REMAINING LIFE EXPECTANCY AT AGE X BASED ON STATIC AND

Musicians are constantly confronted with the question of how a composer sets down his ideas and preferences so that they can be conveyed to his contemporaries as well as to posterity. Over and over again, we see the limitations of the ef-forts made by various composers to avoid ambi-guity by supplying precise instructions. Thus each composer developed a kind of personal notation, which can be deciphered today only when studied in terms of its historical context.

The prevailing misconception that notational symbols and indications of affect, tempo and dynamics have always meant what they do today is disastrous. This view has been fostered by the fact that for centuries, the same graphic marks have been used in the writing of music;

not enough attention has been paid to the fact that notation is not simply a timeless, supra-na-tional method of writing down sounds which has remained unchanged for centuries. On the con-trary, the meanings of the various notation signs

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have undergone constant modification in keep-ing with stylistic shifts in music, the ideas of composers and the views of performing musi-cians. Their meaning at any given time can oc-casionally be discovered in writings of the time but must in many cases be derived from the mu-sical and philological context of the period, which always involves the possibility of error.

Notation is thus an extremely complicated sys-tem of encoding. Anyone who has tried to write down a musical thought or a rhythmic structure knows that this is a relatively simple task. But if a musician is asked to play what has been recor-ded, it will quickly be seen that he by no means plays just what was intended.

We believe we possess a system of notation which will inform us about both the individual tone as well as the course of the musical piece.

However, every musician should know that this notation is very inexact, that it does not pre-cisely say what it does say: it does not tell us the length of tone, the pitch, nor the tempo, because the technical criteria for this kind of information cannot be conveyed by notation. The duration of a note can only be precisely described by a time unit; the pitch of a tone can only be represented in terms of vibration frequency; a constant tempo might be indicated by a metronomeif there were such a thing as a constant tempo.

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Is it not astonishing to believe that musical works which are completely different in essence and style, such as an opera by Monteverdi and a symphony by Gustav Mahler, can be written down using the same notational symbols? To those familiar with the extraordinary diversity of musical genres, it is quite astonishing that be-ginning in about 1500, this same symbol system has been used to set down the music of every age and every style, no matter how fundament-ally they differ.

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Further, despite the seeming certitude of this notational system, two quite different principles govern their use:

1. The work, the composition itself, is notated:

but the details of its interpretation cannot be de-duced from the notation.

2. The performance is notated: in this case, the notation includes directions for performance; it does not indicate, as in the former case, the form and structure of the composition (the interpreta-tion of which must be deduced from other sources), but rather describes the interpretation as precisely as possible: this passage is to be played in this way. The work then, in theory, emerges automatically, as it were, during performance.

In general, music prior to about 1800 is notated according to the work-principle and thereafter as a direction for performance. Nonetheless, there are numerous deviations: for example, as early as the 16th and 17th centuries, the tablatures (finger notations) for certain instruments are strictly directions for playingand therefore do not graphically represent the work. These tabla-tures indicate precisely where the player should place his fingerswhen plucking the lute for ex-ampleso that the tonal reproduction is exactly as planned. We cannot imagine any tones from looking at a tablature; rather, we see only the finger positions. This is an extreme example of notation as direction for performance.

In the case of compositions written after 1800, using notation as the directions for performance (e.g. works by Berlioz, Richard Strauss and oth-ers), the primary consideration is to describe as precisely as possible how the written work is supposed to sound; only when these notes are precisely performed, only when all instructions are observed, does music emerge.

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On the other hand, if we wish to play music which is scored using work-notation, i.e. music prior to the watershed of about 1800, we lack precise "instructions." We must resort to other sources for this information. This changing use of notation also poses a serious pedagogical problem, since normally the musician learns notation first and only later how to create music;

notation is assumed to be valid for every style of music, so instructors do not tell students that music which was written prior to the notation watershed must be read differently from music written subsequently. We fail to draw our own attention as well as that of the student to the fact that in the one case we are dealing with com-plete instructions for playing, while in the other we are dealing with a composition written in a fundamentally different way. These two ways of interpreting one and the same notationwork notation and direction for performanceshould be called to the attention of every music student

from the very outset of instruction in theory, in-struments or voice. Otherwise, the student will always play or sing "what is written down," a common demand by music teachers, although it is impossible to do justice to work notation without having first examined and understood it.

