Art, Technique, & Faculty
When preparing and giving performances, it is necessary to accept that the finished product will be imperfect because perfection is physically and mentally impossible for a living being: it is an unattainable goal towards which one must strive in order to achieve optimum results. This is one concept of which one needs to be subconsciously aware so as not to impede the concentration when performing. It is important to recognise another, related concept whilst not allowing it to become an excuse for deficiencies in technique, namely that mistakes in a performance are far less perceptible to the listener, especially the uninformed listener, than to the performer. For an essay on this subject, see Bruno H Repp, The Art of Inaccuracy: Why Pianists' Errors are Difficult to Hear, in Musical Perception, Winter 1996. It is also true that, if in performance one succeeds in directing one's concentration to the music, and technique and knowledge to the subconscious, some finer technical points may be lost: the ideal is that communication with the listener will improve sufficiently to compensate for any errors which result.
An important factor governing the extent of compromise employed in a performance is the pianist's technique, which needs to be good enough both to play the chosen notes in such a way as to disguise alterations to the score if any have been made, and to enable the player's concentration to be directed towards matters such as where the music is going and what it means. It can be argued that knowledge of the direction of a piece of music is itself part of a performer's technique, since it is achieved by the combination of understanding rudiments - phrasing, harmony, rhythm; awareness of tension, relaxation and resolution; analysis in general and intuition. In this case, one may wish for a separate word to describe the physical aspect of technique, which enables notes to be played; and also to assert that all elements of technique need to be mastered to such an extent that during a performance, the pianist's concentration may be devoted to the art of music, and communicating what he finds to be the essence of the present work.
An accompanist has an especial need to listen to and be fully aware of what the other member or members of the ensemble are doing, not only from the point of view of establishing a convincing rapport and unity of interpretation, but also to compensate when mistakes are made: this is his job if only for the practical reason that he is usually the only performer in possession of a complete score. The ability to read a score fluently enough to achieve this whilst performing one's own part is acquired by a combination of technique and experience.
Ideally, the application of all these elements of technique and of a thorough knowledge of musicianship and analysis should not stifle opportunities for intuition, and instinctive and spontaneous reactions. The mental demands require a high degree of concentration, so the technique and knowledge need to be mastered to an extent sufficient that this concentration is not of such an intense kind that the performer's awareness is distracted from the most important aspects of music, namely those which communicate directly with the listener.
This all requires a very high level of physical fitness and mental alertness that cannot be pre-ordained, and to cancel a performance every time one does not feel in ideal shape to give one's best is not a practical option. The performer's technique, knowledge and concentration need to be sufficient to enable a satisfying and convincing performance even when his faculty is not at its optimum level, at which times he may find it necessary to attempt a less difficult version of the score than that which is printed.
Principles - general
Accompanists are required to play in a wide range of different circumstances. The foregoing, while it is true of any performance, attains its full significance in consideration of public concerts, which are very rare events in most lives. Most of the accompanist' s duties consist of examinations, rehearsals, master-classes, auditions, and lessons, and he will undoubtedly feel that the degree of compromise he employs must vary according to the gravity of the occasion, as well as to the technical difficulty of the music and the amount of time available in which to prepare.
A special case with regard to this is a visit to a recording studio, when there is an obligation upon all participants to produce a result that includes no detectable trace of errors or alterations, and compromise may not be accepted, except perhaps when there is an unplayable feature such as a piano chord of a wider compass than the player involved can stretch, or by default if upon expiry of the allotted time there is no perfect take of a particular passage, when a judgement needs to be made as to whether or not the best version (with or without electronic modification) is sufficiently good that repeated hearing of the fault will not unduly irritate the listener. The distinction between the recording and any other situation is that intentional compromises are never acceptable in the former.
It is interesting to speculate on another special case, that of performing a piece that is exceptionally difficult because it is new (that is, either newly composed or unlike anything previously encountered by the individual performer) and contains very complex technical challenges. For many years, it has been the case that such works generally meet with disapproval from listeners, and finding out whether this is the result of bad composing or unmusical performing of each piece is a very arduous, imprecise and controversial process. It can be particularly difficult to improve the musicality of a performance of such a piece by applying the art of compromise, since simplifying something new is liable to counteract its uniqueness.
In an age when many recent composers have worked in such a precise, exacting way that total accuracy of detail is evidently required of the performer, it is easy to become preoccupied with producing a sonic replica of the printed score. In practice, most composers accept that (like themselves) performers are imperfect - indeed, many composers are performers - and that the more complicated their instructions, the more likely it is that a performance will deviate from the score.
In an age when most people’s consumption of music is dominated by recordings, it is also easy to forget that since the invention of tape recording, what one is listening to probably consists of excerpts from more than one performance. One may then become preoccupied, because this is what one is used to hearing, with trying to produce a performance that gives an equally close illusion of perfection, and to overlook the even greater importance of artistic considerations.
It is in the nature of the accompanist’s work that he can expect to be obliged to learn large quantities of music, with periods of notice varying from adequate to negligible, and to need to perform all of it in a manner that suggests he knows it thoroughly. In theory, the art of compromise is applied when it is not physically possible to attain an accurate performance of the score, and consists of performing a sufficiently similar representation that only the player himself is aware of the differences.
A useful guideline to making omissions and amendments may be that they should be made only if their purpose is to enable a performance of a piece of music to be a convincing, musical account, coming closer to the composer’s perceived intention than would an attempt to play exactly what appears on the page.
