Critique of Stravinsky's "The Performance of Music"

The Stravinsky in the Performance of Music appears as a rather capricious figure, in the sense that the concerns raised in the essay/lecture appear more as spurs of the moment than as a thoroughly argued dialectical process. For example, in the latter part of the essay, though the shifting of the topic from the performance of music to the perception of it may at bottom seem reasonable (in furthering his attempt to convince the reader of his predicament), the subsequent digression on the ill-effects of the mechanical reproduction of music is surely only to entertain his desire of the moment and not the noble cause of his lecture. Such usage of rhetorical gestures (points of entertainment and digression) has thus far failed to convince me of their necessity and more importantly, failed to entertain the desire for sound arguments. All that aside, I shall now reconstruct to my best what I gleamed of Stravinsky’s concerns and my response to them.

All objects – metaphysical or physical, imaginary or real – can be placed next to another object in the space constructed by the mind. Thus any work of art, once published or revealed to the public, once it has left the confines of the mind of its creator, is exposed to the possibility of being juxtaposed with an object that is alien to, detrimental to, or compliments the primordial environment in which its genesis took place. This is one uncontrollable factor that haunts all creators/artists. When dealing with performance arts, there is additional concern for the composer/playwright/creator, coming in the form of performers. This is more so in music than in drama, as drama is less incomplete in its dormant unperformed form due to the accessibility of the language, or so Stravinsky suggests. Having identified his primary adversary, Stravinsky outlined ways (or laws) that would have the performers submit to his will.

He categorized his notion of performers into two groups, the inferior ‘executant’ and the preferable ‘interpreter’. The executant is someone who has no soul, or no emotional attachment to the ‘potential’ music. One might think of his action as a mechanical response (not in the sense of the aforementioned mechanical reproduction of music), a knee-jerk reaction of everything that is notated on the sheet of paper which by coincidence produces something that vaguely resembles the potential music. The interpreter, on the other hand, would be a fervent believer of the potential music whose unconditional love for it wills him to strive for a perfect realization of the music, with perfect taken to mean: as close as possible[1] to how the composer imagined it. Next comes the labelling of the ’virtuoso’ – a virtuous performer who embraces his moral responsibilities to remain truthful to his task, faithful to the work and loyal to the composer, so that justice will not be miscarried by the uncritical critics and the perverted audience.  

*           *           *

Throughout the lecture, Stravinsky made numerous attempts to describe the insecurities of being a composer. To a small extent, he has my sympathy, but only with regards to the loneliness that of not being appreciated. It is common, though not necessarily reasonable and hence not entirely defendable, for people to openly demand respect and loyalty[2]. With the composer, there is also the two-fold issue as to whether the work or the composer should be the subject of loyalty. Composers would naturally argue that the two are the same. In fact if I am in the position of a composer I would insist that the two be the same[3]. Yet the unavoidable truth is that once the work has left the confinements of the composer’s mind and drifted into the public domain alongside trillions of objects that corrupt the essence of the work, the composer’s conception of the work has no superiority over that of the analyst or the performer. Therefore once the work is done, not matter how much pain or effort had been put into it by whomsoever, the work itself will have no allegiance to anything whatsoever. Therefore, my uncritical gut reaction to Stravinsky’s concerns is that if he is so afraid of his precious works being vandalized then he should not have published them or presented them to the public in any form – even if he manages to have complete control over the performance, he can have none over the perception for we all have different modes of listening, we all pick up on different elements of the music and these are bound to be in conflict with the composer’s ideal image. Either that or he could do what a jealous man should do, that is, to marry a prostitute and stop worrying over whether the wife will be having an affair.

