Old Time Instruction

If Beethoven’s Own Interpretation Were Available Now

Suppose that in the early years of the nineteenth century there had been such recording inventions as there are now and that Beethoven had made CDs or DVDS of his own performance of his sonata.  The highest ideal of a purely objective interpretation of the work should demand that the pianist of today would be able to give us an exact reproduction of the record.  This, of course, presupposes that Beethoven himself could play the work according to his own conception of it.  this being granted, and the pianist of today, say Ethel Leginska or Guitomar Novacs, capable of making the exact reproduction , then what would be the use of having any Leginska or Novaces at all?  Why not let the mechanical piano perform the impeccable record and give us the voice of the dead Beethoven? 

There is the test of the whole matter.  “The dead Beethoven!” yes, that is what we should get.  The living, not the dead sing to us.  We may wail with Tennyson. 

“Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand
And the sound of a voice that is still.”

But the wail will be as hopeless as the poet’s.  We cannot bring back the dead composer.  We cannot hear in the interpretation of his piano music the touch of the vanished hand not in his song the sound of the voice that is still.  We must accept from Paderewski his recital of the sonata and from Hofmann his.  When we listen to the famous pianist, whoever he may be, we must render unto Beethoven that which is Beethoven’s and unto Levitzki or Gabrilowitsch that which is his.

May the interpretative artist then, play the music of a master just as he pleases without regard to the composer’s intention?  Of course not.  No pianist worthy of the name ever attempts to do so.  Every sincere musician strives with all his power to understand the composition before him to get at the artistic plan and purpose of its creator.  But to repeat what has already been said, he cannot do that which is not in him.  He cannot be any one but himself.  He cannot find in a composition anything that is not in his own soul.  But he can gather to himself all of Beethoven or Chopin or Schumann that his faculties can discern and reproduce just a much as his own individual force is able to project beyond the four walls of his skull and this is not a small achievement.  Within it is comprised the highest in analysis and synthesis to which one mind can attain and both must be warmed through and through by love. 

Louis XI, of Irving and of Coquelin

Did the reader ever see Henry Irving as Louis XI?  And did he ever enjoy a performance of the same role by Coquelin?  Now Louis XI was only one man and he lived on line life.  He was the subject of countless songs and stories while graver history has methodically recorded his follies his frailties and his immortal meanness.  Much is known about his character and there could be no possibility of blundering on the part of any actor undertaking to impersonate the monarch.  Cruel cunning, crafty, ever active suspicion, malignity, insatiable and a royal cowardice obtrude themselves upon the observation of the interpreter. 

Irving and Coquelin delineated the character with real skill.  Both communicated to their audiences in unmistakable terms the ugly traits of this despicable occupant of a throne.  And yet their impersonations were dissimilar, not only in superficial details but in the deeper traits of sentiment.  Both were true to history but one was Henry Irving and the other was Constant Coquelin.  The personality of each artist was displayed in every scene and it was impossible that it should fail to be.  The actor cannot speak with another’s voice, he cannot look out of another’s eyes, he cannot conceive and feel with another’s temperament. 

The same things must be said of the interpretative musician.  The pianist, if he be one of significance, will surely have his own peculiarities of touch and style.  He can no more rid himself of them than he can rid himself of the shape of his hands and the length of his arms.  No more can he divest himself of his spiritual nature.  If he be a true artist, he will approach the study of a new work with an open mind.  He will strive to penetrate to its heart by finding out what the contrast of its themes, the relation of its phrases, the introduction of developments, passage work or other devices meant when the mind of the composer planned them.  With these points cleared in his own mind he spreads before his inner view his own interpretation of the work. 

In this supreme act of preparation his personality must inevitably operate with irresistible force, for only his own perceptions of artistic beauty can aid him and only from these can he arrive at that state of exaltation in which the fire of deeply moved emotion vitalizes for him the printed page.  Here indeed, is the true field of emotion in the interpretative musician’s art.  No doubt matinee girls thrill with the thought that Paderewski is moved to tears by Chopin while he is playing him.  But Mr.  Paderewski knows that his whole intelligence at that moment is bent upon directing the physical powers to the exact and lifelike reproduction of the conception which he formed when his study of the printed page of Chopin opened for him the shrine of the composer’s imagination and prostrated him in pious adoration. 

I have said that to have the interpretative artist completely disguise his personality would be highly undesirable, even if it were possible.  If the interpretation of any particular masterpiece, say Beethoven’s Opus 110, could be standardized what would be the wasteful prodigality of nature in bestowing upon us Josef Hoffman, Ignace, Paderewski and Harold Bauer.  Each of them plays this particular work according to his own understanding and feeling and each of them plays it beautifully, convincingly.  But each plays it differently from the other. 

Interpretation Cannot Be Wholly Objective

The attitude of the young architect and equally that of the young pianist must necessarily be composite.  It cannot be wholly objective.  The imperative demand for assimilation of that which is found already complete and perfect in itself presupposes the operation of subjective faculties.  The mind is immediately and intensely conscious of its own exaltation.  For what does the young pianist find in the Beethoven sonata?

Can he find in it all that Beethoven found?  Then indeed is he the peer of the mighty master for ‘only genius can understand genius’?  Here lies the secret.  The musical performer who can interpret a work exactly as the composer intended it to be interpreted must be one capable of grasping the intangible, the spirit of the creative mind and of reproducing its most intimate self-communion.  Does anyone belie that this is within the bounds of possibility? 

What then must take place?  The interpreter must absorb into his own spirit that which his spirit can discover and feel.  With all his intelligence and love and sympathy the young artist must strive to understand the message of the composer but when he has put forth all his powers he will have put forth himself.  He can not project anything but his own personality. 

Youths of both sexes, contending with the prodigious difficulties of discovering the world and human life are obliged to go through a process of education in schools.  There they acquire some small amount of knowledge and a still smaller modicum of wisdom.  Among the portentous subjects placed before their expanding young minds is one called metaphysics, a science which chatters glibly in such terms as ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’.  Usually the aforesaid youth depart from the various seats of learning with little care in their souls as to the precise significance of these adjectives.  But in the course of time some of them, and especially those whom Nature has marked out for musical careers, discover that the words are related to matters of deep interest to them.

Composers of whom ambition creates many and nature very few are happily exempt from ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ considerations: but the performers have to take them under their wings and carry them there through all their flights.  Let us try to tell ourselves just what these words mean.  That which the mind contemplates as absolutely apart from and outside itself is objective; that which is a part of the mind is subjective.  This is none too clear but it may help.  The mind, indeed acquires form without matter for its digestion, but it’s conclusions in regard to thee matters are subjective.

What have these things to do with the relations of personality to the interpretation of music?  Just this: a full comprehension of the psychology of the subjective and the objective should convince us that such a ting as interpretation, wholly free of personal reconstruction of the thing interpreted, is utterly impossible.  Furthermore it is entirely undesirable.

A sonata by Beethoven is a creation which existed before the birth of any living pianist.  It was there with all its melodic character, it’s characteristic methods of development, its leonine harmonies, its individual technique, when the contemporaneous generation of performers was still far in the future, when Paderewski, Bauer, Gabrilowitsch, Hoffmann and the rest were not yet dreamed of.  When the young player of today sits down to the study of such a work, he is in precisely the same condition as a young architect who for the first time in his life beholds a Greek temple.  The architect fervently desires to absorb the spirit of Hellenic architecture to the end that the may breathe it into some modern structure, perhaps even make something having a quality of its own, as Cass Gilbert did when he applied the principles of the perpendicular Gothic to the needs of the Woolworth Building.