the conductor has mentioned that a pre-concert talk might be requested. (Perhaps I should have him ask my sister whether my public speaking is tolerable; apparently she thought the eulogy I delivered at my mother’s funeral was far too long. The phrase concerning a prophet and his own country somehow comes to mind.)
Aside from general Fear and Trembling (although I eschew the Sickness Unto Death) I think much of my reluctance to espouse a public philosophy of composition, added to a general and well-documented dislike for having to explain things, is connected to my growing discomfort with the late 20th century move toward what Stravinsky, in his 1939 Harvard lectures, called “execution” in performance, and the accompanying ostracism surrounding its counterpart, “interpretation.” My thoughts have not always run thus. After all, there was a time when, as my dear friend Rob Haskins stated it, I “began as a forward-thinking progressive who so fully embraced the post-tonal language of his time that one of his first teachers (the very conservative William Presser) constantly drew attention to the extreme dissonance of his music—and not in altogether complimentary words.” All quite true, although my “forward thinking” limited itself to the harmonic realm rather than the world of technique. Yet, everyone changes as he grows older, and while I once may have welcomed the idea of an idiom that promotes, to use Stravinsky’s words, “the strict putting into effect of an explicit will that contains nothing beyond what it specifically commands,” I am afraid my heart has softened somewhat, and I now find that I value the expressive input of the performer much more than Igor would have allowed. (Note that these lectures were delivered in 1939, when, I am sure, the Master did not imagine the heights to which composer-specific commands would rise by the end of the 20th century. I am almost sorry to note, as well, that the extra-musical tyranny of the composer does not show any signs of fading even now.) After all, in the same Harvard lectures he said that interpretation is “at the root of all the errors, all the sins, all the misunderstandings that interpose themselves between the musical work and the listener and prevent a faithful transmission of its message.” To be quite frank, my response to that statement is, to use a trans-Atlantic phrase, “Bollocks!”
I realize that the link between a progressive style or compositional technique and the tenets of Maestro Stravinsky’s “execution” seem tenuous—even to me—and of course there is much more to post-modern musical esthetics than a simple embracing of dissonance, but what I return to, time and again, is a slight mistrust of the common idea (succinctly expressed above) that there is a prevailing message in a piece of music delivered by the god-like and unquestioned judgment and direction of the Composer. Whether or not this feeling is connected to my move toward a more conservative milieu, re-embracing, in the words of Mr. Haskins, “the grand tradition of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century music…in a manner that seems at once defiant and heroic,” is a question that I cannot truly answer, lacking both the space and the insight to do so, but I would like to explore another line of thought regarding the role of the performer of new music.
The fact that a piece of music is a work of art which must be constantly recreated is no new discovery; many of the arts require this relaunching, as it were, for the artistic item to exist. A painting or a photograph will always exist, even shut away in a closet, store room, attic, or drawer. A musical score, however, is not the same thing; it is truly a set of instructions for making the work of art anew. (Of course, even paintings or photographs change subtly over time, and it goes without saying that they are—or can be—different for every viewer who sees them or era that is confronted with them, but that is an issue for another meditation.) Given this circumstance, I am somewhat amazed that any composer, much less one as gifted as Stravinsky, would choose to chastise the performers of his time; my feeling is that in some alchemical way, the performer becomes (or should become) the artist every time he takes up his instrument, whether alone or with a group of fellows, and forbidding the performer from investing the work with his own feelings or interpretation—well, I am afraid it seems somewhat foolish. (Naturally, the wicked half of me is tempted to ponder just what the Russian Master thought he was doing with Pulcinella. Was that “execution” or “interpretation”? Not fair, I know, so I have forborne that set of stairs just now.)
