Part 2
In many cases, the score will be the first and foremost resource for an interpretation. Can you explain about how “reading” a score works for you?
(Dorothy Lawson): My teacher, André Navarra, insisted that the performer should always return to the score, in preparation, to refamiliarize themselves with the letter of the text, and possibly make new discoveries and observations.
I try to be sure I have, literally, seen every mark and indication on the page, and made an honest attempt to understand and deliver it, in my own style and technique. Only after that will I allow myself to consider departing from it, or adding details that the composer has not explicitly described.
I usually start with looking for elements of the “mood,” often related to descriptives, speed and dynamics. Then, I focus one the notes - pitches and rhythms. If the speed requested is too ambitious for accuracy, I start slower. I’ll often take a dash at a new piece, though, to get a “sense” of how it will eventually sound, so I can design my technical choices to support it.
When reading with the quartet, we usually use the full score, to get an overview of how the voices interact, how the textures are constructed, and what our individual roles are.
(Kip Jones): Thanks to iPads, my group, like many others, performs from scores on a regular basis, so most of our score reading occurs inside the musical moment. It is a big rehearsal time-saver.
Dynamic cascades are very clear, likewise tutti textures, articulations, motives, situations where the group is divided in any number of ways. I can’t imagine trying to perform a piece like Huang Ruo’s The Flag Project, Caroline Shaw’s Partita for 8 voices, or Gabriella Smith’s Carrot Revolution from a part.
On a more woo-woo plane, I think a big question about any music which involves being written down, any literate music, is “Is this music a set of instructions? If so, what is it instructing me to do? How do I know the right way from the wrong way? What is created or reinforced by this process? (And if this music is not a set of instructions, by what miracle does the text become community activity?!)
Jose Maceda’s 40-minute work Udlot Udlot is written on a single piece of paper, uniting a thousand people in musical activity. Why don’t we do this more? Are we so mired in the idea of music as entertainment, a product we consume, that we’re no longer willing to work for our own supper?
One of the key phrases often used with regards to interpretation are the “composer's intentions”. What is your own perspective on this topic and its relevance for your own interpretations?
(Ralph Farris): As performers, ETHEL’s mission is to ensure that any reading of a work will welcome our audiences into community, into a shared human experience. We make our music to connect with people, to move, to inspire, to uplift. We are certain that this mission aligns with any of our “composer's intentions.”
Again, I look back to my early days with ETHEL, and my foolish sensibility that I held some “truth” about what a composer wanted. It is now 26 years later, and from my regular work with living composers, as well as my own writing experiences, I know that composers are just as deeply committed to connecting to, and communing with, their audiences, as is ETHEL.
I am infinitely fascinated by radically different or even “wrong” interpretations – the tempi of Toscanini, Kempff's Goldberg Variations. Are there extreme interpretations that you enjoy as well? Do you personally draw a line – and if so, what happens when we cross it?
(Kip Jones): I hadn’t heard Kempff’s Goldberg Variations before, thank you for that—the black pearl shines in his interpretation—and was likewise ignorant of the stature and legacy of Busoni.
One example that comes to mind is an album I loved in college, Uri Caine’s experience with Mahler, Urlicht: Primal Light.
Something more in line with your question might be Erik Hall’s lovely solo take on Music for 18 Musicians, a piece which many of us know so well, re-orchestrated for a suite of keyboard instruments
I admit there is a distinction in my imagination, between the cooperatively mimetic—giving breath to the original anew—and an interpretive “need to self-discover”. For me it is a gradient; I do not draw a hard line between Mimesis and Originality; this is a consequence of my belief in an essential subjectivity of music (at times, woefully so) that leads each to pursue an understanding of human action in time through what we each believe the best way.
Audiences may look to rediscover a beautiful past through community reproduction of musical work; there can be disappointment if an interpretation doesn’t deliver a particular desired signature; I consider this unfortunate but reasonable. Life can be extremely disappointing, and the lesson in musical interpretation as well as in our lives is: “WAKE UP!” Now is a different moment, you are alive anew, reality exists, work with it, alongside it, as best you are able!!
