There are mainly three categories of texts: the so-called Urtext editions, interpretative editions and facsimiles. Each of these various editions can be interesting for a performer. Let’s focus on differences between them. At first, Urtext Edition. “Urtext” in German means “original text”. In this case, the publisher tries to return to an objective text, trying to reproduce the original intentions of the composer, and removing all the additions or changes made over the time. To do so, the publisher uses various sources: the manuscript (if it still exists) , the first editions, and copies of the first edition corrected by the composer himself.

The interpretative edition offers the editor’s point of view on how to perform the work. Often provided by famous performers, it may diverge from Urtext by additions or changes of dynamics, sometimes even more radical changes in the score, for example, altering notes or deleting whole passages.

The facsimile is a photographic copy of a source. Sometimes extremely difficult to read, I am thinking particularly of Beethoven’s manuscripts, they are often used by researchers or interpreters conducting a study on a particular work.

As a student, I often heard my teachers recommending only Urtext editions. But while it is supposed to be the original text, there are sometimes doubts about the quality of some “Urtext” editions, affixing the label as a proof of quality in a mercantile way rather than as the result of serious editorial work. On the other hand, the return to “original intentions” of the composer is something rather difficult to define, and very variable according to publishers. We must therefore try to get to know the different Urtext editions and ask which one is taken as a reference for a particular composer, instead of trusting blindly a label.

A good Urtext edition is often essential to begin with the most faithful version of the composer’s intent, but personal taste is also needed to achieve a successful interpretation. Here come the interpretative editions. Made by experts, interpretative editions can bring you a new perspective and give you ideas to enhance or reinforce your vision of the score. Beyond an opinion on a particular piece, they also help you understand how great artists have forged their own aesthetic.

We will never say it enough: compare, compare and compare again your different sources to explore the text further and reach a personal interpretation of a work. Even if recording took more and more space in our life as a performer, the comparison of editions is still needed and far more conducive to building your really own aesthetic as an interpreter. Listening to records generally lead to imitate a style without understanding its essence. My professor used to say: “Look, look, EVERYTHING is in the text”, and he was damn right!

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The word interpretation is a common word in the world of music, meaning how a performer plays a piece. Indeed, the execution itself often informs us about the interpretation given to the text. As an image of the player’s mind, his play reveals much about his relationship to the art of music. The mind controls the discourse, whether consciously or not, and performance inform us about the intellectual work performed. In a sens, we could say that performance is an implementation of our intellectual work. Just as an actor does not try to declaim a text he does not understand, I hope that a musician does not play a score he cannot interpret. Musician and interpreter are the two sides of the same coin, they need each other, one feeds the other and vice versa; From inspiration was born the interpretation, interpretation feeds the inspiration.

Any interpretation is interpretation of something. This something, object of our interpretation, is the musical work, or rather its so imperfect medium of transmission, called score. Each sign it contains defines a two-dimensional space: the univocal dimension and the equivocal one, and it is the latter that we interpret. We therefore interpret what is not clear, which implies a judgment and as a judge, we must support this decision by a set of facts and signals, not only good intentions or feelings. The interpretation of the text is based on a set of observations, a priori non-obvious and which you can miss at first glance. These observations enable to guide the equivocal dimension. In other words, « To interpret is thus to uncover the implicit and move towards the elucidation of an object which at first has been refusing. » (Serge Carfantan).

Keeping an open mind is essential: You must be able to reassess and revise your own position, and avoid falling in a kind of interpretative routine. « To interpret a text, is not a matter of giving it a meaning… Rather, it’s a matter of understanding the plurality of which it is made up » said Roland Barthes (S/Z p.11).

Performers work is ambiguous. On one hand, the interpreter should really disappear behind a work, and on the other, interpretation involves his whole being, and leads him to make choices which influence the music. As a second paradox, we interpret to free ourselves from interpretation.

Sometimes research in interpretation is absolutely necessary: in the world of Baroque music, the research towards an authentic interpretation has become a sine qua non for the execution. Seeking manuscripts, understanding baroque playing techniques, searching for the sound of the instruments themselves, freeing from preconceived romantic influences are, among others, part of the “baroque” daily bread. Au contraire, sometimes the work of the interpreter is truncated, empty, non-justified and it borrows from others what the performer should think on his own. This only results in a collage of aesthetics, grotesque music patchwork devoid of unity.

