INTRODUCTION

In an interview given to the TV Show Roda Viva in 2000, the famous Brazilian pianist

Arnaldo Cohen, sitting in the middle of a circle made by the interviewers, says "If I played Chopin how

they used to in the beginning of the century," he then points to the music critic Irineu Franco

Perpetuo, "you would write bad things about me". Perpetuo promptly laughs and responds "That's

true. I really would". This little exchange between the musician and the critic can seem harmless, even

humorous. Most certainly the audience who watched this interview twenty-one years ago did not think

much of it. They did not know, however, that Cohen's joke referred to what is arguably the biggest

issue in classical music performance: how interpreters should approach a score.

The movement of "historically informed performance" (HIP) is a child of the 20th century. "We live in

an age in which 'growing legions of early music enthusiasts now look for telltale signs that performers

have done their research, evident in the use of period instruments, embellishments (ornamentation),

and improvisation, amongst other things'" (Peres da Costa, 2012). The truth is that never before in

history was the vast majority of performers playing music by dead composers, often from completely

foreign and past periods and traditions. This interest in "old music" – as opposed to what happened in

the 18th and 19th centuries, when audiences were eager to hear the latest Beethoven symphony, or the

newest opera by Verdi – found in itself a problem when musicians realized that their knowledge of how

to approach scores from the pasts was basically non-existent. "It was primarily in relation to the

Baroque period that an interest in performance practice first developed. The middle decades of the

19th century brought forth a heightened historical consciousness that resulted in a sustained
exploration of the repertory of earlier times. The now hackneyed phrase 'newly rediscovered' applied at

one time to the music of Bach, whose long-forgotten sacred vocal music was revived by Zelter,

Mendelssohn and others. A recognition that 19th-century media and methods of performance did not

necessarily suit music of the 18th and earlier centuries developed only gradually" (Selfridge-Field,

1980).

The increase in musicological research about 18th-century performance practice, however, came

together with a decrease in interest for 19th-century traditions of interpretation. According to the

harpsichordist and fortepianist Robert Hill, "In the period immediately following the First World War,

a new spirit seized the imagination of the Western mind. (...) As the organization and operation of

factories and businesses were streamlined in accordance with principal of efficiency, productivity

increased, but so, too, did automation, unemployment, and worker disaffection. (...) The dark side of

modernism becomes increasingly apparent only as its unfulfilled dreams assume gloomy proportions in

our pictures of the experience of our own century, as we witness the alienation of man from himself,

his environment, his fellow man" (Hill, 1994).

This distance between the interpreter and the composer, as if music existed in a platonic "pure" form,

was more and more supported by the new HIP movement. "We, the children of the twentieth century

(...) assembled a rational and satisfying picture of the music and performance practice of the distant

past. We scrutinized this picture with finely honed scientific tools, and pronounced it 'authentic'. In

other words, the job of understanding the picture came to mean: fill in the blanks as they became
apparent, and strip off the varnish of the nineteenth century to reveal bright, intense, highly direct, but

rather unmysterious images of the past in the countenance of our modern-pay performance practice.

That in so doing we remake the music of the past in our own image is a facet of the problem we could

ignore as long as the modernist myth of objectivity held up. It appears, though, that humanistic

disciplines are waking up to a fundamental truth recognized by physicists a good half century ago: we

can never escape our own subjectivity; the act of measurement alters the thing being measured.

Attempting to conceal our presence as observers, we deceive ourselves" (Hill, 1994). In this passage,

Hill points out a very important parallel between the natural sciences and the way musicology has been

treated during the 20th century. What is curious to observe, he says, is that in areas such as sociology

and psychology people were already very aware of the fact that they could not "exclude" their presence

from what they were observing. Somehow, musicologists didn't only ignore this but were also able

– together with critics – to deeply influence musicians for more than a century.

