CHAPTER IV
INTERPRETATION IN CONDUCTING
INTRODUCTORY
THE CONDUCTOR AS INTERPRETER Interpretation from the standpoint of the conductor differs from interpretation in singing and playing in that the conductor must necessarily convey ideas or emotions to his audience through an intermediary, viz., the orchestra or chorus. He furthermore labors under the disadvantage of having to stand with his back (certainly the least expressive part of man's physique) to the audience. The pianist, singer, and violinist, on the other hand, face their audiences; and because they themselves actually do the performing, are able to work much more directly upon the minds and emotions of their hearers. For this reason, interpretation must be studied by the conductor from a twofold basis:
1. From the standpoint of the expressive rendition of music in general.
2. From the standpoint of securing the expressive rendition of music from a group of players or singers.
We shall devote this and the three following chapters to a discussion of these two phases of interpretation.
INTERPRETATION AND EXPRESSIONThe word interpret, as ordinarily used, means to explain,"—"to elucidate,"—"to make clear the meaning of," and this same definition of the word applies to music as well, the conductor or performer "making clear" to the audience the message given him by the composer. It should be noted at once, however, that interpretation in music is merely the process or means for securing the larger thing called expression, and in discussing this larger thing, the activity of two persons is always assumed; one is the composer, the other the performer. Which of these two is the more important personage has been for many decades a much mooted question among concert-goers. Considered from an intellectual standpoint, there is no doubt whatever concerning the supremacy of the composer; but when viewed in the light of actual box office experience, on an evening when Caruso or some other popular idol has been slated to appear, and cannot do so because of indisposition, it would seem as if the performer were still as far above the composer as he was in the days of eighteenth-century opera in Italy.
It is the composer's function to write music of such a character that when well performed it will occasion an emotional reaction on the part of performer and listener. Granting this type of music, it is the function of the performer or conductor to so interpret the music that an appropriate emotional reaction will actually ensue. A recent writer calls the performer a messenger from the composer to the audience, and states[1] that—
As a messenger is accountable to both sender and recipient of his message, so is the interpretative artist in a position of twofold trust and, therefore, of twofold responsibility. The sender of his message—creative genius—is behind him; before him sits an expectant and confiding audience, the sovereign addressee. The interpretative artist has, therefore, first to enter into the spirit of his message; to penetrate its ultimate meaning; to read in, as well as between, the lines. And then he has to train and develop his faculties of delivery, of vital production, to such a degree as to enable him to fix his message decisively, and with no danger of being misunderstood, in the mind of his auditor.
This conception of the conductor's task demands from him two things:
EMOTION IN INTERPRETATION Real interpretation, then, requires, on the part of the conductor, just as in the case of the actor, a display of emotion. Coldness and self-restraint will not suffice, for these represent merely the intellectual aspect of the art, and music is primarily a language of the emotions. This difference constitutes the dividing line between performances that merely arouse our judicial comment "That was exceedingly well done"; and those on the other hand that thrill us, carry us off our feet, sweep us altogether out of our environment so that for the moment we forget where we are, lose sight temporarily of our petty cares and grievances, and are permitted to live for a little while in an altogether different world—the world not of things and ambitions and cares, but of ecstasy. Such performances and such an attitude on the part of the listener are all too rare in these days of smug intellectualism and hypersophistication, and we venture to assert that this is at least partly due to the fact that many present-day conductors are intellectual rather than emotional in their attitude.
It is this faculty of displaying emotion, of entirely submerging himself in the work being performed, that gives the veteran choral conductor Tomlins his phenomenal hold on chorus and audience. In a performance of choral works recently directed by this conductor, the listener was made to feel at one moment the joy of springtime, with roses blooming and lovers wooing, as a light, tuneful chorus in waltz movement was being performed; then in a trice, one was whisked over to the heart of Russia, and made to see, as though they were actually present, a gang of boatmen as they toiled along the bank of the Volga with the tow-rope over their shoulders, tugging away at a barge which moved slowly up from the distance, past a clump of trees, and then gradually disappeared around a bend in the river; and in yet another moment, one was thrilled through and through with religious fervor in response to the grandeur and majestic stateliness of the Mendelssohn Motet, Judge Me, oh God.
It was interpretation of this type too that gave the actor-singer Wüllner such a tremendous hold upon his audiences a few years ago, this artist achieving a veritable triumph by the tremendous sincerity and vividness of his dramatic impersonations in singing German Lieder. in spite of the fact that he possessed a voice of only average quality.
