Musical performance is a research field that is gathering great momentum in recent years. You will find in this page information about five upcoming conferences on performance. The two last conferences have a call for papers. By the way, I attend the CHARM conference and give a paper at the conference on Adorno.

(1) CHARM Symposium 6: Playing with recordings

Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, 11-13 September 2008

How do musicians use recordings and what has been their impact? In this final CHARM symposium we explore the attitudes towards recordings of performers and teachers, along with the ways in which recordings contribute to both the maintenance of musical culture and processes of style change. Do recordings prompt or inhibit style change? Have they resulted in stylistic convergence, as is often claimed? And what is the relationship between such processes and the technological or business history of recording? Might technology and business practices be seen as the principal drivers of performance style in the age of recordings? In addressing the interface between recordings and the professional practice of performance, the symposium will prepare the transition to CHARM’s successor centre from April 2009, the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice.

PROGRAMME

The symposium will run from lunchtime on Thursday 11th through to lunchtime on Saturday 13th September. Speakers and panellists will include John Carewe, Mine Dogantan-Dack, Martin Elste, Anthony Gritten, Pekka Gronow, Peter Martland, Nick Morgan, Ian Partridge, David Patmore, and Jeremy Summerly. Further scheduling details and abstracts will be posted online very shortly.

(2) “Formulate with the greatest care”: Adorno and Performance

13-14 September 2008
Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, UK

A conference based around readings of Adorno’s Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction (TTMR) and its contexts, interpretations, and uses.

(3) Minimalism, Post-Opera, and Performance

GOLDSMITHS, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
MINIMALISM, POST-OPERA AND PERFORMANCE
SATURDAY 13 SEPTEMBER 2008
10.00 - 5.00

A one-day colloquium organised in association with the Society for
Minimalist Music

(4) The Musical Body: Gesture, Representation and Ergonomics in Performance – call for papers!

The Musical Body: Gesture, Representation and Ergonomics in Performance

Institute of Musical Research, Senate House, Malet Street, London, in
association with the Open University, the University of Durham and the
Orpheus Instituut, Gent, the University of Sussex, the Royal College of
Music and the IMR Music & Science group

22-24 April 2009

The aim of this interdisciplinary conference is to bring together
researchers from widely divergent fields to share perspectives on the
physicality of performance, and its visual representation, in musics of
all kinds. From connections between musical performance and health, and
musical performance as dance, to representations of the ‘ideal’ posture
in historical treatises and the lampooning of soloists in caricature,
the conference will explore the ways in which music and the body
interact, both with ease (such as where composition or improvisation are
explicitly ergonomic) and in tension (where physical strain is etched
into a musical composition or acts as a marker of authenticity in a
performance style). Finally, it is pertinent to consider those areas in
which physical ease in performance is either obstructed (eg. via
performance anxiety) or results from the creative adaptation of standard
practices (eg. as a response to disability).

Sessions will be built around themes, with presentations grouped as far
as possible in ways that bring together a variety of historical and
generic areas of study. The following list of themes and topics is
indicative only:

· Music and health
· Iconographical representation
· History of performance style
· Organology
· The boundaries of the idiomatic and the ergonomic in composition
· Entrainment, ensembles and community
· Gesture and embodied cognition
· Stage presence and performance anxiety

A Call for Papers and Lecture-recitals will be issued in the early autumn.

Programme committee:

Katharine Ellis (IMR)
Martin Clayton (Open University)
Mieko Kanno (Durham University; Orpheus Instituut, Gent)
Nicholas Till (University of Sussex)
Aaron Williamon (Royal College of Music; IMR Music & Science group)

(5) The Performer’s Voice: An International Forum for Music Performance & Scholarship – call for papers!

29 October – 2 November 2009

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, National University of Singapore 

Symposium Partners:

Peabody Institute, John Hopkins University
Royal Northern College of Music 

The Performer’s Voice aims to stimulate discussion, develop ideas, and disseminate research on music performance from a range of angles. Though interdisciplinary in scope the symposium’s distinct focus derives from an uncompromising emphasis on the act of performance, the role of the performer, and the professional performer’s perspective. The program will feature plenary and parallel sessions of lecture-recitals, papers with live or recorded performance, open rehearsals, panel discussions, and workshops.  

