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Some Aspects of the Changing Relationship between Composer and Performer in Contemporary Music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Roger Smalley
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Extract

Until comparatively recently the history of musical notation has been synonymous with the desire of the composer to exercise an increasing degree of control over the performance of his works via the medium of the written score. Viewed in historical perspective, it will be seen that during the last thirty years virtually every aspect of this complex composer/performer relationship has been radically changed—in many instances the outcome has been an almost total reversal of roles.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 96 , 1969 , pp. 73 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © 1970 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

1 See, for example, the piano postlude of the song ‘Hör ich das Liedchen klingen’ from Schumann's Dichterliebe, and Chopin's Fourth Ballade, bars 175–6.Google Scholar

2 The Preludes in C# major and C minor from Book I of the ‘48’ are two well-known examples.Google Scholar

3 Stephen Pruslin, ‘Maxwell Davies's Second Taverner Fantasia’, Tempo, lxxiii (Summer, 1965), 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 See, for example, Peter Westergaard, ‘Webern and “Total Organisation” : An Analysis of the Second Movement of Piano Variations, Op. 27’, Perspectives of New Music, i/2 (Spring, 1963), 107–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 See Stockhausen, Karlheinz, ‘Gruppenkomposition: Klavierstück I (Anleitung zum Hören)’, Texte ear elektronischen und instrumentalen Musik, a vols., Cologne, 1963–4, L 63–74.Google Scholar

6 ‘American Performance and New Music’, Perspectives of New Music, i/2 (Spring, 1963), 1–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Die Reihe, iii (1959), 10–40; see especially pp. 29 ff.Google Scholar

8 John Cage, To Describe the Process of Composition Used in “Music for Piano 21–52”', Die Reihe, iii (1959), 41–43.Google Scholar

9 ‘The Contemporary Pianist: John Tilbury talks to Michael Parsons’, The Musical Times, cx (1969), 150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar