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Nothing currently makes my blood boil more than hearing a sentence like: "It sounded beautiful. But that's not how you play Mozart."

It sounds beautiful? Thank you. Period. That's all that matters, ever. Be it Bach with pedal, Mozart with slightly louder fortes, Beethoven with a bit more rubato.

Even the more abstract ideas like "The struggle in Beethoven", "the carelessness and lightness of Mozart" etc. are constructs, and these composers themselves wanted, most of all, their works to be played with passion and in an interesting manner... not in the manner that they themselves might have played it in.

And god only knows what Bach would've wanted to do on a modern piano. All I know is that if Bach would be resurrected today and attend a masterclass where the teacher scolds the students for using "too much pedal", despite the result not sounding bad, Bach would promptly end himself once again.

It is ridiculous, horrible and unacceptable to do this with music. With art.

Haha - can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought the same thing. In recent years however, I’ve become stricter with myself re historical performance practice. I was always taught how to play each style of music “correctly” - but it was never explained to me why/how this improves the quality of the performance. Now that I understand those benefits I follow ”the rules” more closely.

Don’t get me wrong - I actually really appreciate when a performer takes a piece of music and plays it in a new and updated way. As you said, it may not be historically accurate but if sounds good/interesting, why not! We do it with every other art form, why not classical music. But I think it’s important to understand and be able to apply “the rules” before you go breaking them - so I get where these teachers are coming from

I think it's part of what makes classical music so dead. Classical musicians treat pieces of music like sculptures or paintings - unchanging, eternal, perfect pieces of art that were conceived once in the composers mind and have to be faithfully reproduced by the performer. But music is not like that. Music is a living art. Music can be, music should be, created anew everytime. Non-classical musical traditions approach performance in a completely different manner, where a piece of music is more of a template on which you can add and vary as much as you like. I think that's partly what makes these traditions more alive compared to classical music.

I'm not sure where you guys are coming from. In my perception, the ways in which classical music should be performed are forever being reconsidered, revised, and reinvented. Just listen to recordings of, say, 30 years ago, and be amazed at the enormous differences with modern recordings. If anything, there are more different approaches nowadays than there have ever been.

Edit: Case in point: listen to this Beethoven 5th conducted by Teodor Currentzis.

Well I think it is an interesting and frequent issue when playing old music for which we have only written testimonies that we have to interpret within our modern point of view. So I would both agree and disagree with you. And certainly I think that any strict dogmatic point of view is never a good thing, that be in music or in any other area.

No interpretation has to be fully historically compliant, and to a large extent, none of the modern piano interpretation of Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven really are, just because we are using a modern piano which anyway sounds very different than the model the composer used. Certainly for Bach who composed for instruments far removed from a modern piano, any modern version is a form of "arrangement".

That said, there are stylistic patterns which are characteristic of each period. You can play Mozart like Chopin if you like and the result can be quite good, but on the other hand it is fair to say that it is not faithfull to the classical style. I personally believe pedal is necessary when playing Bach, but too much does not yield good results either. I believe each piece has an inner structure that puts some limits as to what one can do.

The main issue and which makes the topic difficult is the question of balance. How far can one go before it becomes so removed from the original intention that it is not anymore what the composer intended. For example would you play Chopin on an harpsichord ? see below, I guess it is ok but not great compared with the piano version. Would you sing Monteverdi like Puccini ?

So though I believe there is a lattitude as to what one can do, there are also limits. Often times I see amateurs taking positions without understanding what is at stake and with little musical judgement.

I remember the old versions of Bach I used to listen to, like the mass in B minor by Jochum and Klemperer. Those are inherited from the late 19th century tradition with a heavy orchestra and choir. They certainly have a certain power but they are also quite heavy and the newer versions, like the Kuijken version, are definitely working much better and conveying a much more intense sense of passion.

I must respectfully disagree with the above statement.

Sculptures, paintings, plays and music were conceived (at least once if not many times given the number of evident changes to a painting, manuscript or score) as a result of the artist's life experience in a given era. The references in those works speak of the contemporaneous morals, ethics, knowledge, wisdom, language and style. With a bit of knowledge of those topics in historical context we can experience a level of appreciation of the art that is in addition to the artistic impact it has on us as we interpret a painting or a play or a piece of music with our own personal and unique contemporaneous life experience.

We, the viewer or listener of art bring it to life. The painter or composer of a play or of a piece of music produces only half the experience.

I think it would wonderful to hear a performer today read the opening of the english epic poem Beowulf to an audience without having studied the history or lexicon or the script symbology. I am sure they would bring a 'fresh' modern interpretation to a dead work.

I am all with you. The existing scores are for us to play around with as we please. The one place though, in which this remark is valid, is the piano school. In school, it is good to learn the proper technique and other rules of how to play Mozart. Outside of school, everybody is totally free.

Exactly. There are thousands of good ways of interpreting any musical masterpiece that still follow the "rules" for playing classical music.

Of course, in one's own home one is free to do whatever one wants including turning the score upside down and playing it. But that does not mean what one is doing is reasonable, good, valid, intelligent, shows any understanding of music, or is respectful of the greatest composers who ever lived. Those composers mostly wrote very specific instructions for a reason. Those instructions in the score were not meant just as suggestions.

