Shadows of meaning: Webern's Piano Variations on record

意义的阴影：韦伯恩的钢琴变奏曲记录

• 批准号: AH/J003417/1
• 负责人: Nicholas Cook
• 金额: $ 9.41万
• 依托单位: University of Cambridge
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2012 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FJ003417%2F1
• 关键词: Shadows; meaning; Webern; Piano; Variations

The history of music is traditionally written in the form of the history of compositions, yet it is as performance that music enters most people's experience and becomes meaningful. This research will attempt to sketch a history of musical modernism as embodied in recorded performances of a single, emblematic work, Webern's Piano Variations Op 27. Webern composed Op 27 in 1935-6, and envisaged its performance in terms of the hyper-expressive style characteristic of pre-war Viennese modernism, but a performance tradition became established only in the context of the post-war avant-garde centred on Darmstadt. The music was now seen in terms of a quite different conception of modernism, in which values of emotional expression gave way to those of structural complexity and integrity: performers treated Op 27 as a kind of sacred text, to be reproduced in performance in much the same sense as a religious ritual. By the 1970s, however, post-war modernism was itself giving way to a new, more interpretive approach that can equally be characterised as more historically informed or as tending towards postmodernism. My research will show how this broad narrative of aesthetic change is inscribed in recordings of Op 27, and how empirical analysis of recordings can give rise to nuanced understanding of the many shades which modernism has taken in music.Based on a complete collection of commercial recordings of Op 27, this research will build on computational methods for the analysis of recordings developed at the AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music (CHARM). It will seek to show how quantitative methods can be brought to bear on the issues of cultural change and meaning with which musicologists are centrally concerned. In addition to setting out the changing performance tradition of Op 27 and its relationship to other expressions of modernism, this will involve teasing apart aspects of composition and of performance that are frequently conflated. Music theorists have traditionally adopted a 'page-to-stage' approach, evaluating performances in terms of how they underline or bring out compositional structure. But this has never been a primary concern for performers of Op 27. While the work is well known as an unusually rigorous application of the methods of serialism, I will show through comparison with recordings of Brahms's Intermezzo Op 116 No 5 (to which Op 27 bears a striking resemblance) that even the literalist performers of the Darmstadt era drew on rhetorical and expressive conventions derived from the performance of tonal music. In this way I shall argue that compositional structure and performance style are not as directly linked as music theorists have believed: it is in the space between them that performers exercise their creative agency, and doing musicological justice to this means developing a more inclusive and better theorised understanding of how music is represented in performance. This research is intended as a contribution towards such a development.While important theoretical and methodological issues of the study of music as performance are thus at stake, it is also my intention to do justice to the richness and variety of individual interpretive approaches that Op. 27 has afforded. The collection of 69 recordings of Op 27 on which the project is based includes eleven by the idiosyncratic and charismatic Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, of which two were made for televison. I will chart his interpretation of Op 27 across these recordings, investigating ways in which his performances relate to his extensive verbal commentaries on Webern and Op 27, and how far his playing was moulded by physical aspects of his engagement with the keyboard. I hope the result will be a multi-faceted study of the engagement between an emblematic performer and an emblematic work which does justice to cultural context, agency, and creativity.

音乐史传统上以作曲史的形式书写，但音乐正是通过表演进入大多数人的经验并变得有意义。这项研究将试图勾画出一部音乐现代主义的历史，它体现在一部标志性作品《韦伯恩的钢琴变奏曲 Op 27》的录制演奏中。韦伯恩于 1935 年 6 月创作了《Op 27》，并以超表现力的风格来设想其演奏。这是战前维也纳现代主义的特征，但表演传统只有在以达姆施塔特为中心的战后先锋派背景下才得以确立。现在人们以一种完全不同的现代主义概念来看待音乐，其中情感表达的价值观让位于结构复杂性和完整性的价值观：表演者将 Op 27 视为一种神圣的文本，在表演中以多种方式再现。与宗教仪式的意义相同。然而，到了 20 世纪 70 年代，战后现代主义本身正在让位于一种新的、更具解释性的方法，这种方法同样可以被描述为更具历史渊源或倾向于后现代主义。我的研究将展示这种关于审美变化的广泛叙述如何铭刻在 Op 27 的录音中，以及对录音的实证分析如何能够引起对现代主义在音乐中所采取的多种色调的细致入微的理解。基于完整的商业录音收藏根据 Op 27，这项研究将建立在 AHRC 录制音乐历史与分析研究中心 (CHARM) 开发的用于分析录音的计算方法的基础上。它将试图展示如何将定量方法应用于音乐学家所关注的文化变迁和意义问题。除了阐述 Op 27 不断变化的表演传统及其与其他现代主义表现形式的关系之外，这还将涉及梳理经常被混为一谈的作曲和表演方面。音乐理论家传统上采用“逐页”的方法，根据表演如何强调或展现作曲结构来评估表演。但这从来都不是 Op 27 表演者最关心的问题。虽然这部作品因对序列主义方法异常严格的应用而闻名，但我将通过与勃拉姆斯的 Intermezzo Op 116 No 5 的录音进行比较来展示（Op 27有着惊人的相似之处），即使是达姆施塔特时代的字面主义表演者也借鉴了源自音调音乐表演的修辞和表达惯例。通过这种方式，我将认为，作曲结构和表演风格并不像音乐理论家所认为的那样直接相关：表演者在它们之间的空间中发挥他们的创造性能动性，而对这一点进行音乐学上的公正意味着发展一种更具包容性和更好的结构。对音乐如何在表演中表现的理论理解。这项研究旨在为这种发展做出贡献。虽然音乐作为表演研究的重要理论和方法论问题因此受到威胁，但我也打算公正地对待《Op.1》中个人解释方法的丰富性和多样性。 27已经提供了。该项目所依据的 Op 27 专辑收录了 69 张唱片，其中 11 张是由独特而富有魅力的加拿大钢琴家格伦·古尔德 (Glenn Gould) 录制的，其中两张是为电视制作的。我将在这些录音中绘制他对 Op 27 的诠释，调查他的表演与他对 Webern 和 Op 27 的大量口头评论的联系方式，以及他的演奏在多大程度上受到他与键盘接触的身体方面的影响。我希望研究结果能够对标志性表演者和标志性作品之间的互动进行多方面的研究，从而公正地对待文化背景、能动性和创造力。

项目成果

Inventing Tradition: Webern's Piano Variations in Early Recordings

发明传统：早期录音中韦伯恩的钢琴变奏曲

• DOI: 10.1111/musa.12094
• 发表时间: 2017
• 期刊: Music Analysis
• 影响因子: 0.4
• 作者: Cook N

The Oxford handbook of sound and image in Western art

牛津西方艺术声音与图像手册

• 发表时间: 2016
• 作者: Cook N. J.