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Through the Looking-Glass:
A Theory of PerformanceProfessor David Owen NorrisUniversity of Southampton
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A Note:
• In the spelling of such words as Baptize, Recognise, Realize and Surprise, I follow the orthography of Dr Johnson’s Dictionary, which uses S or Z according to the word’s derivation from Latin or Old French.
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Surprise or Satisfy
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Don’t Disgust….
• ‘….our disgust, or weariness of attention, will be found in proportion to the beauties of the author so abused. And just thus it fares with an injudicious performance of a fine musical composition’.
Charles Avison 1752
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or Disappoint
• ‘As it is safer to aim at pleasing than surprising, especially in the musical art, I flatter myself I shall be in less hazard of disappointing …’
Charles Avison
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New Old-Music
• Goblins from Four Country Pieces (1923) by Roger Quilter (1877-1953)
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New Old-Music
• Goblins from Four Country Pieces (1923) by Roger Quilter (1877-1953)
• Nice to know Goblins are rural.
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New Old-Music
• Goblins from Four Country Pieces (1923) by Roger Quilter (1877-1953)
• Nice to know Goblins are rural.• Roger Quilter is one of the world’s
great song composers. His piano music is less well known.
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New Old-Music
• Goblins from Four Country Pieces (1923) by Roger Quilter (1877-1953)
• Nice to know Goblins are rural.• Roger Quilter is one of the world’s
great song composers. His piano music is less well known.
• I recorded this on my own Bösendorfer piano – Quilter Complete Piano Music (EMR CD02)
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New New-Music
• ‘The sound of God breathing’.
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New New-Music
• ‘The sound of God breathing’.• The opening of an oratorio entitled
PrayerBook.
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New New-Music
• ‘The sound of God breathing’.• The opening of an oratorio entitled
PrayerBook.• I wrote it (EMR CD 0012)
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Old New-Music
• A version of Purcell’s famous song Music for a while.
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Old New-Music
• A version of Purcell’s famous song Music for a while.
• I arranged this for my BBC Radio 4 Playlist strand.
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Old New-Music
• A version of Purcell’s famous song Music for a while.
• I arranged this for my BBC Radio 4 Playlist strand.
• I think this approach to music is neglected.
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Musical Prisms
• What it MEANT• What it MEANS• What it COULD MEAN
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Performance as Jurisprudence
• The slow movement of the Concerto in A by Philip Hayes (Avie CDAV0014)
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Performance as Jurisprudence
• The slow movement of the Concerto in A by Philip Hayes (Avie CDAV0014)
• It is the World’s First Piano Concerto, published in London in 1769.
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Performance as Jurisprudence
• The slow movement of the Concerto in A by Philip Hayes (Avie CDAV0014)
• It is the World’s First Piano Concerto, published in London in 1769.
• Hayes went on to become both Professor of Music at Oxford (in succession to his father, William) and the Fattest Man in England.
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Performance as Research
• The fourth Song without Words from Mendelssohn’s Fourth Book.
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Performance as Research
• The fourth Song without Words from Mendelssohn’s Fourth Book.
• This performance demonstrates my belief that sf implies an accent, not of force, but of placing.
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Performance as Research
• The fourth Song without Words from Mendelssohn’s Fourth Book.
• This performance demonstrates my belief that sf implies an accent, not of force, but of placing,
• And that the abbreviations dim (get quieter) and cres (get louder) imply also a slowing-down.
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Performance as Research
• This performance demonstrates my belief that sf implies an accent, not of force, but of placing,
• And that the abbreviations dim (get quieter) and cres (get louder) imply also a slowing-down,
• While the ‘hairpin’ signs that technically mean the same thing imply a speeding-up.
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I recorded it on Gustav Holst’s piano, in the Drawing-Room of his
Birthplace in Cheltenham.
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• Debussy: Clair de lune
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Recognition can operate at a number of purely musical levels, even for
those with no prior musical knowledge.
• We can recognise – instinctively – the acoustic imperative of this long dominant in the bass, which demands resolution ...
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... to the tonic.
• (Take note of this melody, so very English in its prosody, and of its perky accompaniment.)
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• We can recognise the achievements of virtuosity as ends in themselves, independent of their musical meaning –
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• Just as the discipline of counterpoint carries a recognisable authority all its own.
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Now Sullivan does a wonderful thing:
• This new lyrical melody is, we realize at last, simply that very English melody, transformed.
• What is Recapitulation, so integral to musical form, but an opportunity for Recognition?
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Through this gradual process of recognition,
ullivan achieves imultaneous urprise & atisfaction.
S
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This is Elgar’s Broadwood.
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I’m playing Elgar’s own arrangement of The Angel’s Farewell from The Dream of
Gerontius.
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He composed the piece at this piano, writing the title on the soundboard: third one down.
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I play this piano very often,
and sometimes, improvising on Elgar’s themes, I’ve sensed his spirit within me.
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I once performed the Angel’s Farewell to the patients at Broadmoor Hospital – men sedated out of all emotion, their faces a blank.
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And yet, when I told them that Elgar had worked in a mental hospital, their attention sharpened.
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I explained that the piece represented an angel saying goodbye to a soul in heaven, and they became thoughtful:
death, alas, they know all too well.
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They received the piece in a deep silence – they sat, and eventually left, in a most unaccustomed state of quiet attention.
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Just last weekend,
I heard the Angel’s Farewell as part of another profoundly moving occasion. Elgar’s sister, Dot, became the Prioress of a convent in Stroud. The St Cecilia Singers of Gloucester have made a programme that tells her story, and they performed it in her own convent church.
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Elgar sketched a piece ‘For Dot’s Nuns’, which was never completed.
I was asked to turn the sketch into a performable piece.
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So last Saturday night, as part of Dot’s own story, we heard the first performance of For Dot’s Nuns on the very organ at which, a hundred years ago, Sir Edward Elgar found those wonderful harmonies.
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We who listened, like the men of Broadmoor, were drawn into the Looking-Glass – and those complementary images blended and made us whole.
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Music is not an Artefact, but an Activity that creates Society.
David Owen Norris, Gresham Lecture 1993
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All the performing strategies we have surveyed today are effective, but the most important is
The Looking-Glass
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Just as a Looking-Glass is more than a passing reflection in a shop window, so too a Performance must be more than the notes, more than the sounds, more even than the performer’s reputation.
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A Performance must be an all-consuming Occasion where the audience becomes the performer, and together they share the artistic reward, the inner spiritual completeness.
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Musical Prisms
• What it MEANT• What it MEANS• What it COULD MEAN
• WHAT IT MEANS TO
ME !!!
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So does Satisfaction prevail over Surprise in the end?
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No,
for the performer knows that, in Looking-Glass Land,to raise his right hand, he must …