Yes. Respect is what it's about. Bach et al.'s minds are something so beyond our comprehension as to command utter awe and wonder. Do what you like but bear that in mind.

Berlioz, in his 'Symphonie Fantastique', essentially marked every note in the score, and, in some cases, wrote long instructions telling performers how to play their instrument to Belioz's satisfaction. I wrote about this years ago here on PW with examples from his score. If we were to ignore the composer's desires on how the music is to be played, why should we concern ourselves with even playing the written notes, let alone the stylistic conventions of the time?

The logical result of ignoring performance practice is to ignore all composers, ancient and modern, and only listen to and only play your own unwritten noodling at the piano.

Classical music is meant to be played according to the composers instructions in the score. One only has to listen to the countless recordings of the same piece by many different great pianists to realize that following the score still leaves room for an endless number of interpretations.

I think using pedal in Bach, Mozart with slightly louder fortes, and Beethoven with a bit more rubato all fall within a range of acceptable interpretation while still following the score. But far too many pianists, mostly amateurs IMO, think that any interpretation is valid, logical, shows musical understanding, etc. even if that interpretation is really just doing whatever they feel like. To me that's an example of lack of musical understanding and poor musicianship.

My comment is based on what I heard in a master class long ago. The pupil was an accomplished conservatory student who didn't follow some significant marking in a Chopin piece. The teacher said "Imagine you were taking a lesson from Chopin and he wrote f in your copy of his piece. Would you follow his instructions?"

All I gotta say on this subject is my pet peeve is when classical musicians take some piece of revered classical music and apply a swing beat (and don't do much else) and call that jazz. A certain flute player springs to mind. Beyond fingernails on blackboard to my ears, it's just cringe inducing, equal to redoing heavy metal as easy listening (or vice versa).

Fortunately, no one is forcing me to listen to anything I don't wanna, lol.

Vanessa made an excellent point for every artist to heed: learn the rules before you start breaking them, or there's nothing impressive about what you're doing.

Beyond that though... much of the "dead" by-the-book approaches are because we - as performers - have forgotten exactly how much freedom musicians of the past had when playing music, and how much improvisation informed their art. Francois Couperin expected the performer to play his embellishments the way he wrote them, but he expected a rhythmic freedom that would shock modern players: in his books of Harpsichord music, he very rarely writes "play these notes evenly" because the norm was to play them differently than written! A toccata from Frescobaldi or Froberger has so much creative freedom from the printed paper that it's mind-boggling to those of us who are too slavish to the score. Mozart, Bach, Beethoven - great improvisers able to play in many styles. Look at the great pianists of the last centuries - even from just written accounts, they vastly differed in their approaches to the so-called "dead" score.

I have a fondness for historical approaches to playing music - I adore the Fortepiano, the harpsichord, clavichord, etc. and spend way too much time researching historical performance practices. But out of this study has come a great creative freedom in how I approach the music of these great Masters. As Vanessa said: the foundation had to be built first, and I am still learning decades later and will probably never cease. Would they care how I play their music? It depends on when they catch me - it's different every time: I'm against robotic approaches with fake emotions and calculated moods. But even then, they're dead - they did their part and we can only do ours to try to keep their great works alive as long as it brings us pleasure while we're doing so. If we lose our enjoyment by becoming slaves to the word, we're no better than religious extremists and I'm not interested in that.

Of course, this is difficult at first - it takes practice and the will to do so. But what a great freedom.

Mattardo, thank you for your precise and thoughtful contribution to this discussion. I entirely agree with you about creative freedom. This was the single most important lesson I learned in University when studying harpsichord and organ. The joy and exuberance that comes when performing early works with the freedom demanded of the music is why I continue to improvise when performing baroque rep sixty years later, and also with the works of Chopin and Brahms for example.

Ignorance of performance practice is what has given rise to the shackled approach to classical music that pervaded, and still pervades modern performance practice to some extent.

Bach and his successors expected and executed huge creative freedom in the interpretation of their score guidelines. Classical jazz is as close as we seem to want to get to Baroque performance practice. Imagine a typical critics review of a Chopin performance where the performer improvises a few extra notes or measures at the end of a piece, a la Cortôt.

I applaud everything said by Mattardo and prout. But I would remind everyone that the deep freeze of classical music is due to high fidelity electronic reproduction, starting in the 1930's. Couperin or Bach's advice was directed at fellow professional musicians from guilds or established performing families. All of them pretended to be capable of embellishments or variations. Chopin or Liszt tutored (among others) young ladies of high birth that would spread their music in their milieus, and that required more standardisation, but every live performance would be obviously different.

The day Kempff or Horowitz became best sellers on Deutsche Gramaphon et al. everybody in the world could listen repetitively to the same performance, and both comparisons and imitations became infinitely easier. Critic Consensus and/or Vox Populi choices emerged, and all the aspiring pianists in conservatories worldwide would turn on the canonical version on their hifi before even looking at the score. Gould created a gold standard for the Goldberg's that Bach would never recognise: at last Jean Rondeau put it to rest recently with his harpsichord.

The ”freeze” or whatever one want to call it is not due to HiFi or any other external cause but simply to the fact that it is historical music, a music of past generations, a legacy of a culture and social life that is long gone. At the time it was a live music. In fact by 1770, no one wanted to play nor listen to old baroque music. People wanted new and different one just like in 1830, classical style was fading away and romantic style was sweeping the continent. At the time that music was the core of what the society wanted to listen to.

