Byron's Blog on Music, Performance and Research

Feeling bad about my concert review

Avior Byron — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:01:07 +0000

Feeling bad about my concert review

Last week I attended an all Schoenberg concert in Jerusalem. I reviewed the concert in my blog and the review was not positive. Lady R, who is one of my subscribers, wrote to me arguing that she did not like my review. She claimed that it was too harsh. I used the word ‘murdering Schoenberg’ and she said that this was too much. She said that I should think about these young performers as if they were my children and avoid hurting their feelings. She told me that I do not want to be like the critic Hanoch Ron who is notorious for hurting performers’ feelings without justifying his arguments (Lady R did acknowledged that my criticism was not without explanations).

After writing the review, I noticed that another subscriber sent me an email (about a week before the concert) telling me about the concert, and that he got the information from one of the performers. This made me feel even worse, since I really do not want to hurt anyone, and especially young performers attempting to play Schoenberg.

As a result I lowered the tone of my review. I removed the ‘murdering’ and used ‘distorting’ and wrote that it was a students’ concert so that my review will be considered in proportion. However, the basic criticism stayed almost the same.

There is some difference between my criticsim and that of the critic Hanoch Ron. As lady R wrote, I do try to explain why I think the way I do about a concert. Moreover, I have about 60 subscribers and this is much less than the readers of Hanoch Ron. It should be remembered that I did mention the first violinist of the 2^nd quartet, who played in a professional way. I liked how he performed. The idea behind the concert was brilliant and some of the lectures were better than others (I did not go into too many details since I preferred to speak about the playing). The whole idea of making such a project is great, yet I am not sure that the ideal place should have been the hall of Mishkenot Shaananim and not the School’s facilities.

After I changed my review, Lady R was happy from the result. The question of how to make negative criticism in a productive and not destructive manner is an important one. When I did a course on how to lecture in higher education, in Royal Holloway, University of London, we were told that a criticism should start and end with positive remarks. This gives the students a feeling that not everything is black. I truly think that what the student performers did has value.

As students, they probably were very busy with other duties. They may not have had too much experience with performing Schoenberg’s music. Some of the movements were reasonable. Nevertheless, I do think that with a few more rehearsals, and with listening to recordings, they could highly improve the result.

There is also value in presenting criticism to young performers. Without knowing where one can improve, one cannot advance and do it better next time. This, however, should be conducted in a gentle manner.

What do you think? Was my review too harsh? Is there a better way to write things when there is a chance that students will read it? Feel free to comment in the form below.

A student performance of Schoenberg’s String Quartets

A Schoenberg concert in Jerusalem

Max Brod on Bronislaw Huberman’s violin playing

Research proposal for the Avenir Foundation-Research Grant

Arnold Schoenberg spoke to me in a dream

Salomone Rossi - Jewish Music?

9 Tips for creating and publishing academic research

How the British Library Sounds Archive helped my research

Huberman and the divine: report by Edmondo De Amicis

Avior Byron — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:21:35 +0000

Huberman and the divine: report by Edmondo De Amicis

Edmondo De Amicis (1846 –1908) was an Italian novelist, journalist, poet and short-story writer. His best-known book is the children’s novel Heart. (source: wikipedia)

In one of my previous posts I wrote about Max Brod’s review of a concert of Huberman in Prague. In this post I will continue to review how Huberman was perceived with relation to the theme of the divine in music. The Italian journalist, poet and writer Edmondo De Amicis wrote in the summer of 1904 about an experience he had meeting Bronislaw Huberman (the text that was translated from Italian, appears in The listener Speaks by Ida Ibbeken (1961)). In the following excerpt De Amicis relates to the question of suffering during performance:

You have the glory – I said to him – dear Huberman – but what about your health? – "Good Lord – he answered with a smile – my health leaves to desire as the glory. But it is all the fault of the violin, I assure you. Unlike many others, who are excited before appearing before the public and quiet down as soon as they are there, I myself am quiet up to the last moment, and I become agitated when I begin to play. One would not believe it, don’t you think so? It seems to everybody that I am impassive, because I do not move when I am playing, except when necessary. But this relative immobility is the effect of a great effort, and the effort I am making to suppress my emotion reacts on my stomach and ruins it. All my suffering is restrained passion. But it is only just that I pay in some way for the inexpressible joy which my art gives me." – Well – I said to him – I have guessed it. (The Listener Speaks, p. 16A)

Huberman’s playing, according to the De Amicis report, is a result of retrained passion and emotion. The consequence of this is great suffering that has implications on his health. Yet the source of this passion is not clear at this stage of the article. De Amicis, however, leads his reader to an impression that this passion is related to metaphysical entities. He responds to the passage I quoted above in the following:

Your quite attitude could not mislead me. I watched you intensely when you played. I saw when your eyes sparkled and when they grew moist, and I saw the shiver running through the muscles of your pale face. Sometimes, when you pressed the violin, you seemed to press a living and adored thing, which inebriated and tormented you; and when you took it from the shoulder, you made a movement as if you were tearing off a vampire sugging [sic.] your blood; and then you took it back to your breast and re-embraced it with even more passionate love and pressed it under your chin with the tenderness of a mother who presses her face against the face of her creature. Oh, I was not misled. I understood, I felt when from the depths of the soul welled up the lamentations, the sighs of love, of joy and sorrow, the sound of the nightingale and the voices of angels, which you poured forth into the theatre; and which out of your two thousand listeners made one single soul; a soul which palpitated, throbbed with you and which loved you.

