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On Transcriptions and the Nature of Compositional Identity By DANIEL M. SULLIVAN
There are some thorny issues of musical philosophy that confront all performers of music. Sometimes the confrontation is particularly direct—as it is for me when I play Bach's "Goldberg" Variations on the organ, whereas he composed them for the two-manual harpsichord. This semester I am performing Bach's late masterwork in recitals in Atlanta, Albuquerque, Chicago, Seattle, and here in New York City at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church on March 21. Since these are organ performances, many use terms like "transcription" or "arrangement" to describe my actions, and I have also used such terms. Increasingly, though, I hesitate to use them, since they (in practice, if not in theory) frequently connote what I take to be, at best, suspect (and at worst, inaccurate) conceptions of music. These connotations circle around the idea that, in playing the "Goldberg" Variations on the organ (or in other ways departing from the score's interpretive instructions), I've somehow violated the composition's ontological essence by doing something "to" the composition that destroys its identity as that composition. This is to say that, under my hands and feet, the composition is to some extent no longer Bach's "Goldberg" Variations, but something different.While preparing this music, I began to ruminate more intensely on these issues of compositional identity, and further explored the relationship between my actions and our common ontological conceptions and/or misconceptions of musical artworks.
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The inherent danger of using the terms "transcription" or "arrangement" is that they unfairly privilege the composers' performing intentions over the equally legitimate performing intentions of other musicians.
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To begin, imagine a case in which someone's first knowledge of a composition is received through a transcription. For example, I first knew Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition as an orchestra piece (it was composed for piano). One day, I was astonished to hear this piece played over the radio on the piano! Despite my surprise, I was thrilled to recognize this music as Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, i.e., as the same piece I knew as orchestra music. This is telling, for it points to something central to our musical experience: We recognize a single thing existing omnipresently in multiple versions. I will refer to the "single thing" as the upper-level identity of a composition, and the multiple versions of this single thing as the lower-level identities.The only way to sonically encounter a composition's upper-level identity is to listen to one of its lower-level identities. Even more noteworthy of the upper-level identity is that the ability to hear it depends neither on which version is encountered, nor on whether this version is the "original" or a transcription. This is shown by the fact that I had already recognized the piano music as Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition before the radio announcer explained which version was the original. This example also suggests that our common, and perhaps instinctual, understanding of a composition's identity deals at basis with the upper-level identity, and that recognition of this identity is not based on instrumentation.What then, if not instrumentation, creates the upper-level identity of a composition? A step in the right direction might be offered by a hypothetical instance of an old game show, whose contestants were asked to listen to excerpts of music and be the first to identify the composition from which the excerpt was taken. Common sense would seem to indicate that the competitors listened not to elements that vary with interpretation (e.g., tempo, key, instrumentation, dynamics, rubato) but rather to the piece's pitch organization, so as to recognize such things as melody, fundamental bass, harmony, etc. In other words, in order to quickly identify a composition, they had a vested interest in hearing what remains the same among various performances of a composition. (After all, it seems wildly improbable that any competitor, upon hearing, say, a Glenn Gould performance of the "Goldberg" Variations, would think "Aha! I've heard something like this before and it reminds me of Bach's 'Goldberg' Variations, but I know from my musicology lessons that Bach and his contemporaries would never have played it like this, and therefore, the piece cannot be Bach's 'Goldberg' Variations.")The preceding addresses music primarily as an object. To bring more light to these matters, it might be helpful to discuss music as action. One way to understand the musical process is to see it as the actions of three actors: composer, performer, and perceiver. A single actor will often simultaneously perform multiple roles. Both composers and performers, for example, listen to (and perceive) the music they are composing and performing in order to make sure that their work conforms to their ideals. Mingling of actions is also found within the score itself: As the 18th century moved towards the 20th, composers tended to include more performing indications in their scores. I take this to mean two things: 1) that the score can be a repository for both compositional intent (elements in the score that indicate composers' compositional choices; these choices make the composition the one that it is and not another) and performative intent (elements in the score that indicate composers' wishes/commands etc. regarding the performance of their compositions), and 2) that the balance in the score between these two kinds of intent varies.It may be that many things found in the score which we commonly perceive to indicate compositional intent actually indicate performative intent. Rather than arguing here which musical elements come under which designations, I wish to simply acknowledge the difficult and contentious nature of these questions. That, for example, a composer makes choices of tempo, key, and instrumentation when composing does not, by that fact alone, mean these choices are compositional in nature rather than performative. That a choice has been made is unarguable. What is contentious is the ontological significance of the choice: whether the choice holds performative status or whether the choice helps to substantively establish the upper-level identity of the composition (i.e., whether it serves to make the composition the composition that it is, and not another composition).One practical fallout of these musings is that no basis is found here for the claim that composers' performative intentions have an a priori superiority over the equally qualified performative intentions of other performers. After all, the composer's performative desires merely constitute one class of the lower-level identities underneath a larger, unifying upper-level identity.We are now in a position to see more clearly why I hesitate to use words like "transcription" and "arrangement" to describe what happens when the "Goldberg" Variations are played on the organ. As I see it, the inherent danger of using such terms is that they can (in practice, if not in theory) unfairly, and thereby dishonestly, privilege the composer's performing intentions over the equally legitimate performing intentions of other musicians. If words such as "arrangement" convey even the slightest sense of something that isn't quite the "real 'Goldbergs,'" there will be the slightest sense that my activity is a fraudulent one with respect to the identity of the composition. I do not feel that I am primarily playing an organ "rendition" of the "Goldbergs" (unless this turn of phrase would apply with equal force and intent to all other performances, including those given on the harpsichord; were this the case, I could accept the terms "rendition" or "arrangement" as legitimate). Rather, I feel that, at basis, I am really playing Bach's "Goldberg" Variations. Furthermore, I consider such organ performances to be authentic to the composition in just the same way as are musicologically verified historical interpretations performed on the harpsichord: Each kind of performance is authentic to the upper-level identity of the piece. Daniel M. Sullivan is an artist diploma candidate in organ.
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