My website

Since I did videos on How to Develop the Voice and have built a website around, that is where I spend my time. My blog pages are history. No sense talking about it, when we can sing about it. So if you end up here, go here: http://www.vocalmechanics.com/index.html

Robert Burgess

On Interpretation

Since I did videos on How to Develop the Voice and developed a website around it, that is where I spend my time. The following is among the lore. So if you get here, go here: 

http://www.vocalmechanics.com/index.html

Robert Burgess
26 February 2014

ON INTERPRETATION: excerpted from THE VOICE OF THE MIND, by EDGAR HERBERT-CAESARI, p 280:

IN Giuseppe Verdi's "Letters", I Copialettere di Giuseppe Verdi, two of the letters, quoted hereunder, dealing with the mooted question of interpretation, are particularly enlightening. The truth underlying the Master's statement is obvious. Years of practice and experience will shape a mechanism for extracting the fine essence hidden behind the symbols of thought we call notes, melody, and harmony.

Verdi wrote, in Letter CCXXI, April II, 1871, that:

"When singers take it upon themselves to create (as the French still say) their parts, nonsense and confusion result. No! I want only one creator, and will rest content when performance is just simply and exactly as the music is written. The mischief is that music is never rendered as written. For my part, I have never found the 'effects not imagined by the composer' that we often read about in the papers. I do not admit the right of singers, or conductors, to create, because that is a principle which leads to the bottomless pit." Again, in Letter CCXXXIV, he states: "It is indispensable to know the composer's intentions. No success is possible, whatever the music, without intelligent, aye, devoted rendition."

The following extract from an article in The Musical Times, July I, 1930, by the Editor, Dr. Harvey Grace (reprinted with permission), offers strong British views on the same subject:

TECHNIQUE AND INTERPRETATION

By DR. HARVEY GRACE

Technique was probably never less esteemed than it is today. On all sides we see the half-taught dabbler with a temperament (or with plenty of assurance) acclaimed above the man who knows his job so well that he does it without fuss. Musical journalism is now being invaded by writers whose literary ability cannot atone for their ignorance of the fundamentals of music, and one of their favorite and most damnable heresies is that technical knowledge and pedantry are almost synonymous terms. Apparently they hold the view that the more you know about music, the less you enjoy it-that, in fact, ignorance being bliss, it is sheer waste of time to be wise. The blessed (I almost used another adjective) - the blessed word "interpretation" is always at the end of their pen.

Toscanini showed that, performed with superlative technique and with faithfulness to the score, great music is almost always its own interpreter. Why should so many conductors distort rhythm, retard already slow second subjects, add an extra f to fortissimo, another p to pianissimo, and so forth, when (as Toscanini has shown) all the variety that is necessary has been provided by the composer?

Toscanini and his players reminded us thus of the primary importance of technique. Was it Bulow who said that the first thing in pianoforte playing was technique, the second, technique, and the third, technique? Before hastily deciding that he was wrong, let us try to make a list of great performers and composers who have failed through having too much technique. We shall soon give it up, and turn to the far easier task of naming those who have failed through having too little. So, after this triumphant vindication of technique by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, let us have heaps more of it, and a good deal less of that confounded "interpretation". Often it is sheer impertinence prompted by vanity; and sometimes (to adopt a witticism of Beerbohm Tree's) it may even be described as the "loincloth of the incompetent".

On all sides it is agreed that the outstanding feature of the playing under Toscanini was its straightforwardness and its freedom from point-making and underlining-almost all the features, in fact, that mark the performances under conductors of the so-called "interpretative" type. Yet have we ever heard more moving or impressive playing than that of such familiar things as the "Eroica"? The general feeling that all sorts of fresh beauties and details were revealed, was due, as Mr. Ernest Newman pointed out, simply to the fact that for once in a way we heard the music as the composer wrote it, with all its niceties of balance and nuance duly respected. The players had the necessary technique, and the conductor's reverence and modesty prevented him from coming between us and the composer.

