Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.2 (2004) 1-6 [Access article in PDF] Once Again, This Time with Feeling Stephen Davies The arbitrariness of so many virtuosos is partly responsible for the excess of expression marks to be found in the works of composers who thus hoped to forestall distortion and misinterpretation. Yet, complete control over the performer is not only impossible but also undesirable. The only remedy is to improve the education of performers in matters of musical style and taste. The most common fault is the application of a Romantic, that is, a highly expressive treatment of non-Romantic music, such as the works of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven. The deplorable result is an overdoing of all nuances: the use of prestissimo instead of allegro, of larghissimo instead of adagio, of fff and ppp instead of f and p, of frequent crescendi and decrescendi instead of an even level of sonority, of numerous rubatos, ritardandos, and accelerandos instead of strictly kept tempo, etc. In view of all these tendencies nothing seems to be more important for the student than to learn to play without expression. Only the pianist who has learned to play Bach's Chromatic Fantasia or Beethoven's Apassionata in the most rigid way will be able to add that amount of nuances and shades which these works properly require.1 Prelude How does the performer communicate the emotional expressiveness imparted by the composer to his music? The response to this question will depend on one's view of performance. For Western works specified notationally(to which I will restrict the following discussion), a plausible position regards musical performance as analogous to quotation. The performer's task and intention is, by following the composer's score, to repeat or re-create an "utterance" made originally by the composer, and, thereby, to convey what he meant by it. The response will depend also on one's theory as regards the manner in which music is expressive of emotion. [End Page 1] Expressive Performance as Feeling or Simulation One such account, known as the expression theory, has it that music is expressive of an emotion just in case the composer experienced that emotion and gave vent to it through the act of composition; the work, his "utterance," betrays what he felt. In that case, the performer's task is to quote the composer's utterance in a manner that betrays the same emotion. Rather than merely mouthing what he says, she will invest it with the passion that would be typical of someone's giving direct expression to his or her experience of the relevant emotion. She might adopt either of two approaches to this end. Like the "method" actor, she might induce an equivalent emotion in herself and affirm what she quotes as an expression of her own feeling, this being one she shares with the composer. Or she might simulate the expression of the appropriate emotion. She articulates the composer's utterance as if she felt what he did.According to the arousal theory, music is expressive of a given emotion just in case the audience is aroused to an experience of that emotion as a consequence of listening to and following the music. In that case, the performer's goal is to move the auditor to an appropriate emotional response by "quoting" the composer. One of the most compelling ways of doing so would be by eliciting an empathetic reaction. Provided the performer demonstrates the appropriate feeling with sufficient ardor, she can rely on the natural human sympathy of the audience to kindle in them a reaction echoing her own emotion. Accordingly, she should proceed as already described, either by inciting herself to the appropriate emotion and showing it in her manner of playing, or, at least, by acting if she is in the grip of that emotion, even if she is not.There are grounds for rejecting both the emotivist and the arousal theories of musical expressiveness, but independent of those reasons, it should be apparent that what these accounts imply about the manner of performing music expressively is...