Chapter Fourteen

Style in Performance

The connotations that can arise in connection with the word style appear to be
virtually infi nite in their diversity. Let us review a few of the more obvious, all
of them drawn for the moment from outside music. We hear talk about style
in sports—about a jumper’s style or a runner’s style. This implies a certain effi -
ciency, directness, and even elegance. Obviously, it also implies a high degree
of competence. In some kinds of sports, we hear about players who are exceed-
ingly confi dent but who are said to have no style. I myself, for example, have
neither competence nor style on a tennis court; but were I even confi dent, I
would still have no style. I am not even one of those who make an eternal spec-
tacle of themselves but who do manage to win games.
Style in literature resembles what we were talking about in sports. It also
has to do with mastery of language and with effi ciency in the manipulation of
ideas. One can say, “He has learned a style” or “He has learned to write with
style.” One can also say, “He has learned a style of writing” or “He writes in the
style of ___.”
Perhaps the lowliest and most unequivocal connotation of the word style is
its use in printing. The Chicago Manual of Style has nothing to do with elegance.
It has principally to do with a certain standard of consistency. If you want to
know whether to put something in Roman or italics, or how to use punctua-
tion, you look it up in a manual of style.
Style in architecture can be both general and specifi c. It can be said that a
building has style. It can be said that it lacks it. But when we talk about style in
architecture, we are most often pulled into another category, and that is the
category of styles. Style is one thing, styles are another. Styles have to do with
manners and convention. It is clear that the history of architecture is studded
with historical styles, to which over the centuries every kind of lip service and,
very often, homage in the form of reproduction, has been paid. To speak of
an incongruity of style in architecture usually refers to the mixing up of the
characteristics of two or more well-established vocabularies of style. Sometimes
the result is a new language; sometimes the result is a hybrid in the pejorative
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