* * *

We should now like to advance our own views, for what they are worth, on this thorny matter: What, then, should be the attitude of the singer towards a composition? The first essential is to get self out of the way. By this we mean that the singer, before he moves in to render a vocal work, must view things in their correct perspective. He must consider the composition (1) to be an emanation compounded of two sources springing from two individual minds: the poet's and the composer's; (2) the poet writes his words, mere symbols to express his ideas, imaginings, feelings, moods and emotions that he injects into imaginary persons, things, situations, happenings. And to convey sometimes a flood of such thoughts he has as a vehicle mere words that speak to the mind through the eye, and to the ear through the voice. Words are often inadequate to express the full chain of ideas; but they are eloquent signposts pointing to the hamlets, villages, towns, cities, and capitals of mind in which the poet lives, moves and has his being; (3) the composer reads the words, and the choice of words, the verses and stanzas reveal to him the poet's intentions and so form a picture of events. Much depends on the quality of this picture, on its clarity and details; if pronounced, the poet's original picture will be reinforced by the composer's. Actually, it will be one and the same thing, with the possible and probable addition of delicate beauties from the fine mind of the musician. Thus the two minds vibrate in unison: two more or less identical pictures, one superimposed on the other.

The next step is when the composer puts down in musical notation this dual or joint picture representing a story into which he injects his own feelings, moods and emotions, developing a vocal line with a majestic harmonic support. This tonal picture dovetails perfectly into the poet's symphony, forming, as it does so, a complete work. In one sense the composer's tone-colouring work is more limited than the poet's effort, in that the written or spoken word conveys much more meaning to the average person and to the masses than do the symbols we call musical notation and the melodies and harmonies accruing therefrom. Observe that the composer has to compress within the narrow limits of mere notes strung on a melodic line that rides on more notes com-pounded into a harmonic structure, all the paraphernalia of human thought, the full gamut of moods and emotions, with a few added markings of expression. It is asking much. To help him he has the thrilling voice of melody and the wonderful colouring of harmonic combinations that accompany, support, and embellish the throbbing tones as they rise and fall in stately undulation; a change of key and of time reflecting a change of mood or emotion, an added sharp, or flat, or natural, meaning worlds, or just a fleeting emphasis.

And as he writes, the good composer has in mind his ideas, and ideals of production and execution: perfect attack, well-shaped colourful vowels, smooth tonal continuity, expansion and shrinkage of crescendo and diminuendo, the forward surge of accelerando, the delaying of rit. and rall; he also builds in terms of varying tempi, rhythm, accent and expression, with an occasional rubato - a very important auxiliary much neglected by executants in general. As he composes he hears in his mind the particular voice for which he has to raise a melodic-harmonic edifice. He sees and hears his creatures-who, originally, are the poet's creations-and he lives with them, laughs, cries, suffers for and with them. To him the characters of an opera, or even of a song, are real, live beings; and he loves them all whether they are good or bad. (Puccini, at 4 a.m., was found in tears at the piano by his wife: "Mimi is dead," he muttered. Verdi shed tears when Aida died.

The actual notes, of long or short duration, are after all mere pointers to, and hieroglyphs of, the inner substance of the joint poetic-musical concept-like portholes in a ship affording light and vision to the various cabins and trappings within. Notes are small peepholes in the curtain separating composer and performer through which can be seen the tonal realm that the latter has to "interpret", or explain, and make clear to the audience. In other words, he has to describe the joint picture.

As the melody-cum-harmony is merely the skeleton of the real picture behind, so to speak, it is up to the singer to convey to the audience everything that he sees and feels.

