Creative license
So here’s a question for you: When performing a song, is it necessary to stick to the score exactly as written?
I recently read this excellent article in the Wall Street Journal by Byron Janis, a renowned concert pianist. Janis asserts that a performer doesn’t necessarily have to play the music precisely as the composer may have initially intended, and that in many cases the composers themselves actually performed their own pieces in various ways at different times.
I suppose those of us who have taken piano lessons (or any instrument, for that matter) have had it constantly drilled into us that we need to play accurately. Years of instructors peering over our shoulders and judges evaluating and critiquing have no doubt contributed to that.
And that’s not all that bad, is it? Does not poetry have to be mastered, so that the poet can—in good conscious—violate the various rules of poetry (and thereby create good poetry)?
Of course, the larger assumption is that you’re actually good at what you do. Have you ever seen someones failed attempt to “improve” the music? We all have. You can’t write good poetry if you don’t know what good poetry is. It just won’t work.
I never perform my choir music or piano arrangements quite the same way when I revisit them. In fact, I occasionally will come across something that was published five or ten years ago, and think, What was I thinking?! I would never write or play it like that today. I guess that’s part of growing as a musician.
And with more experience, and the more I learn, the less I feel the necessity of playing exactly what is written. I’m more interested in connecting with my audience, getting the point across, and ministering effectively. Those things are more important to the people I serve than any misguided notion of the “sacredness of the manuscript” that I might hold to. And I think the majority of the composers of the music I use would probably agree with and appreciate that position.
Disclaimer: The extent of my knowledge of poetry is from the Dr. Seuss books I read to my children.
Related posts:
.gif)
.jpg)
