• I. Find two recordings of a classical composition. Try to make them as dissimilar as possible - say, two recordings of the same piece made fifty years apart. Aside from record stores, some possible sources are friends' record collections, the public library, or a local radio station.
  
  Play both recordings and note the differences. First, think about the recordings, environment. Is one recordings, made in an empty hall, ,with lots of reverberation? Is the tone dark on one record and bright on the other? Identify as many of these variables as possible.
  
  Turn your attention to ways in which the actual performance is different. How does the tempo compare? Is one performance faster than the other? Does one seem precise and angular, while the other is more rounded and comfortable? Pay attention to any ornamentation that may be present (trills, mordents, glissandi - if you're comfortable reading music, following along in the score will help you identify these). How do the two artists perform the ornaments?
  
  What sort of emotional tone does the artist set? Is this feeling different in the two performances? How do the musical variables tempo, phrasing, dynamics function to establish this emotion?
  
  Which performance do you like better? What, specifically, makes you feel this way? Do you feel that the performance you prefer is closer to what the composer envisioned? If you have a copy of the musical score, look at any notes the composer may have made on the feel of the music. Is one performance more successful at bringing across this feeling?
  
  Is there anything you would change about either version? How would you play it differently?
  
  
• II) Find another pair of recordings, this time of a jazz piece. Note how much more variation there is than in the classical recordings. Is the melody played on different instruments? How does the instrument itself determine the interpretation? What differences have to do with the instrumentation? Which with the performer?
  
  As above, think about the emotions conveyed by the two readings and decide which you prefer.
  
  
• III) Perform the same steps with a rock and roll song.

      The development of music in the European tradition has made musicians increasingly dependent on notation for every aspect of musical performance. Music originated as an oral tradition. Musical ideas were passed from musician to musician, generation to generation. As musical forms became longer and more complex, notational systems became necessary for their preservation. These early systems were quite basic, requiring the musician to have a certain amount of knowledge about music and the styles of his time in order to turn the basic notation into meaningful sound. This reliance on the musician's knowledge gave a great deal of originality to each person's performance. The lack of precision of the written music made it necessary for the performer to bring aspects of himself and his musical skill to the performances. Each performance, instead of being a duplication, was essentially a re-creation. As the written piece passed from place to place, conventions for interpreting the notation changed, so that as in the oral tradition, each performer and each region had different styles of rendition.

      As music continued to become more complex, composers demanded more and more sophisticated systems to write down music that contained more and subtler variables. It is an evolution that is still going on. Notation is coming closer and closer to the point where it will control every variable, where every performance can be identical to the original.

      The oral tradition continues as well, in the form of recordings. It is now possible to hear the way the composer played the piece, and to copy his style exactly. MIDI, the musical language developed to control synthesizers with computers, allows nearly identical reproduction of a performance.

      While these resources and technologies are valuable tools for the composer and performer, they present a danger, for the tendency towards absolute fixation of a piece of music is antithetical to the spirit of music itself. Music is and always will be a form of self-expression, but increasing exposure to precise notation and recordings gives the music student the idea that there is one and only one correct performance, and that his own ideas are of no value. There is little in music education to correct this misapprehension.

      Luckily, music notation has not yet reached the point where no variation is possible. As exact as a musical score may seem, it is still a vague blueprint that needs to be fleshed out by the performer. It is still largely the oral tradition that determines how similar one performance is to another.

      The term Allegro means happy, upbeat. What this means to the person playing determines how fast and with what feeling the music is played. Consider the following terms and think about how different points of view would change the interpretation of the marking.

• Presto (fast)
• Staccato (sharply)
• Con Fuoco (with fire)
• Legato (smoothly)
• Crescendo (Becoming louder)
• Ad Libitum or Rubato (with no set tempo, leisurely, at your own pace)
• Forte (Loud)
• Piano (soft)
• Accelerando (becoming faster) Maestoso (majestic)

      Think about the variety of readings you could give to trills, grace notes, and other ornaments. All of these musical terms and symbols have standard interpretations, which are more or less variable, but these standards change. A trill in Bach's time was a very stately and precise alternation between two notes. Since Beethoven's era, a trill is performed more or less as rapidly as possible. The combination of a dotted eighth. note with a sixteenth is traditionally considered to denote a note of three-sixteenths duration followed by a note of one sixteenth duration. In jazz, however, and sometimes elsewhere, is it performed as the first and last notes of a triplet.

