”…the world in a skater’s silence before Bach”
Historically Informed Performance
in the Perspective of Contextual Musical Ontology, Illustrated through a Case Study of
Sonata in E major, BWV 1035, by J. S. Bach
by
Lena Weman Ericsson
Distribution
Department of Music and media/Luleå University of Technology Box 744
SE‐941 28 Piteå Sweden
Telephone: +46‐911‐72600 Fax: +46‐911‐72610
Original title:
”…världens skridskotystnad före Bach”
Historiskt informerad uppförandepraxis ur ett kontextuellt musikontologiskt perspektiv, belyst genom en fallstudie av Sonat i E‐dur, BWV 1035, av J S Bach
© Lena Weman Ericsson, 2008 Cover photo © Natanael Ericsson Translation from Swedish: Joel Speerstra ISSN: 1402‐1544
ISRN: LTU‐DT – 08/54 – SE
Printed by Universitetstryckeriet, Luleå University of Technology, March 2010
Dissertation for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Musical Performance at School of Music, Department of Music and Media, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Luleå University of Technology. Presented on December 5, 2008.
Faculty examiner: Professor emeritus Jan Ling, University of Gothenburg.
Abstract
Lena Weman Ericsson: ”…the world in a skater’s silence before Bach”. Historically Informed Performance in the Perspective of Contextual Musical Ontology, Illustrated through a Case Study of Sonata in E major, BWV 1035, by J. S. Bach. Department of Music and Media, Luleå University of Technology, 2008.
The aim of the present study is to explore the so‐called historically informed performance movement, which also is my own musical performance tradition, from a general perspective grounded in musical philosophy. The discussions concerning this performance tradition have been dominated by different subjects, such as musical works, authenticity, intention and interpretation. The study focuses on Western art music where the performance of the music, the sounding realisation, of a notated work is central. Therefore, the performance in connection with the above‐mentioned subjects is of prime interest. This more overarching theme gave rise to the following questions: What factors can be considered decisive for whether a performance is a historically informed performance or not? How can these factors be identified? Does this mean that there are instructions in the music that I, as a musician, must obey? What does my artistic freedom look like? Where can I find it? The path to tentative answers to these questions is taken via theoretical discussions and the application of the theory in method and analyses as well as in interpretation.
The theoretical perspective of the study is based on contextual musical ontology. The scientific theoretical framework, emanating from this ontology, is formulated in the field of social constructionism.
The performance can, through this perspective, be identified as an indispensable part of the musical work, which also implies that the notated work itself is not sufficient to identify the work. Further, the emphasis on the context’s importance for the performance in order to allow the performance to be of the work in question implies the necessity of awareness of the context of the work. This concept is deepened in the study through the emphasis on the importance for the performance, in a broad perspective, of the historical as well as the contemporary socio‐
cultural context. For the work itself this means that the identity of the work is unstable, it is constantly changing, since the different performances of the work that are parts of the work can never be identical. The perspective is based on social constructivist theories about knowledge. With contextual musical ontology as a point of departure, a strategy is formulated concerning analysis and investigation of a musical work. This strategy focuses on the notation, the instrumentation, and historical performance conventions. These three parts interact with one another and in the study they are formulated as being inseparable from the performance of the work.
The theoretical part of the study is followed by a case study in which a sonata by Johann Sebastian Bach is studied from the articulated theoretical perspective. The case study contains an investigative part and an interpretative part. The work’s notation is always in focus in the investigative and descriptive part, with emphasis on the socio‐
cultural context connected to the notation. Through the sounding interpretations, the different performances, the final chapter results in a summary of the study as a whole.
Keywords: Historically informed performance practice, contextual musical ontology, Johann Sebastian Bach, BWV 1035, authenticity, socio‐cultural context, social constructionism, musical work, intention, interpretation, flute, sonata, figured bass
The Stillness of the World before Bach
There must have been a world before
the Trio Sonata in D, a world before the A minor Partita, but what kind of a world?
A Europe of vast empty spaces, unresounding, everywhere unawakened instruments
where the Musical Offering, the Well‐Tempered Clavier never passed across the keys.
Isolated churches
where the soprano line of the Passion never in helpless love twined round the gentler movements of the flute, broad soft landscapes
where nothing breaks the stillness but old woodcutters' axes,
the healthy barking of strong dogs in winter and, like a bell, skates biting into fresh ice;
the swallows whirring through summer air, the shell resounding at the child's ear and nowhere Bach nowhere Bach
the world in a skater's silence before Bach.
Lars Gustafsson
from the collection Världens tystnad fore Bach
[The Stillness of the World before Bach]. (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1982) Reproduced with permission from the author
Prologue
Can a dissertation be given a poetic title? Most members of the research community would probably say no. Why? The two reasons I heard most often when contemplating this title were that it’s simply not traditional, and that nobody will be able to find the dissertation in an online database. I rejected these arguments as not strong enough to keep from following my instinct that a dissertation can have a poetic title.
Maybe we could think like this: the title of a dissertation can be expected to both clarify the content of the work and communicate a glimpse of the author – in this case the former function is filled by the subtitle and the latter by the main title.
There are parts of the artistic process that analysis can never reach, and perhaps shouldn’t reach either. There are chains of subjective and emotional references that give artistic expression dimensions that should probably never be set down in print.
