Performance, Analysis, and Musical Imagining

Author(s): Charles Fisk

Source: College Music Symposium , 1996, Vol. 36 (1996), pp. 59-72
Published by: College Music Society

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40374284

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Performance, Analysis, and Musical Imagining
Charles Fisk

Parti: Schumann' s Arabesque

Introduction

W Writers who address the relationship between music analysis and performance h
V V usually begun their discussions with analytic observations and then, after co
pleting them, have tried to draw conclusions from them about how to play the mu
being analyzed. Even though some of these writers deny the direct applicability of ana-
lytic findings to performative decisions, they still entreat their readers, whether impl
itly or explicitly, to regard analysis as a foundation for performance, as a way of ground
or validating performance objectively. In his review of Wallace Berry's Musical Str
ture and Performance, John Rink takes issue with the implicit belief of these writers t
what he calls 'serious analysis' can serve as a basis for performance.1 Rink, himsel
pianist, holds that "a unique kind of performer's analysis . . . quite distinct from w
we as analysts usually practice . . . forms an integral part of the performing proce
According to Rink, performer's analysis aims to discover, above all else, aural 'sha
and musical gesture. Acknowledging that informed intuition, more than any theoretica
system, guides such performer's analysis, Rink nonetheless clearly regards such un
tematic analysis as more suited to performers' needs than systematic analysis can e
aspire to become. He suggests, moreover, that theorists may have even more to ga
from building their analyses on performers' modes of musical awareness than perform-
ers can gain from the explicit analytic awareness of theorists.
Rink thus describes and endorses what many performers already do; but some th
rists may disagree with his apparent belief that what performers actually do is what th
ought to do. Berry, for one, advocates a view of performance as "critical discours
the perceived meaning of a score,"2 and argues that performers who do not ground the
conception of this meaning on musical analysis can rely only on what he regards as
vagaries of intuition, or on docile imitation of their teachers and other performers
considers analysis, therefore, to be "the inescapable basis for interpretive doing and not
doing."3
Many performers, if asked about Berry's views, might say they agree with them, at
least in principle. The fact that they almost never have the time, or the capacity, to carry
out such analysis does not imply an objection. But, as Rink points out, the ways per-
formers reach decisions and the ways we evaluate performances have no simple relation
to such convictions. In particular, any attempt to develop a comparison of performance
to critical discourse leads immediately to problems. Most obviously, critical discourse
makes explicit statements about texts and artworks, but performance cannot state any-
thing explicitly. While one can usually infer some of performers' thoughts about the

'John Rink, review of Wallace Berry, Musical Structure and Performance. Music Analysis 9/3 (1990), 3 19-39.
2Wallace Berry, Musical Structure and Musical Performance (New Haven and London: Yale, 1989):6.
3Berry,41.

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60 COLLEGE MUSIC SYMPOSIUM

shape and character of what they play from their

can never hear or read these thoughts directly. Un
formance cannot choose which details it will tak
of consideration. As Janet Schmalfeldt has writt
hension must be placed completely at the service of
making moment- by-moment connections, holdi
point, living within and through the work until, a
achieved."4 She cannot stop to reflect on a pass
emphasizing others. Again quite obviously, perf
from a score, nor makes abstractions. On the contr
mance specifies and makes determinate what the
completing the music itself.5 Once again unlike cri
works they discuss as objects, performers seek thr
sic to recover its immediacy from the medium of
the music to reflection, they must bring it audibly
Even the most musically literate listeners respon
tions they formulate in the course of listening to
that the imaginative focus and energy of the perfo
ence. Many performers can bring this focus and
without ever formulating an articulate basis for
refined responses to the situations within whic
specify explicitly the reasons for these response
in the ability to imagine music, both aurally and b
order its parameters; and no analysis can take th
ence required to develop and focus a performer
deed, the physical aspect of a performer's relations
in his or her hearing, imagining and shaping of th
sis, no matter what conceptualizations it might
from and resolve itself in that performer's tec
musical imagination.
Berry thus overplays the role of musical analys
and with it the performer's capacity to convey cri
role of experimentation, of trying things this w
'works', what produces a performer's sense of
experienced musician, this process of experimentat
based on knowledge of all sorts, but on knowled
embodied in the performer's ways of hearing an
remaining consciously remembered as knowledge
tical for performers to try to articulate consciousl
to restrain it analytically, as to become analytically

4Janet Schmalfeldt, "On the Relation of Analysis to Performa

Journal of Music Theory29/l (1985): 1-3 1.
5Fred Everett Maus, "Musical Performance as Composition." Pa
Music Theory in Austin, Texas, October 28, 1 989.