"I recently, regrettably, attended a recital of four Beethoven sonatas given by an internationally lauded

player in a large hall. The artist was unexpectedly preceded by a herald with frowning brow and solemn

countenance. (...) He predictably proceeded to perform with all the spontaneity of a tenth take in the

recording studio – and the program featured the supposedly improvisatory 'Quasi una fantasia' sonatas

(op. 27) too. It was a miserable experience. (...) How did we end up here form the much more varied,

spontaneous, and improvisatory piano culture of the nineteenth century – when, ironically, most of

our repertoire was actually composed? What lessons can the historical record teach us that might be
applied again to modern performance? Dare we say that the composer need not always have the final

word?" (Hamilton, 2008)

 AN ISSUE OF TIME

"... a lady asked me to which of two existing schools of teaching I adhere, to that which makes

you play in time or to that which makes you play as you feel. I had to think for a moment before I said:

'Can't one feel in time?'" This anecdote, told by the great Austrian pianist Artur Schnabel (1882-1951),

reveals a crucial problem in performance practice during the 20th Century. The lady herself makes it

clear that there are "two existing schools" of piano playing: one the plays exactly in time, and another

one that plays "as they feel" – that is, manipulating time according to their expressive intention and

intuition. This battle between the two ways of understanding time in music is actually something quite

new, and was especially present during the first half of the 1900s, when interpreters from the

late-romantic period (people like Paderewski, Cortot, Joachim, Mengelberg, Pugno) were still alive.

The new modernist generation of performers, that preached a much stricter and sober approach to the

score, was growing at that time, and planting their roots firmly in the musical taste of the 20th

Century. "Musicians of a hundred years ago, hearing a cross-section of present day classical

performances, would likely be struck by this primary difference between their performance practice

and ours: the flexible treatment of time as an expressive resource, an art highly cultivated in

late-romantic performance practice, has given way to an extremely circumspect – more, a restrictive

– handling of this musical dimension. Our performance practice, whether classical-romantic,

radical-modern, or retrospective-historicist (...) assumes that a predictably regular beat is

conscientiously maintained throughout a movement" (Hill, 1994).

What happened throughout the 20th Century was that the performance practice of Western classical

music got increasingly less "intuitive", less "improvised", and became more solid and absolute. As it was

the first time in History that performers were playing music mostly by dead composers, the idea of

"respecting the composer's wishes and legacy" becomes an extremely important one – who would argue

with Beethoven, with Brahms? Naturally, as recording wasn't available until the turn of the first decade

of the 1900s, there's no way of actually knowing how Beethoven would've played one of his sonatas –

ironically, we today suffer from the same problem that he suffered; we cannot hear his playing either.

Therefore, performers and scholars in the past hundred years have been relying only on written

documents in order to produce an "original", "historically-informed" interpretation. The assumption

here is that music exists in a "pure", "true" form – the composer's imagination –  and that the job of the

interpreter is to be a channel through which this form can communicate with the listener. As the score

is the primary source of information in classical music performance, anything that is not written on it

should not be done, as it would be interfering with the composer's wishes. As tempo modification

instructions are not commonly found in most of the classical music canon, they are almost completely

ruled out. "Deliberate modifications of the beat other than those explicitly designated by the composer

rarely go beyond a discreet ritardando at the close of a movement (to the extent this statement is a

generalization, the odd exception today only proves the rule), and even this modification is increasingly

dispensed with in performances of repertoire before 1800. We compensate our lack of timing flexibility

by a very highly developed sense of tone-color and dynamic which, however refined and polished it

may be, tends to abstract and de-personalize the music-making, underscoring its 'absoluteness'" (Hill,

1994).
Another source of information widely used by musicians in order to determine how pieces should be

playing are texts written by great composers, interpreters and teachers of the past. Analyzing different

testimonies from about 1895-1915, the British organist and musicologist writes: "Many writers from

the end of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century recommend flexibility of

tempo, and reject the idea that a piece of music should be played at a constant pace. Hugo Riemann

(1897), writing on expression, advises,

First of all, in the matter of small changes of tempo, it may be remarked that hurrying implies

intensification, and drawing back, the reverse; hence, as a rule, a slight urging, pressing forward is in

place when the musical development becomes more intense, when it is positive; and on the other

hand, a tarrying, when it approaches the close. These changes must naturally be exceedingly minute in

detached musical phrases, but can already become more important in a theme of a certain length;

while for whole movements they are of such extent as to be seldom ignored in the notation.

(...)

