Music in Trains

Some surprising figures:

“For years, [William Weber] has been gathering data on late-eighteenth- and nineteenth-century performances, and he summarizes his findings in graphs showing how works of dead composers came to dominate concerts in Paris, London, Leipzig, and Vienna. In 1782, in Leipzig, the percentage was as low as eleven. By 1830, it was around fifty, going as high as seventy-four in Vienna. By the eighteen-sixties and seventies, the figure ranged from sixty-nine to ninety-four per cent (in Paris). Matters progressed to the point where a Viennese critic complained that ‘the public has got to stay in touch with the music of its time… for otherwise people will gradually come to mistrust music claimed to be the best,’ and organizers of a Paris series observed that some of their subscribers ‘get upset when they see the name of a single contemporary composer on the programs.’ These quotations come from 1843 and 1864.”

This summary comes from Alex Ross of the New Yorker in an article called, “Why So Serious?“

I ran across this interesting quote that is very illuminating:

.”In playing for contemporary composers, I’ve always felt that the ones I respected were not inflexible about what you did to their music. They permitted a certain degree of freedom. I’ve found that the lesser composers were the ones who insisted, no, I said mezzo piano and that’s not my conception of mezzo piano. I think the great composers believe their work will endure even if one does not adhere to the exact indications of the music.”
Isidore Cohen (quoted in Nicholas Delbanco, The Beaux Arts Trio: A Portrait)

One of the primary difference between a score by Bach and another by Boulez is in the details.

At what tempo do you play any piece by Bach? A “correct” answer could be “the same tempo as everyone else.” Granted, this is not an absolute. As performance-practice research becomes available, players modify their tempos to reflect the most current research. Aye, this is the bane of historically informed performance.

At what tempo do you play any piece by Boulez? This one’s easy. The correct answer is printed right on the score. Period.

The short answer to this question: I do.

I recently had a reading of my piano piece The Fall, written for and performed by James Praznik. He decided to perform from memory and drew criticism from another colleague who believed that playing from memory put yet one more barrier between the transmission from composer to audience.