Just for you to understand what I am talking about if you don’t, I let you watch the 2 videos I chose to illustrate today’s topic. I had to choose these 2 pianists of course : THE showman versus THE ascetic. Keep in mind that the point is not to compare interpretations but to analyze two very different styles and their aesthetical implications in a non-judgmental manner.

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Debussy: les collines d'Anacapri

Lang Lang, Debussy: les collines d'Anacapri

Something really weird happened while I was watching all these Lang Lang’s videos: I was so fascinated by his gestures and faces that I forgot there was something to listen to. In fact I focused on visual aspects of his playing, so I had to hide the video to really listen to his interpretation. So, back to the video: he is moving a lot and my old man would definitely appreciate this, seeing him as a “really passionate pianist”. But what I see is that Lang Lang is drawing attention of the audience on himself and not on the music he plays. He seems to show off his bright technique as much as he can even in this prelude.

With Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli we’re in an other world. Nothing superfluous with him, but what a sound, what a subtle interpretation : nothing more than the music needs. In this video, nothing to see, and I was so focused on the sound that I got kind of hypnotized : I had my eyes wide opened but I was not watching anything, just listening to him. If you know a little about Michelangeli, you certainly know this economy of gesture and visual sobriety was something he had worked on and thought about. In fact, he wanted to disappear behind the music he was playing. That’s why he used to politely bow from behind the piano.

As it should be obvious by now, visual aspects of piano playing have a huge impact on the listener, but can also define how the performer defines himself aesthetically speaking. In both cases, the pianist’s body expresses his approach of piano playing and music: one in the role of the spectacular star, one in the role of the craftsman. I won’t go further in this explanation, you got the picture which could be summed up by this new idiom: show me how you play, I’ll tell you what kind of musician you are.

I hear you now loudly complaining “But what’s his point?”. My point is that the old man’s question was much deeper than he thought. In fact he asked me to modify visual aspects of my playing, and thus to re-define who I am as a performer.

I feel much closer to Michelangeli than Lang. I am a craftsman: music comes first. No need to show off, no need to draw attention on me while on stage. Move to produce the sound, nothing more. You don’t need more to serve the composer and his music. And what is more important for a musician than this? So, no, I won’t move a little more, Sir. Music is the art of sound and silence, and I deeply believe music is self-sufficient to express emotions. If sound and silence are not enough to tell others our musical emotion, something may be wrong in our playing or in our understanding of what music truly is.

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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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