Some writers are more cautious in their recommendation of tempo flexibility, and a number of them

suggest that it is more appropriate in Romantic than in Classical music. The pianist Alfred Johnstone

([1910]) allows slight changes of tempo in Beethoven's compositions 'for the purpose of making clear

the varied expressions of soul depicted in the music'. But it is only in modern music, from Chopin and

Schumann onwards, that the varying of tempo has its full play: 'Capriciousness, then, is a characteristic

of this modern emotional style; moods vary capriciously, and constant variations in the tempo is (sic)

one of the means adopted to interpret these capricious moods.' (Phillip, 2004)
With the invention of the metronome by the German engineer Johann Nepomuk Mälzel in 1816,

many composers were excited with the idea of finally being able to accurately indicate the desired

tempo for their pieces. Beethoven was the first one to really embrace the novelty, setting metronome

markings for all of his 9 symphonies, for the Op. 106 Piano Sonata, among other works. The way that

the metronome was used in that time, however, is subject to debate. While it is true that Beethoven was

a big fan of the time-beating machine – hence his eager to re-publish his symphonies with the marking

he had in mind – sources indicate that he didn't want the metronome to be a "steady-pulse" keeper, but

rather an indication of the overall tempo of the piece. Beethoven's first biographer, Anton Schindler

(1795-1864), writes that, when it had been found that the German composer had sent different

metronomic indications to the publisher and the Philharmonic Society of London, reports

Beethoven's answer was" "'No metronome at all! He who has sound feeling needs none, and he who

has not will get no help from the metronome; – he'll run away with the orchestra anyway.'"

(Beethoven, Kerst, 2018)

What is important to be aware of, when reading these sources, is the fact that different authors will

have different opinions. In a certain way, one can say that the disagreement on how music should be

treated was always present – there have always been artists who vowed for a more objective approach to

music, while others preferred a more personal, poetic treatment of the score. It is not uncommon to

even find different sources saying apparently opposite things about the same person. Karol Mikuli

(1821-1897), a very important pianist and one of Chopin's best pupils, writes in the preface to his

Chopin editions:
 "In keeping time Chopin was inflexible, and many will be surprised to learn that the metronome never

left his piano. Even in his oft-decried tempo rubato one hand – that having the accompaniment

– always played on in strict time, while the other, singing the melody, either hesitating as if undecided,

or, with increased animation, anticipating with a kind of impatient vehemence as if in passionate

utterances, maintained the freedom of musical expression from the fetters of strict regularity" (Mikuli,

1894).

At the same time, the great French composer Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), when describing Chopin's

playing in his Memóires, says that "Chopin chafed under the restraints of time… [He] simply could not

play in strict time" (Berlioz, 1870). A lot of caution is necessary when approaching these sources.

While it is difficult – perhaps impossible – to really know how Beethoven or Chopin understood time

and pulse in their music, it is possible to make a comparison between early recordings and modern

recordings. As Neal Peres da Costa observes, "As a window into the past, piano recordings from the

turn of the twentieth century often reveal a style of tempo modification that is radically different to the

present. For the uninitiated, these recordings give the general impression of exaggerated temporal

waywardness. Yet many important pianists of the era evidently considered such a style to be highly

expressive. In contrast, most pianists today adhere more faithfully to the dictates of notation: any

modification tends to stay within close proximity of the prevailing tempo" (Peres da Costa, 2012).

Going on, what is important to highlight in Peres da Costa's observation is the fact that the

straightforwardness in the treatment of pulse in modern pianism is closely related to the faithful

adherence to notation: the notes on the page come one after another, in a continuing, well-spaced
forward motion, from left to right. The assumption, then, is that if an interpretation is to follow the

score, music should behave the same way.

 THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SCORE

Over the years, the written score has become the main source of musical information in

Western classical music. Before the development of acoustic recordings and piano rolls during the turn

of the 20th century, published scores were the only way that music could be shared between two

people who were not in the same room. Therefore, the question of how to write down their musical

ideas was of great importance to composers – and the question of how to read them, to the performers.