There are experiences of artistic expression that no words can reach. Lars Gustafsson’s poem, “The Stillness of the World before Bach,” clothes a dimension of musical meaning and content in words in the form of a poem, a form that challenges our imaginations and our preconceptions. The process of listening to music is always our own, as is the process of hearing a poem with our inner ears.
Allowing this dissertation to have a title from the last line of a poem is an attempt to emphasise the personal experience borne by art in all of its forms. If you give yourself the time, you will generate associations about what this line means personally for you. Perhaps the experience will be different when it is placed in the context of the whole poem, and surely the experience of the poem will be different if the works of Bach that it names are well known to you. But who can say that your experience is more true than someone else’s?
I am so fascinated and so deeply moved by Bach’s music, emotionally as well as
intellectually. It is a music that never leaves me untouched and that I continuously
return to. It is a music in which I discover new universes, in which I find a feeling of
safety and comfort. Without it I would hear only ice‐skate silence.
Clarification of terms and abbreviations
BWV = Bach‐Werke‐Verzeichnis is the most common catalogue of J. S. Bach’s works.
The catalogue is built up by genre, not chronologically.
When I use the term “flute” in the following text, I am referring to the flutes that were current during the eighteenth century. If I refer specifically to the modern flute or the recorder, I use those terms.
Lowered tones are designated with
b. Raised tones are designated with
#.
Octaves are given according to the following system:
Content
ABSTRACT ... III PROLOGUE ... VII CLARIFICATION OF TERMS AND ABBREVIATIONS ... VIII
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...
1A personal introduction ... 1
Aim ... 5
CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ...
7Ontological foundation ... 11
The concept of the work ... 11
Contextual musical ontology ... 14
The concept of authenticity ... 16
Authenticity and contextual musical ontology ... 17
Authenticity and the Early Music Movement ... 18
Epistemological foundation ... 23
Summary ... 27
CHAPTER 3: A METHODOLOGICAL FOUNDATION FOR ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION ...
29Notation ... 32
Background to Dreyfus’s concept of inventio ... 32
An approach for an inventio‐based analysis ... 35
Harmonic analysis ... 36
Instrumentation ... 39
Conventions ... 41
Interpretive attitudes ... 42
Summary ... 43
CHAPTER 4: AN HISTORICAL SOCIOCULTURAL CONTEXT ...
45Sonata in E major BWV 1035 – sources and manuscripts ... 46
Dating ... 50
Excursus – earlier research ... 52
A discussion of an alternative dating ... 55
Summary ... 56
Genre and style ... 57
Excursus – sonata as genre ... 58
The genre of the Sonata in E major ... 63
Galant style and J. S. Bach ... 66
Excursus – galant style ... 67
Discussion ... 69
Summary ... 70
Instrumentation ... 71
Excursus – the flute in Germany ... 71
The flute and Bach ... 74
Bach’s chamber music with flute ... 80
Summary ... 86
Concluding reflections ... 87
CHAPTER 5: ANALYSIS ...
89Notation ... 89
Movement 1 – Adagio ma non tanto ... 90
Movement 2 ‐ Allegro ... 98
Movement 3 – Siciliana ... 104
Movement 4 – Allegro assai ... 109
Summary ... 114
Instrumentation ... 115
The temperament of the keyboard instrument ... 117
Excursus – possible Bach temperaments ... 118
A personal temperament ... 121
Summary ... 121
Conventions ... 122
Articulation ... 122
Tempo and time signature ... 127
Ornamentation ... 131
Trills ... 131
Appoggiaturas ... 136
Notated free ornamentation ... 144
Summary ... 145
Concluding reflections ... 146
CHAPTER 6: INTERPRETATION ...
149The interpretative process ... 149
Performance ... 152
A number of interpretive results ... 154
Terms – public performance versus recording ... 154
Descriptions of the different performances ... 155
Conclusion ... 167
EPILOGUE ... 169
BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 171
Music ... 171
Manuscripts ... 171
Prints ... 171
Modern editions ... 171
Literature ... 172
Chapter 1: Introduction
A personal introduction
The idea for this dissertation grew out of my own musical practice, deeply anchored as it is in the Early Music Movement. As a flutist, I have specialised in the music of the late seventeenth to the mid‐eighteenth centuries, and I have been engaged for many years in performance practice traditions most often referred to as
“historically informed.” This background has convinced me that music from this period has the greatest possible chance to be expressive in an environment that respects the historical context of the work. This conviction has admittedly also been influenced by countless performance experiences that have left me dissatisfied. The number of questions starting with “how” had reached a point where I felt I could no longer manage them purely through performance alone. Nevertheless my basic conviction remained unchanged that historically informed performance practice had given me a depth of general knowledge that could be applied in practice to reach new musical depths as well, which in turn made it meaningful – both emotionally and intellectually
–to continue to make music at all.
My music‐making is characterised by a number of strong choices held together by the belief that it is important not to just play the right notes but also to respect the instruments. For me this means taking into account diverse factors like pitch, temperament, and performance practice conventions that affect everything from the execution of ornamentation, the meanings that can be assigned to harmonic progressions, appropriate tempo in relation to the note‐picture, to patterns of accents – conventional as well as exceptional – and so forth.