I will not be disingenuous and claim that I do not understand what was bothering Stravinsky, at least in part. He mentions, in his catalog of sins against music, the oral tradition that dictated “…it follows that a crescendo, as we all know, is always accompanied by a speeding up of movement, while a slowing down never fails to accompany a diminuendo. The superfluous is refined upon…great pride is taken in perfecting useless nuances—a concern that usually goes hand in hand with inaccurate rhythm.” My first piano teacher was an older lady who probably was instructed in just such a tradition, and I well remember being taught—by example rather than by deciphering the notated rhythm—to play MacDowell’s “Scotch Poem” with a rhythmic abandon that resulted, as I only discovered later in my studies, in astonishing metric faults but was no doubt meant to be impressive in the most romantic, vitalist sense. As for the pairing of tempo with dynamics, that tradition is alive and well today, if the evidence of amateur piano recitals and YouTube videos is at all reliable.
But why go so far beyond correcting these lapses that are, really, not much more than evidence of the overwhelming changes in taste that erupted after the Great War, and promptly bludgeoned into conformity everything that remained after World War II? Perhaps, at the bottom of things, this move toward strict execution is part of the reason that computer-generated music and performances by computer have become so widely acceptable in our time. Unfortunately, I miss the soul of the artist when a piece is simply “executed,” whether that be by a person in agreement with Stravinsky’s precepts, or simply under the compositional thumb, as it were.
Over the past few years I have moved closer and closer to the idea that it is the performer’s duty to dig, search, explore, and interpret, and if that results in some of the nuances that Stravinsky fears, they are certainly far from useless. I have written in this space previously about the great pleasure provided by both performers and audiences who bring their own thoughts to a piece of mine; I suppose it seems strange to say that another’s observations might bring to life a piece that I wrote, but it has often been so. Rob Haskins (again, the source of so much thoughtfulness and kindness in my life) once called my growing philosophy “self-effacement in composition,” and the more I think about it, the more rational this idea becomes. Of course, this calls for nothing so drastic as Mahler’s “Destroy me, that I may forget who I am,” but I do, as some already know, plead the case for performers cutting their own paths, writing their own scenarios, and digging as deeply as possible to find the heart of a work—not what the composer says, but rather what is actually there (or not there).
My personal zenith of compositional instruction was probably reached with either the prologue to The Miracles of Monsanvierge, or the small fantasy for piano, Three Russian Songs. The latter, in particular, is so covered with directions that it appears at first glance to be an exercise in outdoing Satie, until one realizes that the meticulous and page-crowding instructions are actually meant to be followed, and to produce, one hopes, a relentless sort of hyper-romantic rubato effect that would, in previous times, have been left to the performer. I am almost embarrassed when I look at the score now, but I am not going to go back and change it for the sake of any delicate sensibilities, much less my own.
Almost since that very piece, the personal address of the composer has grown more scarce with each piece I’ve written; there have been fewer tempo directions, until now I seem to be satisfied with simple metronome indications (although I often include the explicit permission for the performer to include change speeds as he pleases, or to include rubato effects at will). I have also been rethinking my tendency to append literary or descriptive titles, largely because they might unintentionally push the performers in a direction that they otherwise might not be inclined to follow. (This idea is somewhat difficult to implement, because titles like The Night Has a Human Face are so much “prettier” than “Piece for Three Instruments”.) My current project along these lines is a suite for solo piano called Piano Set (see the previous resolution), and not only have I forsworn titles, descriptive tempo indications, and expressive words, but I have chosen not to number the pieces, thinking that the performer should choose the order in which they will be played. Of course, we are left with metronome markings, articulations, slurs, and dynamics, but I am not so foolish as to use that perennial excuse of the lazy theory student—“Oh, the performer should be able to figure that out.” Deciding upon the mechanics of a piece and extracting its expressive heart are two different things, I believe.
Will performers rise to the occasion, or am I expecting too much? Am I eliminating much of the glamour of composing by stripping away many of the extra-musical trappings? I cannot, of course, answer these questions in advance, but I do think it is time that we pushed the performer back into the forefront of the privilege of making new music. Hoping to disappear into the Forest of No Return that is the outpouring of my pen, so to speak, may only be a pet wish that few others share, but it is sincere. For R.A. Moulds, at least, it is the music that matters the most, and not the scribbler behind its bars.