And it is this problem of how to read, how to understand and interpret a score, that our exploration

here resides. As the American pianist and musicologist Charles Rosen writes in his book Freedom and

the Arts: Essays on Music and Literature, "The survival of a work of Western music, before the

twentieth century, depended essentially on a system of notation. Of course, we must not underestimate

the power of memory. (...) Most of the music in the world is not notated at all: it survives insofar as it

does only through repeated performance, through the fidelity of the performers' memory. A great deal

of music is not repeated at all, but newly created on each occasion. In any case, some of the finest music

does not need notation, or at any rate resists it" (Rosen, 2012). The point that Rosen is making here is

directly related to a main idea: the reading of the score depends not only on what's written down, but

also on the performer's memory, tradition and culture.

"Asking in what ways our musical culture can be transmitted to the future requires us to consider how

our heritage has come down to us – which part of the past has been transmitted by being written down

and what we have been able to gather only by a continuing tradition. Here it is worth emphasizing that

notation only preserves very limited aspects of the music: many parameters are not written down at all"
(Rosen, 2012). According to Rosen, in European music pitch is primary – that is, the notes we see on

the page are the ones that are supposed to be played or sung. However, he points out that not even that

is as objective as we may think: "Singers could alter the written pitches up or down by the introduction

of sharps and flats that did not originally appear in the text. These accidentals are called musica ficta,

fictive music. (...) Much of the ficta added to the text may have been originally understood as implicit

in the notation" – that is, musicians of a certain place and time would know when to modify a pitch,

without it being explicit in the score. Another great example of performers understanding what to do

with the music in the absence of a written-indication is a lot of the keyboard music from the Baroque

period, especially – but not limited to – basso continuo accompaniments. As opposed to the obbligato,

in which all the notes are given by the score1, the basso continuo was the practice of writing down only

the bassline part with numbers that indicated the chord progression. How to play these progressions,

however, was the keyboardist's job, who would improvise their part at each performance.

"In the history of music since Bach, many of the secondary elements have one by one become primary

– that is, those aspects of music once left up to the performer have gradually become incorporated into

the original compositional process. It would be a mistake to think that this has occurred only because

composers wished to exercise greater control over the execution of their works. What has happened is

that the secondary elements became primary to the structure" (Rosen, 2012). Rosen traces a very

important aspect of the development of the notation throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth

1
Even in such cases, it was common for the performer to add improvised ornamentations to the written text,
sometimes even "recomposing" certain passages. "Until the eighteenth century – and even later – the ornamentation
of the written musical line was left to the performer. Couperin and Bach encroached on the performer's freedom, and
wrote out many of the ornaments. It is interesting to note that sometimes in Bach the ornaments infringe the
academic rules of counterpoint: ornaments were not subject to the same rules as the underlying text"(Rosen, 2012)
centuries. It is easy to observe the increasing complexity of written-out instructions if one compares

scores by Haydn, Beethoven, Chopin and Debussy. "Dynamics, for example, were once a way for the

performer to elucidate the structure of pitch and rhythm and make them expressive and even personal.

With Haydn and, above all, Beethoven, however, the dynamics are often an integral part of the motif,

which has become unthinkable and unintelligible without them. (...)

Gradually through the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, not only dynamics, but tone color

are removed from the province of realization and transferred into the basic process of composition.

Starting with Debussy and continuing with Boulez, indeed, tone color – balance and equilibrium of

sound, pedaling, quality of staccato and legato – sometimes even outweighs the element of pitch in

importance. In several pieces of Debussy, it would give the music less of a shock to play a wrong note

than to play the wrong dynamics or apply the wrong touch. The composers have little by little invaded

the territory of the performers. The freedom of the performer has not been completely annihilated, but

it has had to be reformulated" (Rosen, 2012).

If the complexity of musical structures indicated by the score grew with time – again, something that

can be easily observed – then performers are faced with two main options. On the one hand, the lack of

explicit information in a score by Handel when compared to one by Chopin might indicate that Bach's

music does not have the expressive variety – that is, dynamic range, tempo modification, different

articulations, changes in tone and timbre – that Chopin's music does. On the other hand, this lack of

explicit information might mean that the expressive variety of Handel's music resides a lot on the

interpreter's choices. While the first option would be true if we departed from an objective view of the
score, the second would mean that the performer should use their creativity and intelligence to breathe

life into the written text, therefore changing it into something that transcends the ink and paper.

