Performing with Structure

This chapter poses the question of how one synthesizes analysis and performance. Its centerpiece is Leathwood’s analysis of local frictions and long-range connections in the pitch structure of Carter’s Changes; his demonstration of their embodiment in guitaristic timbres, tactile shapes, and kinesthetic moves; and his modeling of how such knowledge might be internalized to inspire vital and free performances. “Improvising Changes: Exercises for Guitarists” and an accompanying video provide practical applications. Leong’s Prelude and Postlude frame Leathwood’s material and highlight how a “third culture” of analysis and performance can be inhabited and passed on—modeled and taught in studio and classroom.

Story in Structure

This chapter presents intertwined readings of Schnittke’s Piano Quartet from four points of view: compositional, performative, esthesic, and analytical. Drawing on Schnittke’s description of the Quartet—“at first the attempt to remember” a fragment by Mahler “and then remembrance itself”—it analyzes the work as a rotational form: four passes through the fragment’s material, followed by a statement of the fragment itself. It discusses interpretive and practical considerations in depicting the journey to Mahler’s fragment. It shows that “memory” expresses Romantic irony through its evocation of a fragment from the past, denial of a clear temporal line, and search for an impossible perfection. And it dissects three techniques—rhythmic “formants,” contraction and expansion, and self-similiarity—employed by Schnittke to subvert temporal direction. Audience and performer viewpoints taken from a concert and interactive presentation supplement the authors’ interpretation. The authors’ live performance on audio (Ingolfsson, Eckert, Glyde, and Leong) complements the written text.

Understanding of Structure

The meters of the trio at the center of Bartók’s Fifth String Quartet scherzo are (3 + 2 + 2 + 3) / 8, (2 + 3 + 2 + 3) / 8, and (2 + 3 + 3 + 2) / 8. Well-known string quartets differ greatly in their interpretations of these meters, with rhythmic performance ranging from accented and angular to lyrical and flexible. What are the main differences in rhythmic interpretation, and what might explain them? This chapter explores the structure of the trio’s melodies in relation to Bartók’s writings on folk music (Hungarian folk song and Bulgarian meter), and examines ten recordings of the trio empirically. It concludes that the most significant distinctions in interpretation of the trio’s rhythms link to a folk-song-like understanding of its melodies, and that Bartók’s coaching influence coincides with such understanding. Bartók’s instructions to the Kolisch Quartet on the performance of the trio’s rhythms, and Bartók’s own recorded performances of similar rhythms, are examined. A performers’ guide and video interview with András Fejér of the Takács Quartet provide practical interpretive resources. Audio examples complement the written text.

Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration

This chapter reflects on the function of shared items, shared objectives (activity objects and epistemic objects), and shared agents in the book’s collaborations. Shared items included scores, notation, poetry, Mahler’s sketch fragment, Bartók’s letter to the Kolisch Quartet, and recordings. The pursuit of shared objectives (book chapters, interpretive insights) gave rise to “experimental systems” and the “problem spaces” of differing disciplinary approaches. Shared agents entailed both Leong’s identity as theorist-pianist (underlying joint performing and rehearsing experiences) and the multidisciplinary identity of several of her collaborators. Issues of representation and voice in scholar-performer collaborations are raised. Institutional and disciplinary factors affecting scholar-performer collaborations (particularly in the United Kingdom and in North America) are discussed.

Script versus Structure

This chapter contextualizes the authors’ Music Theory Online essay (2005), which examined Babbitt’s None but the Lonely Flute from the points of view of flutist and theorist. That essay investigated the significant technical and interpretational challenges facing performers of Lonely Flute, their interface with listener experience, and their intertwining with structure and surface. It analyzed the compositional dexterity found in the work’s array structure, in its modes of projection in both pitch and time domains, and in its composing out to produce a rich variety of cross-references. In short, it demonstrated specific examples of interwoven performative and compositional virtuosity in Lonely Flute, explored how such virtuosity is concealed or displayed, and traced its role in defining the work’s narrative. The authors had learned the piece simultaneously: McNutt by playing it and Leong by analyzing it. In her “Postscript on Process,” McNutt described the tensions inherent in the two authors’ different ways of getting to know the piece. This contextualization explores those tensions to illuminate how performers’ and analysts’ ways of knowing might not intersect—and might even clash. McNutt’s complete performance of Lonely Flute on video closes the chapter.

