Interpretation instead of Composition

I believe it is fair to say that over the course of the twentieth century, so-called “interpretation” gradually became more prominent in concerts of that music which—starting precisely in the twentieth century—came to be classified as “classical.” The reason is that, between the end of the nineteenth century and the twentieth, performers gradually ceased to be composers as well (why this happened is a major issue, and well beyond the scope of this short note). As a matter of fact, nowadays even the most renowned concert artists almost never present their own music, chiefly because they are unable to produce any. Nor are they capable of improvising, which is nothing other than a form of composition. Thus, a rather rigid dichotomy has taken shape: composers produce their music, and performers present it to the public.

Since performers never offer anything new, it is evidently necessary that they present what is already known in the most convincing way possible (and to pad out the repertoire, one turns to old works). These compositions, played and replayed endlessly, generate a performance tradition that becomes impossible to ignore. Moreover, the performance is expected to be technically flawless. It could hardly be otherwise, because a performer devoid of compositional abilities, if they make a mistake, is unable to conceal the slip with a touch of extemporaneous creativity. There exist, for example, reliable accounts telling us that Franz Liszt was by no means a flawless performer; but when he erred, it was a pleasure to see how he managed to extricate himself.

When composers presented their own most recent works, the problem of performance and interpretation obviously did not arise, since new compositions had not yet generated an interpretive tradition. Or rather, the interpretive issue presented itself in a much less obsessive form. This was because it was taken for granted that the performer (then endowed with compositional ability) did not consider themselves bound to absolute fidelity to what the composer had put on paper. Instead, they felt free to personalise the piece, adapting it to their own taste and manual dexterity. In this way, the repeated presentation of the same piece gave rise to a genuine family of variants, similar to those produced by oral traditions. Such a family was to be understood as a continuation of the compositional process, of which the “author” was merely the first link in a chain that, in principle, had no end. That was so exciting!