What is most curious to consider, when reflecting about the change in the amount of interpretative

information that composers left in their scores, is that an absolutely literal view of the score would

mean that the "older" the music is, the less expressive content it has. When asked by Schindler why he

hadn't indicated any poetical concepts for his piano sonatas with titles or superscriptions, Beethoven

answered: "'The time in which I wrote my sonatas (the first ones of the second period) was more

poetical than the present (1823); such hints were therefore unnecessary. Every one at that time felt in

the Largo of the third sonata in D (Op. 10) the picture soul-state of a melancholy being, with all the

nuances of lights and shade which occur in a delineation of melancholy and its phases, without

requiring a key in the shape of a superscription; and everybody then saw in the two sonatas (op. 14) the

picture of a contest between two principles, or a dialogue between two persons, because it was so

obvious" (Beethoven and Kerst, 2018). Here, Beethoven is clearly saying that throughout his life the

way that performers looked at scores had changed from a "more poetic" one – in which everybody

would be able to understand his expressive intentions without them being explicitly indicated by in the

score – to a "less poetic" one – in which interpreters were more heavily relying on the composer's

specific instructions. In a certain way, one could make the point that Beethoven expected performers to

transcend his text – to what degree being a matter of discussion.

Paying attention to how modern pianists read their scores, Robert Hill points out that "Since the

1920's, performers and music teachers have been conditioned by musicologists and critics to aspire to
ideally objective readings of musical texts. That now emerges as an illusory goal. Nonetheless, the now

compromised notion of scientific "progress" still informs the modern performance-practice attitude

– and quite unabashedly so – in both traditionalist and historicist quarters (in the latter it partly serves

commercial interests in the form of 'new and improved' performance practice). Having been told for

three-quarters of a century that positivist standards of detachment and objectivity are unqualifiedly

valid when dealing with texts transmitting the music of the past, it should not surprise us to find that

musicians lacking scholarly training all too often receive the concept of objectivity in terms of a

literalist view of notation" (Hill, 1994). In this passage, Hill makes the essential connection between

the literal reading of the score and the idea of an "absolute music", one that lives by itself, in a platonic

existence. According to the modernist standards, it seems that the role of the performer is to be a "tube"

that connects the platonic world where the "true form" of a piece resides and the audience.

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), in his The Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons, makes the

distinction between an interpreter and an executant. "Between the executant pure and simple and the

interpreter in the strict sense of the word, there exists a difference in make-up that is of an ethical rather

than of an aesthetic order, a difference that presents a point of conscience: theoretically, one can only

require of the executant the translation into sound of his musical part, which he may do willingly or

grudgingly, whereas one has the right to seek from the interpreter, in addition to the perfection of this

translation into sound, a loving care which does not mean, be it surreptitious or openly affirmed, a

recomposition. The sin against the spirit of the work always begins with a sin against its letter and leads

to the endless follies which an ever-flourishing literature in the worst taste does its best to sanction"
(Stravinsky, 1947). What is most important for us in this passage is how Stravinsky brings the problem

of interpretation to a moral level. According to him, what a performer does with the music is a

problem of ethics; and therefore different performances (and performers) would be more or less

"ethical". Speaking about good and bad interpreters, Stravinsky says that "the bad ones are in the

majority and that the virtuosos who serve music faithfully and loyally are much rarer than those who,

in order to get settled in the comfortable berth of a career, make music serve them. (...) To speak of an

interpreter means to speak of a translator. And it is not without reason that a well-known Italian

proverb, which takes the form of a play on words, equates translation with betrayal" (Stravinsky, 1947).

