Historical performance practice traditions can shed light on these questions. For example, in the Baroque period, it was customary to add ornamentation when repeating a section in a binary dance movement, or when repeating the A sec-tion in a da capo aria. Although some composers (notably J. S. Bach) wrote out these elaborations, they were left most of the time to the discretion of the per-former, for whom the score provided only a repeat sign. Th is practice represents a more dramatic divergence between notated repetition and acoustic output than discussed above; performers changed not just the microtiming and articu-latory characteristics of the passage in question, but actually added notes and fl ourishes and new rhythms. In Figure 6.2 , for example, the Sarabande is fi rst notated “straight,” and then in a version full of suggested ornamentation. Th e more elaborate version adopts the same structural skeleton but hangs strings of trills and sixteenth notes on top of it.
In Playing Bach on the Keyboard: A Practical Guide (2003), Troeger advises that “it was expected of the eighteenth-century performer that he or she would, to some extent, ornament and embellish a movement upon repetition” (p. 200).
Specifi c suggestions put by Troeger to the aspiring keyboardist about the per-formance of these repeated movements include changing the dynamics (or
oxfordhb-9780199990825.indd 122
oxfordhb-9780199990825.indd 122 10/11/2013 3:06:07 PM10/11/2013 3:06:07 PM
registration, if playing on the harpsichord), emphasizing the accents and con-trasts more vigorously (Troeger links this advice to the metaphor of oration so pervasive during the Baroque era: forcefulness should increase over the course of a persuasive speech), adding decorative embellishments, or playing a full dou-ble—an ornately decorated version of the movement, as shown in Figure 6.2 , where fl orid sixteenth-note runs have been introduced into what had been a largely eighth-note texture.
It’s hard to speculate about how eighteenth-century composers and perform-ers might have expected their repetitive practices to aff ect listenperform-ers, but treatises of the time framed discussions of musical repetition in terms of rhetoric, the oral art of persuasion. Th is theoretical emphasis on reception makes it relatively easy to believe that composers and performers sustained a practical emphasis on intended listener eff ects. For example, the second A section in a da capo aria was explicitly spoken of in terms of the possibility it aff orded for demonstration of the vocalist’s virtuosity. But if the only goal was to demonstrate virtuosity, why would the performer not add ornamentation straightaway from the beginning?
Th e assumption behind the practice of reserving the decorative embellishment for the second iteration might have been that presenting the musical structure in a plain and simple form fi rst allowed the listener to follow the fl ourishes and dis-placements of the ornate repetition without gett ing confused and disoriented.
A similar kind of relationship seems to hold between jazz standards and their extravagant and syncopated renditions in performance, or between a theme and its myriad diff erent versions within a set of variations; knowledge of a simpler version makes it easier to grasp the twists and turns of more complex sett ings.
But these are all unambiguous cases of variation rather than repetition; what’s interesting about Baroque performance practice is the way that notated repeti-tion actually served as a tacit invitarepeti-tion for performed variarepeti-tion.
Semiologist Omar Calabrese identifi es what he terms a “neo-Baroque” ten-dency in contemporary cultural practice, noting that when mass communica-tion is the norm, if “all has already been said and already been writt en . . . as in the Kabuki theater, it may then be the most miniscule variant that will produce pleasure in the text, or that form of explicit listening which is already known”
(Calabrese, 1992). In an age of music dominated by recording technology, it seems likely that both types exist—pleasure in the replay of a favorite track or album, exactly identical from iteration to iteration, and pleasure in live per-formances that subtly vary an established and overlearned canon, stretching a resolution in a particular place, or delaying an arrival. When planning their embellishments in the repeat, eighteenth-century performers could count on their listeners having had exactly one exposure to the passage—the expo-sure within the fi rst part of their own performance; contemporary performers can oft en count on their listeners having had dozens of prior exposures. Th e
oxfordhb-9780199990825.indd 123
oxfordhb-9780199990825.indd 123 10/11/2013 3:06:07 PM10/11/2013 3:06:07 PM
Figure 6.2 Bach English Suite No. 2 in A Minor, Sarabande and notated ornaments.
oxfordhb-9780199990825.indd 124
oxfordhb-9780199990825.indd 124 10/11/2013 3:06:07 PM10/11/2013 3:06:07 PM
Figure 6.2 (Continued)
oxfordhb-9780199990825.indd 125
oxfordhb-9780199990825.indd 125 10/11/2013 3:06:07 PM10/11/2013 3:06:07 PM
overlearning that recording technology makes available, and in some circles prevalent, can set up a background within which very subtle changes might not only be newly detectable but also newly valued. In an age where recordings of a Beethoven Sonata by any of the past fi ft y years’ most celebrated pianists are read-ily available, some pressure, in fact, might exist for live performances to produce readings that are unique and diff erentiated, justifying the time and expense of att ending an actual concert. Indeed, Repp (1995) showed that student perfor-mances of a particular work shared more expressive characteristics with each other than did professional performances of the same work; this diff erence is consistent with the notion that the younger pianists, the students, having grown up in the age of recorded music, might have a narrower notion of what is sty-listically appropriate than artists raised in an era when more diverse and local approaches to performance thrived.