Keynote Speaker:

Prof. Richard Taruskin (University of California, Berkeley)

Guest Panelist, ‘Asian Voices’:

Prof. Kishore Mahbubani (National University of Singapore)

Plenary Presenters:

Prof. John Rink (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Dr. Elisabeth Le Guin (University of California, Los Angeles)
Dr. Stephen Emmerson (Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University)
Dr. Helena Gaunt (Guildhall School of Music and Drama)
Dr. Aiyun Huang (McGill University)
Dr. Thomas Hecht (Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music) 
Qian Zhou (Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music)
Qin Li Wei (Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music)  

Call for presentations & more information available at: www.performersvoice.org

Symposium Convener: Dr. Anne Marshman

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Should I study in a music department?

One of the dilemmas that young people have is whether or not to study in an academic institution. There could be several thoughts against the idea of doing so: (1) ‘Learning academic stuff will ruin inspiration. Music should come from the heart and too much theory is problematic in this aspect.’ (2) The music field is a hard one and the academic career is even harder. Mama says: ‘go and learn to be a computer programmer and make a living.’ (3) ‘Will the studies help me at all? Why not study only what I feel that I need privately or from books?’ In this post I will try to challenge these negative thoughts and argue that for some people it is indeed worth while to study in certain academic musical institutions.

Heart vs. Brain in music

I do not believe that music should come only from the heart. Composers and performers work considerably with their eyes and hands. It is true that there are cases of people who do not know to read notes or studied only from hearing and playing. However, there are also many examples of great musicians who attended music schools and learned much in order to do what they did. I guess that it actually depends on what kind of music you want to do and which connections you wish to establish. Try to check where the musicians that you admire studied and see if you can study there too. Another practical advice would be to seek information about the teachers teach in the institute that you wish to study in, and see whether you like what you find. If you have a teacher who you wish to study with see if he or she are still there. A person told me that he once moved from Israel to London in order to study with a certain professor which he believed to be part of a certain department. Only after he arrived there he discovered that the professor was an emeritus professor – he already retired.

Learning academic stuff will ruin inspiration

Schools can destroy inspiration and one should be aware of it. If you have teachers that have a negative or too critical attitude, or if the institution does not encourage creativity, than this atmosphere might stick also to you. Try to choose the teachers and courses that inspire you and avoid (or visit less) the ones that do not. It is good to keep in mind that there is no perfect music department. If you have 60% of good teachers than you are very lucky. On the other hand, I remember that when I did my PhD in Royal Holloway, University of London, I had a discussion with a student from the Czech Republic who moved to London to do his MA in this department. He said that while in Brno he had both good and bad teachers, in RHUL’s music department the teachers where all excellent. Yet, this is perhaps true for only the top music department in the world.     

Keep a positive attitude

I think that if you come with a positive attitude to study music than you will learn a lot. I had a terrible teacher in my BA who taught me several theory lessons. I truly suffered from his lessons since he had a tendency to repeat everything he said about 600 times. The problem that he said the same things in ALL lessons! Two years after I finished my BA I was living in Prague and one day, while walking on the beautiful streets of this city, I suddenly thought about something that he said (I cannot recall just now what it was). And I said to myself: ‘this is one thing that he said that is really interesting!’. A positive attitude that I would like to advocate is one that argues that you can learn from anyone. Come to every lesson with the knowledge that you will learn something valuable from it, even if you are not crazy about the teacher.

Why not learn from books?

The idea of going to a music school is that you meet interesting people. Yes, you can learn all this through the web or from books. However, it is much more fun to learn from people. Enjoyment is one of the things that make learning more effective. I would suggest combining an autodidactic approach with the normal learning process. Spend lots of your time in the library and be active in search of information and musical experiences. Scan thorough books, learn to know where the different books in the library are, listen to CDs and records, and watch videos. Do this from your first day in the music department. Time passes fast and you will soon discover that you finished your studies there. Simultaneously, spend time with people: perform with them; eat with them; and talk with people about music. This will shape your world, give you access to valuable information and establish connections that will help you in the future.

How to choose a music department?

Talk to teachers and talk to students. Ask whether they are happy there and whether it is a good place to study in. Ask about both positive and negative things that are in the music department (there are always also negative aspects in each and every place). Try to learn as much as possible about the stuff and program.