Nowadays, Classical music is like old objects in a museum, they are frozen for ever. Between 1800 and 1828, it has been estimated that 44 thousands pieces were composed (probably underestimated) in Europe. We listen today to only a small % of that, the few selected top ones. But the majority were just average or less than average quality. But it was what people wanted to listen to. Today the live music of our days is pop, jazz, rock, ......

I think the 'social life' angle is too often neglected. We're talking cultured people here not brats who practice!

This is not at all what I mean. Any performer is free to play around with the score as they please. Respecting great composers is not the same thing as obeying them. Do with any piece whatever you like. Of course, if you are a performer, you will want to tell your audience that they will listen to a very personal interpretation. And hopefully, many will like what they hear, and you'll be acknowledged as a great musician.

I couldn't disagree more and I am virtually certain 99% of all professional pianists would agree with me. Why did you put "performer" in bold and what was that supposed to indicate? Respecting great composers means following the instructions they put in the score.

No serious professional pianist feels they are free to "play around" with the score as they please.

Tiny, little changes are possible but if Chopin writes ff and you decide to play pp you are, in effect, saying you know more about music and the particular composition than Chopin. If you were taking a lesson from Chopin and he wrote ff in the score would you play it pp?

Following the score still allows for almost an infinite number of interpretations because, for example, rit. doesn't indicate how much to ritard and because one can do an infinite number of things not marked in the score unless they contradict what's in the score. If a composer writes a staccato marking it's up to the performer to decide on the degree of staccato. Just listen to 10 great pianists playing the same piece and they will all sound different although they are to a very high degree all following the score.

If you were free to go to a big museum with some paint and adjust(repaint) part of Rembrandt you thought you could improve, would you do that? Should freedom of interpretation of music allow major changes to the notes and rhythms also.

Interpreting classical music does not mean doing whatever you want. This is an utterly false idea held mostly by non-advanced amateurs. Pianists don't(with very rare exceptions, I can only think of one in 60 years of concert going( tell their audience they are about to listen to a "very personal interpretation", That idea is just foolish.

Pianoloverus - with all due respect, 99% of professional pianists are exactly that: professional pianists who spend 8 hours a day perfecting an emotionally contrived and calculated performance that they can repeat ad nauseam for their concert tours and recordings. This is from necessity, because generations of snobs got their jollies going to concerts or listening to recordings with a score in their lap (so to speak) to catch every little diversion from the holy score and judge accordingly. These professional pianists can be so utterly soulless and boring that there's no point in listening to their little exercises. Technically impressive? Of course. Emotionally and musically impressive? Rarely.

However one feels about Andras Schiff - a professional musician, part of that 99%, in his lectures he bemoans the fact that professional pianists have become SO professional that it's obvious they no longer have a single scrap of feeling or love for the music they are tediously repeating for the millionth time to a hushed audience. We ALL know this!

As for bowing to composers every little marking as if it's holy writ - aside from points made earlier concerning actual historical practice, when musicians played from scores and hadn't been scared by Clara Schumann into memorizing the music that they then began to robotically play at concerts (which of course began to spill over to how teachers taught): when inspiration, taste, muse, emotion and experience all came into a happy harmony allowing a free expression of music that was still alive (read of how Liszt sight-read like the devil, as did most musicians by necessity) - many composers didn't even know what the heck they wanted in the end. Like most artists, many composers would look back at their past work with a bit of disdain - every artist grows with time and experience. Beethoven was constantly releasing revisions of his own works, and Chopin? Chopin was constantly changing his own works - just witness the nightmare of even attempting an Urtext edition of Chopin - it's impossible! The list goes on and on. Composers were not infallible gods - if you believe that God spoke a holy score through Mozart, then one just needs to look at his actual autographs or read his many letters. I love Urtext editions but ONLY because they are the starting point of my personal interpretations, which are not for a snobbish group of score-checkers because thank God - I never wanted to be a professional concert pianist. I've known plenty of them to see what it has done to their love of music: it's just a job. It's the rare professional pianist brave enough to let go and just play their heart out. It's usually reserved for performers specializing on period instruments - paradoxically enough!

Nobody here is guilt of your accusation: "Interpreting classical music does not mean doing whatever you want" - that seems to be a gross misreading of what has been said in this thread. I get where you're coming from - we've all been there. But categorizing other posters thoughts on the matter as "foolish" or "amateurs" is a little....short-sighted, to say the least?

I will comment on the earlier part of this post later but in reference to the above paragraph here's what one poster wrote:
"Any performer is free to play around with the score as they please. Respecting great composers is not the same thing as obeying them. Do with any piece whatever you like. Of course, if you are a performer, you will want to tell your audience that they will listen to a very personal interpretation."

This clearly shows some posters think interpretation means doing what ever you want. (And I think there were other posters on this thread expressing a similar opinion.) Who cares if it's reasonable, shows musical understanding, makes even a minimal attempt to follow the score, shows knowledge of historical performance practice, etc.?

I agree with pianoloverus. There should be, and are, reasonable limits on the license with which a performer can exercise an interpretation of a written work. Public opinion, in any era, is the final arbiter.