Paradoxically, then, recording technology both produces a pressure toward conformity and a pressure toward individuality. Th e repeatability of specifi c recordings across time and across space can serve to narrow experience, expos-ing many people to the same standard, and reducexpos-ing the diversity of people’s
“listening biographies.” Th is can result in a kind of standardization (Philip, 2004;
Clarke, 2007); for example, the ubiquity of note-perfect recordings has reduced tolerance for performance mistakes and created a kind of “clean-ness” in con-temporary playing that some criticize as bland and mechanical. Th e spread of recordings has also contributed to making vibrato and tuning practices more uniform. Standards came to be defi ned not in relation to a geographically local community but rather to an extended culturally local community, defi ned by a shared body of listening experience made possible by the fact that recorded sound can pass from one corner of the world to another in seconds (see Katz, 2004). Similar concerns have been lodged about the eff ect of globalization on the reduction of linguistic diversity (Crystal, 2000).
But even as these forces conspire to promote musical conformity, a reaction-ary upswell emerges to foster diversifi cation. For example, concert promoters tasked with justifying live concerts by specifi c performers have to highlight the distinction between their event and the litany of readily available, top-notch recordings of the same work. Oft en, they capitalize on the stylistic novelty the performer brings to the interpretation. One of the classical performers most reli-ably capable of selling out a hall and creating hysterical excitement among afi cio-nados is Martha Argerich. Although the reception history of star performers (as a parallel to the more traditionally practiced reception history of canonic works) is a complex subject worthy of its own dedicated volume, it seems apparent that the spontaneity, uniqueness, and unpredictability of her performances plays an important role. One stamp of Argerich’s genius, as popularly received, is the dif-ference between what she performs and the versions of the pieces available on
oxfordhb-9780199990825.indd 126
oxfordhb-9780199990825.indd 126 10/11/2013 3:06:07 PM10/11/2013 3:06:07 PM
recording, but another is the technical fl awlessness, whose note-perfect-ness matches recordings closely enough for the expressive infl ections to be well received. In this one artist, both the conforming and individualizing pressures of recording culture are well represented.
Notated repeats in music writt en aft er the eighteenth century rarely represent a call for embellishment at the level of rhythm and pitch; however, it is possible that performers generally interpret notated repeats as an opportunity for addi-tional freedom in expressive parameters such as dynamics and articulation. Just as Shaff er (1984) compared expressive infl ections in multiple performances of the same piece, a comparison of expressive infl ections across multiple iterations of the same passage or section within a single performance could yield fasci-nating insight into performers’ implicit ideas about musical repetition. Are the diff erences in microtiming and dynamics of a similar magnitude to those repre-sented by diff erent performances of the same piece? If the diff erences in expres-sive choices from the initial performance of a passage to its repetition later in the piece were larger than the diff erences from performance to performance, it might indicate a desire to engage listeners by working against notated repetition;
conversely, if the diff erences were smaller, it might indicate a desire to engage listeners by working with the notated repetition. Are repetitions of the theme in a rondo, for example, expressively cumulative, such that later iterations assume a memory not only for the theme, but also for its performance the fi rst time around? Do performers reference their fi rst rendition by, for example, stretching a key moment more the second time around? Or do they try to realize the most expressive manifestation of the notation and play it the same way each time?
Does this aspect of performance practice vary from style to style, or composer to composer? Corpus analyses of existing recordings could provide much insight into these sorts of questions, and behavioral studies could provide insight into the eff ect of these practices on listeners.
In a study currently in progress in my lab, participants are listening to com-mercially available performances of classical rondos in two diff erent forms: the original version, or one modifi ed so that the musician’s fi rst performance of the theme (the A section) has been spliced in to replace all subsequent performances of the A material throughout the piece. Listeners are thus hearing performances featuring expressive variation each time the A section returns or performances featuring verbatim repetition each time the A section comes back. Without knowledge of this manipulation, listeners in separate groups are being asked to rate the performances along various aesthetic dimensions (interest, enjoyment), to rate the degree of repetitiveness in the piece, to rate various parameters (ten-sion, interest) continuously as the piece progresses, and to perform a recognition memory task at the end of the session comparing passages from performances they heard to the same passages in performances they did not hear. Th e goal of
oxfordhb-9780199990825.indd 127
oxfordhb-9780199990825.indd 127 10/11/2013 3:06:08 PM10/11/2013 3:06:08 PM
this study is to understand more about the eff ect on listeners of the relationship between repetition and performance variation.