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 PERFORMANCE, ANALYSIS, AND MUSICAL IMAGING 6 1

of their behavior.
In his response to Berry, on the other hand, Rink underplays the ways that th
performer's analysis' that both guides and evolves through such experimentation ca
draw on 'serious analysis.' Imagining the music in all its detail, or finding in it a distinc-
tive musical shape or gesture, can often become a daunting task. And surely when t
music baffles the performer's intuitive or experimental capacities, an explicit awaren
of its components and of their harmonic, contrapuntal and motivic interactions can help
bring one's sound-image and technical image of the music into focus. But often a pe
former, in order to gain such focus from analytic awareness, must supplement it imagi-
natively in ways that neither Berry nor Rink bring into consideration.
To develop a realistic assessment of the possible role of analysis in achieving th
kind of imaginative specificity necessary for performance, both theorists and performer
themselves need to investigate not only the ways performers - especially ones they a
mire - actually reach decisions, but also what attitudes and habits of thought enab
them to make musical experience most vivid. Autobiographical information from p
formers will be more helpful than theorists' formulations of ideological programs i
assessing just what kinds of theoretical analysis have the most to contribute to performer'
analysis. As a performing pianist who also teaches theory and in some ways claims
analytic approach to performance, I propose to explore one performer's working an
decision-making processes - my own - in relation to these concerns.
In order to make this exploration, I shall reconstruct some analytic observations th
I developed in order to solve specific problems in the performance of two pieces b
Robert Schumann, the Arabesque and the second piece of Kreisleriana. With the Ara
besque, the less overtly problematic of the two, I shall attempt simply to describe so
aspects of my own 'performer's analysis' as I recently studied the piece for the first tim
I shall try to clarify the ways this performer's analysis drew on articulate analytic aware
ness, and also how assessments of the music's character became necessary supplemen
to more objectively analytic observations. With the Kreisleriana, to be discussed in P
II, I shall explore how my analysis - more detailed in the delineation of musical para
eters - grew from my attempts to solve some editorial riddles.

Main Theme

It is common for instrumentalists to begin work on a piece simply by playing it, in

this way initiating a process of learning to 'hear' it through their hands and arms, their
breath, their vocal chords - whatever parts of their bodies the technique of their instru-
ment involves. Since the Arabesque poses no obvious technical difficulties, a good pia-
nist beginning to work on it will be able to play it very soon. But at the same time, or soon
after, this performer will most likely begin to listen critically and analytically to his or
her own way of playing it, and probably in doing so will become more and more dissat-
isfied with this way of playing. The theme, for example, is likely to seem too heavy,
either too strongly or too vaguely accented, too monotonous, or too opaque in texture.
The pianist begins to experiment, to play the hands separately, to try the theme with