Performance is not something that happens between a violinist and members of the audience. It is a meeting of metaphysical subjects. The violin is simultaneously adored by Huberman since it grants him moments of joy. Yet it also cases him great pain. Here again one accouters a romantic view of art that grants the artist both joy and suffering. Moreover, the audience is not a group of individuals that perceive the music in different ways. They are united by the elevated experience into ‘one single soul’. Huberman, as in Brod’s description, is a mere medium that communicates emotion, vibrations and energy from an active and divine source to the passive and astonished listeners. De Amicis ends his article claiming that he will always remember ‘the profoundest emotions which my heart received by that instrument which speaks most humanly about the most divine art.’

Max Brod on Bronislaw Huberman’s violin playing

Save the Music Library in Tel-Aviv - sign petition now!

Self-discipline in music and musicological practice

The New European Ensemble needs funding. Can you help?

10 Tips on how to find scholarships and funding

Bronislaw Huberman - funding ideas

Interview with David Shemer - The Performance of Early Music - Part II

9 Tips for creating and publishing academic research

A Schoenberg concert in Jerusalem

Artur Schnabel and Schoenberg’s Performance Aesthetics and Practice

A student performance of Schoenberg’s String Quartets

Avior Byron — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:00:16 +0000

A student performance of Schoenberg’s String Quartets

Two days ago I stumbled upon a message via Titter saying that there will be a concert with the first movements of the four String Quartets by Schoenberg. After each lecture there will be a short lecture. I decided to attend the concert that occurred yesterday. The lecturers and the student performers were from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.

The basic idea for the concert is brilliant: play only the first movement from each String Quartet and let the audience hear things that cannot be usually heard in concerts. There were two quartet groups. The first played from the String Quartets 1 and 3 and second group played no. 2 and 4. This could grant the listeners a perspective on the creativity and development of Schoenberg though most of his life. It also granted the students an opportunity to focus on a reasonable task.

It would not be fair to judge a student concert with the same criteria as with more professional performers. It is true that this music is not easy to perform. Nevertheless, there are some things that I would expect also from students of an Academy (this is one of the two highest education institutes for performers in Israel.

When the first quartet group started to play I felt physical pain. I know this music quite well from listening to various CDs. I especially adore the performances of the Kolisch Quartet (see the two videos below) and the Lasalle Quartet. I do not expect that the students will play on the level of these excellent quartets. However, I felt that they were simply distorting the music. It seemed to me that they were struggling to play the right notes. There was no groove and no sense of feeling to the various sections of the first movement of String Quartet No. 1. It seemed to me that they did not enjoy playing the music.

The second quartet group was better. I even had a few moments were I enjoyed to listen to the first movement of the Second String Quartet. It was easy to notice that most of the performers, if not all of them, enjoyed the music making. The first violinist (I am not sure whether it was Yuval Herz or Shachar Pooyae) was especially good. They too had some problems with intonation (especially when they started to play) yet the difference between the groups was prominent during the whole concert, especially due to the fact that they played alternately. However, with the second group one could start feeling an interpretation and ensemble playing. The problems of intonation were less important, since they gave the audience the impression that they feel and breathe the music. For me, this is much more important than aspects such as hitting right notes during performance. In short, Yuval Herz, Shachar Pooyae – violin, Willy Zaikin – viola and Daniela Shemer – cello, proved that students can make music on a high level. Yet, even this group had to stop playing in the middle of the performance of the Fourth Quartet. Next time, give the music a few more rehearsals and you will avoid such embarrassing situations.

The lectures were not interesting. The big problem with the lectures was not the mistakes of some of the four lecturers (it is not Robert Kolisch, but Rudolf Kolish), or some of the things that I would never dare to write in public (the program notes actually argued that Schoenberg had a basic musical education! I hope that they meant that he was an autodidact), but they attempted to speak about the music by using anecdotic tales (the Second Quartet and Schoenberg’s wife’s affair with the painter Gerstel) or analyze the music in terms that simply no one could follow (these were moments were some of these people simply slept. The problem was that some of the people were music analysts themselves!). It was absurd that one of the lecturers quoted a letter from Schoenberg to Rudolf Kolisch were he argued that counting the tones in a twelve tone composition is speaking about how the music is built and not about what the music actually is. This was exactly the problem with the lectures. They did not grant the listeners any information that helped them enjoy the music in a better way.

The problem with such concerts is that they give a very bad reputation to the music of Schoenberg, to both the audience and the students. Although the basic idea of the concert was very good, I would recommend that the lectures be much shorter (originally planned for five minutes) and focus on one or two ideas that all of the audience can understand. I would suggest that the students will listen to recordings of famous performers and try to understand what this music is about, before attempting to play it in public.