Parallel with this focus on historicism, I can never completely separate my own
music making from my place in current culture with all of the different kinds of
music that I have internalized both actively and passively. Neither can I disregard
the influence that a number of special people have had upon my musicianship, from
the rector of the community music school in Sigtuna and Sigtuna’s church organist,
through the different teachers that have influenced me at many summer courses,
the music ensembles in which I have played, and the musical journey that I am still
making with Hans‐Ola Ericsson, my life partner. All of these people with whom I
have made music are a part of the journey of my musical education and therefore present in every moment of the creative process that music‐making entails.
Even in this dissertation’s more general discussions, a single piece will be my central focus, namely Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sonata in E major BWV 1035 for flute and basso continuo. One motive for choosing this particular sonata is that it is written in a time (probably 1741) when Johann Sebastian Bach had reduced his compositional output to either the composing of works that where clearly meant for, or works that were specifically dedicated to, a particular person, as well as works that would later be labelled speculative. On the surface, the sonata is a relatively modest work in four movements with tendencies toward the galant style but with an inner harmonic and rhythmic complexity. That this sonata balance between several different traditions makes it even more interesting to study deeply, not least for my own continuing education. The music itself mirrors, in a small format, the musically exciting time in which it was produced. It reflects two different, and to some extent contrasting, musical directions: the galant style dominant at the court in Berlin, and the learned or antique style (both terms were used in Bach’s time), a harmonic and contrapuntally more complex music that was cultivated in Leipzig, among other places, and heavily influenced by forms proscribed by church music.
I find Bach’s E major Sonata a fairly problematical work. Before playing this sonata I confess I have not always felt enthusiastic. A performance of this sonata has often felt more like wandering along an uncleared forest path, with blockages everywhere, where I have stumbled forward without any great pleasure.
When I have worked with the sonata, the technical difficulties have tended to overshadow the musical content, and at the same time, I have the feeling, or can we define this as understanding generated by knowledge, that the technical difficulties of this piece should absolutely not be audible because the sonata’s style and character is as elegant as it is ingratiating.
To a great extent, my view of the E major Sonata has also been coloured by the
summer course I took in the middle of the 1980s, where all of the Bach sonatas
were the focus of a master class with Barthold Kuijken. As an introduction, before
every sonata he presented a great deal of contextual material about the sonata’s
creation as well as his ideas about interpretation. Since Kuijken was in the process
of publishing an edition of the sonatas for Breitkopf, he was engaged with the source studies as well as the history of their creation. When I look back at the scores I used then, I see in the notations I made how deeply influential this encounter was for me and what importance his considerations had for how I later related to this sonata as an interpreter. In my score I found notes on tempi, on the length of grace notes and indications of places he singled out as especially interesting, often from a harmonic perspective. As a curiosity, the instructions Kuijken gave on the third movement, the Siciliana, can serve as an example. He felt compelled to point out that the movement should not be double dotted, because the pastoral character would become lost. Today, almost twenty years later, I do not think the idea to double dot would occur to anyone at all. This is given as an illustration of how traditions as well as preconceptions are in a constant state of change in the relatively young Early Music Movement.
Somewhere near the beginning of my doctoral work I was challenged, in connection with a seminar, to document my relationship to this sonata. In April of 2007, I wrote down the following reflections as a kind of reconstruction of this relationship as it existed at the beginning of January of that same year:
“I have an ambiguous relationship to the sonata – it is technically difficult in the sense that the key in which it is written demands so many fork fingerings and thereby some rather unnatural fingering combinations. It is also audibly problematic because E major, due to all the fork fingerings, is a weak key purely from the perspective of tone production.
When I have played the sonata I am always filled with questions of why, and/or how?
Adagio ma non tanto – In principle, an uncomplicated movement but with tricky
fingering combinations that make it a mess. It is singable. Tempo choice? If it goes
too slowly, the ornamentation becomes too important; if it goes too quickly then it
becomes careless. I have, however, most often played it a little too slow. Have
successively gotten a more relaxed attitude to the piece in the sense of really
treating the thirty‐second notes as ornaments and thus play after. The movement
has a tendency to be fragmentary because of all the pauses which has disturbed
me.
Some special moments: the deceptive cadence and the following triplets in bar 6, the cadence in bar 8 as resting point, repeated off‐beat accents like in bars 2, 9, 10 etc, in bar 13 the G
#minor passage to F
#minor in bar 14 to C
#minor in bar 15, that is to say challenging key excursions. Delicious, but it can be difficult from an intonation perspective.
Allegro – Have always understood it to be simple and dancelike in structure, but I
have also been fascinated by all the slur marks. It is unusual in a quick movement with such long slurs as especially found in the second half. Don’t like the bass line in bars 73‐76. Have successively moved to a more and more quick tempo.
Siciliana – HARD! I have had difficulty finding a tempo that creates flow while still
capturing the melancholy of the movement. C
#minor is a difficult key because it wants to drift even farther away harmonically. Difficult to make the legato work with complex fork fingerings. It happens easily that the tempo becomes too slow.
Does the movement win anything by it? How should the grace notes be handled?
How much slurring should be found, or inserted, in the bass line? How can one find a good balance with the bass line because the movement is so canonical in its structure? I have successively used more and more legato to create both flow and accentuations.
