A Musicology of Performance by Dorottya Fabian

Author:Dorottya Fabian [Fabian Dorottya]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: music, musique, musicology, musicologie, performance musicale
ISBN: 9782821881723
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
Published: 2019-05-05T19:10:44+00:00

Ornamenting or Improvising?

Our discussion of ornamentation started with the need to understand what Bach’s notations mean; to render the many small note values as if spontaneously unfolding improvisations over an imagined melody. Circling back to such broader issues, the contention that ornamentation should always be improvised is worth unpacking. So far I have argued that the performance should sound as if improvised. How are we to know, really, whether or to what degree an added ornament is pre-planned or spontaneous? Musicians intimately familiar with a particular style are able to play extempore, they just have not been encouraged much to do so until recently. 50

People, including musicians, used to say that ornamentation in recorded performance is not desirable because of the repeatability offered by the medium. The idea being that the listener will not be able to hear it as improvised, or as an added ornament, because it will recur unchanged in each playing of the record. It may even become annoying to hear it over and over again instead of “the music proper.” Christopher Hogwood apparently advised his players against ornamenting in the recording studio

because he felt that risk-taking, ‘wild risks’ and ‘fantastic cadenzas,’ improvisatory élan, spontaneity and dangerous living which would certainly elicit cheers in a live performance ‘nearly always pall on repeated hearings.’ 51

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