By Mark Miner

I re-read my art entry and noticed that I had dropped a teaser for a discussion of performance art, but not followed up on it.  Here, then, is my follow up.

Wynton Marsalis, in an interview with NPR last week, said that music was the essence of the art of expression.  He gave the example of a Martin Luther King speech delivered by the man himself, or by someone else.  It is the same words with an entirely different speech.  The performer influences the art.

Herein lies the difference between a CD and a concert hall.  The performer has his own idea of what the work sounds like.  The composer may have written a very well-defined piece, controlling dynamics, rigidly specifying the tempo, and on and on, but two different orchestras will have two different sounds.  If it is a solo piece, the sounds will likely differ even more between performers, and even between performances.  An old performer may return to a piece she did years ago and have a very different take on it.

Everyone is influenced by different things at different times, and the way they see the world is correlated to their life.  Mr. King saw a powerful battle between right and wrong in his present day, and he delivered a powerful address.  Those who delivered that speech on MLK day 2007 saw a day of remembrance and reflection on the battles of yesterday.  Thus, two different speeches, one set of words.

Of course, there can be a dark side to the discussion of performer-as-artist.  Consider the following anecdote:  

My fiancée performed a composition called Ukiyo-e, a solo harp piece inspired by the Japanese wood-block art of the same name.  The piece called for a good bit of improvisation, with cues to, essentially, "play around on these notes for about this long".  The only recording she could obtain was by a woman named Yolanda Kondanassis.  As Virginia practiced the piece, she developed a feel for it and an idea for what it should sound like, and figured out how she liked the improv sections.  She then performed it for a competition.  One of he judges was Ms. Kondanassis.  She did not do very well.  

Hopefully this illustrates one of the dangers the performer-artist faces: prejudice.  If I hear a Tchaikovsky piano concerto, I measure it against my recording of that piece.  Hopefully, though, I can realize this and accept the new performer's take on the piece, judging it with right judgment.  When Yolanda penalized Virginia on Ukiyo-e, was it because of poor playing or because she "did it different"?  I don't know, but this is an enormous pitfall that must be guarded against.

When does a piece pass out of the composer's hands and into the performer's?  If I play the James Bond theme, it is obviously not mine.  If I play it in a minor key, well, that's not how it was written, but it's still the same music, pretty much.  If I begin to embellish the chords or do a flight on the higher strings above the main theme, it is further from the composer's intent, and on it goes.  Virginia tells me that Chopin was influenced by Beethoven and Mozart, yet he sounds very little like them.  What, then is an influence, and what is a derivative?  

I believe it is useful to picture an analogical scale, with a recording on the one hand and a virtuosic genius on the other.  The "art value" of a performance is thus zero at the recording level, and complete at the other end.  I submit this to be perhaps a useful metric for performers and audiences alike.  

 

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