The composer needs an intermediary-performer, a creative interpreter of his composition…….A musician-interpreter, at one and the same time, realizes his connection to the composer’s intentions, and realizes himself as an artistic personality: acknowledging both the enormous importance of the author of the composition – and at the same time his own role in the realization of the composer’s ideas – Samuel Feinberg Thus the performer becomes a crucial participant in this process: But this is ridiculous because the music requires a performer to bring it to life and communicate and shape the musical experience for the audience. Alongside this comes high praise for the performer who becomes “invisible” and stands back in deference to “let the music speak for itself”. Performances which are deemed to respect the composer’s intentions are often held up as definitive and are then used as benchmarks by which other performances are measured. Performers are regularly and fulsomely praised for their adherence to “the composer’s intentions” or castigated for not respecting them. Look at the value placed on “urtext” and autograph scores as receptacles of the “sacred text”, and the demands placed on musicians from the moment they begin their training to faithfully carry out the composer’s “intentions”. Such is the canonisation of classical music and the veneration of those who wrote, and write it, that the “composer’s intentions” are generally regarded as sacrosanct.
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