One of the enigmatic miracles of musical experience is that we all must take part in a collective action to deliver these individual revelations to each participant.
When you have the score in front of you, what's your take on taking things literally, correcting possible mistakes, taking into account historical aspects etc?
(Ralph Farris): To taking things literally — As I stated above, I do tend to start from the literal with my score-reading and I will try EVERYTHING out, but I will quickly bend away if (after exploration) I see a marking or a notation that just doesn’t make sense as presented. And generally, that means it’s time to speak with the composer!
To correcting mistakes — I play from score, as it gives me the big picture and I can usually trust that it is the clearest, most reliable rendering of the composer’s intentions. Normally the score wins, especially in that sometimes we trust a bit too much in our notation software to create fully-realized, clear parts. (But again, speak with the composer!)
To historical aspects — In that ETHEL generally plays contemporary works, and most of our music is written either for—or by—us, we are in fact looking to our own practice and evolution as an ensemble, to inform our performances. Occasionally, we’ll treat a classic of the repertoire, but in our hands, that classic will generally be “ETHEL-ized,” so anything is fair game!
With regards to the live situation, what role do the audience and the performance space play for your interpretation?
(Kip Jones): Kip writes: We can't overstate the importance of being open to the unique needs of each performance! Tempi are related to the reverberation times and frequencies of a room, whether we choose to adapt or not; likewise world events or local events can dramatically change the needs of the audience.
ETHEL has a short, festive piece called TSOMA, which has three long improvised breaks during which performers may leave the stage, or enact various hijinks. This freshness makes it a lot of fun for everyone.
Some works seem to attract more artists to add their interpretation to it than others; some seem to even encourage wildly different interpretations. From your experience, what is it about these works that gives them this magnetic pull?
(Corin Lee): For a work to attract many interpretations, it must be a work that motivates many artists to do so. Some factors that might influence are audience expectation (Is the work surprising? Invigorating? Calming?); peer expectation (Is the work fun to play? Inspiring? A good challenge?); and of course, stylistic considerations (Is the composer breaking new ground? Does this piece feel “of its time”? What’s up with that chromatic line? etc.).
Different factors will pull more strongly with different pieces. The physical challenges of a Julia Wolfe work may call to a performer, especially as one well knows that the audience will be blown away by its energy and power. Or the purity and honesty of a Bach Partita may be just the salve for a program filled with tension and stress.
And no matter what, it is our job as performers to keep living with our repertoire (classic and contemporary), for it grows with us.
Artists can return to a work several times throughout the course of their career, with different results. Tell me about a work where this has been the case for you, please.
(Kip Jones): I'm compelled to treat this question as a confessional: With the works I revisit often, especially in solo performance situations, I feel zero compunction in bending them to the demands of the present moment, no matter how different from previous performances or historical precedent.
Like many violinists I’ve made my own deconstructions of the movements of Bach's Sonatas and Partitas. I had a realization in my twenties of the inherent flexibility of the polyrhythmic gigues and 12/8 movements, and more recently began performing movements in duet with improvised accompaniments and descants.
Cory and I made a version of the famous E major preludio with a strong Steve Reich "violin phase" influence. I promise I have scruples, but they lie elsewhere ...
Part of the intrigue of interpretations is that the process is usually endless. Are there, vice versa, interpretations that feel definitive to you?
(Ralph Farris): By me, no, there aren’t many. I tend to come down on the other side of the argument, in that I hold that concert musicians are in truth, cover artists. And if you’re gonna cover a song, you dang well better make it your own!
Cookie-cutter performances are such a drag; there’s just zero value to me in someone’s covering ANY work, and not putting their own stamp on it. Same goes for covering Hildegard von Bingen, as it does Led Zeppelin, as it does Anna Clyne.
