Steve Schwartz <[log in to unmask]> writes:

>Len Fehskens:
>
>>...  Where I start to feel uncomfortable is when someone asserts,
>>without supporting evidence, that their edition is what the original
>>artist "really intended" or "would have intended".
>
>But you get that with *any* scholarly edition.  Someone has decided
>exactly that.  So you have that problem just about every time you
>perform the score of a composer who's not around to tell you otherwise.

No, you don't.  Please note Len's key phrase "without supporting evidence."
Most composers left plenty of supporting evidence about what they intended.
Without it, we would have no basis at all for conclusions about their
works.  But let us confine ourselves to the issue of repeats, which is,
after all, the topic.

>>I'm sorry, all I know of what the artist intended is what the artist left.
>
>Actually, you don't even know what the artist left is what he intended.
>You can't, probably, read minds.  Better to leave the question of
>intention aside altogether.

Once again (pardon me if I'm repeating myself) we do not have to read minds
or communicate with the dead.  The composer's intention to repeat a passage
is unambiguously placed there by his own hand.  No paranormal abilities are
required.  So, yes, we do know what the composer intended.

>On a mini-discussion on this topic off-list, someone brought up the point
>that every time a wrong note is played, you can condemn the performance
>on the same grounds as omitting the repeat, in which case you consign to
>artistic Erebus some of the greatest performances of all: Schnabel's
>Beethoven, Furtwaengler's Beethoven, Horenstein's Mahler, and so on.

On the first point, no, because a wrong note is unintentional, whereas
a disregarding a repeat is by design.  On the second point.  I dispute
any performance's claim to greatness if it disregards such a fundamental
instruction on the part of the composer (unless the composer has specified
that the repeat is optional), just as I would with a performance that
disregarded tempi, dynamics, had no passion, etc., no matter how famous
the performer/conductor.  You, I, and others have denounced listening to
the music of composers uncritically.  Why should conductors be spared
that either?

>...  How do you decide whether a particular performance is valid if it
>differs from the score in its treatment of repeats - say it follows some
>and not others or that it follows none? Why not do so in the same way you
>decide about any performance, including one absolutely scrupulous? You
>compare the choice made to the choices possible.  It might turn out that
>the performer has chosen better than the composer.  At least, I see no
>reason why that's a non-starter.

There is absolutely no basis to conclude that the performer knows better
than the composer.  And, no, we do not kill the work, we allow it to exist
in the form the composer intended it to exist.  It is by hacking bits of
it off that it gets killed, at least in a particular performance.  Any
performer who disregards the composer's intentions so blatantly has placed
himself above the music, and that is a cardinal sin for any performer.

-Jocelyn Wang
Culver Chamber Music Series
Come see our web page: www.bigfoot.com/~CulverMusic