Allegro assai – Strange movement! Why does it begin the way it does? Why does
Bach present a figure in the flute with the bass line as only an accompaniment to then let the bass line itself do something else and then start again? The long upbeat gives the movement an imbalance and then come all of the syncopations in the bass line in the second half. This creates a continuous sense of back beat. Again, technically difficult and many slurs. Which tempo should one choose in order not to lose all the details which happens easily in a tempo that is too fast.”
At a later date (August 2007), when I had started work with the analysis of the first movement, I noted the following:
Adagio ma non tanto – I find myself humming this movement so often. It has a
really undulating lure about it. I would like to bring this out, it is elegant and it
would mean that all of the technical problems would just have to be solved to get it
to flow! When I read the movement I saw a clear structure with sheer sequences
and heavy fourth beats – how to make them clear?
Allegro – Eppstein talks about it as a Bourrée or Passepied – haven’t thought so
before, works quite well, but should this lead to a prouder character? More and more important to feel it in one beat per bar. At the same time, it can’t go too fast because then the accents I create through the different slurs easily disappear.
Siciliana – Nothing special.
Allegro assai – Important with pauses and bass line and articulation that uses slurs
and dots. Tested the other day playing it much slower than before − was quite exciting.”
Aim
The overarching aim of the dissertation is to understand and express my conscious points of view and uncover my unconscious ones using scholarly study, and document how they all affect an interpretation process that leads to a performance.
As I have already mentioned in the personal introduction, I am in my active music making, a part of the performance tradition that is most often named with the accepted term “Historically Informed Performance” (or Practice) or “early music movement.” The most obvious mode of expression for this tradition, or movement, is the goal of using historically relevant instruments and applying both historical playing techniques as well as historical performance practice in music making. In this way one aims at an interpretation that makes the music come alive from a tradition that isn’t part of our own time.
The different terms and areas of inquiry that are contained within this performance tradition include performance in relation to
• the musical work concept – what defines a musical work?
• authenticity – in relation to what?
• intention – whose intention and what does it intend?
• interpretation
By problematising these concepts in the text that follows, I have the goal of seeking answers to the following general questions, and thereby also reaching the aim of the study.
Which factors can be seen as conclusive for a performance in order to be considered a historically informed one? How can these factors be identified? Does this mean that there are instructions in the music that I as a musician must follow?
What does my artistic freedom look like? Where do I find it?
To study these questions without relating them to a sounding performance would be to miss an important chance at integrating the theoretical and the practical, which is why I will follow up the theoretical discussion with a case study. In this study, I exemplify a possible way, through theory and analysis, to reach a sounding performance, an interpretation where the choices that are made are given a scholarly basis. Any such interpretation has naturally no ambitions to make a “final”
truth because that, from my experience, is a musical impossibility.
Chapter 2: Theoretical perspectives
I have a score in front of me. The score contains information about how I am expected to relate to the work when I perform it. But is this information enough?
The answer to this question is dependent to a great extent on my performance intentions, but even setting that aside, I can be sure that if the score represents a flute sonata from the first half of the eighteenth century, a great deal of information that is important for the performance is probably missing, information that I probably would find in a score from the late nineteenth century.
What can I expect to find in the score that will help me prepare to play this sonata?
There are symbols that indicate the time signature, the pitches, the length of the notes, as well as sharps and flats that define the key. There is probably an indication of which instrument should be used, at least for the melodic voice. Perhaps the bass line is figured to make it easier for the keyboard player to decide what chords should be added to the bass line. There are also some written‐out articulations, like slurs, dots and dynamic markings. Sometimes there are notations for trills and other ornaments. Another issue can be made of the score itself; if the score is a facsimile it is often originally handwritten, leading to different interpretations arising perhaps from unclear tendencies in the handwriting style. But even a facsimile of an original print can leave some details unclear.
What is absent from the score? There are probably no exact instructions about the correct pitch, the instrumentation for the bass line, types of articulation in general, as well as how each individual note should be articulated, how it should be attacked and what dynamic it should have. There is probably no realisation of the bass line’s figures. Often the bass line isn’t even figured, which means that I am uncertain about what chords the composer intended. I also don’t know the exact type of flute I should use, or which accompanying instrument was intended. Concerning the keyboard instrument, I also can’t tell the temperament that the composer would have considered appropriate for the work, even though it has a direct impact on both the intonation and the affect of the performance.
These are just a few examples of the questions and decisions a musician is
confronted with.
A notated work’s path from creation to performance both historically and in our time can be described with the help of Figure 1 below. The figure is intended to give a picture of how I see the interpretive process, which also reflects my
understanding of historically informed performance practice:Figure 1
This interpretation process is always present within, and influenced by, the socio‐
cultural context in which I participate. The arrows represent influence, and this influence also represents a chain of events based on a scenario where it is my aim as a musician to interpret the work in a way that actively relates to its historical socio‐cultural context, including the performance practice conventions that historically complimented an incomplete notation picture.
The figure also expresses a possible description of an interpretation process in the present, where the musician has the intention of presenting a work from the past with the ambition of following instructions we understand to be a part of the work.