In short, the feeling was not that of a concert, but of sitting and listening to a rehearsal of under-rehearsed music. I suddenly understood why Schoenberg insisted on many rehearsals. It was clear to me how a bad performance can distort the music. It does not matter whether you like or hate Schoenberg. Listening to an under-rehearsed performance of his music can leave you only with a very negative and general impression. It is simply not the same thing.

A Schoenberg concert in Jerusalem

The interpretation of Rudolf Serkin - lesson plan

Research proposal for the Avenir Foundation-Research Grant

Arnold Schoenberg spoke to me in a dream

How Twitter helped my research on music

Evaluating Sprechstimme: what early recordings tell us - the chapter

9 Tips for creating and publishing academic research

Fair notification of music jobs in higher education

Cats performing Schoenberg Piano Piece Op. 11 - a must!

A Schoenberg concert in Jerusalem

Avior Byron — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:36:26 +0000

I just discovered via Twitter that there will be a Schoenberg concert tomorrow at Jerusalem (read here my review of the concert) . I am really starting to enjoy twitter. This social site and the Google Alerts really keep me updated on subjects that I am interested in. Since many of my subscribers are from Israel, I have copied some information about the concert (both in Hebrew and English). If you will come to the concert we might have the pleasure meeting there:

Arnold Schoenberg: Four Milestones

In collaboration with the Department of Composition & Conducting, JAMD

Wednesday, 4.11.09 at 8 pm

A survey of Schoenberg’s artistic development through his complete string quartets: live performance of the opening movement from each of the four quartets, illustrated with short lectures (in Hebrew) by the department’s staff.

First movements of quartets no. 1, 3:
Hila Lifshitz, Barak Shossberger – violin
Daniel Tanchelson – viola
Bernice Keshet – cello

First movements of quartets no. 2, 4:
Yuval Herz, Shachar Pooyae – violin
Willy Zaikin – viola
Daniela Shemer – cello

Lecturers:
Ayal Adler
Karel Volniansky
Michael Wolpe
Menachem Zur

Admission free, please book in advance at tel. 02-6241041

ארנולד שנברג: ארבע אבני דרך

בשיתוף החוג לתורת המוסיקה, קומפוזיציה וניצוח באקדמיה למוסיקה ולמחול בירושלים

רביעי, 4.11.09, בשעה 20:00

סקירת התפתחות דרכו האמנותית של שנברג דרך מכלול רביעיות המיתרים פרי עטו: נגינה חיה של פרק הפתיחה מכל אחת מארבע הרביעיות, ובתווך הרצאות קצרות (בעברית) מפי חברי הסגל בחוג.

פרקים ראשונים מהרביעיות מס’ 3,1:
הילה ליפשיץ, ברק שוסברגר – כינור
דניאל תנחלסון – ויולה
ברניס קשת – צ’לו

פרקים ראשונים מהרביעיות מס’ 4,2:
יובל הרץ, שחר פוייאי – כינור
ווילי זייקין - ויולה
דניאלה שמר – צ’לו

מרצים:
איל אדלר
קארל וולניאנסקי
מיכאל וולפה
מנחם צור

הכניסה חופשית על בסיס מקום פנוי,
נא להזמין מקומות בטל’ 02-6241041

Read here my review of the concert.

Research proposal for the Avenir Foundation-Research Grant

Arnold Schoenberg spoke to me in a dream

How Twitter helped my research on music

Evaluating Sprechstimme: what early recordings tell us - the chapter

9 Tips for creating and publishing academic research

Review of The Glenn Gould Reader

On fear: Schoenberg, Stravinsky and the Israeli music scene

The Schoenberg Archive in Vienna

A letter from Oxford University Press: Schoenberg’s Writings on Performance

Email interview with Schoenberg’s Children

Share your formative performance experiences

Avior Byron — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:04:56 +0000

Share your formative performance experiences

Most people who decided to dedicate their life to music have formative experiences as performers. You do not need to be a professional performer to have experiences as a performer that will stay with you all your life. I had such an experience when I played as a lead guitarist in a high-school rock band (we called ourselves: The Alleycats) , when I was about 15 years old.

I remember our first performance in my parent’s garden. There were about fifty people listening to our group. The band started playing and I improvised on my electric guitar. I remember the feeling of pressing the strings with my left hand. Each vibrato seemed like touching butter. It was physical pleasure playing these notes and I will not forget that I wanted to extend each note and each moment of this pure pleasure. I think that the whole experience was not more than one or two minutes, yet to me it seemed like eternity.

People have different experiences that they carry for many years. Often, these experience, which are related in various ways to performance, may change their lifes. I am very interested in such experiences and I would like to encourage you to share them with me and the readers of my blog.

Various performance experiences

The experience that I mentioned above is a very personal one and it is hard to communicate it to others. In fact, since it was more than 20 years ago (time flys…), it might have changed (Primo Levi speaks about the way our memories change). Your performance experiences might be very different. Here are a few possibilities:

Learning to play the piano as a child. Hitting the keys with your mother listening.

