John Rink

The Form of Performance: Analyzing Pattern Distribution in Select Recordings of Chopin's Mazurka Op. 24 No. 2

Performances of the same piece can differ from one another in innumerable ways and for many different reasons. The aim of the current study is to analyze the timing and dynamic patterns of a large sample of performances in order to explore the musical reasons for both the occurrence of such patterns and the differences in their location and characteristics. The investigation focuses on twenty-nine performances of Chopins Mazurka Op. 24 No. 2, which features clear four-bar phrases and correspondingly consistent sectional units, but which also has characteristics such as a steady crotchet accompaniment that remain constant throughout. This results in a potential tension between “through-performed” and sectionalized features. In this study we examine the performances accordingly, investigating the relationship between the works structural and thematic characteristics on the one hand and the timing and dynamic characteristics of performances on the other. Following this, we narrow our investigation of these and other features by undertaking a comparative analysis of three recordings by the same performer, Artur Rubinstein. A toolkit of methods is employed, including an approach that has been little used for this purpose: Self-Organizing Maps. This method enables the systematic analysis and comparison of different performances by identifying recurrent expressive patterns and their location within the respective performances. The results show that, in general, the structure of the performed music emerges from and is defined by the performance patterns. Particular patterns occur in a range of contexts, and this may reflect the structural and/or thematic status of the locations in question. Whereas the performance patterns at section ends seem to be most closely related to the large-scale structural context, however, those within some sections apparently arise from typical features of the mazurka genre. Performances by the same performer over a 27-year span are characterized by striking similarities as well as differences on a global level in terms of the patterns themselves as well as the use thereof.

Methods for analysing recordings

If analysis means studying something in order to gain knowledge and understanding of it, then there are any number of ways of analysing recordings, and any number of reasons for doing so. Performers, recording engineers, historians of recording technology and historians of performance practice listen to recordings with quite different kinds of knowledge and understanding in mind: analysis means different things to them. The same applies to acoustic scientists, record collectors and archivists, or communication theorists, not to mention people in the A&R divisions of record companies whose job is to spot the next big hit. The list goes on. This chapter basically assumes that your reason for analysing recordings is to gain a better understanding of them as culturally meaningful objects, and more specifically that you are primarily interested in the effect of music as experienced in performance, whether live or recorded. In that sense its orientation is musicological, although that too is a term that can be defined in different ways. Recordings are a largely untapped resource for the writing of music history, the focus of which has up to now been overwhelmingly on scores, and recent technological developments have opened up new ways of working with recordings – ways that make it much easier than before to manipulate them, in the sense that we are used to manipulating books and other written sources. I begin by introducing software that makes it possible to navigate a number of different recordings, and to create visualisations that help to heighten aural understanding of what is going on in the music.

In respect of performance: the view from musicology

This article surveys a range of musicological approaches to musical performance. It first addresses the place of Western art music within the world of performance at large; it then considers the retrospective means by which musicologists have investigated individual performances and the manifold issues related to them. The discussion turns thereafter to the practical application of research to performance. A case study of Chopins Nocturne in E-flat major Op. 9 No. 2 demonstrates how the gaps between research and practice might be bridged to enhance the moment of truth that each performance represents. Emphasis is placed on the need for both mediation and a contextualized understanding of whatever it is that historical, analytical and other modes of research might offer the performer.

Recording practices and the role of the producer

Introduction The editors 1 Personal takes: Learning to live with recording Susan Tomes 10 A short take in praise of long takes Peter Hill 13 1 Performing for (and against) the microphone Donald Greig 16 Personal takes: Producing a credible vocal Mike Howlett 30 ‘It could have happened’: The evolution of music construction Steve Savage 32 2 Recording practices and the role of the producer Andrew Blake 36 Personal takes: Still small voices Jonathan Freeman-Attwood 54 Broadening horizons: ‘Performance’ in the studio Michael Haas 59 3 Getting sounds: The art of sound engineering Albin Zak 63 Personal takes: Limitations and creativity in recording and performance Martyn Ware 77 Records and recordings in post-punk England, 1978–80 Richard Witts 80

