An amateur pianist reflects on why performers obey composer instructions even when doing so raises risk or seems unnecessary, and considers philosophical arguments about what it means to perform a piece.
Some performers follow the score strictly because the difficulty or risk written on the page contributes to the work’s expressive content.
Philosophers disagree: Stephen Davies suggests deviation may mean you aren’t performing the same piece, while Peter Kivy rejects the idea that composers necessarily know better than performers.
Register for an account your email your username A password will be e-mailed to you. Reflecting on my willingness to follow the score written by the composers, I found it bizarre: I follow the score to such an extreme extent that I am willing to take the risk of ruining a public performance. The pianist Malcolm Bilson once discussed how to play the opening of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No.
Bilson thinks pianists should play it only with the left hand: I say go out on the stage and be plenty nervous because it's dangerous, and because that's what Beethoven wrote. I won't, because there is something left out there on the score: the sense of danger, excitement, the risk of messing it up. For instance, chess players need to follow the chess rules because they are participating in chess games.
Beethoven doesn't write a thing like that for a string quartet. He writes it for a piano because on the piano it's difficult. Could it be the case that, without following the score of op.
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