Playing together with a famous performer.

Playing together with someone dear to you.

Playing a certain of your favorite composer.

Playing at a certain important event (your marrige?).

The list can go on and on…

Share your experiences now

I would like to offer this blog post as a stage for musicians who had formative experiences during performance. Please consider sharing them with us. If you have an internet site with an About page (or a similar page on someone’s else website), please add a link to it so that people who read this post, will know more about you. Share with us your formative performance experience now (by filling the comments form below). Thank you!

Max Brod on Bronislaw Huberman’s violin playing

The interpretation of Rudolf Serkin - lesson plan

How Twitter helped my research on music

9 Tips for creating and publishing academic research

Telemann, Hogwood and the listener/composer/performer relationship

An Interview with David Shemer: The Performance of Early Music - Part I

Pierrot lunaire, Sprechstimme in video performance

Max Brod on Bronislaw Huberman’s violin playing

Avior Byron — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:34:01 +0000

Max Brod on Bronislaw Huberman’s violin playing

Recordings give us some evidence of the sound that was produced in the first part of the twentieth century. In spite of the distortion of the recording mediums, often influencing tempo, pitch, dynamics, color and practically all musical parameters that were present in performance, there is a feeling that one actually is granted a rare glimpse into the past. Finding a rare recording of Bronislaw Huberman, for example, may be compared to discovering a rare old picture of one’s family member. Yes, it is black and white, and the focus may be distorted, yet it does seem to communicate something of the past. Nevertheless, even if we could travel in time, and sit in a concert of Huberman, a contemporary listener would not hear what previous generations heard. It seems to me that contemporary societies have changed to such a great degree, that they experience music in significantly different ways than in the first part of the twentieth century.

The brutal violence, such as stabbing, that occurred in some of Schoenberg’s concerts seem unbelievable in our days. The expectations, social behavior and experiences were very different, even in more normal concerts in the beginning of the previous century.

In this and some of the posts of the following weeks, I will present concert reviews and letters from listeners in order to explore one theme that reappears in relation to Huberman’s performances: the experience of music as something divine. The almost religious experience of music seems to me something that is absent the life of most contemporary listeners.

Max Brod, who is chiefly remembered as the one who translated the operas of Janacek and arranged that the writings of Kafka would not be lost, reviewed a concert by Huberman. The review entitled "Art as deliverance", is dated 13 January 1927 and appeared in the Prager Tagblatt (I found the translation of this newspaper clipping attached to it in the Felicja Blumental Library in Tel-Aviv). The review itself is very poetic and descriptive, as if trying to convey to the readers how it actually was to experience Huberman’s performance. Brod opened his review describing Huberman just before starting to perform:

He steps on the platform – bent, austere. Never have I seen so much suffering concentrated on the small surface of a human face. Strindberg’s "Poor humanity!" is written in all its depth of melancholy on this finely arched brow. Yet below it the expression of the eyes as they glance round is impassive, untrusting. The lips tightly closed together. The corners of the mouth are reminiscent of Beethoven in their tragic solitariness.

Brod wrote that the moment Huberman started to play, the ‘expression of wild suffering fades, the features relax into pure melancholy… The glance has lost its fierceness when the eyes reopen. Only the nervous eyebrows twitch, and the eyelids are as though under spell.’ Brod continued to quote (from memory) a poem by Hofmannsthal, and suggested that ‘All the sorrows of humanity find expression, as in a dream, in this playing.’ He went on in describing the essence of Huberman’s playing as he experienced it:

And now love springs up. Huberman plays nothing but passion and pain; but passion and pain may look up at times to their blue skies above. Here is the outpouring of a happy passion, the peace of a strong love. Even when Huberman paints happiness it is never playful, comfortable happiness. It is the happiness of a heart of passionate storms, brought beneath a blue sky of compassion.

Brod argued that under Huberman’s playing, Smetana’s "Fatherland" ‘had no longer its simple rustic quality, but became the desire and fulfillment of a strongly emotional, strongly inspired soul.’

A theme that appears in this review and reappears also in other sources is the impression that technical difficulties are ’swept aside and completely subordinated to the revelation of the music’s soul.’ Brod describes such technical passages as ‘daemonic speeding’, and ‘an ascent in search of God and deliverance’. He suggested that in Huberman’s performance, ‘one is at peace, one is awakened to the best in one.’ This echoes the romantic concept of the ethical power of music to improve people.

In various parts of the review Brod seems to be embarrassed from the fact the Huberman is performing to a public: ‘Is not one brought to feel that the great artist is escaping from humanity, from us who listen, into the realms of his music? We are troubling him. The lights should be put out and he should be allowed to play in darkness, not to have to gaze our faces, faces unworthy of this music…..’ Brod argued that Huberman in not like a preacher who tries to convince his audience:

the characteristic attitude of Huberman at the peaks of interpretation [… is that] he turns away, we see him in profile, he lifts the violin high up, he turns right away from us into the background, as though he were playing to some invisible higher being, not to us; he is far away from us now, he has placed his fiddle as a barricade between himself and us. But it is then above all, in the liberation of solitude, that we feel nearest to him.