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62 COLLEGE MUSIC SYMPOSIUM

fingers flatter or more curved, with more or less a

from side to side or with in-and-out motions of th
pianist discovers, sometimes as if by accident, a
that captures and embodies what feels to that pianis
motions become subordinated to, or part of, the
physical impediment to hearing the music while
The personal discovery of how to play a passag
and struggled can be thrilling; but that discovery
intellectual experience, the experience of becomi
analysis of the technical and aural factors contributi
to be clear, will probably fail to capture the excitem
one discovers is not primarily cognitive, not a serie
as a theorist might discover, but instead a capac
capacity simply by saying: "I can play this now.
might add: "It has become part of me, and I part of
a way to imagine the music through one's own tech
through one's own body, and the body feels take
The motions I eventually discovered for the t
will not surprise anyone whose understanding of pi
ably told piano students to employ the same or s
play the piece myself. And yet I did not settle into
experimented with the theme for weeks or even m
in doing so I beg the reader's patience - I shall co
ways of understanding the theme.
On the rhythmic level of the beat, the motion I f
leftward rotation into each thumb-note, and a swin
a rightward rotation for each of the melody's d
measure, I subordinate these rotations to a down-up
beat into every following downbeat, feeling the
board) on the upbeats and then feeling the weig
though without releasing the key) on the downbeat
well with the left-hand motion suggested to me by
they make it natural for the left hand, like the righ
into (or just after) the downbeats. I initiate the ent
with the right thumb, on the second eighth of e
strike the analytically-minded as violating the in
second eighth of the measure often resolves the dis
of the preceding measure. But if one controls the r
teaching the hand to move in this way - plays cont
the continuity of this alto voice.
Simple analytic observations can sometimes he
motions; at other times, awareness of analytic point
out. The motions I employ (and advocate) in thi
patterning of the first two subphrases (m. 1-8), in

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 PERFORMANCE, ANALYSIS, AND MUSICAL IMAGING 63

Example 1 . Arabesque (theme)

Leichtundzart. M.M.J = 152

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■ o j. J J. J ■ J- JftJ- J ■ J y jyTTTpJ J"T 11 J j i 1 1 -i jd jT

, !^ P -^ Jp y /? f/ V r/ ^^°
I ^-L_
-L_ l[ If 1 I If I hIf i_-^f I U 1^=^ If Mr r l'L I # I
c/. Minorel

ri - -

l^ff 37| r^ i- lirf I if' ' -*^ Itf I H 1 \j fp '"^ Iirr ' If-
37| i- I '

- - dan - - - - do

\J\ rrjlji I', tj 'i^j'r { ^ ^

''("" f VF" T - i-11" 'r 'f |i 'f if" 'i ' Jr

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64 COLLEGE MUSIC SYMPOSIUM

upbeat leads to its respective tonic on the follow

observation is not at all subtle, and I was certainly
different motions. It did not in any strong sens
experimentation, but it did set limits for that exp
tually employed must not violate this harmonic pat
My technical explorations interacted much more c
the texture and character of this theme - thoughts
perhaps, to be regarded as analytic. For all the care
differentiation of the parts in this theme, its te
polyphonic. The lower parts all ally with and suppo
subtly controlling them, should not (in my opinion
as separate parts, except possibly for the bass. In
vided between the hands, should flow into the mel
too clear a distinction between its sixteenth note
melody. It is part of the evanescent quality of the
that one not separate it too markedly from the
intend the fluidity of my playing motions to allow
web of its own accompanimental ornamentation.
In teaching the left hand its pattern of syncopati
I began to take note of the earlier cessation of t
subphrases (m. 1 1-12, 15-16) than in the first an
the melody no longer has to pull against these
aware of the syncopations and of their abatement h
out the difference of character between the first p
in their rising line and their chromaticism, and
falling and skipping line, their pure diatonicism, a
syncopations. Taking these differences into acco
phrase to vary the amount of arm- weight, the rat
and the degree to which the measure-long arm m
rotation.

In the middle phrase (m. 1 7-24) of the theme's t

the left-hand syncopations helped me especially
four-measure subphrases, each marked with a ri
find no satisfying way of making these ritards un
ing especially on the syncopated B, the motion fro
in its middle voice. The ritards had to make sense f
sense for the others. But even then, it was not unt
relationship of this phrase to the music of the con
I understood these ritards at all fully, and hence fe

Minore I

If one's playing of the theme of the Arabesque can seem monotonous in its unvarying