Cortôt's knowledge of Chopin's ideas on interpretation came directly from a student of Chopin. Chopin, as indicated elsewhere in the discussion, confused editors, in some cases, by sending different scores of the same work to editors in Germany and in France. This 'freedom', along with Cortôt's understanding of Chopin's desires through his student, allowed him and others to modify, to some small extent, the actual notes, and, in some cases, the structure, of a work. This was applauded and expected by the 'live' audience of the day.

I really couldn't disagree more.

1. The best(and even some of the not so great) pianists of today and the past don't sound emotionally contrived and calculated. Some perform their repertoire pretty much the same way once they've decided on an interpretation while some claim to play quite differently depending on their mood or other factors. Either way I find nothing "soulless and boring so that there's little point to listening to their exercises". I find the best pianists both emotionally and musically extremely impressive...just the opposite of your opinion. And this applies to some pieces I've heard countless times.

2. Before your post I have never heard anyone claim that the fidelity to the score popular today and for at least the last 80 years(probably more) has anything to do with "generations of snobs got their jollies going to concerts or listening to recordings with a score in their lap (so to speak) to catch every little diversion from the holy score and judge accordingly." I have attended recitals for 60 years. I rarely see someone following along with a score, and if they are doing so I doubt it's because they're trying to catch some deviation. I think it's because they want to learn something from the pianist's performance.

3. I would have to see the Schiff interview to hear what he said in context. I doubt he feels his own performances lack feeling or love for the music. To me, it's obvious watching many of today's pianists(and not only the one's showing obvious visible emotion) that many of them are incredibly emotionally involved with the music they play and have a great love for it. I have also attended at least 100 master classes and the teachers' love for the music they are teaching is undeniable.

In praise of freedom of interpretation, I offer the following example of a Louis Couperin unmeasured prelude, one of many written in the era (late J.S. Bach). It offers up an infinite variety of interpretations. It was not expected to be slavishly followed and never expected to be performed the same way twice (horror of horrors).

That being said, without studying the historic performance practices of the era, no one today would have any idea what Couperin was writing about. The emotional intensity of the music, the ability to convey those emotions to an attentive audience was hidden in the stylistic conventions of the time, not in the ink splotches on the page.



Edit. This is the last page of the prélude, not the entire work.

Pop musicians like Elton John don't usually play & sing the same songs the exact same way. Bygone composers like Bach would embellish church hymns to make them sound more interesting. I don't think great composers like Chopin, Brahms & Liszt would compose a piece for piano, write the notes on paper and assume it is the 1 final version. Composers would often play their own pieces in different variations.

Yesterday I watched a video uploaded by a piano teacher (Chinese) on what to expect in a piano exam. She didn't specify the music program (probably ABRSM) or the grade level. She said that students are expected to play 3 pieces representing 3 periods of Western Classical music including Baroque, Classical & Romantic and 1 piece of the student's own choosing. Marks will be given to note accuracy and the correct rhythm. Part of the mark will be for playing a piece in the style appropriate to the period meaning you wouldn't play a piece of Bach like Chopin. However, there are exceptions. In the past Bach pieces were performed on a harpsichord / clavichord without foot pedals. A piano is a different instrument and should be treated as such so many musicians use sustain pedal to enhance pieces.

A lot of young students who have a teacher have limited knowledge or experience in music. They would get into pieces by dead Western composers after learning the basics and reproduce pieces taught by the teacher like every other student. The Suzuki method is well-know for students copying off each other learning approach. Everybody learn the same pieces, perform them in year-end recitals in similar ways. Suzuki doesn't encourage students playing original pieces or even performances that sounded different from other performances of the same pieces. Every student has the talent for music and can be taught to be "musical" the Suzuki way which is like factory standardization.

I am an amateur so that gives me some advantage. I don't do competitions , I don't have to pass exams. Mozart I play is MY Mozart and so is Bach. I use a lot of strong accents in Mozart and I do use the occasional pedal in Bach. My piano teacher doesn't agree with any of those but respectfully I don't care. My Mozart, my Bach, why else should I play?

Playing music for yourself is an intensely personal and rewarding experience. In my opinion, it it the best way to experience music, either previously written, or extemporized. You get to forget yourself, forget the world and its troubles, and commune with the composer, or with your own spirit. You get to listen to the superb resonance and interplay of all the pitches and noises of the piano. You are transported. It is a transcendent experience. No one can take that from you.

Why should you need to "tell your audience" the subjective quality of the performance that they are going to hear? Should the music/performance not speak for itself?

Regards,

"You play Bach your way, I'll play him his way."

Thus spake.........not Zarathustra, but Wanda L.

And is this not what the OP's, who, I have noticed, has run for the hills, original point?

My problem with the idea of ignoring historic performance practice, and not bothering to study what makes Bach Bach, Mozart Mozart, Poulenc Poulenc and so on, is this.

Does this 'ignorant' performer's music all converge on a 'personal interpretation' that in the end all sounds alike - akin to mush?

If your teacher doesn't agree with something you do, he should explain why(does he?). Then you have a choice to make based on some additional musical understanding that you may or may not agree with. But it's possible that with additional insight you might change your approach even if playing just for your own enjoyment.There is not one correct way to play a piece of classical music. But that does not mean "anything goes" is a good approach which is what some posters on this thread seem to believe.

