Music, Recording, and the Art of Interpretation

Presently working on a new research project with pianist extrodinaire, Dr Stephen Emmerson. The project examines the recordings of a series of classical piano works, but rather than try to attempt to record these 'authentically' (following the recent fascination with recordings 'as' music), the project aims to deliberately manipulate and re-construct the pieces as sound art or 'phonography', with a view to expanding of some of the underlying narratives.

As a starting point, we took a series works performed by Stephen on the 29 October 2008 in the Queensland Conservatorium’s Ian Hanger Recital Hall. The compositions date from 1908, regarded as a landmark in the history of European Modernism with a number of the 20th century’s most remarkable composers finding their distinctive voice around that time via seminal works for solo piano. These included Alban Berg’s Sonata Op.1, Arnold Schoenberg’s 3 Piano Pieces Op.11 and Béla Bartók’s 14 Bagatelles Op.6.

Here's a few excerpts from the concert:

Boomp3.com

Boomp3.com

Boomp3.com

Next, we're working to present a paper and interactive session in the IMERSD recording studios as part of the CreateWorld 2008 digital arts conference, this coming December. In particular, we will be preparing 5 of Bartók’s Bagatelles, famous as a collection of pieces which explore a range of innovative compositional techniques (polytonality/bitonality, symmetry, twelve-note collections, quartal harmony, clusters etc.) as well as reflecting his explorations with folk music.

The range of the musical languages employed has encouraged the view that they are a collection of separate individual and almost incompatible pieces. However, as a musciologist, Emmerson is convinced that the sharp contrasts in style are part of the overall concept of the work as a cycle of pieces that successively builds with a cohesive sense of narrative progression. Beyond merely a collection of compositional experiments or exercises, he understands them as having strong emotional and programmatic implications that develop through the cycle.

Stephen has come up with a range of 'sound types' to parallel musicological arguments about the personal emotions and historical settings for the pieces, and we'll be producing these though a variety of multi-track and post-production techniques, including varing treatments for right and left hand parts . .

. . . overdubs, layers, compression, tape distortion, a host of microphone placements and manipulations of spatiality. 

Fundamentally, the project challenges the predominant approach in the recording of classical music where such works promote the illusion of capturing a concert experience and that sound production decisions appear to be transparent. Here the authors argue that classical music language can benefit from deliberate interference in the recorded product provided this is congruent with research into the underpinning musical meanings. 

And so the music is not just manipulated/remixed to produce an essentially a different piece (although this remains a valid possibility) but maintains that central aspect of musicking which leads to new ways of experiencing music. If this can be realised, then perhaps the artists have begun to master the art of interpretation and the ability to speak music’s language more effectively.

We'll be continuing the project following CreateWorld by producing all the works on Steinway and recorded in the Conservatorium's Concert Theatre. Aiming for a journal articel early in the new year, accompanied by a two CD set and booklet. Perhaps 'before and after' CDs, and what we're most interested in is – which one is really the 'fake'?