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 PERFORMANCE, ANALYSIS, AND MUSICAL IMAGING 65

rhythm and texture, then one's playing of Minore I (Example 2) can seem even more
the texture of this E-minor episode is thicker, simpler, chordal rather than arpeggiated
its rhythm unfolds in undifferentiated eighth notes rather than in a dotted figure; and
subphrases are almost all two rather than four measures long. The characteristics of
main theme that one might associate most readily with the piece's title, Arabesque, seem
entirely absent from this B section. While I could not initially find a distinctive charact
for the opening theme through my fingers, I could find one all too readily, and too oppre
sively, for this contrasting music. I did not have to experiment technically with t
episode in the same way as with the theme, yet I felt much more dissatisfied from
start with the way I played it.
The simplest harmonic analysis began to help me somewhat: I began, for examp
to intensify the tonicization of the iv chord in measures 45-46, and to recognize t
departure of the ensuing E-minor half-cadence from the dominant-to-tonic patterning
the three preceding subphrases. I then sought to bring out the slowing of harmonic rhyth
in measures 54-56, where a single dominant harmony, by controlling three measur
produces a longer subphrase in order to pull the tonal center from B major, the epheme
ally tonicized dominant, back to E minor. By making the music quieter and more floatin
in measures 65-68 and then intensifying it again in 69-72, 1 differentiated the moment
relief of the G-major imperfect cadence in 67-68 from its dramatic negation in 71-7
intensified still more the four-measure subphrase (m. 77-80, only the second four-m
sure group in Minore I), with its chromatic suspensions, that leads back to E minor.
But making my fingers responsive to these harmonic changes did not fully dispel th
monotony of my playing in this episode, a monotony brought about in part by the espres
rubato on which I found myself insisting within almost every subphrase. Only whe
began to think deliberately of Minore I as obsessive, to regard its monotony as part of i
intentional aesthetic quality, did I begin to accept this insistent rubato and feel it
natural. I cannot reconstruct how this rubato actually changed under the influence of th
conception of the episode, but it must have changed somewhat, for I no longer felt awk
ward carrying it out.
One observation helped me especially either to arrive at or to confirm this view of th
character of the episode (I no longer remember which): the recognition of the motivic a
harmonic connection of the episode's opening gesture to the beginning of the contrastin
middle phrase of the theme (compare Example 1 , m. 1 7 with Example 2, m.4 1 ). Withi
the theme, this E-minor tonic-to-dominant progression sounds especially poignant,
way that seems to bring about the hesitancy of the next three measures. The first episo
begins with this same melodic and harmonic idea and returns to it twice, each time mor
intensely, as if the music cannot get away from it. Heard as obsessive, the painful mood
of Minore I can also be heard as a conflicting stratum of experience underlying the mor
fleeting yet more serene and nostalgic mood of the theme, and thus as an obsession tha
momentarily overtakes the theme in its central phrase. The recognition of the relations
of this central phrase of the theme to the music of Minore I helped me to make sense o
the ritard within this part of the theme: the music hesitates over the intrusion of a po
gnant or painful preoccupation.

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66 COLLEGE MUSIC SYMPOSIUM

Example 2. Minor e I

Etwas langsamer.

; ® rnT?S3 /nTph /f
(HIIt »r <r > ir »r If T

i^*.iJI?i!!<r^i]i.j i i.j ? irTT

i^'r *r [r * <r ^r ir * ir

1 r > 'r V'r »r 'r V'r »r 'r 'f 'f r '* 'P

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 PERFORMANCE, ANALYSIS, AND MUSICAL IMAGING 67

The Transition

Regarding and playing Minore I as obsessive also helped me to come to terms with
the transition (Example 3, m. 89-104) from that episode back to the theme in its first
return. This transition may look more different on the page, and feel more different
under the fingers, than it actually sounds: its long melody-notes respond to the high
accented notes occurring on almost every even-numbered downbeat throughout Minore
I, and its inner voices perpetuate the constant pulsation of eighth notes, even if at a
slower tempo. Nevertheless, the melodic gestures of this transition, falling by step for
the first time and incorporating the rhythmic motive of the theme at the end of each
gesture, led me to conceive of the transition as embodying a different voice, or at least a
different attitude, from that of the Minore I episode: a voice that calls the obsessed one
back into the sphere of the theme; or an attitude of seeking reconciliation between epi-
sode and theme, a response to hearing them as being in conflict with one another. It is a
very searching passage, far more wide-ranging harmonically than any other passage in
the piece, and also much more fluctuating in tempo. In spite of all its fluctuations, I
eventually decided, after taking note of the dissonant harmonies at the end of each of its
subphrases (two six-fours, then two dominant sevenths), to play this transition as one
sixteen-measure phrase (beginning each subphrase somewhat 'early' in order to do so)
rather than as four four-measure ones. If one plays the transition this way, the search
that it undertakes does not lose its urgency.