In master classes, it's usually pretty obvious when the teacher is making an optional suggestion as opposed to just correcting the student. And even conservatory students do sometimes play in a way that after the teacher's explanation is seen to be obviously wrong. IOW some things the student does are more clearly "wrong" at least at the professional level. If one is just playing for oneself, one is free to do whatever one wants but that does not mean it makes sense musically.

I think only a small number of teachers or
professional pianists today would say that occasional
use of pedal in Bach is wrong. One would have to hear how you play Mozart to make a judgement about your strong accents. If a good teacher heard you play Mozart and felt you over accented the music, they would try to explain why they felt your approach was wrong and then you would have additional insight to use.

The last 2 pieces I played during the Christmas break were arrangements for piano so wouldn’t sound 100% like the original. The things I worked on were the notes, rhythm & a fast enough tempo. The rest can be as personal as the way I choose to play… even changing a few notes.

I certainly agree.

But I think the even bigger concept here is that playing classical music does not just mean being able to technically play the notes and then adopting a "do whatever I want" interpretation.

There are the composer's markings besides the notes and rhythm and, just as important, an understanding of how music should be played. To me, playing consists of two parts: technique and musicianship(musical understanding). I think some posters on this thread think whatever they want to do is automatically indicative of good musical understanding and that all "interpretations" are equally good.

If all interpretations were equally good, there would be no work for critics, no choices to be made by audiences as to which performer they would want to hear, and no need for Piano World to offer up forums for this type of discussion.

What is the basis for this statement? I have never read anything to the effect the Mozart and Beethoven wanted other people to play their works in a manner different from their own playing. For myself, part of the joy of playing the piano is to realise with my own fingers the great masterpieces that these masters composed. I am in awe and admiration of them. Why would I try to "improve" them with my own paltry efforts? As has been remarked at length above, there is plenty of scope for realising one's own interpretation in terms of subtleties which are not actually notated in the score. When I play the Haydn sonata I am currently studying, I have an image in my mind of the interpretation that I am trying to realise. I might listen to recordings by Brendel and other pianists, and decide that my intended interpretation is superior in subtle ways. Of course, whether I can actually realise this interpretation is another matter!

Playing around with the score in more substantial ways is of no interest to me. Why should I want to do that? Haydn is a greater composer than David-G. Other people may of course feel differently, and they are quite free to do so.

People are a product of their age. Mozart revered Handel, but "modernised" his music for performance. The Romantics romanticised Don Giovanni. The present age is marked by a quest for "authenticity" (which has given rise to the period-instrument movement). Perhaps my own non-interest in playing around with composers' scores originates from having been imbued with this quest for authenticity. And indeed, I get great joy from playing Mozart and Haydn on the fortepiano. The music seems to come alive to a much greater extent than on the modern piano. There seem to be so many more possibilities for constructing an interpretation.

Mozart of course expected pianists to write their own cadenzas for his concertos, and to supply subtle decoration in repeats of sonata movements or opera arias. I observe an interesting dilemma here. I am in great admiration of pianists like Robert Levin who can improvise a complex and virtuosic cadenza on the spot. It is a thrilling experience. However, if I am candid, I have to admit that when I here decorated repeats in Mozart recordings, I often find that the inspiration of the decoration does not live up to the inspiration of Mozart. And so I may find it more rewarding to listen to the true Mozartian inspiration of the undecorated music - even though I am aware that this is not actually how Mozart would have played it.

Don't argue with that. Just who will be the judge of how musically sensible a passage is ? I am not ignoring all the "sensible" performances, I listen to a lot of performance while studying. In the end I make my own decisions; I follow my own sensibility, as stupid as that might be.

And as prout put it, that to me is

Just like there are pianists whose technique is clearly superior to your technique and almost everyone else's, there are pianists whose musical understanding is extremely high. They are the ones who after explaining something one thinks "that makes a lot of sense but I didn't realize that."

They can explain in convincing terms why their musical choices makes sense(not mecessarily meaning they think there only one way to play any passage) and their explanations are clear and convincing. There are also many accepted general musical ideas understood by the best pianists but not always known by lesser pianists. These pianists with great musical understanding(or at least much greater understanding than their students) are the ones whose thoughts on your musical decisions you should at least seriously consider.

Bruce, just the decent thing to do. If I use a heavy metal band to accompany my rendition of Satie's Gymnopédie 1, I would like the public to have some awareness of this when they purchase a ticket to my show.

Just had to play the Nutcracker Suite arranged for strings! How insane is that?

Image hearing the Holberg Suite played on the piano. Horrors!

Oh, wait a minute...

Did that for a wedding and just did the string arrangement (by Grieg) last month.

Never liked him. What was with the lute for christ's sake?

I like Sting and love his attempts at lute and Dowland and I own his 'Songs from the Labyrinth'. It shows maturity and courage and willingness to try new approaches to music.

I think you are missing the point some of us are trying to make. I own an extensive jazz collection and listen only to jazz at home. My wife and I love the infinite variety of takes on pieces that jazz allows. We are both trained in baroque historical performance practice, made our careers in the genre and use same approach with classical repertoire as jazz musicians do with the huge variety of rep they cover. Jazz musicians conform to the style prevalent of their day, just as did Mozart.

Here is the point though. I was listening to CBC radio 2 this afternoon - all Hindemith music, and learned that his wartime experience in Germany forever changed his approach to writing music. He stated that all his music was political.