Learn music and lose money

So your mother is worried that you will have no serious job after you graduate. She is right. Consider this carefully. When I taught in an academic music institute I told my students that life is far from being simple after one graduates. People who study music are sometime rich, but usually quite crazy. They know that life will be hard, but they do it anyway. They simply love music and want to learn everything about it. This is why I did it, and this is why I still do it today.

It will help you in the future – wherever you’ll be

At the end of the day it is really your feeling that should guide you. Examine all positive and negative considerations and then let your mother decide from you (just kidding). If you are talented and love music, you will probably find you way. Moreover, you can always do something else after you finish you studies. At the moment I live from managing a translation company and language school. I love my job. It is hard but it inspires me. I still do research on music and write in this blog. Actually, since I worked in this company I have more money to spend on music then if I were a music teacher. Moreover, I worked in the past in computers and also as an academic music teacher. So it is very possible that I will teach also in the future somewhere. It is clear to me that my life is not going in one clear path. I think that this enriches my life and makes it more interesting. I have different perspectives than most musicians when I write about music; and I use my academic training to learn things, analyze and make decision as a general manager of my company. I also use my knowledge in computer programming in order to build and promote this website. This is perhaps the best argument for going to learn in a music institute: learn whatever you can, be focused and look, criticize and value what you study. You can be sure that it will help you in the future – wherever you’ll be.

For people who are able to fit in institutions – at least partly, for those who are curious, it is possible a good idea to go and study in a music department in an academic institution. Remember that when you are in an academic institution there are many other department and libraries that can be visited. Use this opportunity. Whatever you decide, remember that it is not irreversible. You could always go to another department in the middle of your studies. I started learning composition, switched to orchestral conducting at my second year and add also musicology to my curriculum at the fourth year (I already had many courses in musicology in my program). This turned out to be an important decision since at the end I did a PhD in musicology. The decision was simple. After I took several courses in the musicology department in Tel-Aviv I say that I am learning there more and that I am enjoying there more than in the composition and conducting class. On the other hand, one should keep in mind that if you change an institute in the middle of your studies, you might find out that they are demanding you to learn many courses or even a whole academic year that you would not have to do otherwise. This is there way of arguing that they are better than your previous university, and this is their way of making more money.

I hope that you found this post interesting and perhaps even helpful. Feel free to comment in the form below.

There are several reasons why to write a book review. It is a good way to gain experience in writing. Publishing reviews is easier than publishing articles. One is not expected to contribute something completely new to the world of research. When you submit your review to a journal you usually receive feedback from the editor and that can improve the level of your writing. Another reason is that it may help you learn the book more thoroughly than if you would just read it. Good writing is a form of teaching. When one teaches something, one remembers it forever. Moreover, this is a way that other scholars in the field (especially the one whose book your will review) will know you and what you think. In other words, this is a way to start making a name in the field. Finally, if you where asked to review a book, although you will probably not be paid for it, you will receive the book. In this post I will mention some of the things that can help you write a good book review.

Read the book

Read review written by others

Do not be too critical

Balance your criticism

Show your personal reading

Be helpful

Listen to the comments of the editor

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Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction

In the this post I have gathered a few quotations from Theodor W. Adorno’s notes on performance collected in the recently published book Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction (Cambridge UK and Malden MA USA: Polity, 2006). The notes here are from the section titles ‘NOTES I’ on pp. 1-7. The notes do not appear in the order as they do in the book.

Reproduction

Title: ‘Notes towards a theory of musical reproduction’. The word ‘reproduction’ (and not performance) in the title of the study puts emphasis on the idea that one not merely performs, one reproduces something that exists a priori. This is very important since it reveals one of the main concerns of this study.

Hidden beneath the surface

‘True reproduction is the x-ray image of the work. Its task is to render visible all the relations, all aspects of context, contrast, and construction that lie hidden beneath the surface of the perceptible sound’. The idea mentioned in the title is developed here. Performance is an ‘x-ray image’ of a hidden construction. The word ‘hidden’ and ‘construction’ are important as we will see in a moment.

