Tracking the performer’s creative space

As it comes to the act of creation, performing musicians claim a rather specific role and position compared to other artists (e.g., composers, film makers, photographers). A role which could be described as ‘co-creating’ the composer’s musical ideas. Despite its level of detail, the musical score is inevitably an inherent incomplete representation of the music itself. The uncertainties and ambiguities introduced by the score require a creative artistic decision-making process in order to develop a personal interpretation: the performer’s ‘creative space’. My doctoral research examines tempo, rubato and expressive timing in recordings of Alexander Scriabin’s early piano preludes, between 1910 and 2010. The database consists of 1417 recordings of the 53 early preludes by 106 different pianists. A comparative analysis of the recordings aims at mapping the differences and communalities in the pianists’ artistic decisions, providing insight in a century of performance history. The recording analysis employs a combination of aural analysis methods as well as analyses using audio-software tools and statistical data analysis techniques such as analysis of variance, regression, (hierarchical) clustering and principal component analysis). The analyses are two-fold: on the level of the preludes, performances are compared per prelude (= mapping interpretations); on the level of the performers, performances are compared over several preludes (= mapping playing styles). By taking into account parameters as the pianists’ educational background and the period of recording, this comparative study is looking for tendencies and singularities in the performance history of the preludes. Preliminary results show that, in this by nature particularly short compositions of the prelude-genre: - (1) in general pianists do take remarkably high degrees of freedom concerning their basic tempo choice (average tempo) in relation to the tempo markings notated by Scriabin, independent to the period of recording. But, several differences can be observed related to the type of prelude and to the pianist’s educational background (e.g. ‘Russian piano school’). - (2) pianists demonstrate a huge variety of rubato styles and expressive timing playing techniques, however, the use of certain types of rubato playing as well as expressive timing playing techniques, such as dislocation and unnotated arpeggio’s, seems to have been changed gradually over time, some of which have been almost completely falling in disuse. For today’s pianists this knowledge opens up opportunities to relearn, assimilate and incorporate some of these nowadays rather unfamiliar playing techniques and enrich their personal playing style. Insights in the performance history enable performers to make interpretative choices more consciously and deliberately in relation those of others. A full awareness of their own ‘creative space’ enables performers to take a well-informed and more grounded position within this spectrum of interpretations and performance traditions.status: publishe