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Perhaps this can be best explained by using the concept of orthography. There is a "right way to spell" in music, derived from musical teaching, musical theory and harmony. Special features of notation result from this musically proper spelling, for example suspensions, trills and ap-poggiaturas are often not written out. This can be quite annoying if one thinks he must play ex-actly what is written. In another example embel-lishments are not spelled out: if they were writ-ten down, no latitude would be left for the creat-ive imagination of the performer; but this is pre-cisely what was encouraged, particularly in the case of free embellishments. In the 17th and 18th Centuries, a good "adagio player" was a musician who freely improvised embellishments which suited and enhanced the expression of a particular work.

When I see a piece of music, I first try to assess the work and determine how it should be read, what these notes signified for musicians of the time. Notation depicting the work rather than the manner of playing requires, after all, the same reading knowledge on our part that it de-manded of the musicians then.

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Let us take an example which is surely obvious to present-day musicians: Viennese dance music of the 19th Century, a polka or waltz by Johann Strauss. The composer tried to write down whatever notes were necessary, in his opinion, for the musicians who sat before him in the or-chestra. After all, they knew quite well what a waltz or a polka sounded like and how such dances should be played. If this music were giv-en to an orchestra which lacked this knowledge, which was unfamiliar with these dances, and the musicians were to play exactly in accordance with the notes, the music would sound totally different. It is not possible to write down such dance music precisely as it should be played.

Often a note must be played earlier or later, or shorter or longer than it is written, etc. Thus we could play this music as precisely as possible, even with metronomical precisionand yet the result would have nothing to do with the work as it was originally intended by the composer.

If the correct understanding of notes is this problematical for the music of Johann Strauss, despite its unbroken traditionhow much more problematical it must be in the case of music whose playing tradition has completely van-ished, so that we no longer know how such mu-sic was actually played during the lifetime of the composer. Let us imagine that Strauss was not played for one hundred years, only to be once again "discovered" and performed anew as in-triguing music. It is impossible to imagine how such a performance would sound! Something similar happens, I suppose, with the great com-posers of the 17th and 18th Centuries, with whose music we have no continuous connection because their works were not played for centur-ies. No one can say definitively how such music should be read, which specific conventions must be observed when this music is performed.

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Of course, much information is available in the sources, yet it is also true that everyone reads in-to these instructions whatever he himself has in mind. If, for example, we find in the sources that each tone should be played shorter by half than its written value, we can take this literally:

each tone is therefore held for only half its value. This instruction could be understood in a different way, however; there is also an old rule which holds that each tone should fade away in-to silence. The in-tone originates and fades

awayrather like the tone of a bell; it ends "by dying away." The precise end cannot be heard because the listener's imagination extends the tone and this illusion cannot be separated from the actual experience of hearing. So the duration of a tone cannot be precisely determined. The tone can be regarded as a fully held note or as a drastically shortened note, according to whether or not illusion is also taken into consideration.

Furthermore, there are a few cases in which it is technically or musically impossible to hold a note according to the notation; such cases show at the very least that notation and practice often differ. This can be clearly seen in chord playing on stringed instruments, in which case not all notes can be sustained for technical reasons, or in the case of an instrument on which the notes cannot be fully sustained e.g. piano, harpsichord and other plucked instruments. We cannot hear a long, sustained note on a harpsichord or a lute;

we hear only the onset of the tone, which then fades away. The imagination supplies the rest, while the actual tone disappears. This disappear-ance does not mean that the tone ceases, rather it continues to be heard by the "inner ear" and is cancelled only by the onset of the subsequent note. If this tone were to continue to sound at its full strength, it would disturb the transparency of the composition's texture and would cover up the entrance of the next tone; this outcome is

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often heard in the case of organ concerts as it is theoretically possible to hold any tone on the or-gan for as long as it is notated. The reality of a sustained sound is not better than the illusion of the sound; on the contrary, under certain cir-cumstances the former can mask and interfere with our understanding of the latter. In those fugues contained in Bach's Die Kunst der Fuge in which there is an augmentation of the subject, this difference can be clearly recognized. For these fugues can be understood more readily on a harpsichord than an organ, which can sustain the notes as the harpsichord cannot. There is no four-part chord which can be sustained in all four parts on the violin for an entire measure, for just as the player reaches the E-string, noth-ing is left of the bass tone on the G-strnoth-ing and it is not possible to begin the four notes of the chord simultaneously, as written. This provides a clear example that we must regard the notation as an orthographic image of the composition and

the execution as a musical representation inten-ded to correspond to our technical resources and the receptiveness of our listeners. In other words, the chord has to be played successively and not

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simultaneously. This is not only true of the stringed instruments and the lute, but at times also of the harpsichord and the piano in those cases in which the chord does not lie within the span of the hand, as well as when the harpsi-chord player prefers not to play the notes simultaneously.

