The notion of vitality refers to the way in which an act is performed and the feeling that directs it (Stern, 1999). Vanmaele (2017) introduces this into the musical discourse as way to name those “states of mind” that are suggested by the rhythmic and melodic contours, embodied in the performer and communicated, through the music, to the listener. In this context, he claims the need for a more systematic analytical interest in these states of vitality, to be added to the four most common topics of musical analysis: score, auditive signal, musical gestures and listener’s experience. Vanmaele’s work has led, in 2016-2017, to the assembling of a list of the 70 most common bio-topics[1], as a result of the discussion of various repertoire with piano-students of the Stedelijk Conservatorium Brugge (BE).
This list can be found in Appendix 1 and was used as the base of my own bio-topical analysis, which was carried out by practicing and performing the piece as well as reflecting on the score, after having acquired enough familiarity with the list; this empirical way of analysis seemed in fact the only one possible considering the non-readily observable nature of these bio-topics.
[1] The term “bio-topic” is used in contrast to Ratner’s “Topical analysis” (1980), with the goal to replace its intrinsically cultural “topics”, that are also restricted to 18th century music, with more fundamental and universal “bio-topics” representing performer’s experience and vitality whilst playing a piece.
The results of this analysis are pictured in Figure 4a and 4b, where a new bio-topic is mentioned in correspondence with the sections where I could experience a new state of vitality; therefore, the resulting sections can sometimes differ from those that were identified through the musical analysis. Overall, it can be observed that these sections are usually identified with a slight delay compared to those that are defined through musical analysis, as if a different state of vitality could only be recognised after a few notes, as well as being sometimes smaller and more refined than the first ones. This shows a fundamental difference in the way of defining these sections, being more continuous and time-based compared to the former one, which on the contrary implied an ‘above-temporal’ view of the score; this difference is intrinsic to the point of view from which one performs these analyses: the one of a ‘first person’ experience (vitality analysis) against that one of an external examiner (musical analysis).