If we look more closely at Figure 1, we see two types of geometrical shapes, an ellipse and a rectangle. The ellipses represent the parts of the interpretive process that a musician is able to influence and actively change. The rectangles represent the parts of the process that wield a great deal of influence but cannot be affected by the performer in the same way. With these rectangles, I mean to suggest areas about which we can only speculate, even if we have some knowledge about the content within them. How this knowledge is communicated and how we understand and interpret it is however dependent on our own socio‐cultural context and the meanings that different concepts have accrued in our time, which can differ from their historical meanings.
“Contemporary socio‐cultural context” is not limited, because as I see it, this would be impossible. All of our activities in these ellipses are constantly dependent upon and acting upon our socio‐cultural context.
The rectangle “Historical socio‐cultural context” is bordered by a dotted line to mark that the socio‐cultural context of the past is no longer available to us, but precisely as in our present, all activities were included and were influenced by the past socio‐cultural context.
The music that is the result of a composer’s compositional activity is also the result of how a composer is affected by and exists within his or her socio‐cultural context.
Assuming that the composer also intended his or her music to be performed, each
composer is dependent on the musician’s ability to understand the notation, and,
when necessary, to fill in an incomplete notation with content from the
contemporary historical socio‐cultural perspective.
When we move the notation to our time, the socio‐cultural context is different, but contemporary musicians can choose interpretations that take into account past performance practice conventions to the greatest extent possible. We can acquire skills so that we can understand the performance practice conventions around the notated score, even though our musicianship is also dependent upon our own socio‐cultural context. Therefore, a performance in our time cannot be a kind of repetition or copy of how music sounded then. The performance will be a reconstruction, or perhaps more accurately a contemporary construction, that takes its sustenance from the past as much as from the present.
As I have already noted, and as the figure above expresses, it is not possible for me as a musician to directly reach the past socio‐cultural context – or the exact intentions of the composer. We can assume that the composer was motivated by certain intentions to compose a work, and that the composer also had expectations that the work would be performed in certain ways. Can I reconstruct any of the composer’s intentions and expectations? The answer must reasonably be no, but on a hypothetical level we can develop theories about the composer’s intentions.
This relationship is illustrated partly by the dashed line that divides the figure, and also by the single arrow from past conventions to present knowledge. We have good reason to presume that the composer’s interpretational intentions can be found among the general conventions of the period’s performance practice. When we choose to perform music from the eighteenth century and earlier, we have no unified tradition to fall back on, as opposed to the relatively unified interpretive practice that developed as a consequence of the rise of the conservatory tradition, beginning with Paris just before 1800. This lack of a unified tradition before 1800 generates a number of interpretive questions. How, for instance, do I make decisions as a musician when I know I do not have enough information? What gaps do I choose to fill with content? How do I choose in each case what the content should be?
From my interpretive perspective as a musician, as well as my own intuition and
experience, I do not want to create a performance that is merely a sounding
tapestry of the score’s prescribed pitches and rhythms. I am led to ask questions
about how I can ground my intuition and experience – that together constitute my
preconceptions – in theory. There are several different scholarly disciplines I can
turn to, but in the present study, I will choose to anchor my interpretation in music philosophy and musicology.
Ontological foundation
Within the frame of the interpretative process there are a number of concepts.
Among the most important concepts in Figure 1, we find intention (the composer’s as much as the musician’s), context, performance practice conventions, performance, and notation.
The study’s theoretical perspective is based on contextual musical ontology, where one of the most important suppositions is that the performance is a part of the work. This supposition is a prerequisite for the study’s continued discussion of the relationship between notation and performance in general, and the demands that can be placed on the performance in particular. This relation also frames the other concepts from Figure 1, which is why it can seem a contradiction that the concept of the work is not represented; nevertheless the musical work is the central focus of musical ontology generally, which is why I will begin by touching more closely upon the concept of the work.
1The concept of the work
Among the different branches of music‐related research, the musical work stands as a phenomenon that can be studied from different perspectives. In historical research individual works are the starting point for covering music history, and within music philosophy one tries to formulate the musical work’s ontology.
When we speak about the “musical work,” we imagine surely that it is a piece of music, composed by a particular composer, that it is written down on paper and that it is intended to be performed. This description is close to the basic consensus that was reached within the frame of the symposium about the concept of the work
1 In this study and in my argument, I focus exclusively on Western art music. This also means that I will not take up genres like jazz, rock, or music that is handed over in different forms.
in Liverpool in 2000: “...a musical work, to merit the description, has to be discrete, reproducible and attributable...”
2As I interpret this definition of the work concept, it is based on the possibility of some form of repeatability, regardless of when the work was composed. This implies that the work concept is coupled to the existence of a score, or some kind of notation. To further develop this definition we can ask the question; what is it that brings the author to compose the work in a notated form? One way to answer this question is by touching upon the composer’s historical context in the way Lydia Goehr does.
3Goehr’s hypothesis can be summarised as follows: historical context drives the development of compositions before 1800, while the work concept itself is paramount after 1800. She further suggests that when the historical context is in the forefront, the composition cannot be called a work because the work concept, according to her, is connected to the concept that the work is autonomous. This independence constitutes, among other things, that the work does not have a clear function within a rite or another social context, but rather that the work is a separate entity and should constitute an aesthetic experience in itself for the listener. According to Goehr, this situation is not prevalent in the period up to and including the eighteenth century, because compositions were dependent on their historical context for their specific creation.
