Abstract
It is acceptable practice in the rehearsal and performance of Western art music to play the notes and other textual instructions of a music score in a faithful manner. Unlike in the case of jazz, for example, performers of Western art music do not readily improvise, or at least not in music of the so-called classical and romantic style periods. Apart from melodic and harmonic improvisation, other elements in the structural design of Western art music pieces are also not changed at the performers’ discretion. Moreover, precomposed changes and adaptations of composers’ musical texts are not tolerated. In Western art music communities an approach of loyalty to composers and their musical works exists (especially to the texts of these works), according to which performances need to be authentically correct – a performance approach that is usually referred to as Werktreue (fidelity to a work and the instructions in its text) in the literature. This article examines the relevant opinions about Werktreue with a thorough investigation of a keynote address essay (“Setting limits”) by the American musicologist Richard Taruskin.
First, I examine two interdisciplinary reviews of Taruskin’s previous writing by the legal scholars Sanford Levinson and J.M. Balkin, which influenced Taruskin then to write the essay “Setting limits”. In these reviews, Levinson and Balkin are especially interested in a conceptual association that can be made between historically informed performance practice in Western art music and originalism in the law. Although Levinson and Balkin write in an interdisciplinary context, I concentrate more on what their interdisciplinary theorisation ultimately means for performances in music than for performances in the law. Consequently, Taruskin’s participation in this interdisciplinary conversation interests me more.
I am particularly interested in questions that Levinson and Balkin put to Taruskin regarding what to do when authenticity cannot be the touchstone of textual interpretation in music and the law. They want to know whether anything is permissible, then, with the interpretation of texts and their instructions, and they also immediately answer “no” to their own question. According to them, certain interpretations of texts will surely always be preposterous, while others will easily fall within the limits of possible interpretative solutions. What interests them the most, therefore, is to try to understand what determines people’s competence either to construct plausible limits for interpretation possibilities or otherwise to adjudge certain musical and legal “performances” fraudulent. Levinson and Balkin believe that so-called interpretive communities (a concept that they borrow from Stanley Fish, 1980) enable people to construct sensible (pragmatic) limits where the evaluation of textual interpretations is concerned. In this context they finally ask Taruskin about setting limits in provocative contemporaneous opera production, and they especially want to know at what point Taruskin would invoke the authority of the score to evaluate the credibility of certain musical performances. These are therefore the main issues that Taruskin investigates in his essay “Setting limits”.
This article demonstrates how Taruskin’s essay probably does not satisfy Levinson and Balkin’s intellectual expectations, first because Taruskin has nothing to say about Western art music’s interpretive communities, but also because he is unwilling to set pragmatic limits of interpretive permissibility before the evaluation of musical performances. He implicitly rejects their theory of pragmatic performance evaluation, and instead argues that they are clinging to authoritarian standards of evaluation that will lead to tyranny. Taruskin’s answers demonstrate a radical rejection of the ideal of fidelity to musical works and their texts (Werktreue), because there is no point at which he would invoke the authority of the musical score to evaluate a performance. Instead he advocates that performers may take as many liberties as they want. He also argues that there are obviously fundamental differences and ethical consequences with regard to setting limits between music and the law.
In their review of Taruskin’s Text and act, Levinson and Balkin make an important distinction between algorithms, formal criteria and determinate procedures on the one hand and the supposed pragmatism of interpretive communities on the other, as regards the evaluation of textual performances in music and the law. Here their research relies heavily on ideas formulated by Stanley Fish. It is nevertheless difficult to understand exactly what they mean by this opposition of evaluation procedures, and I therefore question what precisely they aim to communicate with their idea of pragmatic interpretive communities. The article thus examines Fish’s all too brief and inadequate description of interpretive communities, before arguing that Levinson and Balkin use Fish’s concept to outline an instinctive and pre-theoretical community of legal and musical experts whose “often inchoate standards” of evaluation can only involve pragmatism. I then demonstrate how Taruskin and Levinson and Balkin are at odds because Taruskin simply doesn’t see any difference between Levinson and Balkin’s use of algorithms, formal criteria and determinate procedures and the purported pragmatism of interpretive communities. Contrary to their possible expectations, Taruskin also does not offer his own explanations of these opposing concepts in the context of Western art music.
This article therefore offers an explanation in Taruskin’s stead, which revolves around the important concept of Werktreue. This concept is highlighted as a significant lacuna in the discursive interactions between Levinson and Balkin and Taruskin. I offer a lengthy discussion of Lydia Goehr’s theorisation of the Werktreue concept in order to demonstrate the conservative nature of the interpretive communities against which Taruskin rebels with his relinquishment of Werktreue as a musical ideal. After the discussion of Goehr’s formulation of Werktreue, the second part of Taruskin’s answers to Levinson and Balkin’s review questions is examined. This section of the article explains how Taruskin suggests a radical rejection of loyalty to musical works, or Werktreue, where so-called Regieoper is concerned. His approach, which allows that the original music of opera composers may be changed in challenging ways, is compared with Roger Parker’s similar, though more conservative, outlook on the adaptation of composers’ music.
After examining what the concept Werktreue has meant in the historical context of Regieoper, I discuss the creative possibilities, for contemporaneous opera production, contained in Taruskin’s implicit relinquishment of the concept of Werktreue. These possibilities include improvisation, recomposition and adaptation, insertion arias, music-stylistic translation and variation. A South African opera is presented as a case study and discussed briefly as an applicable example of these creative possibilities, namely the opera Impempe Yomlingo (an adaptation of Mozart’s “Singspiel” Die Zauberflöte). The article then concludes with a brief discussion and critique of current South African research on indigenisation in local opera production.
Keywords: adaptation; authenticity; Balkin, J.M.; Beethoven; Die Zauberflöte; Goehr, Lydia; historically informed performance practice; Impempe Yomlingo; improvisation; interpretive communities; insertion arias; Levinson, Sanford; music-stylistic translation; Parker, Roger; opera; originalism; recomposition; Taruskin, Richard; variation; Werktreue; work concept
Lees die volledige artikel in Afrikaans: Afstanddoening van werksgetrouheid in Richard Taruskin se essay “Setting limits”
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