A performative interpretation is a performance of a musical score for an audience, and it could be seen as including four key components: reading, playing, performing, and the history of interpretation.
1. Reading the score
To read a score, one must know about notation and its realization, since “a score always under-determines the full sonic of any performance” (Davies, S., & Sadie, S. Interpretation. Grove Music Online. 2022). Therefore, knowledge about the creation of the score (composition, style, historical insight, etc.) or the performance of it might qualify for a better reading and accordingly rendering. On the other hand, reading the score might just as well be a question about finding or creating meaning, expression, or emotions in the score through a personal understanding grounded in the present.
2. Playing the score
Reading the score cannot be separated from its performance. Finding meaning in a score might as well be understood as finding a satisfying performance of it – no matter what it is. Obviously, a musician might simply play more interestingly because of personal qualifications. Physical capabilities in relation to precision, equality, agility, etc., as well as experience, knowledge, emotional, and analytical competences will reflect on a musician’s interpretation.
3. Performing the score
Performing a score is not only playing the music but making a presence in a context, communicating with an audience through body language, clothes, staging, etc.
The scenic presence of the performer – timing, creation of a suspense, making a surprising entrance or changing the energy in connection with the performance is crucial to make the audience experiencing the music.
4. The history of interpretation
Finally, an interpretation creates meaning through the expectations that surround it through the history of interpretation. This history falls into two, before and after the invention of recording. Our knowledge about interpretation before this invention is very limited, and vice versa. Through recordings, we know that within the tradition of interpretation, it is not necessary to follow the dynamics, phrasings, articulations literally in a musical score, and that musicians always add fluctuations to the notation of tempo, dynamics, articulation, etc. Recordings also tell us how much interpretation has changed over time. What in the beginning of the 20th century was a “natural” phrasing, sounds today strange or even “unmusical” – including when composers like Debussy or Grieg play the music by themselves.
Debussy plays Debussy Préludes, Livre 1, no. XII. Minstrels (1913):
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet plays Debussy Préludes, Livre 1, no. XII. Minstrels (2007):
· see also ·