      In Baroque music, much of the ornamentation was left up to the performer, leaving music scholars with few clues as to how the music was interpreted. While there are standards for performance of these ornaments, (indeed, many are now written into the scored as fixed sets of notes), it is my view that the discretion of the performer should be the final judge of where and how these ornaments should be played.

      Because the notation requires so much interpretation on the part of the player, it is inevitable that the music will largely be a personal expression, regardless of how precisely the composer fixed the notes on the page. It is a mistake to let these personal aspects be accidental.

      Interpretation of a composition provides the performer with a chance to make a statement, to be a co-composer in his own right. Interpretation is the factor which makes every artist and every performance a unique entity that will not be duplicated.

      The following two exercises will begin to give you an idea of the variability possible within a musical phrase.

• I) Choose a single note on your instrument (drummers, pick a single drum). Experiment to see how many different ways you can play that note. Pianists -explore degrees of touch: hard, soft, light, firm. Try both damper and soft (una corda) pedals with each touch, alone and together. Try stopping the note with the pedal, and by lifting your hand. String players - try the note both with and without vibrato, upbow and downbow, with the point, with the frog, ponticello, near the fingerboard, pizzicato, col legno. How many places on the fingerboard can you produce the same pitch? Is it high enough to be played as a harmonic? Guitarists, bassists - try free stroke, rest stroke, with the pads of the fingers, with the nails, with a pick, hammered on, pulled off. Try bending to the pitch from below, or playing with a slide. Wind players - how many different fingering and blowing combinations can you discover for the pitch? Percussionists - try the note with the stick point, stick butt, brush, hand, mallet, rimshot, point rimshot, combinations of the above. You could spend all day on a snare drum discovering different combinations. Vocalists - again, with or without vibrato, forward towards the teeth, in the throat, breathy, nasal, swelling, aspirating, with a glottal stop(1). Try approaching the note from below and from above. With all instruments, find out how many degrees of loudness you can accomplish. Try having the note fall off quickly or cut off abruptly. Try holding the note out as long as possible. Find every possible way to play that note. (2)
• II) Using the same note, make combinations of two, using every possible combination - long note, short note, loud note, quiet note - go through every variation.
• III) Pick a second note and make combinations of two using every variation of both notes.

      If you have spent several weeks on this exercise, then you may be close to having an idea of the multiplicity of possibilities available to a musician using only a single note. Adding a second note multiplies each possibility by four. Imagine how many possible ways there are to play an eight-bar Passage of music with two voices.

      With such a variety of nuances inherently possible, it is easy to see how individual a live performance is, and how much we lose by substituting a recording for the actual event. Even a MIDI keyboard is capable of reproducing 127 different touch velocities which can control volume, timbre, and vibrato.

• I) Play a scale on your instrument (drummers play a roll). Play at a speed you are comfortable with, that lets you play fluidly.
• II) Play the scale taking two notes at a time (play in an unbroken quarter note rhythm). Accent the first note of each pair. .
• III) Continue to add notes each time you go through the scale, until you are playing the entire scale in one breath, bow, or movement.

      Phrasing is the logical extension of the single note exercise. Phrasing connects a series of notes as a coherent thought, making the variations of volume and timbre lead us naturally to the next phrase. Music without conscious phrasing is less alive - it makes less sense to the ear or misleads when the musical aim should be clear.

      Many times, phrasing is indicated in the written music, but it is often left up to the player to intuit, requiring him to discern the composer's intentions. Sometimes this is obvious, depending on how much experience you have with the style, but often it is open to multiple interpretations, and this is where the performer must make his contribution. Go back to the recordings you used in the comparing exercise. How much of the difference between the two recordings is due to different interpretations of the phrasing?

• I)Select a piece of music that you would like to play. See what you can find out about the composer's life at the time he wrote the piece. What was the reason for the composition? What emotions drove him to write it? Is it meant to convey a particular idea or emotion? Look at a copy of the score. Are there any indications in the notation as to emotional content?
• II) Find a recording of the piece. Does the performance in the recording accomplish the goals the composer set for the piece? How does the performer's interpretation agree or disagree with the composer's intent? How would. you play the same piece?
• III) Play the piece yourself. How does playing the piece make you feel? Is the feeling of playing different from the feeling of listening? How?

