Blog #6

Now you hear it, now you don't...

Well-chosen were the three readings for this assignment - Kozinn, Slonimsky, Hogwood - not in tandem do they work best, but each of them chooses to "define" or "catalogue" (but best: to attack) Urtext as an idea, but from different perspectives. Slonimsky first of all (tongue-in-cheek not) reduces it reasonably to an outgrowth of "Germanism" - what I like to call the Teutonic Tectonics of Theoreticals. In other words, that which can be analyzed SHALL be analyzed. That which can not be analyzed (and certainly not by the same system) will therefore lie fallow and be ignored - as if somehow the musical work was less valid, because it defies the theoretical analysis. Naturally I'm talking about Schenkerian analysis here - analogous to Freud, but far more painful. Bach, Beethoven and Brahms can be analyzed in these patterns - the French composers widely not. Or Spanish or English or Russian. Different system.

Urtext is an outgrowth of the German need to make order out of a chaotic musical universe. Kind of like the unity principle - ONE version MUST be better than the others - it's just a matter of cutting through the weeds, follows this line of thinking. So if BACH made versions of BWV 1000 for the lute, for the organ and for the violin, then the race has started. Which one was first, which one represents the PRIMAL version, and which is therefore somehow changed or weakened or watered or typhooned? Without accepting the possibility, of course, that one version doesn't exclude the other.

Hogwood goes into more detail than do Slonimsky and Kozinn regarding the philosophical underpinnings of being sold a bill of goods in the first place. It's entirely possible that a wrong note is a right note; that a right note is a wrong note, and everything else in between. Examining microscopic pen scratchings to try to divine who made microscopic changes becomes the political battle of the century. Bach wrote a cello suite, which he "reused" later as a lute suite, adding bass notes and lines that would support the work musically - yet there is no ms of the work in Bach's hand.

People scream bloody blue murder of the music - suddenly there's a case that the 5th Cello Suite isn't for a "normal" cello at all, but rather for a smaller cello slung over the shoulder like Arlo Guthrie. And we're back to the races.

Another point - just because we think we can "serialize" the music doesn't mean we can get computers to play it. Controlling the options doesn't bring us closer to the composer's "true" intention - only to our understanding of the notes left behind. Kozinn's mention of Copeland's imaginary edit makes the point. Time after time - we discover as performers - sometimes playing a wrong note by accident actually sounds great, if we think about it. We scrape for rules that allow us to "add baroque ornaments" with or without proper baroque authenticity playing a role. We should have sensitivity training - 

Perhaps the most important point - can we even HEAR the music of Bach with "Bachian" ears? not exactly an unimportant turn of events. For instance, Bach's works were primarily written for the church of about 1200 seats. A very fine acoustic to this day for those works. But when we have Mischa Maisky playing a Bach cello suite - we can argue about each bowing, each fingering, chewing through the Urtext - but in the end, does it really matter? Is authenticity really  a substitute for the responsibility of listening with an open mind and heart? To become the Ur-Police isn't what we're trained to do. Critics should be able to be aware enough of variations so that they can comment intelligently to their readers about the differences. Condicutors / interpreters feel no such obligation. It's the meddling of musicologists - the the fear of being stamped "unauthentic" that force us to have this thing dallied in front of us at all. It scares the artist into following the rank and file, to be true to a false and impossibly naive goal of surrendering our musical abilities to the "will" of the composer. But based on what? If Bach was a spiritual man - and he was - would any performer care if Bach was opposed to playing his music in concert halls, on TV? What if Bach was against the idea of canned music - would people follow his intentions meticulously? "No, we can't record Bach - at all - he jotted down somewhere that doesn't want us to do it."

Tell that to Glenn Gould.

 

- Alex Jacobowitz