Introduction to InterpretationJanuary 21st, 2010
Interpreter: word which can, by extension, replace the word musician. Yet the two words have a totally different connotation: if the latter clearly evokes music and the inspired craftsman created in and by popular imagination, first emphasizes another facet of the same man: here is suggested the intellectual work, in other words the analysis and long road towards understanding a work.
The word interpretation is a common word in the world of music, meaning how a performer plays a piece. Indeed, the execution itself often informs us about the interpretation given to the text. As an image of the player’s mind, his play reveals much about his relationship to the art of music. The mind controls the discourse, whether consciously or not, and performance inform us about the intellectual work performed. In a sens, we could say that performance is an implementation of our intellectual work. Just as an actor does not try to declaim a text he does not understand, I hope that a musician does not play a score he cannot interpret. Musician and interpreter are the two sides of the same coin, they need each other, one feeds the other and vice versa; From inspiration was born the interpretation, interpretation feeds the inspiration.
Any interpretation is interpretation of something. This something, object of our interpretation, is the musical work, or rather its so imperfect medium of transmission, called score. Each sign it contains defines a two-dimensional space: the univocal dimension and the equivocal one, and it is the latter that we interpret. We therefore interpret what is not clear, which implies a judgment and as a judge, we must support this decision by a set of facts and signals, not only good intentions or feelings. The interpretation of the text is based on a set of observations, a priori non-obvious and which you can miss at first glance. These observations enable to guide the equivocal dimension. In other words, « To interpret is thus to uncover the implicit and move towards the elucidation of an object which at first has been refusing. » (Serge Carfantan).
Keeping an open mind is essential: You must be able to reassess and revise your own position, and avoid falling in a kind of interpretative routine. « To interpret a text, is not a matter of giving it a meaning… Rather, it’s a matter of understanding the plurality of which it is made up » said Roland Barthes (S/Z p.11).
Performers work is ambiguous. On one hand, the interpreter should really disappear behind a work, and on the other, interpretation involves his whole being, and leads him to make choices which influence the music. As a second paradox, we interpret to free ourselves from interpretation.
Sometimes research in interpretation is absolutely necessary: in the world of Baroque music, the research towards an authentic interpretation has become a sine qua non for the execution. Seeking manuscripts, understanding baroque playing techniques, searching for the sound of the instruments themselves, freeing from preconceived romantic influences are, among others, part of the “baroque” daily bread. Au contraire, sometimes the work of the interpreter is truncated, empty, non-justified and it borrows from others what the performer should think on his own. This only results in a collage of aesthetics, grotesque music patchwork devoid of unity.