Assignment 7

According to Cook, what are some problems of performance studies that focus on analyzing
recordings? What solutions to these problems does Cook propose?
In all three of the readings this week by Cook, he argues that focusing on recordings could fall to
the tendency of putting the theorist above the performers, while ignoring other aspects that are
also crucial in researching and understanding performance. In the MTO article “Prompting
Performance: Text, Script, and Analysis in Bryn Harrison’s être-temps”, Cook explains that
using recordings as a text to be analyzed “risk misreading or simply not grasping the social
meaning inherent in the act of performance.” Recordings represent a small, final part of a lively
process occurring among the performer, score, and composer. Moreover, theorist analyzing
recordings may commit a kind of intentional fallacy if they, according to Cook, attempt to take it
“upon themselves to speak for performers in a kind of ventriloquism” even as they tried to move
away from a score-based, work-centered approach (EX: Berry, Narmour). Cook invoke some of
these theorists in his other MTO article “Introduction: Refocusing Theory”, in which they
foreground theoretical frameworks and “scriptist ontology of traditional theory” rather than
music as performance art in their empirical analysis of performance. In his literature review,
Cook identifies Alan Dodson’s article “Great Nineteenth-Century Rhythm Problem’ in
Horowitz’s Recording of the Theme from Schumann’s Kreisleriana, Op. 16, No. 2” and Robert
Ohriner’s article “Grouping Hierarchy and Trajectories of Pacing in Performances of Chopin’s
Mazurkas” as examples of the aforementioned problem, though they generally acknowledge the
fundamental difference between the performative and analytical acts.
In his book chapter, “Bridging the Unbridgable? Empirical Musicology and Interdisciplinary
Performance Studies”, Cook presents his solution of bridging empirical and cultural approaches
in his analysis of three performances of Chopin’s Mazurka in C-Sharp minor, Op. 63 No. 3. He
synthesizes aural and visual observations that consider details from the pianists’ phrasing,
physical gestures, and interactions with their environment. Cook’s analysis solves the problem
from earlier by putting traditionally analytical approaches on par with social and cultural
approaches without foregrounding and narrowing his research with theoretical concepts and
frameworks, clearly demonstrating the interactive aspects of performance that strict analysis of
recordings tend to ignore.