4A composer’s primary motive during this period was the premise that the music was needed in some concrete situation.
The great dividing line comes right at 1800. Only thereafter does Goehr suggest that we can speak of the work, because the focus gradually moves from the function of the work to a work in itself where both the work and its performance were autonomous.
5In a parallel development, the composer’s social status also changed.
The composer was viewed first and foremost not as a part of an institution of some
2 Michael Talbot, ed., The Musical Work. Reality or Invention? Liverpool Music Symposium I (Liverpool:
Liverpool University Press, 2000), 3.
3 Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music, 2nd edition, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
4 Goehr, The Imaginary Museum, chapter 7.
5 Goehr, The Imaginary Museum, 203.
kind, but rather became more and more autonomous from the structures of both church and aristocracy.
6If, for the moment, we disregard any performances of the work, this is a distinction that deeply affects how knowledge of music history can be communicated. Is music history constructed around individual works and their analyses, or will it be written based on music’s social function?
7In the meantime, Goehr’s hypothesis has so fundamentally influenced music philosophy concerning the definition of the musical work from an ontological perspective, that in principle we now avoid using the term
“musical work” for music created before 1800. The focus of this study lies in pieces from the eighteenth century, so I need to broaden my work concept in order to encompass more than Goehr intended. How should this be accomplished?
We established in the introduction of this section that a generally held criterion for a piece of music to be called a musical work is its ability to be reproduced, which implies the existence of a score. This implies, in turn, that the score has a regulating function in relation to the performance. Stephen Davies argues for a work concept that is based on this approach. It is thus a work concept that is based on a sufficiently high degree of unchangeability in the notation so that the uniqueness, the specificity, of the work will not be distorted or even risk being lost. On the other hand, the score can be more or less precise in its instructions – the less precise it is, the more is left to the decision of the performing musician. This is also a work concept that includes performance and is therefore central for contextual musical ontology.
86 Goehr, The Imaginary Museum, 206.
7 For further discussion of this topic, see, among others, Leo Treitler, “The Historiography of Music:
Issues of Past and Present,” in Rethinking Music, ed. Nicholas Cook and Mark Everest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 356‐377, and Tobias Pettersson, De bildade männens Beethoven.
Musikhistorisk kunskap och social formering i Sverige mellan 1850 och 1940 [The Educated Man’s Beethoven: Music‐historical Knowledge and Social Formation in Sweden Between 1850 and 1940] (PhD diss., University of Gothenburg, 2004), 26‐31.
8 Stephen Davies, “Ontologies of Musical Works,” in Themes in the Philosophy of Music, (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2003), 30‐46.
Contextual musical ontology
Contextual musical ontology is a branch of the philosophical field of musical ontology. Musical ontology can be briefly defined as the study of different existing musical elements that constitute a work, and the relationships that hold them together.
9The definition of musical ontology can also be formulated as the study of
“what kind of thing is a musical sound or a musical work?”
10Even more precisely it can be expressed as “what exactly is a work of music. When is a work A the same as work B…? … what is the relation between a work and a (true) performance of it?”
11A central question for musical ontology is, in other words, the relationship of the performance to the work.
12As we could establish in the section on the concept of the musical work, contextual musical ontology views the work as made up of equal parts notation and performance.
13In addition to this, contextual musical ontology put demands on the performance itself. A fundamental idea within contextual musical ontology is, as the name implies, that the musical work is a cultural phenomenon that is dependent on its historical socio‐cultural context, and though the work presupposes its performance, it must take into account the context and in particular the part of the socio‐cultural context that consists of historical performance practice conventions.
14This can also be expressed by looking at how the specific work arises in dialog between the score/notation and the performance.
15But it also suggests that if the
9 Andrew Kania, “The Philosophy of Music,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/music (accessed January 12, 2008).
10 Stephen Davies, “Ontology,” in Grove Music Online. http://www.grovemusic.com (accessed January 5, 2008).
11 Roger Scruton, The Aesthetics of Music, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 97. Parentheses and italics are Scruton’s.
12 For a comprehensive and clear summary of the different musical ontological points of view, I recommend Andrew Kania, “New Waves in Musical Ontology,” in New Waves in Aesthetics, ed.
Kathleen Stock and Katherine Thomson‐Jones (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 20‐40.
13 Stephen Davies, Musical Works & Performances: A Philosophical Exploration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), and Stephen Davies, “Ontologies of Musical Works,” in Themes in the Philosophy of Music, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 30‐46, as well as Andrew Kania, Pieces of Music: The Ontology of Classical, Rock, and Jazz Music (PhD diss., University of Maryland, 2005), Chapters 1‐2.
14 Davies, Musical Works, Chapter 3, and Kania, “Philosophy of Music,” parts 2.1‐2.2.
15 Davies, Philosophy of Music, 31, and Scruton, Aesthetics , 109.
work’s distinctive character, its identity, is dependent on the performance, then the work’s identity is changeable because the performance is changeable since every person in every moment is dependent on their own socio‐cultural context for their interpretation.