Example 3. Transition

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\/L J , h * , m J--Jj1 Y 'vn q . H

t f r f±t
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Minore II

Recognizing the distinctive motivic relationship between the music of the first epi-
sode and the main theme led me to expect Minore II, the second episode (Example 4), to

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68 COLLEGE MUSIC SYMPOSIUM

exhibit some similar relationship to its musical su

or to Minore I, or from the transition back from
ship I found surpassed my expectations: Mino
three - of theme, episode, and transition. The mu
motive of Minore I (5-6-5-2-3) with the upbeat-m
theme, and then combines this new fusion with
the transition (m 145-49). Recognition of this mo
size the appoggiatura that binds ascent to desc
would. This combination of motivic elements har
the transition's calling gesture to the obsessive
the insistent shape of the Minore I material an
sion that it embodies. The appoggiaturas (ma.
point in this overcoming, and this interpretation o
in the falling lines these appoggiaturas introdu
than the score suggests.

Example 4. Minore II
cf. Minore I

Minore II \^ - ^"^T"^\

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|r1|-ir 5= '"'

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i^ Tempo^I.

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 PERFORMANCE, ANALYSIS, AND MUSICAL IMAGING 69

The Coda

No transition intervenes at this time at the juncture between the second episode and the
last occurrence of the theme. Perhaps the synthesis that Minore II achieves - what I am
metaphorically characterizing as the overcoming of the obsession - obviates the need
for such a transition. What then balances the transition, in the sphere of the main theme' s
last occurrence, is the sublime coda, for me one of the most affecting passages in all
Schumann (Example 5). Both melodically and harmonically with its calling pairs of
half-notes (m. 209, 211,213,215-16) over long-held harmonies while the middle voices
arpeggiate upwards in eighth notes, it refers to the transition. The coda thus remembers
the transition, even if the memory is only subliminal for the listener; and the resonance
of coda with transition deepens the serenity of the coda's final affirmation of C major, in
such marked contrast to the transition's mercurial shifts of tonal center.
I never felt any problem in playing the coda. From the beginning I felt physically
and emotionally identified with it as I played it, and was therefore motivated not so much
to experiment with different ways of playing it as simply to refine my auditory and
technical control over what I was already doing. Thus no problem with the coda im-
pelled me to analyze it.
Yet I did feel that I could never understand XhQ Arabesque at all fully without under-
standing something of how the coda works its magic: put one way, how it resolves
compositional issues raised earlier in the piece - if it completes a compositional process,
and if so, how; put another way, how it functions dramatically in relation to earlier
musical events. Even if I didn't need to resort to explicit musical analysis or critical
interpretation to play the coda, bringing these kinds of insight to bear on the coda might
focus my imaginative grasp of earlier passages in ways that would further help me in
playing them.
As a route to understanding the resolution brought by the coda, one might ask to
what extent the music would seem resolved without it. The theme, after all, reaches the
same perfect authentic cadence every time (Example 1 , m. 40 - although the holding of
the penultimate G always somewhat covers the resolution to the tonic). One might there-
fore think that the theme could stand alone, that it could just as well end the piece, and
that the coda, like so many other codas, only fulfilled a need for some kind of dramatic
balance.
But Schumann's German designation for this final section, "Zum Schluss," is trans-
lated literally "In Closing:" it suggests the idea of cadential articulation much more
strongly than does the term 'coda' - tail - with its connotation of something added as a
terminal embellishment to the music. It suggests what any Schenkerian analyst would
soon recognize: that the cadence of the theme, not so much because of its held G as
because of its low register, is not a completely satisfactory resolution for the theme's
opening. The sense of incomplete resolution, of resolution made gesturally but never
fully achieved in the theme, partly motivates the explorations of the two Minore epi-
sodes. Both episodes, in fact, cadence in the register of the theme's opening, thus prepar-
ing for its return while also reinforcing the need for ultimate resolution in this register, a
need that the coda addresses.