The references to a ‘higher being’ and God, as well as the recurring theme of suffering (see the reference to Beethoven above) is part of a romantic conception of the performer who delivers art from God to passive listeners, that just happened to be there by chance. The performer is a medium that helps regular listeners to connect with higher spheres of existence. The passive listeners are exposed to beauty that was presented by the composer and delivered by the performer, yet the source of this beauty, is clearly divine.

I will continue to explore this topic in the next weeks when I work in the Huberman archive in the Felicja Blumental Library in Tel-Aviv. Subscribe to the Blog and be updated via email or RSS.

—

The translation of the German text was probably done by Ida Ibbeken who was the secretary of Huberman.

Save the Music Library in Tel-Aviv - sign petition now!

Part III: Schoenberg’s Children on Religion and customs

McClary on analysis, historical conditions and rationality

Self-discipline in music and musicological practice

10 Tips on how to find scholarships and funding

Musicology, Science and Postmodernism

Bronislaw Huberman - funding ideas

Research proposal for the Avenir Foundation-Research Grant

Arnold Schoenberg spoke to me in a dream

Evaluating Sprechstimme: what early recordings tell us - the chapter

The interpretation of Rudolf Serkin - lesson plan

Avior Byron — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:04:34 +0000

The interpretation of Rudolf Serkin

Once a month I conduct a meeting which is part of ‘Beit-Midrash Musika’ in the Keshet community in Mazkeret Bataya (where religious and secular Jews educate the children together). The meetings are dedicated to musical interpretation which has many issues that are connected to the performance and interpretation of tradition in general. The people who come to this program are interested in both music and pluralistic interpretation of Jewish/Israeli culture. The next meeting is dedicated to the famous pianist Rudolf Serkin. I have included in this post a brief of the lesson plan and some videos of Serkin performing.

The pianist Andras Schiff wrote that ‘Rudolf Serkin is one of the great unsung heroes among the giants of musical performance.’ Serkin influenced a huge amount of important pianist in America and beyond it. Most of the lesson is based on what I have read in the book Rudolf Serkin: A Life by Stephen Lehmann and Marion Faber (Oxford, 2003).

Here is the lesson plan for the ‘Beit-Midrash Musika’ that I will do tomorrow.

lesson plan

1. Listening

2. Early influences: Swarzwald school, Schoenberg (objectivity, ‘ethical’ interpretation, total dedication to the composer, Society for the Private Performance of Music (1918-1921).

3. Berlin: turning away from Schoenberg, Adolf Busch, playing from memory, Sachlichkeit, unified tempo, clarity, going beyond sound.

4. Toscanini: ‘architecture with passion’.

5. Listening

6. Serkin’s attitude towards recordings, his attitude towards listing to recordings when building an interpretation.

7. Listening.

8. The way excessive practice influences one’s performance, Serkin relation to the musical score, Serkin’s ‘religious’ interpretaion of music, suffering as an ideal, choosing the difficult solution, practicing with physical pain. Conflict and tension when performing.

9. Listening.

Research proposal for the Avenir Foundation-Research Grant

Blogging researcher at the British Library

Salomone Rossi - Jewish Music?

Evaluating Sprechstimme: what early recordings tell us - the chapter

9 Tips for creating and publishing academic research

How the British Library Sounds Archive helped my research

Cats performing Schoenberg Piano Piece Op. 11 - a must!

Interview with David Shemer - The Performance of Early Music - Part III

Arnold Schoenberg spoke to me in a dream

Save the Music Library in Tel-Aviv - sign petition now!

Avior Byron — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:17:00 +0000

A few heartless people in the Tel-Aviv City Hall aim to close the Music Library in Tel-Aviv (Felicia Blumental Library) by gradually reducting its budget. Please take two minutes and sign the petition here in order to help preventing this. Please forward the address of this page to as many people that you know so that they will sign and help.

I am doing research at this library (on Huberman) on a weekly basis. I can assure you that it contains cutural treasures such as the Huberman Nachlass as well as that of many other international and Israeli musical figures. We must spread this information and find as many people as possible that will sign the petition so that the Library’s cutural treasures will not be lost.

I suggested to some people who are concerned that it would be very useful to arrange a concert in protest of the decision. If you are a musician in Israel, please contact me if you are willing to perform in such a concert. If you are a musician out of Israel you may consider making an internet performance on YOUTUBE adding that it is for this cause (if you do so, let me know about it, and I will add it to my blog).

Here is more information in Hebrew:

בימים אלה נדונה בעיריית תל-אביב האפשרות של קיצוץ דרמטי בתקנים העומדים לרשותה של הספרייה למוזיקה (במרכז למוזיקה ע"ש פליציה בלומנטל). ייתכן מאוד שהתקנים ושעות העבודה שייוותרו אחרי הקיצוץ יורידו משמעותית את תפקודה של הספרייה לשפל שאינו מאפשר שירות מקצועי ואחראי; למעשה - בטווח קצר או ארוך קצת יותר - למצב שבו אין עוד טעם בעצם קיומה של הספרייה, ולסגירתה .