16I suggested above (see page 7) that notation never can communicate all the instructions that a musician needs for a performance. To some extent, a score is always indeterminate in relation to the performance. Davies describes this presence or absence of instructions in the notation of a work as either ontologically thick or thin. The more ontologically thin a work is, the more there is left to the interpreter to express primarily by relying upon historical performance practice conventions.
Davies has formulated the role of the interpreter thus:
Works for performance, though, are always thinner than the performances that faithfully instance them… What is added by the performer constitutes her interpretation of the work. That interpretation closes the gap between what is instructed and the repleteness of sounded music.17
As an interpreter of a work, I contribute important aspects to the sounding performance of the music. In the following discussion, as an interpreter of a musical work, I must ask which instructions – notated or inferred – can be constituted as necessary for a performance of the work to have taken place. Which instructions can I interpret as suggestions, where I can choose to take them into consideration or not? Which parts are left entirely to me as an interpreter to shape myself?
When performing music from the eighteenth century, it is helpful to reflect upon what these socio‐culturally relevant factors could have been. It is here that we can return to the Early Music Movement once again and tie the concepts of authenticity and intention to contextual musical ontology. I return to these concepts in the following section, see pages 16‐18. However, I would first like to conclude this section with a discussion around the question of the identity of a work.
16 That there can be performances that are so similar that they are experienced as identical is certainly true, especially in a didactic context, but the question is then whether we can talk about the
interpretation of the work. It’s more a question of the reproduction of the work, in the same way that we play a recording.
17 Davies, Philosophy of Music, 39.
We have already seen that the work’s identity is not permanent because it is dependent on a changeable performance. Is there something that constitutes the work in some permanent way, something that can be thought to constitute the core of the work’s essential character?
In the interpretive process that I sketched in Figure 1, the notation is the only permanent element. The notation encompasses information and instructions that are necessary for the performance of the work. Notation waits, like a text, to be interpreted. For a musical work, interpretation implies putting the text into practice in a sounding form. However, notation in itself is not so simple to adhere to.
A single piece of music can exist in a great number of versions, from the composer’s hand to a computer printout. All of these versions are constructions dependent on their socio‐cultural context. What about the information that the notation expresses? Again, it is subject to construction and interpretation when it is written down, copied or reworked for any reason: an edition, for example. From this argument is it not possible to talk about a core. A notation is more or less approximate, which is why, to come closer to the composer’s notated intention, we must apparently try to find the earliest possible notation for the work. This could be a manuscript from the composer, or a print where the composer had some influence. In this way, we can have access to a score that we can have reasons to assume reflects the composer’s notation and instructions for performance. It is also possible that the score that we have chosen to trust is a construction representing later layers of influence, but we actively and consciously choose to accept it as believable anyway. We are in precisely this situation with Bach’s Sonata in E major.
We can talk about the parameters that define the work, that consist of instructions for the performance notated by a specific composer, but I still believe that the notation in this score is of a non‐essential nature.
The concept of authenticity
We can approach the concept of authenticity from several different angles. One
way is from the perspective of contextual musical ontology; another is from the first
days of the Early Music Movement, which would lead to a more practice‐based
approach. My aim in this section is to give an overview of the different meanings
with which authenticity has been imbued, which is why the section “Authenticity
and the Early Music Movement” clearly has a character of historical background description.
Authenticity and contextual musical ontology
As I will go into further below (see page 18) the Early Music Movement began, relatively dogmatically, by insisting on historical authenticity in all things, musically as well as what I would call extra‐musically.
18Over time, this ambition became less dogmatic, and the concept of authenticity has proven to be problematic, which is why the Early Music Movement has begun to talk about historically informed music‐
making and historically informed performance practice. It can be discussed whether in reality there is any difference. Perhaps, as Peter Kivy insists, this is mostly a play on words to escape the loaded term “authentic performance.”
19What does the concept of authenticity mean, when it is used in relation to contextual musical ontology? For contextual musical ontology, the concept of authenticity is highly relevant, because authenticity from a musical ontological perspective is inseparable from the performance of a work. When a performance is a part of the work, where the performance is expected to take into consideration the instructions that the notation expresses, and those instructions in turn are dependent on socio‐cultural conventions to be understood, authenticity is “… an
ontological requirement, not an interpretative option.”20In this context, the meaning assigned to the concept of authenticity is a compliance to the notated score, the dimension of the composer’s intention that we can judge as either notated or implied through past performance practice conventions. As the concept of authenticity is used within contextual musical ontology, it does not concern the part of the interpretation that is a mirror of the performing musician’s expression, and the concept is not limited to historical music either. It also applies to contemporary music. At the same time, it needs to be pointed out that, at least concerning works where the author is no longer living, a completely authentic
18 The extra‐musical in this context could be exemplified by dressing in clothes typical of the period or staging the performance in a historical setting.
19 Peter Kivy, “On the Historically Informed Performance,” in Music, Language, and Cognition (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2007), 91‐110.
20 Davies, Musical Works, 207. The italics are Davies’ own.
representation of the composer’s intentions is a utopia. It can be striven for but never reached.
Davies emphasises that the concept of authenticity is actually value neutral, because the type of authenticity that he speaks about is faithfulness to the part of the work that is possible to comment upon from a contextual musical ontological perspective. Here we also find the performance practice conventions that guide our understanding of the composer’s instructions.
