The nature of my relationship to different media
To expand my performance palette using multiple media, it felt important to reflect on the nature of my relationship to different media, including music, text and visual art. In the following I will reflect upon:
- the nature of my relationship to music, drawing on an essay by music philosopher Lydia Goehr entitled The Perfect Performance of Music and the Perfect Musical Performance (1996) and on the book The Meaning of music (2014) by musicologist and composer Leo Samama ;
- my own way of creating texts and visual art;
- my way of photographing informed by philosopher Walter Benjamin's text A Little History of Photography, from 1931.
The nature of my relationship to music
What is my relationship with the medium 'music'? How do I see myself perform a piece of music? What does it mean to perform the clarinet in Western classical tradition? What is my relationship to a composer and to the score?
I believe that music can enrichen everyone's life. For me, music colors life and gives the possibility to enter another world for a moment, distant and liberated from everything around me, and where I can feel. Playing the clarinet is like talking, another way of communicating. A way of expressing myself. It is a way that is different from any other. I like the warm, deep and round sound of the clarinet and I like the different colors of the different registers. I find most beautiful the moments when I feel I am able to take others into my musical world with the atmosphere and emotions that I perceive and recognize in the music, and with that being able to connect to the other.
From the moment I started playing the clarinet I have been interpreting notated music. I have always been taught that it is important to interpret the score as well as possible; to play the right notes and rhythm and to think about which way of playing suits the style of the music. In doing so, I have trusted my teachers' musical knowledge. Teachers inspire me and I have always felt that I could learn a lot from them. I have come to trust them, as well as my own knowledge accumulated over the years.
Interpreting scores to the best of our ability fits with Goehr’s concept of ‘the perfect performance of music’. Goehr writes (1996, 5): ‘Performers interpret faithfully the works they perform.’ It is about fidelity to the music and the score. The term that Goehr uses for this is Werktreue, or 'fidelity to the work’. The Werktreue ideal is about being faithful to the music as originally conceived and notated.
Accordingly, the concept of ‘the perfect performance of music’ is centered on the music itself and therefore, less on the performer. Performers are mediators between composer and audience, according to the concept. We realize the music in sound and we have a score that helps us do so. ‘Performances should be like windows through which audiences directly perceive musical works, transparency’ (Goehr, 1996, 7). Goehr also says; ‘Value should be placed in the existing musical works and not in their transitory and fleeting performances.’ Reading about this makes me think and reflect about the nature of my relationship with music and composers and how I see myself as a performer. It raises questions in me such as: Where do I stand as a person and as a performer in relation to the music? What is important? The music? Am I playing this music just for the sake of the music? To make the music come alive, because the music is so beautiful and valuable and I want to make it come alive and perform it? Because of the music? Like Goehr (1996, 7) says in the concept of ‘the perfect performance of music’; ‘Performers are subservient in purpose to the music.’ Am I only there to play this music as best as the composer wanted and intended? Or is it also about me? And if it is also about me, how should I relate to the music and how can I put something of myself in it? Should the performer be subordinated to the music or not?
I have never felt that I as a person and performer do not matter or that I am only there to make the composer’s idea of the music alive and nothing else. On the other hand, neither have I felt that it is only about me as a person and performer. I feel it is both. The music, which has a great value, exists and the performer brings the music to life in the best way possible. However, in the way in which the performer believes. So at the same time, it is the performer who gives meaning to the music and by that every performance/performer has its own uniqueness. This corresponds to Goehr’s concept of a ‘perfect musical performance’: in this understanding of performance, she (1996, 15) writes ‘[v]alue resides in the creative acts of individuals who give meaning to music in the very moment of each act of performing.’ Besides the music, it is also about how and that I as a performer want to express myself and communicate and connect with listeners. That goes beyond the music itself.