      Ultimately, the goal of your performance of a given piece is to convey an emotion or a series of emotions, to lead the audience on a journey or tell them a story. You as a musical performer have the power to communicate directly to the audience through your performance. Your interpretation of the music will color their, views!of the piece. If it is a coherent, powerful interpretation, it will stay with them forever. This implies a certain amount of responsibility. You need to decide whether you will try to convey the composer's exact intention or whether you will try to present the piece in a way that changes its meaning. In this way, it is as much your piece as the composer's.

      You will find that as you perform more, you will make certain choices again and again, interpreting similar pieces in similar ways. This evolves into your personal style. Knowing that you have so many options, it is possible to make choices early in your musical career to influence your style, to make it as true as possible a reflection of who you are. Once you establish a style, it is hard to change.

      One compelling reason to think about your interpretation has to do with the nature of the performance situation. Performing before an audience can be a very emotional experience - frightening, exhilarating, maddening. Your emotions at the time of the performance can take over and color the piece you are playing. Being sure of your interpretation beforehand can help you to establish the feeling you want the piece to have.

      There are some performers, myself included, who prefer to react to the situation at hand, to let the interaction between musician and audience determine the shape of the music. This, too is a valid approach to interpretation, and one that in its spontaneity makes it similar to improvisation. However, this too takes practice, and can have unpredictable results. To take this avenue, you need to be prepared for anything.

      In any case, it is important to know which route you are going to take before you begin to play. The meditation techniques you learned in chapter three can prove invaluable in helping to identify your emotions so as not to be controlled by them, while giving you the option of using them as the motive force for your interpretation.

• I)Select a simple piece of music to play. Using tempo, dynamics, and phrasing, try to make the piece display different emotions. Make it an angry piece, a happy piece, a sad piece, a lonely piece. Express as many emotions as you can with the one piece.
• II) Try to call to mind the subjective experience of those emotions and try to make yourself feel them. Play the piece while feeling each emotion. Play angrily, happily, sadly. Play from the standpoint of all the emotions.
  
• Think about how the interpretations differed, thinking about the emotion versus feeling the emotion.
  

      If you are a composer, you have a pre-existing relationship to the music you have composed. The music springs directly from your own ideas and emotions. Being this close to the music has both advantages and drawbacks. On the plus side, you have all the background of the music at your fingertips. You know what feelings you were trying to convey, and what you were feeling at the time you composed it. On the other hand, being so close to the music, you miss out on the experience of the first time listener. Does the piece produce in others the same things it produces in you? Often the only way to know is to put the piece aside for several years, forget about it, and come back to it later. I've had many unpleasant, as well as pleasant, surprises coming back to my own pieces this way.

      The music that you, as a composer, create, comes from the unconscious, and so can often reveal more of your emotions than you realize at the time. Taking the time to meditate on the music, laying aside all your preconceptions about it, can help you to get a more objective idea of the overall content and effect. Similarly, taking the music out of context can objectify it. I've many times bad the experience of performing a piece for the first time and finding that the performance situation brings out aspects of the music I hadn't noticed. Arranging the music for a different instrument or ensemble can produce the same effect. Sometimes you will find that the piece becomes foreign to you and you lose interest in it. Often this is because you are too attached to a limited idea of the music. Again, a good time to put it aside until you can look at it objectively.

      Composing music that will be played by other people brings up special problems, again concerned with objectivity. Chances are, you will have a definite idea of what the piece should sound like and will try to define the music sufficiently in the score to produce the effect you intend. However, as I pointed out earlier in the chapter, there are always variables open to the performer, who may not agree with you. You can define the music as rigidly as you like, but I have found that it's best to resign myself to the fact that others will always see something different in the piece than I do.

      The first time a listener approached me with a view of my music that differed from my experience, I put up a front of denial. "No, no," I said, "you don't understand my piece at all." It took perhaps a year for me to realize that what I was reacting to so negatively was in fact a mark of the success of the piece. A composer never wants to produce music that nobody can understand. In this case, the woman in question had a perfectly valid experience of the music that coincided with her own experience. That it didn't match my own experience of the piece was not a mark of failure, unless it was my own failure to recognize an aspect of my own music that had been previously hidden from me by my own lack of objectivity.

      Similarly, I've been shocked by others' performances and alterations of my music, only to recognize later the validity of the interpretation and incorporate aspects of it into my own performance.

      Playing music with other opinionated composers while it is still in an unfinished state has proved for me to be a good way to expand my awareness of the music. Again, it is the ego that balks at the idea that there is something there that I didn't consciously put there.