There is of course a more scholarly way to go about this. Stravinsky mentioned Johann Sebastian Bach in the lecture, so let us stick to Bach and look at the Fantasia of the 3rd keyboard partita in A minor, BWV 827. Let us imagine ourselves, dare I say, to be in Bach’s shoes whilst he was composing this prelude. The time signature is 3/8, the smallest rhythmic unit is the semiquaver, there are lots of syncopations on the last quaver of the bar and it is a stretched out two-part invention. The melodic line consists largely of disjunct motion, often forming coherent compound melodies and the way the harmonies combined with the figurations is quite exotic, even somewhat Spanish (e.g. mm. 21-24). If this is heard within Bach’s consciousness, chances are, the tempo will be quite brisk (dotted crotchet equals 66) and will probably be played with quite a lot of flair. Fast forward some 300 years and let us place ourselves in the mind of an ignorant youngster, whose brain is being eaten away by earworms such as John Williams’s Schindler’s List, whose soul has been scorched by Helmuth Rilling’s Weinen, Klagen, whose ears have been on various occasions exposed to quotations of Carmina Burana in blockbuster movies. From the perspective of this biased upbringing, it is entirely probable for him to locate in this two-part invention traits that has continually fascinated him in the influences mentioned above, namely that of the profound and the monumental. And, it is possible to turn this unassuming prelude into a tragic spectacle by following Rilling’s cue in taking a slow tempo (dotted crotchet equals 33), making long arching phrases, and also by giving in to the obsessive moto perpetuo semiquaver droning. Furthermore, it is a treatment that can be troped onto other toccata like pieces such as the C minor prelude of WTC 1 and the toccata from the Dorian Toccata and Fugue.

If this young soul is not so innocent, and is knowingly and deliberately going against “Bach’s intentions”, then he is clearly being unfaithful to Bach. However, is it not obvious that Bach’s perception of the piece, not as the composer but as an outside reader, would have changed and been influenced by the myriad of events that happened after the composition? Some might argue that this change is so small that it is negligible, or that the change does not affect the essence of the work. Hence the Weinen, Klagen can be transformed into the Crucifixus of the B-minor mass, or the unaccompanied violin sonatas can be turned into harpsichord sonatas, because they are “the same thing”. The ‘message’ passed down by the composer is preserved. Yet what can be defined as the essence of a musical work? If we take the Neoplatonist’s view, then surely it would be the thing that has the least parts and therefore the most unity – the background level of a Schenkerian reduction, according to which, any rendition of the fantasia, as long as it more or less follows the notes, would carry the essence of the work[4]. If the essence is taken to mean the excitation of a specific emotional as imagined by the composer at the moment of the composition, then Bach himself violated it in turning Weinen, Klagen into Crucifixus. If what we want is simply to fulfil some sort of emotional desire, then the work has no fixed essence as long as it does a job. No matter how minute a change, it is nevertheless a change – the negligible belongs to discrepancies in execution. Society affords the creators the liberty to “change”, to describe objects both real and imaginary from various angles, which is why we have so many versions of Monet’s Rouen Cathedral. What Stravinsky the elitist demands is that this privilege be kept a privilege of not simply the aristocracy but of the very top echelon of the cultural ladder – the composers. All his seemingly witty use of references to the sacredness of his ‘message’ seeks to immortalize the composer’s “final word” as a divine object to be worshipped. He denies the “mortal” men their right to create/imagine, he forbids the existence of a performer-composer. What he failed to realize is that, though he is a composer-performer, he is merely speaking in the position of a performer/analyst. He may have inside knowledge of how “his” music can work, but there can be no jurisdiction upon an object that has achieved an autonomous state of being.

February 2013

[1] The definition of “as close as possible” means literally what it says – as close as humanly possible, i.e. taking into account the variation between individuals in the conception and understanding of what music means, what it is for and how it is achieves its goal.

[2] “Artists”, because of their enigmatic temperance, are often allowed (and exploited) such an indulgence in the Cantonese culture. They are excused for inappropriate behaviour “because they are being artistic”.

[3] The work is not a sentient being and does not psychologically benefit from being respected. Therefore, from the perspective of the composer, any moral indication directed towards the work would in some twisted sense be forwarded straight to the composer.

[4] A similar case can easily be put forward if one takes Adorno and Schonberg’s sense of structural autonomy as the embodiment of the essence.