Clearly, mastering the historical texts will not suffice. To contend that each note must be played shorter or that each has its correct strength or weakness is to misapprehend the nature of notation. Even if we followed the rules they contain literally, much older music would end up sounding like a malicious caricature. It would probably sound even more distorted than if a musical person out of ignorance were to do everything "wrong." The rules of the old treat-ises become interesting for actual practice only if we understand themor at least once they con-vey a meaning to us, whether or not we under-stand them in keeping with their original meaning.

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I am very skeptical as to whether complete un-derstanding remains possible today. One must always keep in mind that all these treatises were written for contemporaries, so an author could count on the existence of a large body of gener-ally familiar knowledge; he did not need to dis-cuss it at all. After all, his instructions were ad-dressed to his contemporaries, not to us. All of this valuable information would therefore ac-quire its full import for us only if we, too, pos-sessed the same accepted basic knowledge.What was not written down, that which was self-evid-ent, was probably more important than anything that was written!For my part, I believe that mis-understandings resulting from study of the sources are not only common, but probable, and that the numerous collections of excerpts which have been published in recent years should nev-er be introduced as evidence, for one could just as easily "prove" the opposite using other quota-tions similarly taken out of context. Therefore I

must warn against overestimating our historical understanding of music. Only if we really com-prehend the meaning behind the old prescrip-tions and theories will we be able to use them to interpret this music.

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The information available to us comes from a series of 17th and 18th Century treatises. If we read just one of them, e.g. the flute method by Quantz, we feel that we have learned a great deal. And then we study a different text only to discover that it contains quite different, often contrary, information. If to compensate we read several authors, we find many contradictions, and only by comparing a large number of sources can we begin to see that these are not real contradictions. Only then do we begin to form an overall picture. If we codify the differ-ing instructions, we can see exactly where each author stands. Music and musical practice, after all, were by no means uniform at the time. One author holds fast to what his forefathers wrote or said; his orientation is directed more towards the past. Another describes the musical customs in a particular locationor is a devotee of some new style or movement.

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These differing approaches can be easily ob-served when we compare sources. Basically we find that a common practice, those normal, com-mon aspects of musicianship, were never recor-ded in such texts. Rather, the tendency was to record something when it seemed it would soon be forgotten, or when a devotee of already out-dated practices wished to preserve them, as is beautifully illustrated, for example, in Le Blanc's defense of the viola da gamba. Then, of course, there were authors who "mounted the barricades" to introduce something new. Muffat, for example, towards the end of the 17th Cen-tury sought to spread the current French style beyond the borders of France. He summarized the essential features of this style as a means to explain it to musicians totally unfamiliar with it.

We must also consider where a source belongs stylistically. It does not make much sense to play a work dated 1720 according to playing directions from 1756. All of these

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considerations must be seen in context and repeatedly re-evaluated and reconsidered.

The example of Johann Strauss, which I referred to earlier, seems to me quite useful, because his music, as I understand it, is still played in Vi-enna in the original and natural way. In their youth, some of today's older musicians were still in touch with people who played under Strauss and his successors. They simply knowwithout much conscious reflectionhow light and shadow are to be distributed in the dynamics, where notes should be shorter or longer, how the music realizes the right lilt for dancing and wherein the wit of the whole lies. Without any unbroken tra-dition, this kind of intuitive knowledge is lost to us. We can draw conclusions about the tempi and the unwritten fine points of musical per-formance only from descriptions. We know, at least from the point of view of physical sensa-tion, far too little about the old dances, which is critical for determining tempo. If we know the rules of the dance steps, this knowledge can eas-ily be applied to the music. We have therefore a

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certain concrete, movement-related possibility of interpreting the notation. Since the dances were at one time generally known and follow pre-determined rhythms and tempi, they are rel-atively easy to reconstruct, and are probably the most significant source of information about the manner of playing, timing and manners of accentuation.

In other music, the basic rhythm, tempo and ac-centuation must be deduced from the time signa-ture and bar-lines. At the beginning of the 17th Century, these probably functioned only as an aid to basic orientation. They are put in "any old place" (in any case, I have yet to make any sense of them). Only in the course of the 17th Century was the bar-line "correctly" placed as we understand it today; and from then on, it

In other music, the basic rhythm, tempo and ac-centuation must be deduced from the time signa-ture and bar-lines. At the beginning of the 17th Century, these probably functioned only as an aid to basic orientation. They are put in "any old place" (in any case, I have yet to make any sense of them). Only in the course of the 17th Century was the bar-line "correctly" placed as we understand it today; and from then on, it