If you choose to ignore what Hindemith wrote in his music and disrespect the pouring of his soul into his music and do your own thing, then you are not a true musician working in the service of the music or the composer.

Yes, I miss your point because you are plain wrong. Who are you to decide who is a true musician?

I will leave this discussion now, but first I'll cite what a music critic wrote about the Beatles in 1964.

I don't think your Beatles review by one critic has anything to do with the discussion at hand.

I completely agree with Prout and I think almost all professional musicians would agree with him also. Doing whatever one wants to or feels like is what untrained and unprofessional pianists often think interpreting a piece of music means.

All "interpretations" and musical decisions are not equal. They range from terrifically good to terrifically bad. A huge part of the training at top conservatories is about how to make good musical choices in playing a piece. The greater one's understanding of music the more likely one is to produce a good interpretation. And many things poor pianists do are not even a matter of interpretation, they are just plain wrong!

Why bother to take lessons then?

Good summary statement.

As you learn more about music and playing piano, YOUR Mozart and YOUR Bach might change because you discover your previous ideas are not as good as you thought they were, and by using things you learn you can make your performance more beautiful or more convincing.

Have you ever listened to a great pianists playing one of your pieces and thought they sounded better than you and wondered why?

Your example belongs to a completely different category. Sting just borrowed the theme from Prokofiev but he made a different musical object out of it. When i listen to his song, i dont see is as an interpretation of the romance, not even an arrangement. What we are talking about is interpretation of a piece per the original score of the composer.

There is a pianist, Vikingur Olafsson, who often plays pieces by baroque or classical composers and making changes to the score but he makes it clear that those are arrangements.

The nice thing about notated music is that, no matter what performers do with it, the score is still intact, and other interpreters can approach it however they want.

It is interesting that way when compared to the visual arts, where there is no performer needed to make the art real for the viewer - the artist's work is in direct contact with the audience. In comparison, what happens with notated music from origin to end result is extremely complicated and fairly elusive in nature.

There is a lot that is already written on paper and a lot that isn't written down. Over the years, music experts decided how music from different genres should be played.

A common 18th century piece "Minuet in G" from the Anna M Notebook when you come to the end of a phrase with 2 long notes repeating you'd play them staccato. A typical phrase like D-G-A-B-C-D-G-G the 2 Gs at the end you hear staccato playing but it's not marked on paper. Someone in the recent past decided that an 18th century piece with a phrase that end with 2 of the same notes should be played short and every student would copy each other playing this way.

There are people on both sides of the fence. Those who play music as a hobby including myself would play according to what is written in the score and add embellishments as necessary to make the piece sound better. Others are aiming to go through conservatory grade levels would follow playing conventions to get more marks in exams. You go online and watch how other students play the piece you're working on. You see that the majority play the piece in a certain way and you assumed the tempo, dynamics, phrasing & other nuances are considered ideal and you do the same.

I think this post is pure speculation, and I have never heard anyone ever express the same opinion. The two Gs you mention cannot be played legato since they are the same note and pedal would be inappropriate. They don't have to be played staccato and are often played portamemto.
The idea that students playing that piece go online to see how others play it and copy their approach seems far fetched at best.

I don’t agree with this description of two types of students. You do not need to be taking exams or going trough conservatory to want to play classical music as intended by the composer. I am doing neither exams nor going to conservatory, but I can’t imagine going online to see how other students play and copying what they do. The score, to me, is the source, not the phrasing and dynamics chosen by a bunch of student videos. Copy if you want, but I believe it is a bad habit that limits your own learning. I take occasional lessons from a concert pianist who feels strongly that playing decisions should not be copied from online videos; he teaches his very beginning students not to develop that habit. I agree with him.

That is not what I understood from the post. What the poster was saying is that most students are taught the standard way to interpret and don't deviate from it because it won't fly in competitions or auditions. This is a fair concern and one which a lot of people have voiced over the years.

Trivial: I get opinions, I get a lead, from someone much better than me and with much more experience. Having your own opinion does not mean you have to become solipsistic in your musical search. It does not mean either you have to follow always.

My sense is that if we assume Bach was living lets say in mid 19th century, he would have composed a completely different music than what he did. So this type of argument does not lead very far. The point is that he composed music with in mind the performance practice and the type of sound he was familiar with in his time. And to an extent the way he composed his music implies a certain idea of how the piece should sound.

To the best possible extent, we have recreated based on available materials, instruments, and so on, the recommended performance practice that we believe is accurate. Experts dont actually agree on everything, and even pianists have, for some pieces, a range of interpretations, dynamics, articulation, phrasing. Clearly the way of playing Bach has evolved quite a lot, in the 19th century it was played in a romantic way, nowadays we are trying to be closer to a baroque approach. In addition, using the piano implies a form of arrangement since the type of sound produced is not something that Bach knew.

So, I believe any strictly dogmatic point of view is inapropriate. There is a range of possible interpretations, using at best the piano capabilities. But that said, There are also limits, set by the score itself but also by the aesthetics of the baroque music. As I said there is a continuum between various interpretations, it is difficult to define precisely at which point one goes to a point where it is no longer Bach exactly but an arranged version of it. I believe playing a baroque composer like a romantic one makes little sense, even if a true authentically historic version does not exist either. It is curious to see that no one would think of the opposite, playing Chopin like Bach with no pedal at all. That wouldnt make any musical sense.

