Performing by the Book?

The challenges and limits for musicians dealing with texts.

To perform a musical score implies the transformation of a symbolically coded text into vibrant sound. In Performing by the Book? a carefully selected cadre of artist-researchers dissects this delicate act in critical ways. Offering first-hand insights into the notational, structural and interpretative challenges faced by musicians in dealing with texts of all kinds, the chapters traverse the spectrum between the Middle Ages and the age of Stockhausen. In a harmonious blend of scholarly allure and individual artistry, free from academic obfuscation, the contributors keep a keen eye on the limits of interpretation, both in terms of the interpretative process itself and of the balance between textual faithfulness and artistic autonomy. This comprehensive volume is an indispensable guide for everyone interested in the relationship between musical performance and texts.

Contributing authors: Niels Berentsen (Haute école de musique de Genève-Neuchâtel (HES-SO) / conductor of Diskantores), Björn Schmelzer (artistic director of Graindelavoix / independent researcher), Jonathan Ayerst (freelance organist and improviser), Elizabeth Dobbin (Le Jardin Secret / Haute école de musique de Genève (HES-SO)), Camilla Köhnken (freelance pianist-researcher / Bern Academy of the Arts), George Kennaway (cellist, conductor, teacher, publisher and musicologist / University of Leeds), Kate Bennett Wadsworth (cellist / Guildhall School of Music and Drama), Nir Cohen-Shalit (conductor and independent researcher), Xiangning Lin (pianist / Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, National University of Singapore), Clare Lesser (independent performer, musicologist and composer).

Ebook available in Open Access. This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

Introduction. Musical Texts and Contexts: Stairway to Heaven or Highway to Hell?
Bruno Forment

Mind the Gap: Reimagining Incomplete Medieval Music
Niels Berentsen

Performing by the Book (Next to the Book You Were Looking For), or: Aby Warburg’s “Good Neighbour”
Björn Schmelzer

Pluralising the Musical Text: Improvising on Canonic Repertoire
Jonathan Ayerst

À la recherche du chant perdu: The airs sérieux in the Recueils d’airs sérieux et à boire de différents auteurs (1695–99) as a Lens on Vocal Practices in the Seventeenth-Century Parisian Salon
Elizabeth Dobbin

From Beethoven Performance to Beethoven Interpretation: Carl Czerny and Franz Liszt’s Evolving Relationship, 1822–57
Camilla Köhnken

Nineteenth-Century Texts in the Twenty-First Century
George Kennaway

The Flexible Text: Published and Unpublished Alterations to the Schumann Cello Concerto in the Nineteenth Century
Kate Bennett Wadsworth

The Romantic Conductor-Scholar: What I Learned from the Archives
Nir Cohen-Shalit

Relocating Ravel’s “Sad Birds” in Alternative Forests of Place and Time
Xiangning Lin

The Virgin Act: Mediating Supplement and Repetition in Performance
Clare Lesser

Online materials
Notes on Contributors
Index

Bruno Forment

Bruno Forment is the principal investigator of the ‘Resounding Libraries’ research cluster at Orpheus Instituut and the Leader of the ‘Performances’ Working Group in the European COST Action EarlyMuse.

Bruno Forment is hoofdonderzoeker aan het Orpheus Instituut in Gent. Hij publiceerde talrijke boeken en essays over 18e-eeuwse opera, scenografie en artistiek onderzoek. Daarnaast is hij actief als musicus en als erfgoedspecialist.