It was an emotional response of this character that the Greek philosophers must have been thinking of when they characterized drama as a "purge for the soul"; and surely it must still be good for human beings to forget themselves occasionally and to become merged in this fashion in the wave of emotion felt by performer and fellow-listener in response to the message of the composer.
It is emotion of this type also that the great composers have sought to arouse through their noblest compositions. Handel is said to have replied, when congratulated upon the excellence of the entertainment afforded by the Messiah, "I am sorry if I have only entertained them; I hoped to do them good." An English writer, in quoting this incident, adds:[2]
What Handel tried to do … by wedding fine music to an inspiring text, Beethoven succeeded in doing through instruments alone … for never have instruments—no matter how pleasing they were in the past—been capable of stirring the inmost feelings as they have done since the beginning of the nineteenth century.
There is danger, of course, here as everywhere, that one may go too far; and it is entirely conceivable that both soloist and conductor might go to such extremes in their display of emotion that the music would be entirely distorted, losing what is after all its main raison d'être, viz., the element of beauty. But there seems at present to be no especial danger that such an event will occur; the tendency seems rather to be toward overemphasizing intellectualism in music, and toward turning our art into a science.[3] The thing that we should like to convince the prospective conductor of is that real interpretation—i.e., genuinely expressive musical performance—demands an actual display of emotion on the part of the conductor if the ideal sort of reaction is to be aroused in the audience.
In order to interpret a musical work, then, the conductor himself must first study it so as to discover what the composer intended to express. Having become thoroughly permeated with the composer's message, he may then by instinctive imitation arouse in his chorus or orchestra so strong a reflection of this mood that they will perform the work in the correct spirit, the audience in turn catching its essential significance, and each listener in his own way responding to the composer's message.
DEFINITION OF INTERPRETATIONMusical interpretation consists thus in impressing upon the listener the essential character of the music by emphasizing the important elements and subordinating the unimportant ones; by indicating in a clear-cut and unmistakable way the phrasing, and through skilful phrasing making evident the design of the composition as a whole; and in general by so manipulating one's musical forces that the hearer will not only continue to be interested in the performance, but will feel or understand the basic significance of the work being performed; will catch and remember the important things in it, will not have his attention distracted by comparatively unimportant details, and will thus have delivered to him the real spirit of the composer's message. This implies skilful accentuation of melody, subordination of accompaniment, increasing the tempo or force in some portions, decreasing them in others, et cetera. Clear enunciation and forceful declamation in choral music are also included, and in it all, the performer or conductor must so subordinate his own personality that the attention of the listeners will be centered upon the composition and not upon the eccentricities of dress or manner of the artist.
THE BOUNDARIES OF MUSICIt is inevitable that there should be considerable difference of opinion among composers, critics, listeners, and performers, as to just what music may or may not legitimately be expected to express. Some modern composers are apparently convinced that it ought to be possible through music to suggest pictures, tell stories, or depict moral and intellectual struggles on the part of the individual. Others contend that music exists solely because of its own inherent beauty, that it can arouse general emotional states only, and that if it is good music, it needs no further meaning than this. Even "pure music," the champions of this latter idea urge, may express an infinite variety of emotional tones, from joy, encouragement, excitement, tenderness, expectancy, invigoration, and tranquillity, to dread, oppression of spirit, hesitation, harshness, and despondency. A modern writer on esthetics treats this matter at length, and finally concludes:[4]
Is the symbolization pervasive enough to account for the steady continuing charm of lengthy compositions? … The symbolizations … mostly resemble patches; they form no system, no plot or plan accompanying a work from beginning to end; they only guarantee a fitful enjoyment—a fragment here, a gleam there, but no growing organic exaltation like that actually afforded by musical compositions.
At another point in the same work, this writer again discusses this same matter (page 120):
Music is presentative in character, not representative. Measure, to be sure, may correspond to the beating of the pulse, and the final cadence may picture the satisfaction of desires; the coda may simulate a mental summary; but the composition in its totality, with its particular melodies, harmonies, and rhythms, and with the specific union of all these elements characteristic of this composition, does not represent any definite psychical or material fact.
The majority of us would doubtless take a middle-ground position, admitting the beauty and power of music, per se, but acknowledging also the fact that abstract beauty together with a certain amount of suggested imagery, in combination, will usually make a stronger appeal to the majority of people than either element by itself. Many of us are entirely willing to grant, therefore, that a more complex and more vividly colored emotional state will probably result if the auditor is furnished with the title or program of the work being performed; but we contend nevertheless that this music, regardless of its connection with imagery, must at the same time be sound music, and that no matter how vividly descriptive our tonal art may become, if it cannot stand the test of many hearings as music, entirely apart from the imagery aroused, it is not worthy to endure. It is not the meaning of the music which makes us want to hear it repeated, but its inherent beauty; it is not usually our intellectual impression, but our emotional thrill which we recall in thinking back over a past musical experience.