‘Perhaps this is the philosophical sense of the ‘x-ray image’ - to imitate all that is hidden.’ The performer needs to reveal what is hidden and then to imitate it in his or her playing. ‘The objectivity of reproduction presupposes depth of subjective perception, otherwise it is merely the frozen imprint of the surface.’ Here Adorno suggests a kind of listening that is not concentrated on the moment, but on ‘depth’ and hidden construction.

Analysis and performance

‘Precise analysis as a self-evident precondition of interpretation. Its canon is the most advanced state of compositional-technical insight.’ Since the construction is hidden the performer must reveal it through analysis. The word ‘construction’ mentioned in the quotation above is connected to ‘compositional insight’ here. Analysis is focused on the score and when Adorno speaks about context he relates to any context that might help understanding the notes in the score of the composition. Much is left outside of the game: style, playing fashion, tradition, the wish or insight of specific performers, current cultural and social issues. ‘Whereas the [musical] sense is not absorbed within the phenomenon, the possibility of its representation … consists exclusively in the phenomena. But this means: within their context. Fulfilling the sense of music means nothing other than rendering all aspects of the context visible.’

Against ‘beautiful sound’

Since the revelation of hidden construction is the goal, a beautiful sound for its own sake is almost useless. Adorno wrote in ‘Reflexionen über Musikkritikä’ [Reflections over music criticism] from 1967 the following: ‘I recall once telling my friend Rudolf Kolisch that I thought the new cellist in his quartet had a revolting tone, and Kolisch answered: “But that’s the best thing about him”. (see endnote 10 p. 237). ‘The negation of the “beautiful tone” is the true achievement of all musical mimesis’. ‘The elimination of the sensual pleasure at sound is the idiosyncrasy in which the death of interpretation asserts itself.’

Silent music making

Since all the truth is contained in the score, Adorno develops the concept of ‘silent music making’: ‘Development of the ideal of silent music-making, ultimately the reading of musical texts, in connection with falling silent (NB the utter destruction of the sensual phenomenon of music through mass reproduction). Playing from memory – ‘thinking the music to oneself’ – as a preliminary stage to this.’

Since ‘silent music making’ is the ideal, performance will always fall short of such reading: ‘It is this possibility – playing complex chamber music from memory, as inaugurated by Kolisch, and as asserting the absolute primacy of the text over its imitation – in comparison to which essentially all “music-making” already sounds antiquted… Cf. Schumann’. The editor of the book notes that Adorno is referring to Schumann’s aphorism ‘Das öffentliche Auswendigspielen’ (‘Playing from Memory in Public’). Schumann argues that playing from memory ‘will always testify to the great power of the musical spirit.’ He asks: ‘Why put fetters on the feet if the head has wings? Do you not know that a chord played from a score, no matter how freely it may be struck, does not sound even half as free as one played from imagination?’ Schumann concludes: ‘I am like that philistine who, when the virtuoso’s music fell from the stand and he played on calmly nonetheless, exclaimed triumphantly: “Look, look! This is a high art! He can play it from memory!”’. According to Schumann, real performance falls short of imagined performance. It seems that the ‘real’ performer is one that can imagine the a priori object so well, that he or she do not need a score. Schoenberg advised the Kolisch Quartet to play from memory. He was also the one who wrote several letters to conductors praising their will to make many rehearsals, arguing that people who do so have a clear image in their mind of the music. In other words, Adorno and Kolisch are echoing Schoenberg’s view on this subject. 

Schoenberg’s attitude to the text versus my own view

‘Two fundamentally incorrect notions of the nature of musical interpretation need to be refuted: 1) that of the musical text as a set of performance instructions 2) that of the musical text as the fixing of the imagined. In a more profound sense, it is not the work that is the function of the imagination, but rather vice versa (derive from the subject-object dialect of the work. NB also the epistemological argument of the unknownness of the imagined – “thing-in-itself”. NB Schoenberg’s attitude to the text versus my own view. Yet it must be said that the ideal of the work incorporates the imagined and the performance instructions as extremes of the spectrum).’

Organicism

‘herein lies dissolution of the natural, “organic” aspect of music, which is a mere social appearance’. It seems that Adorno, unlike Schoenberg, did not believe in the concept of organicism. I will have to check this point as I further read the book.