The profession of music

This chapter explores a rich seam within music’s economic and social history during the first half of the nineteenth century. Successive political and economic developments and demographic responses to them impacted heavily on musical culture, causing an exponential increase in the number of public concerts as well as rapid expansion in the worlds of music publishing, music journalism, music teaching, and instrument manufacture and sales. New musical professions sprang up as a largely urban music-consuming public voracious in appetite but variably refined in taste exerted growing financial power. Established professions either evolved in reaction to intense market pressures or disappeared entirely. Certain obstacles make it difficult to chart the profession of music – or, more accurately, the professions of music – from 1800 to 1850. One is the sheer diversity of professional activities, which prohibits detailed investigation and watertight conclusions across the board. Another is the diversity of centres in which they were practised, ranging from capital cities to provincial locations in any number of different countries. A third is the diversity of consumers at the time – above all, the ‘middle class’, a socially disparate group with complex hierarchies of status and taste that defy concise summary. My approach is therefore highly selective, offering case-study illustrations drawn from a broad spectrum of professions, geographic locations and consumers, rather than a comprehensive coverage doomed from the start. Although eclectic, my strategy at least reflects the lack of cohesion within the profession of music itself during this period.

Performing Music: Shared Concerns@@@The Practice of Performance: Studies in Musical Interpretation

Preface Part I. Fundamentals: 1. What do we perform? Roy Howat 2. Expression in performance: generativity, perception and semiosis Eric Clarke 3. Musical motion and performance: theoretical and empirical perspectives Patrick Shove and Bruno H. Repp 4. Deliberate practice and elite musical performance Ralf Th. Krampe and K. Anders Ericsson Part II. Structure and Meaning in Performance: 5. The conductor and the theorist: Furtwangler, Schenker and the first movement of Beethovens Ninth Symphony Nicholas Cook 6. A curious moment in Schumanns Fourth Symphony: structure as the fusion of affect and intuition David Epstein 7. Beginning-ending ambiguity: consequences of performance choices Janet M. Levy 8. Strategies of irony in Prokofievs Violin Sonata in F minor Op. 80 Ronald Woodley Part III. Performance and Process: 9. Performance and analysis: interaction and interpretation Joel Lester 10. Analysis and the act of performance William Rothstein 11. The pianist as critic Edward T. Cone 12. Playing in time: rhythm, metre and tempo in Brahmss Fantasien Op. 116 John Rink Index.

Chopin: The Piano Concertos: Chopin's third concerto

Contexts Chopins enthusiasm for the stile brillante waned rapidly during his early years in Paris. Only a handful of virtuoso pieces follow the two concertos – among them, the Grand duo concertant for piano and cello on themes from Meyerbeers Robert le diable (1831), the Variations brillantes Op. 12 on a theme of Herold (1833) and the Rondo Op. 16 (ca 1833). None of these comes close to the concertos conceptually or expressively, and it is understandable why, having brought the stile brillante ‘to perfection’, Chopin should henceforth have favoured the more individual artistic style he had forged in Warsaw in the late 1820s and in Vienna and Paris from 1830 onwards. Nevertheless, his ongoing exploitation of virtuoso textures and procedures in other musical contexts remains one of his most significant compositional achievements. Starting with the Etudes Op. 10, Chopin utterly transformed the conventional gestures of the brilliant style, deriving new powers from the archetypal alternation between lyricism and display, and employing virtuosity for profoundly expressive purposes – as in the ‘finales’ of the four ballades, which employ a ‘white heat of virtuosity’ to ‘exorcise earlier conflicts and tensions’. These and other large-scale works – including the scherzos, fantasies and sonatas – indirectly draw upon the precedent set by Op. 11 and Op. 21, which themselves stand apart from the conventional by reinterpreting the traditions that shaped them. Against this background, Chopins Allegro de concert , published in 1841, comes as a surprise in its blatant exploitation of the stile brillante , only partially mediated by the stylistic consolidation of the 1830s.