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During the Paleolithic, humans painted on cave walls but also played music. Instruments used to send sound signals have been found, such as whistling reindeer phalanxes (the oldest known dates to 100 000 BC) but also flutes and musical bows depicted on the walls of the Trois-Frères cave in southern France. Art is thus a primary need for human beings.

One may lean upon Hegel to understand this universal need of art: The general need of art doesn’t depend on anything else than on the fact that Man is a thinking being and endowed with a conscience. “The artwork is a mean by which Man exteriorizes who he is.”. In Hegel’s opinion, art is an absolute necessity for Man, “which follows from Man’s rational character, source and reason of art, as of any action and knowledge.” Through art, Man tries to find who he is, and tends to find himself.

In a world which tells us to not endure life, yearning for more authenticity, it appears paradoxical to not philosophize and to not ask oneself the fundamental question of who we are. However it is what many do by considering art as useless or just as a simple entertainment or even as an ordinary representation of beauty. The artist is before everything a thinker who interrogates himself on Man and it’s milieu. Isn’t it fundamental and much more important than to amass millions?

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Often I see my collegues being surprised when we pronounce certain words or names. Adorno, Badiou, Deleuze, names that should not appear in the middle of a musical discussion. However philosophy has its role in music, and has strongly influenced History of musical creation.

While musicians are generally not trained in this discipline, aesthetics becomes very important when you deal with contemporary repertoire. Aside from the fact that it represents one of the best tools for understanding and controlling easily “irreducibles” claiming that contemporary music is just noise, it allows us to better understand the way taken by the composer and to resolve some issues of interpretation in a music which does not benefit from historical interpretation and specialists.

The interpreter actually little arises a fundamental question of aesthetics: What is music? Questioning a bit about what the music is helps us to understand views of certain composers. For example, the use of noise in music may seem absurd, but finally does the beauty of music only resides in tonal harmony, in sounds of instruments? Why could the composer use only specific types of sounds and not others? It must be clear that when a composer uses quarter-tones, it is not an eccentricity but an aesthetic way which drove him to the use of so-called quarter tones. Understand why quarter-tones, of course, is interpreting the composer’s music with a faithfull thought.

Of course, the aesthetics can renew “technical composition” or currents, by looking for, for example, the essence of music. If we take an emblematic figure of contemporary music that has a lot theorized as Pierre Boulez, you can easely notice that he had to develop a coherent system to counter to the attacks of older currents.

“The requirements of the current music go hand in hand with some of the mathematical currents or contemporary philosophy,” said Boulez. Of course! Thinking music is a priority especially for its craftsmen. If I go on with quotes from Pierre Boulez I will also use this piece of interview by the Figaro:

“Le Figaro: What do you think about a certain “neotonal” aesthetic which now seems to have the wind in its sails?
P .Boulez : This is a total waste of time. We are celebrating this year the 50th anniversary of the Domaine Musical’s first season: by consulting the works which were played at this time, I found that no major composer of my generation missed. And those I have chosen are still played. The netonal composers, who you refer to, prefer the Institute: it is their place. That does not worry me at all: their power can not exceed the ring road. These are ow-wage earner, unimpressive. Do you think that London or New York are interested in them? Who is invited abroad? It is not them, it’s me. If at least this current gave us masterworks, as neo-classicism of the 20′s, but there is nothing, it’s vacuum. “?

From the side of the composer, the aesthetic will play a key role in his musical process. It is the way of thinking which influences the music he composes, and is used to justify what he writes. Neotonalism against serial writing, Boulez here stigmatises neotonal composers whose aesthetic is diametrically opposed to Boulez. More than a simple parochial quarrel, this debate is crucial for the future of musical creativity, and influences the younger generation of composers.

You understand that musical aesthetics plays a big role on the music stage, mainly in the contemporary world, and I deplore that only musicologists are trained in a discipline which is also necessary for musicians and composers or more generally to all music artists, not just the theorists.

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