Thereby I feel that it is important to make the music your own, to feel the music and to know what you want to convey with and through it. I always try to detach myself from the score. With that I mean to not just copy what is written in the score, but to think consciously what I want to do with the music and how I think the music can be best brought to life. I have the opinion that there is not one right way to perform the music. I always try to interpret the music in the way I think the composer intended and what I think fits the music, in purpose of the music. But on top of that, I believe that, like I said before, there is room for personal input and interpretation, which ensures that there are multiple ways to perform a piece and therefore not one perfect way. However, I have never taken a piece of music and totally transformed it into something else. I do not think that it is appropriate to do, because I feel that I am then taking it too far. Yes, it is important in my opinion to make the music your own as if you wrote the music yourself. This is important so you can really feel the music and with that convey it. However, changing the music completely I do not feel is suitable. That leaves too little of the music as the composer intended it to be. I do not want that. Then it would be more my music than that of the composer's. And who am I to make the music so my own that you hardly hear anything of the original music, but still play it under the composer's name? Who am I to change his ideas? I do not feel free to change the music. I believe it would be better to then create something myself. Then, no one has anything to say about whether it is allowed or possible, or not. It would be mine. Additionally, you can for example use other music as inspiration for music that you create yourself. So, I think it should be in balance. There is space to interpret the music in your own personal way which adds great value to the music, but still in compliance with the composer’s intentions. Or like Goehr says (1996, 18); 'Music remains the audible art of sound, but to recognize that the situatedness of the performance of this art in the real world is not the latter’s failing but to its genuine aesthetic merit.'
Another thing that keeps me busy at times is that there are so many people who play the same music. I have struggled with that at times. What is the extent to which I matter as a person to perform this music that already is and will be played by lots of people. Despite the fact that I just indicated that I do not think there is one perfect way to play a piece, in my understanding there may be a particular way of playing a piece in a particular framework that is seen as ‘right’. What then distinguishes one performance from another if this particular way of playing is already there at different performances? What can I offer that another person can not? However, like I told before I feel every performance is unique. The same applies to every situation and also the listeners and all other circumstances. I think the value lies mostly in the feeling that the performer can put in the music and what the performer feels in the music. These feelings can radiate to people and by that share, communicate, and connect with the listeners, with each other, and by that let listeners feel. Although, I say listeners, I also believe that one 'sees music'. The body language of this specific person is important for understanding the music and the performer himself. Or how Goehr says it (1996, 18): ‘The sight of the gestures and movements of the various parts of the bodies producing the music is fundamentally necessary if music is to grasped and to understand in its fullness. One sees music.’
Over the years I have found more and more my own way in playing music and playing the clarinet. However, I think that I have always felt, unconsciously perhaps, that I wanted more. I want to express myself and my own voice and ideas, but to what extent is this possible for me with music and with music that already exists? The music is there, I feel that I can not change it completely. That there is a limited space to put and express my own voice in it, because I play music that already exists and it is therefore not mine. I find it difficult at times how to deal with the relationship between the composer and myself. How to fill it in or shape it and find the balance between the composer's intentions and my own artistic intentions. Leo Samama also writes about the relationship between composer and performer in his book 'The Meaning of Music' (2014 , 90); 'The score system has become more and more refined. So detailed that performing musicians were strapped into a harness of instructions and assignments that a strong need arose to give the performers more room for their own musical input. Results of this are graphically extremely freewheeling scores in which there is no more to see than a few lines, dashes and dots, sometimes drawings that seem borrowed from a comic book and which in extreme even do not go beyond a concept.' The dividing line between composer and performer thus becomes more blurred or less sharp. The performer is given more freedom for musical input, for his own artistic intentions. These works interests me, because I have missed that freedom at times.
Creating texts and visual artworks
I have always loved to create and by that express my ideas. I have explored this wish to create with multiple different performances including Gaan, Bewegen in de veranderingen and Photos and Text. In both performances, Gaan and Bewegen in de veranderingen, I combined music with other media such as self-created written texts and visual elements. I wanted to give a concert where the different types of music were connected through an overarching concept. Which at the same time was a way for me to make the concert personal and a way to tell people what I wanted to say and to put something of myself in it. Tell them something about aspects that were important for me at that moment and that could be interesting for other people too. Simultaneously, it helped me to find my way in expressing myself in the music. I have the feeling that I cannot express all of my ideas through my instrument and that there are things that I cannot convey with music only. This combination of music with other media helped me already to more fully express my artistic intentions.
Writing texts and creating artworks is something that I do instinctively. In a way writing texts is a way to help myself organize my mind and thoughts. It is something that I do when I am for example sitting in the train or when I drink a coffee in a cafe or when I lay in bed but can not fall asleep yet. I find it beautiful what is possible in combining words. When I write a text I often don not know where I am going and where I am ending. I start with a word, a thought, a feeling and from there it develops instinctively. Suddenly there is something on paper and along the way I find out where I want to go. When I make an artwork it is more structured. First, I think of a concept and what I want to say with it. I write that down and from there I find inspiration and I start sketching. During the creation of the artwork itself, it often also develops beyond the sketches.
