had more similarities with the musical work of the baroque era. Music was regarded as a
performance art: the performer was sometimes as important as the composer. The
musical work was more identified with the meaning of the music than with its notation,
and this meaning was associated with an aesthetic ideal that became outmoded in the
twentieth century. To perform music was to communicate to the listener the content of
music; to understand this content one had to translate it and bring it into line with the
aesthetic ideals of the public.
Trying to understand the music of the nineteenth century using the work concept of the
twentieth century is problematic. Applying a work concept that developed as a reaction
towards that which one wishes to study leads to anachronisms. This is clearly evident in
the case of Chopin’s variants. According to his contemporaries, Chopin never played his
own compositions alike twice, and he often changed his performing directions even in his
published scores. This inability to reach a decision or – from a different perspective –
this great improvisational ability was a part of the interpretational and compositional
process in the nineteenth century. The variants are interesting in many ways. They point
to something fundamental in the musical work, not only in older times but also in our day.
The ability to adjust the interpretation to the mood, the personal feeling, the acoustics and
the instrument, and to find a personal rendition is still valued among musicians in our day.
Our intentional work concept cannot explain this variability of the musical work in a
satisfactory way. The fact that one can play a work of music in so many ways indicates
that the musical structure is to some extent – and in certain contextual environments an
important extent – changeable. The musical work seems to have some autonomy in
relation to the composer and the score. The variability is also a part of the personal and
stylistic approach to the musical work. The works of some composers are said to have
more interpretative variability than the works of others, and Chopin is often seen as one
of the most ambiguous composers in this respect.
The paradoxical conclusion is that what constitutes a great problem for the editor of an
ürtext is, from the historical and interpretative point of view, a unique possibility to
understand what the musical work is about, not only for the performer but also for the
composer and the public.’
Source: Beryl Wikman in ‘The Interpretative Musical Form of Chopin’s Nocturne Op.
27 No. 2’.
BACH
Life
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was a prolific German composer and organist whose
sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra and solo instruments drew together the
strands of the baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity. Although he
introduced no new forms, he enriched the prevailing German style with a robust
contrapuntal technique, a control of harmonic and motivic organisation from the smallest