{"id":8314,"date":"2012-12-09T08:40:10","date_gmt":"2012-12-09T13:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=8314"},"modified":"2012-12-09T08:40:10","modified_gmt":"2012-12-09T13:40:10","slug":"classical-music-101-a-piece-of-music-is-not-so-much-a-thing-as-a-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2012\/12\/09\/classical-music-101-a-piece-of-music-is-not-so-much-a-thing-as-a-process\/","title":{"rendered":"Classical Music 101: A piece of music is not so much a thing as a process"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A chorister’s notes for “Behold the Lamb of God,” for Handel’s Messiah<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Australian conductor Alexander Briger arrived in Toronto four years ago to begin rehearsals for the Canadian Opera Company’s production of Leos Jan\u00e1cek’s From the House of the Dead<\/em>, he brought along his uncle’s orchestral score.<\/p>\n

His uncle, the late Sir Charles Mackerras was a world authority on Jan\u00e1cek, and the score helped fill in the blanks between the printed notes and the final sound.<\/p>\n

Briger took me on a walk through the score. Mackerras’s trail was marked in red pencil, highlighting tricky tempo changes, correcting wrong notes and providing additional insight on phrasing and overall pacing.<\/p>\n

Each page of the slightly dog-eared book contained these notes, visually underscoring the disadvantage faced by a conductor who didn’t have the volume in his or her hands.<\/p>\n

Even as an ordinary piano student, in my early teens, I remember my teacher pulling out two or three versions of a score to compare the differences with me. I quickly figured out how some publishers were reliably unreliable — Schirmer being the prime culprit.<\/p>\n

Comparing different editions and, if it’s available, a facsimile of the original manuscript, presents a whole view of the notes. But not even the most diligent notes from a composer — someone like Mahler, for instance — provide all of the information on rests, breath marks, accents and the inevitable spots where the music needs to speed up and slow down.<\/p>\n

Handel’s Messiah<\/em>, which is in the process of being deployed all around us, is one of the prime examples of musical evolution.<\/p>\n

There’s Handel’s original manuscript, which no one except for Toronto’s Aradia Ensemble seems to use (they call it the Dublin Messiah<\/a>, and it’s coming up on Dec. 22). There are umpteen revisions by the composer, made for different occasions and different singers.<\/p>\n

The Toronto Symphony and Tafelmusik invariably present different sequences of recitatives, airs and choruses, for example.<\/p>\n

There is Mozart’s modernization of the score, which we’ll hear in the GTA on Dec. 15, thanks to Markam’s Kindred Spirits Orchestra<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And then there is the even more modern, downright whimsical spin that Sir Andrew Davis put on Messiah<\/em> last year.<\/p>\n

But the score — and its various permutations — is still only a starting point. If possible, one listens to several notable interpretations to see how others have translated print into sound.<\/p>\n

And then, all information in hand, the artist sets about making their own statement about the music.<\/p>\n

Nothing is black and white. Music is not a thing. It is a process.<\/p>\n

+++<\/p>\n

As an extreme example of this process, using Messiah<\/em>, here is a snippet from a staged version brought to an unsuspecting Viennese audience by Florian Boesch & Ensemble Matheus at the Theater an der Wien three years ago:<\/p>\n