My way of photographing
Besides making music, creating artworks and writing texts, I also love to take photographs. I am interested in little details. The little things that are not noticed so quickly or immediately, because the eyes filter out a lot of all the things we see. How often do you walk past places without consciously seeing what you see or could see? I would like to consciously notice the things I see. I love to see the details and look and find details, like reflections, shadows, hidden places. I like to capture the details and the things that I see by taking photographs.
For me what is special about taking photographs is the ability to capture moments that could pass by so quickly. The possibility to immediately capture, in just a few seconds, a beautiful thing that suddenly appears in your field of vision, is wonderful; especially with the ever-improving photography possibilities on your phone that is almost always within close reach these days. You can capture a moment, the here and now, with al its details. No detail is missed by the camera.
In the beginning, when photography had just been invented, it was all different. The technique was not as advanced as now. It took a long time to take a photograph. Like philosopher Benjamin (1931, 17) tells; ‘In the portrait photography, the early pictures, everything was designed to last. There was a long duration of the shots, they grew as it were into the picture. They lived inside rather than outside the moment.’ I find that interesting too. To live inside the moment rather than outside. With full attention in the moment. It is the opposite from moments that happens to pass by and that could pass into another moment in just a second. In the portrait photography they often created a world especially for the photograph with details of things you would not encounter in everyday life. They made that moment longer and magnified. Everything stood still for a moment, literally. Perhaps it would be good and nice if in today's life we also more often live in the moment and extend a moment a little?
Benjamin talks about Atget. Eugène Atget (1857 - 1927) was a French photographer best known for his photographs of the architecture and streets of Paris where he captured the city in detail and ambience. Atget found a new way of seeing. I like this way of seeing. Benjamin (idem, 19, 20) talks about the portrait photography in which the atmosphere and object had an aura; an unprecedented and delightful general impression. Atget initiated the liberation of the object from this aura. He seeks the forgotten and the forsaken. Things of the everyday life. Like Benjamin (idem, 21) says ‘Atget always passed by the grand views and the so called landmarks. What gave him pause would be for example those hundreds of thousands of well-worn tables you see, the dirty dishes left standing.’ It is something that interests me as well. Forgotten places or things that not everyone would maybe see as interesting to photograph, because it is something that you see so often, but for that very reason you maybe do not see anymore and therefore I feel is interesting to photograph. Because then you really see it, you look at it differently or at least have an eye for it, that you are normally less likely to have. You can see things a lot of times, but that does not mean that you really see it. Benjamin (idem, 21) says: ‘The remarkable thing about these pictures of Atget however is their emptiness. They are not lonely but they lack atmosphere, the city in these pictures is empty in the manner of a flat which has not yet found a new occupant.’ So the city is shown in a different way than from how you would normally see it. That is what makes it interesting in my opinion. A new or different way of looking at things. To the city. To the world. To details.
Benjamin (1931, 21) also says: ‘the sense of the sameness of things in the world has grown to such an extent that by means of reproduction even the unique is made to yield up its uniqueness.’ This lets me think about what interests me. I think because there is already so much of the same, I want the opposite. I want to see and show things that are not so often shown, to give a different view of things that you can see. I am interested in the unique, in the details. The everyday moments, the fleeting chance moments, the details. Or like Benjamin (idem, 25) says: ‘It is now because of developments in the photography possible to capture transitory and secret pictures which are able to shock the associative mechanism of the observer to a standstill.’ That is what I am interested in. Photographs at which you have to look closely before you know what you see. Leaving room for imagination. Or a hidden detail that you only see if you look closely. The different possibilities of approaching a photo.
Benjamin talks about an aura (1931, 20): ‘Aura; a peculiar web of space and time: the unique manifestation of a distance, however near it may be. To follow, while reclining on a summer’s noon, the outline of a mountain range on the horizon or a branch, which casts its shadow on the observer until the moment or the hour partakes of their presence – this is to breathe in the aura of these mountains, of this branch.’ I find it beautifully described; to breathe in and feel the aura in that way. Being able to find and feel the aura of an environment and being able to capture this in a photograph and convey it to people is a wonderful thing I feel. Reading this lets me reflect on my way of taking photographs. I found out that sometimes I breath in an 'aura' and then take a picture of something that catches my attention. However, most of the time I take pictures of details that happen to come across and that I notice at different moments.