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Another excellent post by Liz Garnett. I think I’m in love! In a topic related to performance practice, she talks about performing songs which have definitive recordings by the original composers (or at least famous recordings).
But if we do know exactly how the original went, that doesn’t tell us what we should do in response to it. We’ll never sound exactly like the original, and besides, why would anyone want to listen to us attempt to if they can just listen to the original anyway?… The pleasure of the cover version come from measuring the distance between the original and its appropriation by a different artist.
What’s most instructive, I think, is this use of the word "artist". It’s a given in the popular music world that performers are artists in their own right. When Diana Krall sings "Fly Me To The Moon", no one expect that she’ll try to mimic exactly Frank Sinatra’s (or composer Bart Howard’s) rendition. Everyone expects her to put her own artistic stamp on it, and that includes the freedom to change notes and rhythms. Liz’s main point is to suggest that performers should familiarize themselves with the original recordings, and I’m all in favor of doing homework regardless of the type of music involved.
 
Why don’t we conductors of classical music think of ourselves as artists? Rather, we increasingly think of ourselves as automata, robots whose task is to produce identically our best guess regarding what Bach would have wanted. I’ve been repeated excoriated by commenters on this blog for daring to suggest I might change a note (or even a dynamic) in the Masters’ works; by contrast, every allows U2 the artistic freedom to turn the Beatles’ Helter Skelter into something totally different.
 
Our profession needs more artistry.
 
I’m not claiming that I am the artistic equivalent of Diana Krall or Bach or Leopold Stokowski (well known for his idiosyncratic interpretations and significant rewriting of classical standards). I’m talking about our self-definition, and our aspirations as musicians. Do we aspire to be artists, or technicians? Is our artistry to be limited to filling in the spaces between the notes?
 
I recently attended the Harmony Sweepstakes, a competition of a cappella groups. Most of the groups sang arrangements of 70s pop songs. My group sang (among other things) an arrangement of Waltz of the Flowers from the Nutcracker. No one at that event implied I was being false to Tchaikovsky (even though I made cuts and changed some harmonies) because every there recognizes the goal of artistry. I couldn’t imagine doing something like that at an ACDA convention.
 
 

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  1. For many of us who wear both composer and conductor hats, you raise an interesting question. I would argue that comparing the practice of a pop artist covering another artist’s recording of a song that may have been originally scored by the artist as a simple lead sheet with melody and chord symbols has more in common with improvisation than a performance of the concert repertoire. The former is a genre in which the song writer’s instructions are often closer to suggestions if scored at all. The performer is often considered a collaborator with the songwriter as an interpretor of the piece.
     
    By contrast, a composition in the concert repertoire that is clearly scored with very specific performance information does not carry the same invitation to improvise. I would not want a composition of mine to be freely altered unless the performer used language like “based on (original title) by (composer’s name)” or “freely adapted by (arranger/performer’s name).” 
     
    The genre of “Tribute Bands” is more closely akin to the practice of concert repertoire in which the Tribute Band is trying to replicate the recording as if it had been scored meticulously. When I hear a Tribute Band, I want it to be the equivilent of time travel back to the original performance, as if the Beatles or Pink Floyd, etc. were right there. On the other hand, when I hear a choir perform my composition, I want it to be the rendering of what I put on paper. Whatever is not obvious from the score is clearly going to take on the interpretation of the conductor. But I would not want to hear an obvious adaptation or “arrangement” of my piece without it being identified as such.
     
    By comparison to the pop medium, it would be like recording engineers doing their own reworking of a recording artists tracks without the artist’s permission. The practice of sampling other music to be used in hip-hop influenced recording practices is a different art form and as listeners, we know it is an adaptation or borrowing of the material from it’s original source.
     
    All this to say – comparing a pop medium that is implicitly improvisational and performer-centric to a medium in which the composer has given much more specific information about what is expected in a performance of his or her music is an apples/oranges situation. If you want to put your spin on a piece of detailed and specifically scored music, identify it as freely adapted so that the responsibility and credit for the outcome rests on your shoulders. It’s a worthy enterprise to explore new rendering of source material (the Soulful Messiah is a great example), so long as you take responsibility for your authorship.
     
     
     

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