כל מי שנעזר בשירותיה של הספרייה למוזיקה, וכל מי שבקי בחשיבותן בתפקידיהן המגוונים ובדרכים שבהן אמורות ספריות מסוג זה לשרת את הקהל הפוטנציאלי שלהן, מבין שצוות מינימום ובו שני ספרנים בלבד (ובמונחים יבשים של מצבת כוח-אדם - ספרן-וחצי ), הממונה לבדו על אוספים גדולים מאוד של ספרים, פרטיטורות ישנות וחדשות, תקליטים ,דיסקים, כמה וכמה ארכיונים (בהם ארכיון ברוניסלב הוברמן ועזבונותיהם של יהויכין סטוצ’בסקי ומנשה רבינא) ואוסף מיוחד של כלי-נגינה - צוות מינימום כזה אינו אלא ‘עלה תאנה’. בשעות העבודה ובשעות הפתיחה המעטות שיאפשרו התקנים החדשים , הנדונים עתה בעירייה, עשוי צוות כזה לבצע רק מינימום של השגחה על הבניין ועל המלאי שבתוכו. הרי הספרייה, שצברה ותק וניסיון מאז שנות החמישים , אינה מתמקדת ב’תצוגת חומרים’ בלבד ולא רק בהשאלה-כשלעצמה. הקהל המגוון שלה (מתל-אביב ומחוץ לתל-אביב) - סטודנטים שהספרייה מציעה להם, לא פעם , תווים והקלטות שאינם נמצאים באוניברסיטה ובמכללה; תלמידים במגמות מוזיקה; מורי מוזיקה בבתי-ספר ומורים לכלי נגינה; נגנים, מנצחים וזמרים וכן חובבי מוזיקה רבים נזקק כמעט תמיד לשירות מקיף, מה גם שחומרי הספרייה (שלא כמו בספריות ציבוריות כגון בית-אריאלה) אינם מוצגים, ואינם יכולים להיות מוצגים, באופן חופשי על המדפים. השירות המקיף כולל, לעתים קרובות, יעוץ, הפניה והמלצה מפורטת (איזה ספר , איזו פרטיטורה, איזו הקלטה, איזה ביצוע מוקלט, מתאימים לצורך ספציפי, למורה מסוים או לסטודנט מסוים או למבצע מסוים, והיכן מוצאים אותם), מתן עזרה בשימוש במכשירי ההאזנה, סיוע לתלמידים ולחוקרים בהתמצאות בחומרים שהספרייה מציעה. שירות זה הוא לב-לבה של הספרייה למוזיקה; הוא דורש צוות סביר ושעות עבודה ופתיחה סבירות ; ויתור עליו - כמוהו כסגירת הספרייה, ותקני-המינימום הנדונים בעיריית תל-אביב - אכן פירושם ויתור וסגירה .

אנו פונים לכל מקבלי ההחלטות בעירייה לשקול היטב את משמעותו של קיצוץ קיצוני ולא להוציא אותו אל הפועל .

אנא, צרפו את חתימתכם לעצומה זו .

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Research proposal for the Avenir Foundation-Research Grant

Avior Byron — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:45:49 +0000

The Avenir Foundation-Research Grant

Last week I received the following wonderful news from The Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna concerning the Avenir Foundation-Research Grant:

Dear Avior,

With pleasure I am writing to you to inform you about our decision to support your research projects by providing an Avenir stipend for travel and accommodation in Vienna/Moedling.

Support for the Research Grants will include:
Housing at the Schoenberg-House in Moedling for a four-week period;
Public transportation passes to and from the Schoenberg-House in Moedling to the Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna as well as transportation within Vienna;
Per diem allowance;
Transportation allowance to assist in travel to and from Vienna.

—

The news made me very happy since it will help me finish two books. The following is the research proposal that I have submitted on 3 September 2009 to the Arnold Schoenberg Center:

From Dr. Avior Byron, Musicology Department, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

To Dr. Christian Meyer, Director of the Arnold Schoenberg Center

Research proposal for the Avenir Foundation-Research Grant:

I would like to come to the Schoenberg center for one month during August 2010. The aim of the research trip is to work on two books. I am applying for a 2 week grant for my Oxford book (Schoenberg’s Writings on Aesthetics and Interpretation in Performance) and an additional 2 week grant for a second book entitled Schoenberg and Performance: Changing Interpretive Perspectives. In the following I describe the contents of both books.

A. Plan for the book Schoenberg’s Writings on Aesthetics and Interpretation in Performance

I have signed a contract for editing a book on Schoenberg’s Writings on Aesthetics and Interpretation in Performance, which is the fourth out of nine volumes called Schoenberg in Words: Teachings, Correspondence and other Writings (1890-1951), (Oxford University Press).

The main aim of the research trip is to examine the documents listed below and to search for further documents that could be included in this book.