Conference on Adorno

Byron will be giving a paper titled ‘Schoenberg’s or Adorno’s aesthetics of performance?’ in a conference on Adorno and Performance, 13-14 September 2008, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, UK

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Being a young music scholar in Israel is almost impossible. In other counties it is also very hard. A few words about the situation in Israel, which could serve as a case study. There are only five small universities: Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv University, Haifa University, Ben-Gurion University in Beer Sheva, and Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan. There is only one musicological department in Jerusalem which has only four scholars who are there on a permanent basis and there is something almost non existent in Bar-Ilan. In Tel-Aviv the department was closed about two years ago because some, of I have heard, played with the University’s money and lost it in the stock exchange! Haifa and Ben-Gurion have no department of musicology. Moreover, the tendency to cut budgets in social sciences makes the future not very optimistic.

How young scholars react

Teach and write on the web

Teach music for Money

The problems

A possible solution

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One of the common mistakes of music students is to read letters, articles and other musical documents by composers, performers and musicologists, completely out of context. In order to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of what one reads, the reader must attempt to gain access to the context/s of the document. One can start doing so by asking to whom was the document written. The next second question could be: what was the writer seeking to achieve? Only these two questions may help avoiding many misunderstandings. To answer these questions, one often needs to do further reading of other documents. Further questions could help building a wider context: at what period was this document written? Are any of the key terms in the document being treated in a special way with regards to their history or the writer’s history? A practical example could help to understand what I mean when I say that a historical music document must be read in context.

What next?

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Jehoash Hirshberg wrote a letter on the new Israeli Musicological website. Avior Byron respondes to this letter in the following video calling the IMS members to join Hirshberg’s initiative and think what content they can contribute to the website.

Byron: It is my first video post, so it is not very "edited" and "clean", however, I hope you will enjoy it. The video is in Hebrew, so I apologize to my English readers who do not know the holly language. I added subtitles to the most important parts. Please turn on your speakers and press on the button in the center of the picture below:

Here are the parts of Hirshberg’s letter that Byron refers to:

Related posts:

What next?

Compare the two following videos to see how great the difference are between the performances. The first is by Glenn Gould the second is by Isaac Barry.

Glenn Gould

Isaac Barry

06 Hanns Eisler — Elegie 1939, poem by Bertolt Brecht

Hanns Eisler - Nonett nr.1, Variationen

This video shows some of the paintings of Arnold Schoenberg. Schoenberg painted self portraits, portraits of other people (some very famous such as Mahler), caricatures, nature, etc. I found especially impressive the paintings of “gazes” and some of the portraits. The video is very good: the choice of paintings, the way some of the paintings are presented side by side with photos of people, and the quotations by Schoenberg and others. The Arnold Schoenberg Center recently made a catalogue of Schoenberg’s paintings which can be obtained via their website www.schoenberg.at

When I used to be a student in the Tel-Aviv University, Leon Schidlowsky said that Schoenberg was a bad painter. Looking at this video I feel far from this opinion. What is clear to me is that these paintings a extremely valuable for anyone who wishes to understand the period and cultural surroundings of Schoenberg.  

In 1921 Schoenberg drew two caricatures of performers in embarrassing Positions (you can see them in the video). In one you can see the pianist’s body twisting in an absurd manner while playing the piano. The pianist is smiling with closed eyes while the head is in a position reaching upwards. Note that the pianist is playing without a score. It seems as if Schoenberg is mocking exaggerated romantic expressive movements, which he might  have seen as belonging to a past era.

In the other caricature Schoenberg drew a pianist in an opposite manner: inactive, sitting loosely on the piano chair and staring at the keyboard. The performer, who sits like a sack of potatoes while starring at the score, seems musically impotent. One might suspect that the lines that Schoenberg drew near the legs of the pianist imply an obscene gesture. In this period Schoenberg felt threatened by the possibility that his will would be overridden by performers expressing themselves.

On the other hand, Schoenberg wrote elsewhere that the interpretation of the performer is extremely important. After he immigrated to USA he wrote several documents that show an increasing awareness to the importance of performers as creative artists.  

Schoenberg had a complex and at times contradictory attitude towards performers and performance. In the book I am currently writing I analyze these contradicting aspects.

Related posts

Arnold Schoenberg videos