Whatever the nationality of the composer, he speaks the universal language of music. Of course there is both a melodic and harmonic idiom characteristic of national music, the product of a race-mind, just as there is a national idiom in all spoken languages. Even as moods and emotions have their degrees of intensity according to racial idiosyncrasy, so certain individuals of one race will externalize with greater emphasis than others of another, and different individuals of the same race will vary in the degree of intensity of expression. So with a piece of music before him the singer should remember above all that the composer (alive or dead) has a tale to tell, which is also the poet's, that he will speak to you in frank terms, that he will bare and reveal his most intimate thoughts provided you let him by getting self out of the way-at least while you are analyzing and extracting the essence out of the aria, or song; the composer will conduct you round his musical workshop, show you his creations, and guide you bar by bar, phrase by phrase. Let him do all the talking, and you all the listening: then wait for your reaction. But wait in a receptive mood and be ready to grasp and make yours, as it were, the composition as a whole. Thus does self take a back seat—for the moment.

If a good one, the composer has already done all the "interpreting" that you will ever need to score a success, other things being equal; but you must not merely follow and carry out his markings of expression; the thing to do is to get right into the melodic line and ride on it as it rises and falls. Let each note-cum-word, or syllable, literally speak to you and express its entire being, for in a good composition every single note has meaning. Until you get the real feeling of the song, try not to allow your own thoughts on how you think "it ought to go", to intrude on the newborn atmosphere; if they do, they will spoil reception exactly as atmospherics or another incoming station will spoil reception on a radio set. There must be no interference; so just tune in to the composer's station and let him do all the broadcasting. With practice and in time, you, the singer, will be able to relay it clearly, faithfully, interpretatively.

What passes in the poet's mind and what in the composer's as they write? What do they see, hear, and feel? That is what you, as a singer, must get at, contact, and tune in to. Their respective forms of composition reflect and manifest the respective images of thought; they will therefore speak to you as a beautiful rose does, as the sun and moon and stars do, if you know how to feel, listen, and read aright.

Some composers, like some writers, do not always express themselves with sufficient clarity, and the inner meaning appears elusive, impossible to grasp. Much of the so-called ultra-modem music is just "clever" manipulation of notes, and conveys "pictures" that are as intelligible and visible as a Raffaello in total darkness; the mental image behind the cacophony may well be cubistic, but tonal cubes are not inspiring.

Compositions vary in quality as do speech, letter and essay writing. A language when spoken can be mutilated, painful to hear; and letter writing varies from puerile to perfection. By the same token a musical composition can be anything from soggy to sublime. Given a really good composition, the singer must not attempt to "paint the lily", or the peach. Cabbage combinations, however, do require a lot of make-up. The ordinary ballad is not generally the product of a master mind, but can be materially improved by a good and imaginative singer.

He would be a bold man that attempted to improve on or even touch up the work of a Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Raffaello or Reynolds. Has anybody attempted to improve Shakespeare? Or Verdi, Puccini, Wagner, Beethoven? The idea is preposterous. Why then in the name of reason do singers, and conductors, vainly imagine that they are "interpreting', aye, improving, the work of a master-composer by adding personal frills of "expression", exaggerated displays of emotion, fake feeling, stabbed and hammered accents, mostly in the wrong places; andante slowed down to funereal, moderato whipped up to a gallop, turning p into f, and so forth. Verdi once said, "I write five p's to get one”.

Interpretation, reduced to its simplest terms, is nothing but the possibility of being roused emotionally in the same degree as that of the composer when he was actually writing the particular aria or song (or whatever music is being performed). If we can contact his thoughts, and feel what he felt, as they lie imprisoned within note, bar and phrase, and an occasional marking, if we can do this without injecting any personal twists of fancy, we shall have what is called interpretation at its best and highest, as the composer himself would wish it. It is for the discerning singer to release the imprisoned wealth through appropriate tonal colours, expression, and accent.

The good singer stamps that indefinable substance called personality on everything he sings, his atmosphere of mind commingling with that of the composer, and with that of the poet. Actually, a song or aria well rendered is a product of three minds. (See pp. 250, 299-302.)