Unlike modern music, playing old music is in fact extremely difficult. It implies a fair amount of knowledge in the performance practice of the time and a sound musical judgement based on years of practice as to what works and what doesnt. In the beginning we rely on our teachers to guide us to understand what is possible and what isnt. Some may have very rigid opinions about that, and I think it is not a good thing, but once the student has acquired enough skills, he can decide on his own how to adjust. That is definitely part of what learning to play classical music is all about.

1. The poster gave an invalid reason for claiming the two Gs are played staccato (which they often are not) and I explained why he was wrong, This section was half of his post.

2. Most/many students taking piano lessons never take exams and most certainly don't enter competitions. Judges at exams and competitions are not mindless people who think there is only one way to play music.

3. The standard way to interpret a piece of music is not just something mindlessly copied from generation to generation. It is based on sound and high level musical understanding, The "standard" way of interpreting a piece still allows for endless variety of performance. Just listen to ten great pianists playing the same piece and they will all sound different although the differences will be subtle especially to a novice pianist or an untrained ear.

I have often wondered why a person would be satisfied performing a work without an understanding of the context in which the work was written.

Could I conduct a meaningful interpretation of Britten's 'War Requiem" without any knowledge of WWII, of Coventry, of Britten's views on fighting, of his reasons for the use of Latin text and English poetry?

It might be a pretty performance, but would leave the audience bereft of the potential impact of the work.

Just finished listening to the Pentatonix's Cover of Fleet Foxes' "White Winter Hymnal". (I like the cover better than the original.)

That being said, I did some research on the origins of the piece and it gave me a new and more thoughtful way of experiencing the performances of both versions.

Got it - and thanks for introducing me to a new word today.

OP here.

So where do I begin...

I feel like many people misunderstood what I meant. I never thought one should ignore all the directions in a piece, or the direct backstory of the piece, if one exists. My post was about performing pieces that don't have a clear instruction by the composer about the way they should be performed... instead it's just "it's Mozart" or "it's Schubert," so "it should be played in that style."

Do you think Bach would've said: "my pieces must be played in a 'baroque' way"?

Would Mozart, after writing the works he wrote shortly after his mom passed away, have said: "these pieces MUST be played with a sense of devastating grief?"

No composer would ever, ever say this about their pieces, UNLESS they had a specific idea in mind when writing it, as is the case with the "War Requiem" by Penderecki which was already mentioned here, or in any of Debussy's preludes, of Liszt's Anneés de Pelerinage, for example. I NEVER meant to say that Liszt's "Orage" for example should be played to sound like a calm summer wind.

But... I don't think that fortes should be held back in Mozart's chamber music, for example. A recent experience I had was with Mozart's g minor piano quartet that I played for an exam. Our professor told me: "This isn't Beethoven; it's Mozart. Play the fortes more with the feeling of forte, not actually loud", she said.

This is what i'm against. I'm not saying start turning adagios into prestissimos, fortes into pianissimos, single notes into octaves, etc. I'm saying stop playing Mozart like it should be Mozart, Schumann like it should be Schumann, Bach like it should be Bach. Because even though those composers were all products of their time, and the way they wrote their music reflected it, it doesn't mean that we should keep reflecting it in our time and anyone who refuses to do so, should be scolded.

In the Mozart quartet there were plenty of introspective moments, light and careless moments, and also moments that you could go all-out. My professor successfully turned this quartet into something incredibly dull, held back, castrated. Not what Mozart intended, I am sure. No artist would want that.

But don't most pieces with the exception of Baroque keyboard music do have detailed instructions by the composer about how they should be performed?

Most of them certainly don't... the Mozart quartet I played definitely didn't have written instructions by Mozart, saying: "be chill with the fortes".

In fact, the last piece I remember playing that had detailed instructions on how to perform it, was a contemporary piece written 2 years ago.

I really don't understand what you're getting at here.

When I talk about instructions, I mean all the tempo indications, articulation markings, dynamic markings, and verbal instructions the composer writes, i.e. everything but the notes and rhythms. Many composers leave very detailed instructions of that type.

When Mozart writes forte, he assumes the players understand it not an absolute and leaves the rest to the skill/interpretation of the players. No instructions, even very detailed ones with the exception of metronome markings, are absolute. And I doubt any composer would insist a passage be played at some exact speed.

No matter how detailed the instructions, there is usually a big part that is unwritten. The performer then 'fills in the blanks'. If they do it in a way that reinforces what is written instead of clashing with it, chances are that they will make a deeper impact on the audience. How to do it? Well... culture helps. And the technical skill to carry it out. Easy, no?

In my opinion you are raising but also mixing different issues together. One is a general discussion about what should be a reasonable performance practice for a historical composer and the latitude that is possible to play that music.

Another issue is the teaching of performance practice and how strict/dogmatic teachers are or should be on certain points.

For your first point, of course that every composer did compose its pieces with an intended musical outcome, which is in large part based on the musical aesthetics of their time and the performance practice/instruments that they used. Of course, 300 years later we can only approach those and a certain latitude is inevitable. There are things we know and others that we assume based on some rationale deductions. For example the fact that all of Mozart keyboard music was composed for instruments which had limited dynamic capabilities (when compared to a modern piano) and limited resonance does imply Mozart had necessarily a certain aesthetic in mind when composing these pieces.

