Play like an artist, not a musicologist!

“Museum Music.” That’s what a pianist friend once dubbed performances of masterworks by pianists whose excessive reverence for the score sucked the will to make music right out of her. These performances were correct. Clean. Safe. And boring as hell.

What happened to piano performances in the past 100 years? Recordings from the first half of the 20th century offer examples of master players taking multiple liberties with the written score. There was an understanding that the notes and markings on the page were a gateway to the music, not the music itself. Compare recordings from that era with those made in the past 50 years and the differences become immediately apparent. Today’s interpretations are faster and tidier. Most follow what we think we know of the “composer’s intent.” But many of them lack the communication and the humanity that shines through the notes performed by the top players of the past.

There’s a reason why so many classical piano fans prefer to listen to the older recordings and I think it’s because our current obsession with the purity of the score has turned beloved pieces into Museum Music. We may have cleansed the music of the mistakes and excesses of the past, but in doing so we’ve also sanitized it to the point of losing its humanity. We’re so obsessed with perfection that we forget that composers themselves want their music to live, not just be correct. Composer and pianist Simeon Walker said it best when he wrote, regarding his composition “Compline,”

“Remember—the notes on the page are a guide on the path; not an absolute truth.”

Why have so many pianists forgotten this? After all, what’s more important—the manuscript or the music that can be realized from it? The obvious answer is the music, but so many of us fail to remember this in our zeal to hold ourselves and every other pianist to a rigid set of rules—ones that may or may not serve the music we’re hoping to recreate.

I’ve encountered score Puritans my whole career, most recently several months ago when a respected colleague spent 15 minutes of our phone conversation ranting about another pianist who played a measure of a masterwork in a manner he considered to be incorrect. I didn’t say it at the time but I wanted to ask, “was it musical? Did it move you?”

I’m grateful for the efforts of musicologists whose work has opened the magic of non-contemporary pieces to me. Without their scholarship we would miss much of the glory of the past by overlaying too much of the present on the notes. But as an artist, I chafe at being handed a list of rules and regulations that I must follow every time I explore a piece of music. And I mourn when I hear one generic performance after another of music that by its very nature has the power to shake us to our cores if we only allowed it to sing without the corset we’ve stuffed it into.

The perfect, historically correct performance of any piece can easily acquired. All that’s needed is to remove the human element and let AI do the work. The result? A recording that no one wants to listen to. Real life music happens through the minds and fingers of real life performers. And, because we’re not identical people, each interpretation reflects the heart, sole, and life experience of the artist. As pianists we can use scholarship to engage with the score, but at some point, head learning must be set aside so that a real, personal encounter with the music can take place or nothing magical happens. The truly gifted performer of any generation knows that their job is to walk through the doorway of the score and engage with the dangerous, untamed wilds of the music itself. They know that if they fail to bring their humanity to the music that it will fail to touch their listeners. They base their performances not on rules and regulations but on love. This love allows them to transcend the score as well as themselves. This love brings the music they love out of a sterile museum and into the streets of real life. Smudges or mistakes may happen, but that’s just part of real life music.

Photo by Amauri Mejia, courtesy of UpSplash