Book description: This volume will be the first published collection and translation devoted to Schoenberg’s writings on performance. Only a handful of these commentaries have appeared in the editions of Style and Idea (1975, 1984). Indeed, from 1923 to 1951, Schoenberg wrote more than thirty manuscripts, two of which he targeted for a proposed book project. Some of these works are reactions to concerts that he heard or reviews or essays that he read, while others discuss the philosophical nature of performance itself. Although they do not deal exclusively with performance, selected correspondence with various musicians often makes a substantial contribution to the understanding of specific works.

My introduction to the text will engage the primary concepts of Schoenberg’s aesthetics of performance —crucially, the impact of his notion of musical idea on interpretation and the role of the performer in relation to the composer and the score itself. The writings will divide chronologically into three parts (1909-18, 1919-32, 1933-51), which reflect certain changes of attitude toward performances during his career. For example, he strongly altered his views in America where his pieces lacked appropriate venues. Although Schoenberg’s notions of the aesthetics of performance do not define a school of thought that others may readily follow, his ideas contribute to a refined interpretation of his music and the classical canon.

The grand will help me examine the following letters and writings as well as find other ones that might be relevant for the book.

MANUSCRIPTS TO BE CONSULTED AND EXCERPTED: (230 PAGES)

c. 1900 Das Opern- und Konzertpublikum und seine Führer [The Opera- and Concert-Public and Its Leaders, from ‘Seven Fragments’]

1904 Prospectus for the Society of Creative Musicians
1909 Letter to Busoni concerning Op. 11
1909 Tempo annotations on the performance score of his String Quartet, Op. 10
1912 (revision 1948) Excerpt from ‘Gustav Mahler’, about Mahler as conductor.

1912 Berlin Diary about not identifying a clarinet playing in a wrong transposition.
Post 1917 Excerpt from Schoenberg’s annotations on Busoni’s Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst (Outline of a New Aesthetic of Music).

1914 Schoenberg’s introduction to Pierrot lunaire
1918 Prospectus of the Society for Private Musical Performances
1920 Letter to Berg and other students
1920 Letter to Erwin Stein
1922 Letter to the singer Marya Freund
1922 Letter concerning Copenhagen performers
1922 Letter to Varèse
1923 Zur Notenschriften ["On notation"]
1923 Vortragszeichen ["Performance indications"]
1923 Noten-Bilder-Schrift ["Pictorial notation"]
1923 Der Moderne Klavierauszug ["The modern piano reduction"]
1923 letter to Josef Rufer
c. 1923 or 1924 Zur Vortragslehre ["For a treatise on performance"]
1924 Zu einigen Punkten der Frage, ob man Krammermusik dirigiren soll ["One point about the question whether on should conduct chamber music"]
1924 Eine neue Zwölfton-Schrift ["A new twelve-tone notation"]
1926 Mechanische Musikinstrumente ("Mechanical Musical Instruments")
1926 Zur Metronomisierung ["On metronome markings"]

1927 Schoenberg to Stein
1929 Musikalische Dynamik ["Musical dynamics"]
1929 Das ist eine seichte Auffassung ["This is a shallow conception"]
1929 Ein "Urheberrecht nachsch-affender Künstler" ("A ‘Copyright for performers’")
1930? Splitter (shortened form of Gedankensplitter. Aphorisms on opera)
1931 Revolution Evolution (Notierung – Vorzeichen) ["Revolution-evolution, notation (accidentals)"]
1931 Raumton, Vibrato, Radio, etc. ["Tone space, vibrato, radio, etc."]
1931 Phrasierung ["Phrasing"]
1934 Vortrag und Gestalt ["Performance and Gestalt’]
1934 Triolen und Quartolen bei Brahms und Bach ["Triplets and quadruplets in Brahms and Bach"]
Post 1934 Tempo
1936 Schoenberg answered Columbia by telegraph concerning recording of Pierrot lunaire

Late 1930s – Early 1940s EXPRESSION music was from the very beginning…

1939 manuscript with Schoenberg’s claim that critics and conductors were creating a conspiracy against him

1940 letter to Moses Smith concerning recording of recording of Pierrot lunaire

1940 letter to Fritz Stiedry and Erika Stiedry-Wagner
c. 1940 Das Vibrato hat man in meiner Jugend ["in my youth the vibrato was called…"]
1941 letter to Stein ‘… though Mrs. Stiedry is never in pitch’
c. August 1944 Koussevitzki-Toscanini
c. 1945 Musical notation is done in rebusses …
post-1945 Theory of Performance
1946 May I state that knowing records, I realized that their performers…
1947 Before Musical notation
1948 Today’s Manner of Performing Classical Music
1949 For the Radio Broadcast of the String Trio
1949 Ich glaube den Anfang von Pelleas ["I believe that the start of Pelleas"]
1949 To Twelve American Conductors
1949 Letter to Steuermann
1949 letter to Daniel Ruyneman

1949 letter to Hans Rosbaud
1950 Letter about Rudolf Kolisch
1950 Letter to Basil Douglas
1951 Letter to Thor Johnson

B. Plan for the book Schoenberg and Performance: Changing Interpretive Perspectives.

This book focuses on Schoenberg’s performance aesthetics and practice as a conductor in relation to the various cultural and social environments in which he lived. It also examines historical recordings from the early interpretive history of Schoenberg’s music. In Part I examine Schoenberg’s history as a performer. I suggest that the common notion that Schoenberg was an unaccomplished conductor was often tainted by issues unrelated to his performance technique. Part II focuses on Schoenberg’s writings. There is a discussion of some of the basic conceptions concerning his performance aesthetics and I inspect his performance-related writings (articles, unpublished manuscripts and letters). I argue that Schoenberg’s performance aesthetics significantly changed during his life.