21However, Davies suggests that from this perspective the social norms that guided the performance in the past are irrelevant for an authentic performance in the present. In other words, he believes that certain parts of the historical socio‐cultural context have no relevance for a performance in the present.
To assert that the historical socio‐cultural context lacks relevance for the performance to any degree is, from my perspective, to make things too easy for ourselves. I am not suggesting that it is worthy or meaningful to fixate on the outward historical trappings, but at the same time, I think it is impossible to ignore, for example, that a sacred cantata of J. S. Bach once was a part of a Lutheran church service, where the different parts had their prescribed places within a liturgical framework. Even if we do not have contact with that time period’s socio‐cultural context, it is relevant to be aware of its existence and to have as much knowledge as possible about it, in order to deepen our understanding of the work.
It is possible, perhaps even likely, that this knowledge will have no direct bearing on the performance, but it is fully possible that it might – and thereby cannot be dismissed out of hand. Therefore, I seriously believe that it is meaningful to the highest degree for my interpretive process that I try to create a picture of the historical socio‐cultural context using the notated work as a point of departure.
Authenticity and the Early Music Movement
To begin with, the Early Music Movement, already from around 1930, placed great
emphasis on objectivity in musical expression. By retaining an objective relationship
to the work, one signalled a desire to follow the composer’s intentions, believing
that they were fully expressed in the notation. In order to understand these
instructions in the notation one studied theoretical texts from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. If one could follow the composer’s intentions, one could also express oneself in terms of interpretive “truths.” By accepting these truths, one achieved an authentic performance where one was faithful to the work.
22How did this point of view develop?
Primarily the clues can be found in the strong development of the Early Music Movement in Germany after World War I. Even before the war, interest in reawakening the old music had already begun in Europe, but within the Early Music Movement this interest would not be sparked by editions and arrangements as it had been in the nineteenth century, but rather by returning to the sources and the notated works and not involving the romantic viewpoint. This new philosophical direction was also closely related to the aesthetic stream within German music during the Weimar Republic that is characterised by the “new objectivity” where subjective expressionism was rejected in the process of creating an objective analysis.
The fact that the Early Music Movement as a popular movement developed during the interwar period is not unimportant. This movement stood on the sidelines of traditional music life and made claims that in early music one could find “pureness”
and “trueness,” ideals that coincided with the ideals of the German youth movement.
23The early music suited this movement perfectly:
Sung or played slowly, it presented only moderate technical difficulties, and the absence of tempo and dynamic markings meant that this music could be used to make “objective” music. 24
21 Davies, Musical Works, 213.
22 It is interesting that in the study of older theoretical writings, statements about emotions have been consistently ignored, for example, that music must be able to express an emotional message to the listener. It is equally interesting that this knowledge has still not achieved its breakthrough.
23 Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Musik als Klangrede: Wege zu einem neuen Musikverständnis (Kassel:
Bärenreiter, 1982), 92.
24 “Langsam gesungen oder gespielt, ergaben sich nur geringe technische Schwierigkeiten, durch das Fehlen von Tempo‐ oder Dynamikbezeichnungen bot sich diese Musik geradezu an für »objektives«
Musizieren.“ Harnoncourt, Musik, 92.
The music that Harnoncourt refers to in this quotation is more likely Renaissance ensemble music than the more complex music of the Baroque, and he also infers that those that began to work with this music were not professional musicians but amateurs. The movement practiced an “…ideologically grounded protest music, discovered and performed by a circle of well‐read and enthusiastic dilettantes.”
25But perhaps the key word in the quotation is still “objective” (see above). This can be said to include a musical practice whose primary relationship to historical accuracy is faithfulness to the score, thereby allowing the music to speak for itself.
Musicians put themselves, as it were, in the service of the composer and abdicated their own right to engage emotionally and interpretively.
Some years after the end of the Second World War, Theodor W. Adorno published an essay that has come to be a powerful and meaningful critique of the Early Music Movement as it expressed itself in that time.
26Adorno was deeply engaged in questions surrounding the performance and interpretation of music, borne witness to not least by his plans to write a substantial work on the theory behind musical reproduction, or interpretation.
27Therefore, it was natural that Adorno, as one of the twentieth century’s most important musical philosophers and social critics, expressed himself about the movement that he emphasised was a monster with fascist and sectarian tendencies, blindly led by authorities. This movement turned Bach, “a composer for organ festivals in well‐preserved Baroque towns, into ideology.”
28Ten years later Adorno makes an even more brutal attack on the Early
25 “…Ideologisch fundierte Gegenmusik, die von erlesenen Zirkeln begeisterter Dilettanten entdeckt und gepflegt wurde.” Harnoncourt, Musik, 91.
26 Theodor W. Adorno, “Bach Defended Against his Devotees,” in Prisms (Cambridge Mass: MIT Press, 1981), 133‐146. The German original is from 1951. The English translation, authorised by Adorno, was published first in 1967.
27 Theodor W. Adorno, Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction, ed. Henri Lonitz (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006). The volume includes notes that Adorno made during most of his life and that should provide a basis for the comprehensive work that never reached its conclusion. The notes do, however, make fascinating reading about his thoughts concerning musical interpretation.
28 Adorno, “Bach Defended,” 136.
