July 26, 2012

• Beauty, Music, and Entertainment

  So this post has been a long time brewing.  It's the question of what a musician does in performing music, and how that relates to the beauty of music itself.

  I would venture to say that when most of us go to music, we seek to be entertained.  Venue makes a difference since going to Grant Park in Chicago will have a distinctly different feeling than going to the Symphony.  Here the participant is engaged in making a conscious choice in seeking the environment that plays to the sides of entertainment or Art.  Of course seldom is it one or the other, but my perception is that pop "concert" venues with wine and cheese look for entertainment value rather than an artistic quality found at hushed concert halls.  The important thing here is the audience.  Venue aside however, the music itself is the same and must be interpreted by the one(s) playing it. 

  Below you will find links to Vivaldi's Presto section in "Summer." (originally I wanted to compare He's a Pirate, but this was more interesting)

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NLiipyXcjo (a more "classical version")

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNcYT7jpH9E%20 (Joshua Bell, lots of energy, but still in classical mode)

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g65oWFMSoK0&feature=related (Mari Silje, less energy than Bell, still in classical mode)

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3OVQPjk7nE (David Garrett, edited video, fast, very separated notes)

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EHhxPF1-YA&feature=related (Vanessa Mae, music video, lots of energy, introduction of techno beat)

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2o8SqEvwu0 (Bond, quartet, studio produced, "plain" classical sound, techno + electronic)

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcl1ZDL-0Sg (Epica, Metal/Rock instrumentation in addition to symphony orchestra)

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_eIM0jqEAo&feature=watch_response (Samvel Yervinyan/Yanni/et. al, free-form based Summer [skipping cello part], almost military, superfast, does Yervinyan ever really smile?)

  These are all different takes on Vivaldi, but I think you will notice a shift in artistic rendering.  I've given notes on a few things that I think differentiates them and what the performed music is trying to do.  It seems the more solo driven and the more orchestral in nature, the more entertainment value there is.  Note also the shift in staying "traditional" to the music and the embellishments and genre interpretations that alter/mask it.  Now should musicians be concerned with "tainting" the original beauty of a piece, the Urtext, so to speak, or should musicians celebrate what can be seen as innovation in musical interpretation?  Are any of these renditions "truer" to what Vivaldi had intended when he composed "Summer?"  Or is there something behind any piece of music, an essence that remains unchanged and ready to be expressed differently?

  I think part of the answer lies in whether one is trying to entertain or to present art.  Again, it's seldom one or the other, and I don't know if Vivaldi would have been concerned with such a question.  Given technology now would Vivaldi had done something different with his Summer?  Of course this is only a hypothetical question.  It's not like we can steal Vivaldi from time in a phone booth and let him wander into a store with electronic keyboards (Bill and Ted anyone?).  No, I think the answer resides with the performer of music and where that person wants the listener to go.  If a person or entity's purpose is to entertain, then the music stops with him/her/it.  Music becomes the artist's tool to point to him/herself as the main attraction and not the music.  How many times have you said, “I’m going to see Bon Jovi tonight?”  Or “I’m going to the symphony tonight?”  True, it’s just easier to reference the artist than the myriad of songs or pieces to be played, but doesn’t it seem like the music gets lost?  So what of art?  Even those that seek to entertain will stake a claim to the music itself.  After all, they are the ones playing it.  I make a subtle distinction here.  Whereas entertainment enslaves music to the musician, art (music) empowers the musician to free it so that it transcends the player, pointing beyond the musician to the music itself. 

  For example, I recently got the itch to start playing the piano again.  It’s amazing what I “remember” playing.  I haven’t played Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” (1^st and 3^rd movements) or his Pathetique for more than a decade, yet my fingers warmed up to the notes nicely.  During one of my run-throughs of Moonlight, I felt something I really hadn’t felt before, or maybe I just wasn’t cognizant of it.  In my early days, I was fairly wooden.  I was focused on technique and playing the notes correctly.  Sure I would pay attention to my dynamics, but you would see little movement from me.  I was in control of the music.  During my run-through, I found the opposite happening.  I breathed with the music, moved with it.  I let it flow naturally, as if moonlight itself were tickling the keys.  I could imagine an old grandfather clock keeping time.  I could sense the beats of each measure as almost heartbeats.  Yeah.  It was unexpected.  Sure, I made mistakes along the way, but I didn’t really care.  I made the correction and moved on.

  I do not know the historicity of “Moonlight,” but I would hope that a listener would be able to feel the music as I had, or at least sense its transcendence because of the way I had played it.  Of course I could never know the reasons or the process that went into the composition of “Moonlight,” but can certainly point to the music and say that it’s in there somewhere. 

  The key difference in presenting music and entertaining is the symbolism that an artist is supposed to represent.  An entertainer takes the music for his or her own, as if the entertainer IS the music.  I’m sure some of you have heard a certain musician IS rock or IS country.  The symbolism is lost.  An artist however, only points to the music because at best the artist can only reveal a part of the process that went into making it, even if he or she was the original composer.  Thus as symbol, the musician embodies the soul of music.  The cold rational process of technique is melded with the abstraction of warm feeling.  As a result, the musician draws an audience into their interpretive framework that ultimately ends with the music, its soul, not the musician him/herself.

  Throughout this post, I’ve set up opposing sides of entertainer and artist as if one could not do what the other could.  At the beginning of my post however, I mentioned the beauty of music, and I think it appropriate to end on that note.  People have different opinions on this, but I think that the appreciation of beauty can only be felt, not analyzed.  As such, entertainer and artist are able to do both as long as they allow the music to transcend and retain the function of symbolism.  Before I go, here is another link to an old favorite musician that I think embodies the soul of music when she plays her solos.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ppgiK8R3OA (Karen Briggs)

  • 2:37 am
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