Challenging Performance, Chapter 6.3 : Delusions -- You must play structure
To perform one is supposed to sound the composer-god's structural plan, as revealed by music theory. But music is not like architecture: it has other ways of engaging us.
10 Dec 202420min
Challenging Performance, Chapter 6.4 : Delusions -- Current performances work best
Current performance practice has to be believed to be the best possible practice, because the classical music State is (isn't it?) the best possible state.
10 Dec 20242min
Challenging Performance, Chapter 6.5 : Delusions -- We learn natural musicianship
Training musicians to think of current performance style as 'natural' musicianship is one of the most insidious processes involved in coercing musicians into musicking as they are told.
10 Dec 20243min
Challenging Performance, Chapter 6.6 : Delusions -- Performances today are very unalike
We’re trained to notice tiny differences between performances, and to imagine them as huge, because this is the only space within which -- given the ideology of performer obligations to the composer’s...
10 Dec 20247min
Challenging Performance, Chapter 6.7 : Delusions -- Music makes better sense performed ‘historically’
Whatever we claim, we don't believe in faithfulness to the composer's intentions when it comes to the uncomfortable truths of recorded performance styles.
10 Dec 20246min
Challenging Performance, Chapter 6.8 : Delusions -- Texts document sounds
As recordings prove, words are seriously insufficient to describe performance styles, and so written records alone cannot lead to substantially historical performances.
10 Dec 20245min
Challenging Performance, Chapter 6.9 : Delusions -- Everything is in the score
Until the 20th century no one believed that notation adequately specified performance. And they were correct!
10 Dec 20249min
Challenging Performance, Chapter 6.10 : Delusions -- A work is greater than any performance of it
That a score can give rise, given fine performers, to so many enriching musical experiences makes us want to imagine something lying behind them that contains all that greatness. But what could it con...
10 Dec 20245min