Drama in Structure

Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen is interpreted as ritual cum drama, enacted by its two pianists. Beginning with the work’s compositional background, this chapter profiles Visions’ two original pianists (Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod), describes the occasion of its premiere, and outlines its extramusical inspiration in Messiaen’s visions of the Amen. Messiaen uses combinatorial means to create Visions’ ritual and drama: repeating, varying, superposing, juxtaposing, combining, and recombining. His combinatorial materials are themes, timbres, and harmonic and rhythmic modules: two types of themes (the Creation theme and the blackbird’s song), two types of timbral elements (birdsong and percussion sounds), and two types of pedals (rhythmic and melodic-harmonic) are discussed, exploring their construction, locations, and functions in Visions. The two pianos themselves, along with the constructs of ritual and drama, are viewed as combinatorial components; the chapter closes by showing how the two pianos, in combination, enact ritual and drama through their relationships.

Creation of Structure

This chapter questions the role of the notated score in delimiting structure. Examining first the soundness of the published editions of Schoenberg’s Op. 19, No.4, and then analyzing the score and recordings by three pianists associated with Schoenberg interpretation (Edward Steuermann, Maurizio Pollini, and Mitsuko Uchida), it demonstrates how structure can be defined by the interpreter—analyst or performer. A view of interpretation as creation is set against a backdrop of a score’s affordances, including those of text or script.

Determination of Structure

How can a performer’s voice complement that of a theorist in the analysis of a musical work? This chapter takes the opening cadenza of Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand as a case study. Certain performance considerations—embodied facets, instrumental affordances, and affective implications—comprise warp and weft not only of the Concerto’s execution and interpretation, but also of its structure and meaning. The chapter explores the cadenza: visual and kinesthetic aspects, rhetorical and tonal function, form and structure, rhythmic features and performance issues. The analysis is informed by the authors’ experiences of performing the Concerto and by historical recordings of the work. Video performances and audio examples complement the written text.

Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration

This chapter describes the things and people that facilitate collaboration across disciplines: shared items, shared objectives, and shared agents. (These concepts draw from literature on collaboration in the sciences and from research on intercultural communication.) Shared items function differently from discipline to discipline, while being identifiable across disciplines. Shared objectives comprise activity objects, the prospective outcomes of collaboration, and epistemic objects, knowledge sought. Shared agents function within and across two or more disciplines. In this book, shared items are represented primarily by scores (and recordings), activity objects by the book’s chapters, epistemic objects by interpretations of pieces and of analysis-performance relations, and shared agents by scholar-performers or performer-scholars. Mechanisms and processes of collaboration are briefly described: strategies for collaborating when views diverge, and degrees of collaborative convergence (working in parallel, translating or mediating knowledge for mutual influence, transforming domain-specific knowledge into new cross-domain knowledge).

Performers, Structure, and Ways of Knowing

This opening chapter presents the book’s overarching project: the illumination of relations between analysis and performance through theorist-performer collaborations on twentieth-century works. The project is set in the context of two distinct though overlapping disciplines: the tradition of relating analysis and performance within the field of music theory, and the field of musical performance studies. Musical structure, on which the book focuses, is broadly defined as relations among parts and whole, emerging through interactions of objective materials and subjective agency. Ways of knowing that arise in the course of relating analysis and performance are encapsulated by wissen (knowing that), können (knowing how), and kennen (knowing, as in knowing a person). The book’s title and form (a theme and variations) are briefly described. Two rehearsal vignettes (from Crumb’s Four Nocturnes for violin and piano and Shende’s Throw Down or Shut Up!), the first accompanied by a performance video, frame the chapter.