Len Fehskens replies to me:

>>And, just so you don't think I've gone napping, your position does
>>not agree with the composer's intent, but only with what he wrote.
>
>And what better guide to to the composer's intent do we have?

Probably none.  But you assume that the composer always writes what he or
she intends.  I myself always intend to write a masterpiece.  If you ask me
how many I've actually written, I'd have to admit I don't know.  Why worry
about the composer's intent at all? What you have is *only* the score - not
intent.  The only practical question is how closely you want to realize the
score in performance.

I'm reminded of this week's episode of "West Wing" (a US tv show about
an American President and his advisors).  A very substantial financial
contributor wants the President to speak out on allowing gays in the
military.  Even though the President agrees with the man, he says that
it's the last thing the man really wants, since any subject becomes a
matter for debate the moment the President says anything publically.
In short, be careful what you wish for.

The notion of "complete faithfulness to the score" has the advantages of
being easy to understand and apparently on the side of the downtrodden
artist.  However, a composer would have to be an idiot, a masochist, or
master of a completely electronic medium to want complete faithfulness
to what's written.  Every little nuance a performer puts in not already
part of the score, every micro push and retard of tempo - everything
that makes music alive, in short - goes against the doctrine of
faithfulness if these expressive devices don't appear in the score.  On
the other hand, every wrong note also deviates.  Some have said that the
difference is unintentional.  Again, you don't know intent - in this case,
the performer's.  It may be a deliberate alteration.  The only thing you
have is the performance.  If you're going to judge a performance on the
basis of what the performer intends, you run into the same problem as
before.  But very few people, I suspect, do such a thing.  They judge on
some other basis.  This, you may protest, is the reduction to an absurdity,
and so it is.  Nevertheless, it raises the questions what you would allow
that the composer doesn't specify and why, and these are far closer to what
actually goes on when most people listen - including those who advocate
complete faithfulness.  In short, there's critical listening going on of
the sort that Jocelyn and (probably) everyone on all sides of this debate
advocates.  The score is static.  A performance never is.  All completely
faithful performances to a single score must sound identical.  No two
performances by human beings ever do.  So "faithfulness" becomes a slogan
and a piety, rather than something out of real life.  It's not even a
desireable ideal.

I haven't read anyone in this debate protesting something they liked or
thought showed the composer off to advantage, of course, and I'm sure, if
we really looked, we could find such moments that weren't written into the
score.  No one talks about this because no one feels an ox has been gored,
even though we're no longer faithful.  I'm simply asking people to look a
bit more closely at how they decide.

The proof is always in the listening, except when we're so into catechism.
If several discussants told you that X didn't observe a repeat and you
believed that such a failure always meant that the performance sinned
against the light, they've just saved you a great deal of time.  In fact,
the only reason to listen is to confirm that the repeat isn't taken, and
then you can go about your business.  You really don't have to listen
critically at all.  You just have to be able to count to two.  However,
if you believe that many other elements go into a fine performance, you
still have to listen critically all the way through.  I grant that not
observing a repeat is a major alteration of form.  It may very well sink
a performance of a Beethoven or Mahler symphony - although I'd say that
probably other horrendous things are going on as well - but I'm open to the
possibility that it may not.  On the other hand, it may make no difference
or might even be an improvement to a Clementi sonatina or a Beethoven
morceau.  For that matter, it might even improve a Bruckner symphony.
In any case, I make up my mind once I've listened.

I just bought the Philips set of Tureck playing the Bach Partitas.  Tureck
observed every single repeat when she recorded.  However, to fit the six
works onto two CDs, she allowed the engineers to cut out the repeat in the
Sarabande movement of Partita No.  4.  Notice "she" allowed them.  They
couldn't ask the composer's permission, for obvious reasons.  How many
years in purgatory will she spend? Of course, she does all of them on
piano, for Bach's sake.  Move her closer to the fire.  Better we shouldn't
listen.

Steve Schwartz