Principles - the Score
In an age when authenticity has come to be regarded by many as a concept essential to performance, it is worth reflecting on the relationship between it and compromise. It is not relevant here to discuss the choice of instruments on which to perform, because this essay deals specifically with the pianoforte and normal accompaniment situations: it is very rare for an accompanist not to be obliged to use whatever piano (or electronic keyboard) is present at the time. The aspect of authenticity that may be addressed concerns realising the composer's intentions by playing exactly what he wrote in the score.
The extent to which exactitude in reproducing printed instructions matters is determined by performance practice. A printed score is effectively an instruction manual that may be interpreted in many different ways, bearing in mind that the degree of precision of the indications contained therein varies according to factors such as the era in which the music was written, the genre and the composer's way of working. Much music exists in which the composer has not even written all the notes, for example in the majority of baroque sonatas the harmony is expected to be supplied by a keyboard player working from a (usually figured) bass line, and in arias of several periods and jazz (and other forms of popular music) soloists are expected to use the given melody and harmony as a basis for improvisation. Again in arias, and in other forms too (especially concertos of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries), composers customarily provided soloists with opportunities to create their own cadenzas. The point is that in order to judge how freely one may alter a printed score, one thing one needs is a thorough knowledge of the history of performance practice.
First of all, it is necessary to establish what the score is, and how much it tells us about the composer's wishes as to how the work should be performed. As observed above, in baroque music scores did not include many details: composers expected these to be provided by the musical knowledge and good taste of performers, according to the practice of the time. There has been an increasing tendency through time for composers to make the details included in their scores more precise, whilst not necessarily excluding the use of common sense and the understanding of additional details through knowledge of performance practice: one often finds in songs by Schumann the instructions ritardando and rallentando, but very rarely finds a consequent a tempo. It is easy to think that the majority of twentieth century composers give absolutely precise instructions to which one must adhere strictly, in which case one needs reminding that composers are human and can either accept that a situation may necessitate an alteration to the score, or change their minds. To realise this, one may observe the differing (from each other and from the metronome marks in the scores) tempi in Stravinsky's performances of his own music, or the ten pages of editorial notes and alternative readings that precede the score of Carl B. Schmidt's edition, published by Chester Music in 1994, of Poulenc's Sonata for flute and piano.
One also needs to consider how to relate the score to the instruments available, for example by accepting that dynamic markings are related not to a scale of decibels, but to each other, to the acoustic conditions in which one is playing, and to the need to establish appropriate balance with the soloist or between the members of the ensemble. An example of an adjustment that an accompanist may at times find it prudent to make for the sake of clarity is to reduce the dynamic, or maybe even the number of notes, in the left hand if playing chords or figurations low in the bass, for example in songs by Schubert in which a piano part, already low in register as originally composed, has been transposed downwards to suit a bass voice. The extent to which this is advisable depends partly on the quality of the instrument available.
When one finds it necessary to apply the art of compromise to an edition of a baroque concerto, one may wish to take into account in which area of the keyboard it is most effective to play the accompaniment in order to produce a texture matching the range and tone quality of the soloist (Adler, pp. 230-2). The same may apply to baroque sonatas, especially if the edition is old enough to include (due to the performance practice of its time) stylistic aberrations such as doubled octaves in the bass.
Altering the text of a piece of music one is performing is basically regarded as unacceptable, and no conscientious musician would contemplate tampering with a composer's thoughts. Although this sentence posits a very good rule, it does not take into account the possibilities that the composer may have written, with a specific performer in mind, something that is physically impossible for someone else; or that what appears on the printed page may be a summary of several versions (all of which apparently met with the composer's approval) of the piece, an inaccurate representation of what the composer wrote, or an arrangement by a person other than the composer.
Transposition of Songs
A custom that may be argued to constitute tampering with a composer's conception is that of performing songs in keys other than those in which they were originally composed. This can raise complex issues such as the extent to which the mood of a piece of music is determined by its key, how much the mood is changed by performing the same words and music in a different key, and whether or not the listener's perception of mood is related to the pitch of the sounds heard: if the last is the case, the mood may be held to be changed, if the composer's pitch was a semitone or more lower, when a work is performed at modern concert pitch. Transposition of songs is normally undertaken for strictly practical purposes, to bring them into ranges suitable for more singers (including situations brought about by an individual singer's state of physique at the time of performance): they are generally published in two or more different keys, and it is seldom known if the composer's approval was required (it seems reasonable to assume that composers generally accept practical solutions to problems) or given, or if the composer considered that his approval was required. For theory regarding the accompanist's or coach's role in deciding the key in which a singer should sing a song, see Adler, p. 221.
A more controversial issue is that of whether or not it is acceptable to perform a song-cycle with varying distances of transposition. In a work such as Schumann's Dichterliebe, the key of each song is related to that of its predecessor so closely that the key sequence may be taken to be an integral part of the composer's conception, and one should be very reluctant to alter these relationships. This does not concur with the strange case of Vaughan Williams' Songs of Travel (Boosey & Hawkes, 1960: low voice, 1969: high voice), in which the published high voice version bears a prefatory remark alluding to the importance of the key relationships between the songs (No 7 apparently having been transposed "to fit in to the tonal sequence of the cycle"), but uses transpositions ranging from a minor third to a perfect fourth above the original.