Now does that mean we should, when playing on modern piano, forbid ourselves to use the full capability of that instrument ? I think almost any musician would answer no, as playing Mozart or Bach on a piano is a form of arrangement already but ...... on the other hand that does not mean that everything is musically possible or viable either. The performance of those composers has evolved over time, and it is necessarily rooted in the expectations of our time. I also believe that it makes generally speaking no sense to play composers outside of the aesthetic of their time. I think everybody would agree that singing Monterverdi or Palestrina like Puccini would be silly. Similarly playing Mozart like Beethoven is possible but it would also not make justice to Mozart style. Because then there is no style anymore and any piece will sound like everything else.

I dont think that anyone is scolding pianists for their choice and there is a fairly wide interpretative range for any composer. No one can say what Mozart should sound like precisely. So there isnt any precise model of what is Mozart, or Bach or Chopin, but there is an overall aesthetic model and a historical performance practice. And I certainly support that artistic choice also leads to create less uniformity, but I also believe that we should keep in mind what each composer style is as a beacon to make our personal artistic choices. I cant say that Bach played by Furtwangler or by Gould is how I see Bach, and that it is certainly not aligned with the historical performance practice, but it is a good thing that it exists. The topic is complex enough and cant be properly discussed in a forum like this. But I suggest you read what other great musicians have written on that subject, Tovey, Rosen, Donnington, Badura-Skoda, ......

As far as teaching, dogmatism is never a good thing, but I think it also make sense that teachers focus on giving you what is the current accepted performance practice, as a starting point. Any teaching is by definition based on an agreed framework. Just like at the conservatories, futur composers learn how to write model fugues. What you decide to do with this knowledge afterwards is your choice once you are equipped with the skills , the musical sense and the knowledge. You have plenty of time ahead of you to rebel against the teaching of your professors.

A very good answer IMO. I think it also clarifies the OPs questions which I found very difficult to follow.

I have noticed 2 things so far:

1) I am continuing to speak to a wall, despite trying my best to articulate my ideas in a clear manner. I may not be very good at expressing myself, that is true, so maybe that is the problem.

2) Some people are confusing me for a typical conservatory student who should know his place and stop rebelling against professors until he learns the fundamentals of music interpretation. I know how much I still have to learn, and I am NOT comparing myself to any true master; but I no longer play, nor write music like a "student" who needs constant help and feedback from professors, despite me still being a "student" by name for a few more months.

To put it more simply; I wholeheartedly support the idea of giving the classical performer FAR more freedom with his/her interpretation.

Sidokar, you describe the difference between Beethoven and Mozart almost like the difference between classical and jazz. Classical and jazz are two different styles, with a completely different feel, rhythmic approach, the improvisatory aspect etc, so of course, I wouldn't want to play jazz the same way that classical music is played because it's a completely different cultural space. But the difference between Mozart and Beethoven is NOT like that at all.

And how, tell me, would interpretations all start to sound the same, when people start to focus less on historical practice? How? I think through the way I would like to play every piece before I perform it... of course I find something different to do in Appassionata, than I would in Bach's Chromatic fantasy and fugue. They won't be sounding the same, that's ridiculous.

Perhaps the way I think of it is just this - I play music the way I would like to play it, not the way I think it should be played in other people's opinion. I respect the markings the composer wrote IN THE SCORE, but unless there are no explicit WRITTEN/VERBAL instructions to interpret it in a certain way, I am going my own way in regards to the "style".

I agree with everything you said from the beginning.

Not sure if I understand; do you agree with everything I have stated on this matter from the beginning of this thread, or just... the 2 points that you quoted? If it's the latter, then i'm confused.

But anyway; I didn't create this thread for people to agree with me. I stated what I think about this, and why it is killing classical music. That's all

I agree with everything you said.

Beethoven was very angry at Czerny for playing in public from memory because he missed things in the score. He'd have been apoplectic if Czerny had intentionally changed anything!

Should Bach be played like Chopin?

Why not?? Enjoy the Chopinesque rubato and dynamic gradations....and that long piano cadenza is totally irresistible :

About the "killing" of classical music. I wouldn't blame tradition at large, but rather the current standard, at least in the piano world.
In the 19th century it was actually the tradition to take (educated) liberties with the music, as long as the playing expressed what was thought to be the composer's intention. Tradition has changed a lot since then. Now the standard is perhaps overly conservative, and this is what OP is probably objecting to. Who/what can we blame for such a shift in tradition? Is it technology, with its obsession with ultra-high-fidelity that magnifies the so-called imperfections of performances? Or competitions that by design reward performers with more unanimously acceptable styles? Most likely a combination of these factors and more.

I think of things differently. In the 19th century, the performer was glorified at the expense of the composer(and I don't think any liberties they took were necessarily educated)but by the beginning of the 20th century the place of the performer started changing to expressing something closer what the composer wrote. IOW less of an ego trip for the pianist.

Some present day competitions may reward performers with conservative approaches, but I don't think this is always the case and is mostly a misconception. In fact, i think the winners of the biggest competitions these days are all sensationally interesting pianists with brilliant interpretations.

I wholeheartedly disagree, but ok.