Comparing both Stravinsky's and Beethoven's words, it seems that the most reasonable conclusion to

make is that their music shouldn't be played the same way. At the same time, that decision also is part

of the performer's wishes as an artist: both Stravinsky and Beethoven are dead, so we wouldn't be able

to make them smile with our interpretations anyway. The question of tradition, respect for the

composer's memory – that all is important. But in the end, it is only important because we made it

important.
 LOOKING FOR A REASON

In my attempt to find a reason for the striking objectivity of classical music performance after World

War One, I have noticed that, while it is extremely difficult to trace a distinct cause-effect connection

between events, certain characteristics of the time seem to appear frequently. In his The Poetics of Music

in the Form of Six Lessons, as we have seen, Stravinsky writes about the idea of the performer not as

somebody who interprets a piece, but as somebody who executes it. "The idea of interpretation", he

writes, "implies the limitations imposed upon the performer or those which the performer imposes

upon himself in his proper function, which is to transmit music to the listener. The idea of execution

implies the strict putting into effect of an explicit will that contains nothing beyond what it specifically

commands" (Stravinsky, 1947). The executioner, then, is a person who makes something happen,

without interfering in its course. Once they interfere with it, they will no longer be doing what they

were told to do – they will then be interpreting it by putting themselves on the way between the initial

order and the final product.

Written in the beginning of the War, Franz Kafka's (1883-1924) The Trial tells the story of a man, Josef

K., who suddenly receives an arrest notice by two unidentified agents, who never tell him why he's

being arrested. This narrative is the essential description of an execution – an order is being put into

effect, without any "human interference", that is, who the agents are or what they think and feel has no

influence in what they are doing. The Metamorphosis, another novel by Kafka published in 1915, traces

a similar notion. The story begins as the salesman Gregor Samsa wakes up to find that he had

metamorphosed into a human-sized insect. In both of Kafka's novels, there's a notion of

dehumanization – in The Trial, nothing about who Josef K. is or what he did has anything to do with

the fact that he's being prosecuted; in The Metamorphosis, the main character suffers so much abuse

from his parents and from his boss that he literally becomes a non-human.

It is also worth mentioning the poem With an Identity Disc, by the English poet Wilfred Owen. Very

common during the First World War, identity discs were used by the British Army to identify their

deceased soldiers. Each soldier would then carry two discs, carrying the same information. One of them

would remain with the body, the other would serve for record keeping.

If ever I dreamed of my dead name

High in the heart of London, unsurpassed
By Time for ever, and the Fugitive, Fame,
There seeking a long sanctuary at last,

I better that; and recollect with shame

How once I longed to hide it from life's heats
Under those holy cypresses, the same
That shade always the quiet place of Keats,

Now rather thank I God there is no risk

Of gravers scoring it with florid screed,
But let my death be memoried on this disc.
Wear it, sweet friend. Inscribe no date nor deed.
But may thy heart-beat kiss it night and day,
Until the name grow vague and wear away.

It is poignant in the poem Owen's idea of being a name inscribed on a metal disc, of his existence being

a number that doesn't mean anything and that would be forgotten when the letters were no longer
legible. A small, but important, detail is that identity discs were popularly called "dog tags", which

reinforces the notion of dehumanization.

It is not surprising, then, to see that the interpretation of music also suffered with the objectivity of

human life. In a certain way, one could make a point that the reality in which each soldier is a number,

and that everyone should fight and sacrifice themselves for a greater cause hits moral and ethical

grounds. "Being one more in the front" – this idea affected not only those who were actually in the

trenches, but also who was at home, praying for their loved ones. During war, a soldier cannot think

that their life is more valuable than their comrade's, a fact that generates an almost forced-humility: "it

is wrong to pay too much attention to my own feelings, because there's something much greater out

there."
 CONCLUSION

In the Fall of 2019, I was working as a producer for Robert Hill's recording of the complete French

Suites of Johann Sebastian Bach. Once, during one of our late night sessions, I remember stopping him

and asking why he was playing a certain phrase the way he was, and suggested that he did it differently.

He said "Well, that's a matter of taste", to which I promptly responded, jokingly, "Yes, some people have

good taste, some people have bad taste". We recorded another take, with my preferred approach, and I

don't remember exactly which version ended up in the final cut. Let the truth be told: disagreements

about performance practice in Western classical music are not actually a big problem. The fact that one

pianist plays a phrase with a lot of rubato and inflection, while another chooses to do it with more

sobriety and simplicity (and both think that theirs is the definitive version) – this is not something very

serious. In fact, it is highly desirable, as not everybody will react equally to the same performance;

variety is part of the pleasure of listening to music.

