Introduction
This essay is about the firmly established, but normally not openly acknowledged, practice of making minor textual alterations to pieces of music to facilitate their performance. The main aim is to debunk the stress-causing theory that when playing music, the avoidance of mistakes in an exact realisation of a set of markings on paper should be at the top of one's list of priorities.
The working-out of this theme begins with an examination of a number of general principles that may guide a musician's decisions as to whether or not to employ the art of compromise, and to what degree. This discussion occasionally raises an issue, not specific to piano accompaniment, which would be an interesting subject for further examination in another essay and, when the author is aware of its existence, reference is made to such a work.
The most extensive sections are devoted to the relationships between technique, art and state of mind, and their roles in the quality of performances; consideration of what the score of a piece of music actually represents, and what bearing recognition of what the score does and does not contain has on interpretation; and the bane of piano accompanists’ lives, the specific problems caused by transcriptions - especially those made by uninformed arrangers - of orchestral parts.
Methods that may be used to achieve acceptable compromises are detailed and their use in given situations evaluated. All the examples are drawn from the author’s own experience, a side effect of which is to raise another issue to which attention is given: that of the extent to which the application of the art of compromise is governed by the individual’s physical capabilities.
Immediately, it is evident that what is habitually regarded as a controversial or taboo subject is about to be addressed. In spite of the fact that perfection in anything is an unattainable goal to be striven towards and one is obliged to spend one's whole life accepting this by making compromises, it is often claimed that to make a compromise is an admission of failure. The issue under discussion in this essay is the impracticality of absolute application of this concept. What follows is an exploration of the notion that failure is acceptable when it is necessitated by purely practical considerations, with an examination of some techniques that may be used to alleviate or nullify the consequences of playing something that differs substantially from the score. The title is designed to emphasise the order in which one's priorities must lie: if any concessions are made, they are to be designed to assist art, not to compromise it.
It is unusual for anything written about practical music making to approach the subject from a standpoint other than the assumptions that the reader's or student's goal is to give public performances of professional standard, and that his technique is (or is destined to be) advanced enough to achieve that. This essay is not aimed at any specific standard, but addresses all levels of performance (concert, examination, rehearsal, lesson) that a piano accompanist may realistically expect to encounter, and assumes only that he sets out to achieve the most artistic result possible in every situation.
Most existing books on the subject of piano accompaniment - by such esteemed authors as Philip Cranmer, Gerald Moore and Ivor Newton - fall into one or more of the categories of textbook about technique, theory of approach to specific works and composers, and anecdotes. Very little has been written about the aesthetic theory of the accompanist's art, which explains the scarcity of references within this work to existing publications.
Conventions
In the absence in the English language of pronouns of neutral gender, in order to avoid using awkward expressions such as him/her or s/he, this essay follows the long established practice of using masculine pronouns to denote individuals who may equally well be of either gender.
When points are illustrated by reference to musical scores, the editions used are identified in the body of the text by reference to the publisher and date of publication.
Rehearsal letters are referred to in bold type, individual bars being located by expressions in the style A+7 = seven bars after A.
It is advantageous to the reader to be able to refer to scores of Mozart's Bassoon Concerto (arranged for bassoon and piano, e.g. Boosey & Hawkes, 1947) and Weber's Grand Duo Concertant for clarinet and piano.
Bibliography
ADLER K (1965) The Art of Accompanying and Coaching, New York: Da Capo Press
CRANMER P (1970) The Technique of Accompaniment, London: Dobson Books
MOORE G (1943, rev. 1959) The Unashamed Accompanist, Ascherberg, Hopwood & Crew
MOORE G (1953) Singer and Accompanist, London: Methuen
MOORE G (1962) Am I Too Loud?, London: Hamish Hamilton
MOORE G (1978) Farewell Recital, London: Hamish Hamilton
NEWTON I (1966) At The Piano, London: Hamish Hamilton
STORR A (1992) Music and the Mind, London: Harper Collins