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70 COLLEGE MUSIC SYMPOSIUM

Examole5. Coda
ZumSchluss.1
Langsam. a = 58 >

i^^^B"^
Schumann's treatme
'serious analysis' of
a serious analysis is c
they can learn from
registral changes th
ingly. Perhaps many
anyway, and won't n
ciently into account
indirectly but much
or dramatic understan
a performer's grasp
For while a perform
music, in the way t
understanding in or
In its fusion of con
obsession, the Minore
of the piece, and the
ciliation between th
cally, between the c
coda no longer has to
reconciliation by no
has already been fou
pany, the achievemen

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 PERFORMANCE, ANALYSIS, AND MUSICAL IMAGING 7 1

But heard in another way, the music of the coda still searches for something, and its
final phrase, ending on e' rather than c' leaves something open. Its two-note melodi
gestures refer, as I have already said, to the transition; but also to the crucial appoggia-
turas in Minore II. In focusing on this gesture, separating it from the other elemen
linked to it either in the transition or in the second episode, the coda achieves a new leve
of calm; yet the gesture itself, in its isolation and its diatonic but dissonant harmoniza-
tion, becomes more pleading than ever before. In one way, these ef- d1 appoggiaturas call
for full and richly supported melodic closure on cf; but in another, they beg to keep the
music open, insisting on again and again rather than allowing the melody simply
close. The return of the opening motive of the main theme as the final gesture of t
Arabesque secures for the ef, in its openness, a cadential role. Without the return of the
opening idea, the melodic line could slowly work its way to a long-held cf; but with that
return, a final affirmation of the c1 becomes only a grotesque possibility (try playing cf
instead of e' as the final melodic pitch!). The motive of the Arabesque - itself an ara
besque in its ornamental movement, a symbol of freedom and fantasy - returns at th
last moment to affirm an ongoing life, a life that especially resonates from this pie
beyond the moment of its conclusion. Understanding in this way the role of the opening
theme's return at the last moment of the coda, I am led to reflect further on the character
and potential of the theme itself, and so I am led to play this theme more quietly, more
fleetingly, less simply lyrically, than I otherwise might.

Conclusion

These comments obviously do not represent what a theorist would call a thorough
"analysis" of the Arabesque; but they do try to represent some ways in which a performer's
work can draw upon and lead to explicit analytic observations of different kinds. They
also arrive at what one might fairly call an account of the piece, a telling of it that draws
on both analytic and characterological descriptions of its musical events. The search for
such descriptions might begin with problems encountered by a performer in the initial
stages of the "performer's analysis' Rink proposes. In trying to find satisfying ways to
play the theme and the first Minore episode of the Arabesque, for example, I not only
come to some first analytic observations about these passages, but also find descriptive
terms that help me to encapsulate, or at least approximate, their musical character.
Eventually, my observations about the main theme and the ensuing Minore I must both
feel appropriate in themselves for these passages, and contribute to an intelligible narra-
tive or dramatic understanding of both their opposition and their succession in order for
me to draw conviction from them for my performance. Ultimately, I seek an understand-
ing of the entire sequence of musical episodes in the Arabesque, in terms through which
I can harness the characteristics of my own playing to the evolving character of the
music. Ideally. This understanding can develop from any kind of observation on which I
can reliably draw, however indirectly, in order to focus my sound-image of the music:
analytic, characterological, biographical, literary, to name the most obvious for Schumann.
Like any critical understanding, such 'performer's explication' is unlikely ever to

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72 COLLEGE MUSIC SYMPOSIUM

become definitive, even for an individual perfor

even need to change - every time the performer pr
performer usually never has a chance to present
by its naivete, to be forced to revise it; as alread
just what the performer thinks. In some performa
that the performer has thought and felt, and that t
such thinking and feeling to make it consistent
such performances, the music may seem to beco
reexperience the uncertainties of its own course
come the music. And for some performers, deve
drawing on analytic observation to find a way to t
its myriad detail, can open a way to such becom

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