Those of us who take the middle ground that we have just been presenting contend also that descriptive music can only legitimately arouse its appropriate imagery when the essential idea has been supplied beforehand in the form of a title or program, and that even then the effect upon various individuals is, and may well be, quite different, since each one has the music thrown, as it were, upon the screen of his own personal experience.
EXPRESSION CONCERNS BOTH COMPOSER AND PERFORMERIt will be noted that in this discussion we are constantly using the word expression from the twofold standpoint of composer and performer, each having an indispensable part in it, and neither being able to get along without the other. But in our treatment of conducting, we shall need to come back again and again to the idea of expression from the standpoint of interpretation, and in directing a piece of music we shall now take it for granted that the composer has said something which is worthy of being heard, and that as the intermediary between composer and audience, we are attempting to interpret to the latter what the former has expressed in his composition. It should be noted in this connection that wrong interpretation is possible in music, even as in literature. One may so read a poem that the hearer, without being in any way to blame, will entirely miss the point. So also may one conduct a musical work, whether it be a child's song or a symphonic poem, in such a fashion that neither performers nor audience gain a proper conception of what it means.
INTERPRETATION IN VOCAL MUSICIn the case of vocal music, the key to the emotional content of the work may almost always be found by carefully studying the words. In preparing to conduct choral singing, master the text, therefore; read it aloud as though declaiming to an audience; and when you come to the performance, see that your vocalists sing the music in such a way that the audience will be able to catch without too great effort both the meaning of the individual words and the spirit of the text as a whole.
The great Italian tenor Caruso expressed himself forcibly upon this point during an interview for the Christian Science Monitor, in 1913. In reply to the question "Where do you locate the source of expression in singing?" he said:
I find it in the words always. For unless I give my hearers what is in the text, what can I give them? If I just produce tone, my singing has no meaning.
"Thereupon" (continues the interviewer), "vocalizing a series of scale passages such as are used in studio practice, Caruso commented":
Now, when I do that, I don't say anything. I may make musical sounds, but I express nothing. I may even execute the notes with a good staccato or legato (again illustrating with his voice) and still, having no words to go by, I make no effect on my listeners.
Look at the question in another way. Suppose I were to sing a line of text with a meaning in my voice that contradicted the idea of the words. Would not that be nonsense? It would be as much as though I were to say to you "This wood is hard," and were to say it with a soft voice. People have observed that I sing as though I were talking. Well, that is just what I mean to do.
"Singing, then" (the interviewer goes on), "as Caruso began to define it, is a sort of exalted speech, its purpose being to illuminate the imagery and sentiment of language. The mere music of singing he seemed for the moment to put in a subordinate place.
"By way of further emphasizing his point, he referred to a theme in Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore, which is used in two opposing situations—by the soprano in a mood of joy, and by the tenor in a mood of sorrow. He sang the measures of the soprano as though laughing. Then he sang those of the tenor as though weeping."
Expression in choral music is dependent upon the text to just as great an extent as in the case of solo singing; and choral conductors may well ponder upon the above words of one of the world's greatest singers, and apply the lesson to their own problems. The average audience is probably more interested in the words of vocal music than in anything else; and since both vocal and choral performances are usually given before "average audiences" it behooves the conductor to look into the minds of those before whom he is directing, and to adapt the performance to the attitude of the listeners.
- ↑ Constantin von Sternberg, Ethics and Esthetics of Piano Playing, p. 10.
- ↑ C. F. A. Williams, The Rhythm of Modern Music, p. 13.
- ↑ This danger is especially insidious just now in our college and high school courses in the appreciation of music. Instructors in such courses are often so zealous in causing pupils to understand the machinery involved in the construction and rendition of music that they sometimes forget to emphasize sufficiently the product resulting from all this machinery, viz., beauty. The idea of these courses is most excellent, and in time those in charge of them will doubtless realize that the hearing of actual music in the classroom is more valuable to students than learning a mass of facts about it; and that if a choice were necessary between a course in which there was opportunity for hearing a a great deal of music without any comment, and one on the other hand in which there was a great deal of comment without any music, the former would be infinitely preferable. But such a choice is not necessary; and the ideal course in the Appreciation of Music is one in which the student has opportunity for hearing a great deal of music with appropriate comments by the instructor.
- ↑ Gehring, The Basis of Musical Pleasure, p. 89.