The problem lies when musicians, taking themselves too seriously, start alienating other musicians

because of the way they play. This is especially common in music schools and in competitions, where

some teachers or jury members, thinking that they know anything about "the correct way" of playing a

Haydn sonata or a Chopin Ballade, condemn certain expressive behaviors and prohibit the student

from exploring new possibilities in their playing. This leads to the opposite of disagreement – a world

in which everybody ends up performing music the same way, because they want to pass their juries and

get first prizes.

It doesn't matter how hard we try, we will never really know how eighteenth and nineteenth century

composers truly interpreted their music. And even if we did, it would still be an interpretation – yes,

the composer's view on their own music is also kind of interpretation – meaning that there can be

different ones. As it is perfectly valid for a musician to experiment with a completely literal view of the

score, it is perfectly valid for them to experiment with non-written out possibilities.

As a new generation of musicians arises, we should remember ourselves of what happened with our

ancestors in the 1910's: they were exploring, rejecting some ideas as their own and trying out new ways

of making music. New concepts, ideas, interpretations were created. As human beings, they changed

art because art is part of human reality. Understanding this is especially important for teachers, as it is

easy to get into the habit of thinking of music in a certain way, cutting short the possibility of exploring

ideas together with the student. In my experience with both teaching and being taught, I've found that

when the teacher and student share a position of curiosity, the amount of knowledge and sincere

music-making produced is far greater than when the student serves as a mirror, reflecting and

reinforcing the teacher's views.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beethoven, L. van, & da, S. W. R. (2006). Cartas, diários, cadernos de conversação e reminiscências
de contemporâneos. Veredas.

Beethoven, L. van, & Krehbiel, H. E. (1964). Beethoven The man and the artist, as revealed in his
own words. Dover Publications.

Berlioz, H. (2002). The memoirs of Hector Berlioz. (D. Cairns, Trans.). Everyman's Library.

Brown, H. M., Sadie, S., & Fuller, D. (1990). In Performance practice: music after 1600 (pp.
117–146). essay, Macmillan.

Brown, H. M., Sadie, S., & Levin, R. (1990). In Performance practice: music after 1600 (pp.
267–291). essay, Macmillan.

Brown, H. M., Sadie, S., & Selfridge-Field, E. (1990). In Performance practice: music after 1600
(pp. 3–19). essay, Macmillan.

Chopin Frédéric, & Paderewski, I. J. (1949). In Complete works, according to the autographs and
original editions with critical commentary. afterword, Fryderyk Chopin Institute.

Chopin Frédéric, Mikuli, K., & Mikuli, K. (1894). In J. Huneker (Ed.), Complete works for the
piano. G. Schirmer.

Costa, N. P. D. (2012). Off the record: performing practices in romantic piano playing. Oxford
University Press.

Frescobaldi, G., & Pidoux, P. (1949). In Orgel- und Klavierwerke IV: das zweite Buch der
Toccaten, Canzonen usw. 1637. introduction, Bärenheiter Verlag.

Hamilton, K. (2008). After the Golden Age: romantic pianism and modern performance (2nd
ed.). Oxford University Press.

Hill, R. (1994). In Bryan Gilliam (Ed.), Music and Performance during the Weimar Republic
(pp. 37–58). essay, Cambridge University Press.

Howat, R. (2014). The art of French piano music: Debussy, Ravel, Faure, Chabrier. Yale
University Press.
Kafka, F. (2000). Der Prozess. Hamburger Lesehefte.

Kafka, F. (2014). Die Verwandlung. Beck C. H.

Owen, W., & Stallworthy, J. (1983). In Wilfred Owen, the complete poems and fragments (p. 96).
essay, Chatto and Windus - The Hogarth Press.

Philip, R. (2004). Early recordings and musical style: changing tastes in instrumental
performance, 1900-1950. Cambridge University Press.

Rosen, C. (2012). Freedom and the arts essays on music and literature. Harvard University Press.

Schumann, R., & Storck, K. (2018). The Letters of Robert Schumann. (H. Bryant, Trans.).
Franklin Classics.

Stravinsky, I. (1947). Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons. (A. Knodel & I. Dahl, Trans.).
Cambridge University Press.