Bob Draper wrote:

>But I also feel that the role of the interpreter is often oversold on
>this list.  It is understandable as we have many practicing musicians
>as members and they do not want their craft undervalued.  But as a
>non-musician it seems to me that the technical aspects of say playing a
>piano far outweigh the difficulty of interpretation.  I'd guess that the
>score holds 95% of the magic.  The other 5% being in the interpretation.
>Though I expect others will disagree.  One statement I have come across on
>this list and in a music magazine that the "The genius of Mozart is not in
>the notes" is frankly absurd.  The suggestion here is that the performer
>has almost the role of a disciple in interpreting the gospel.

'The genius of Mozart is not in the notes' is of course rubbish.  But
the emotional content is only *implied* in the notes, and you need an
insightful and imaginative mind to draw it out.  It's the same with, say,
Shakespeare - the poetry in the words is always there, but it makes a
hell of a lot of difference whether you declaim the verse meaningfully,
expressing the moods implied in the words, sorting out rhetorical points
of tension and rest, untangling particularly knotty sentences, or on
the other hand just rattle off endless streams of iambic pentameter.
Similarly, in music you can observe all the note values, follow all the
performance indications on the score, squeeze everything into a steady beat
- ie do everything 'correctly' and it means little or nothing.  The Quatuor
Mosaiques bring Haydn and Mozart alive because they clarify and project -
they bring a lilt and lift into the accompanimants, they dramatize the
interplay of the voices, they follow the harmonic contours of the music,
they highlight differences.  This all becomes less important once you
already know and like a particular piece, but it's vital for those who
come to learn their music by listening.

Felix Delbruck
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