PIANO PEDAGOGY FORUM v. 3, no. 1/January 1, 2000 KEYNOTE ADDRESS John Salmon John Salmon School of Music University of North Carolina-Greensboro Greensboro, NC 27412 jcsalmon@uncg.edu Adding Notes: A Reflection on Interpretive Freedom by John Salmon Several battle cries for interpretive freedom have converged in my mind recently: John Perry, speaking to an audience at last year's Music Teachers National Association convention in Los Angeles, exhorted pianists to view the Urtext as only the beginning of the interpretive process; without creativity, Perry argued, no score, however "definitive," will ever come to life in performance. Robert Weirich, speaking to the same group in Los Angeles, urged us to consider "the spirit of improvisation" that caused such works as Beethoven's "Rage Over the Lost Penny" and Mozart's Adagio in B Minor, K. 540, to come to life, even accepting (if not demonstrating at that moment) the esthetic legitimacy of spontaneous note-changing. William Westney, in the August/September 1999 issue of American Music Teacher , warns against the perils of perfectionism, stressing beauty as the true goal of practice and performance. Robert Levin, at a 92nd Street Y gathering, defended ornamentation in Schubert. | |
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