Part III and IV contain several case studies focusing on Schoenberg’s practice. I examine Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4, dating from his tonal period, and Suite, Op. 29 as well as the Piano Piece, Op. 33a from his twelve-tone period and claim that several key factors affected Schoenberg’s performance practice. Part IV is dedicated to Pierrot lunaire, Op. 21 from the atonal period. There is a detailed discussion of the Sprechstimme enigma (how should the voice perform it?). I examine for the first time the test pressings for the commercial recording. This sheds new light on how Stiedry-Wagner and Schoenberg performed the Sprechstimme in his 1940 commercial recording of the piece. A comparison is made between a broadcast that I have recently discovered and the famous 1940 commercial recording of the piece, showing significant differences between the two. I end this part by suggesting criteria for evaluating Sprechstimme performances and examining early recordings of performers from the 1950s.

Part V includes a review and analysis of video and audio performance of Schoenberg that can be obtained only via the internet. The jump to the twentieth century will grant the reader a perspective to what direction the interpretation of Schoenberg’s music is going to.

Part VI evaluates Schoenberg’s performance aesthetics and practice from a large perspective. In chapter 11 I examine whether Schoenberg’s performance aesthetics and practice shed new light on the analysis of his music. In the final chapter I examine the relation between Schoenberg’s practice as a conductor (Parts III and IV) and his performance aesthetic (Part II), and I point out some of the problems and challenges that it presents to one who wishes to interpret Schoenberg.

I will need access to performance manuscripts and I will try to find more performance related manuscripts. Access to the library as well as to early recordings of Pierrot lunaire will also be of great importance.

Plan of book chapters:

Acknowledgments
Lists of tables, figures, examples and sound examples
List of Abbreviations
Preface

Part I: Introduction
Chapter 1. Demystifying Schoenberg’s conducting

Part II: Aesthetics

Chapter 2. Basic performance conceptions
Chapter 3. Schoenberg’s writings on performance

Chapter 4. Comparison of Schoenberg’s and Adorno’s performance aesthetics

Part III: Ideas in Practice - compositions from the 1920s
Chapter 5. Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4
Chapter 6. Suite, Op. 29
Chapter 7. Piano Piece, Op. 33a, early performances, 1950s-1960s

Part IV: Ideas in Practice - Pierrot lunaire, Op. 21
Chapter 8. Schoenberg’s broadcast and commercial recording
Chapter 9. Sprechstimme reconsidered

Chapter 10. Evaluating Sprechstimme - early performances, 1940s-1950s

Part V: Performing Schoenberg on the internet

Chapter 11. Video and audio performances on the web

Part VI: Evaluation
Chapter 12. Analysis and performance
Chapter 13. On interpreting Schoenberg

Appendices
Interview with Dika Newlin

Excerpts from an interview with Schoenberg’s children

Bibliography
Discography

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Blogging researcher at the British Library

Avior Byron — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:05:52 +0000

Blogging researcher at the British Library

The following was published in an internal newletter of the British Library:

In August Israeli musicologist and composer Avior Byron was awarded one of the Library’s prestigious Edison Fellowships to carry out research on Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire.

He found the British Library facilities to be of great help in his continuing research that combined the examination of sound recordings from CDs, LPs and the Library’s SoundServer with printed scores and printed books.

Schoenberg’s music sounded very modern in its day and still has the power to shock. Pierrot Lunaire is a setting of poems for voice and chamber group, except the voice does not sing, but intones the text to approximate pitches using Sprechstimme – the ‘spoken voice’.

Dr Byron’s analysis used special visualisation software in the Sound Archive to reveal that the pitch of the voice suggested bySchoenberg’s score in fact varies with each performer.

He commented: “This is the most advanced software I have seen for analysing recordings.

I find it very useful for hearing very short extracts of music repeatedly as in a loop. It provides opportunities to see sound representations and hear things that are not discernable during normal listening to recordings.”

Dr Byron has shared his findings through his blog and Twitter even using ‘tweets’ to take research notes. “The blog gives me more space than Twitter to express myself, yet it is still less formal than academic publishing in journals and books.

It was surprising and encouraging to see how people in the British Library were enthusiastic about my tweeting. It certainly shows that the British Library is in the forefront of technology.”

Richard Ranft, Head of the Sound Archive, comments: “as part of a review of the S&C directorate, staff have been preparing scenarios on future research use of the Library’s collections and services.

Dr Byron’s research methods, his needs for a variety of analogue and digital sources and his sharing with fellow academics worldwide of his discoveries online and in real-time, is a powerful example of how researcher behaviour is changing.”

For more information about the Edison Fellowships please contact Jonathan Summers

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