As a musician, there's always one thing that I wonder all the time: What makes a great interpretation a great interpretation?
Ok, before discussing this topic I'd like to ask another question: What makes a great composition a great composition? Or more essentially, what makes a great music great music?
The elements of music
So let's analyse what elements does music have - we have the rhythm/time, the pitch, the timbre and the structure, we combine all of them together to make music in order to express the emotions and convey the idea to the listeners.
The first element of music - the rhythm
The reason why music is the highest form of art is that music is the art of time, compared to paintings, sculptures, architectures... etc., music is fundamentally fluid and time is the main factor that gives the music life, makes the music breath and creates the emotional vibe of the music, one can already feel the emotions just through the rhythm, even some small changes of the rhythm (rubato/micro-rhythm/accelerando, ritardando... etc.) can subtly affect the emotional vibe of music. A continuous pulse like a heartbeat keeps the music going and gives the music direction, while the micro rhythm "within" the pulse can give it more subtle emotional spices, also the music that constantly changes the pulse doesn't have the clear, exact direction that the music that have continuous pulse for a long time, and the music that has a lot of rubato, cadenza like and doesn't have a continuous pulse would sound very spontaneously, the directions would become vaguer and more uncertain. As you can see, rhythm/time is the most important factor of music, it directly affects the emotional vibe, the direction and the subtle nuances of the expressions.
The second element of music - the pitch
Besides the rhythm, another important thing in music is the pitch. The most important key to the pitch can affect emotionally is the relationship between 2 notes which is the interval, imagine when you have 8 notes that have the same rhythmic duration but they are on different pitches, the difference between the intervals between 2 notes can create a certain stretch, especially when the interval is big or there are some notes out of the tonality. Like the rhythm, these intervals between 2 pitches can also create nuances of expressions. When you have more pitches together you get chords, and different chords will cause different emotional changes too, also the harmony development can give the music directions in the sense of emotional vibes.
The third element of music - the timbre
Once you have the rhythm and pitch, another element that can affect the intensity/expressions/emotional vibe of the music is the timbre. The timbre is built above the sound itself, it has 2 important factors - dynamic and sound texture, the dynamic can make the sound more distant or closer, or more mysterious/secretive vs more outgoing/grandiose, and the texture can give the sound more different colours, in one instrument through different ways of playing one instrument or through multiple instruments in an ensemble/orchestra.
The fourth element of music - the structure
When you make music, you combine all the previous 3 elements together, you use the rhythm and the pitch to construct the melody, the accompaniment or different layers of a polyphonic piece, and use different timbres to give the music more colours. From a big picture point of view, music works are built on a large structure, which includes how you construct music (including the musical forms), how you layout the rhythm (including the pulse, the nuanced micro-rhythm, the rubato and how you progress rhythmically), the pitch (including the melody, the accompaniment, the polyphony, the intervals, the chords and how you progress harmonically) and the timbre (including the dynamics, the variety of timbre texture, the instrumentation, and how you progress them).
Coherence/strong, clear idea - the key to great composition/interpretation
After you have all the elements, the next thing you have to do is to think about how you can express the emotions and convey the idea to the listeners. The most important thing in this is coherence, when you composing or interpreting/performing music you must have the strong, clear idea of what you're doing that can be well-perceived by the listeners. The composer MUST have the strong, clear idea of what the purpose of this piece is, what this piece is about, what to convey and compose according to these, meanwhile the interpreter MUST have the strong, clear idea of what the purpose of this piece is, what this piece is about, what the composer is trying to convey and interpret according to these. That's what a great composition or a great interpretation is based on.
The importance of wide range of expressions
But how can composers and interpreters express the emotions/convey the idea? Most importantly you need to make the listeners have strong, clear feelings and "feel" your idea. There's one important thing which is the wide range of expressions. If the music has narrow range of expressions, it's extremely hard to express the emotions and convey the idea to the listeners because they don't have strong feelings as listening to the music with wide range of expressions. The ways of increase the range of expressions include increasing the drama in the progress/development of the piece, increasing the dynamic range, increasing the variety of timbre texture, increasing the changes in the progress/development of the piece... etc.
What a great interpretation truly means
So, let's say we have a great composition which CAN be well-interpreted in the sense of being clearly coherent/understand by the listeners, but if the interpreter doesn't understand what the composer truly wanted to convey, then it's considered as a bad interpretation. There are thousands of ways of bad interpretations, including but not limited to being indifferent to the emotional vibe of the piece, just playing notes and being indifferent to the meaning behind the notes, being indifferent to the meaning of the piece (i.e. what the composer wants to convey), making up stuff that doesn't make any sense with the meaning of the composition... etc.
A truly great interpretation would be understandable by the listeners and the listeners can truly get what the composer is trying to convey, therefore the interpreter must understand why composer wrote all those stuff (including rhythm, notes, trills, articulations, dynamics... etc.) on the score, what is the meaning of the piece, then the interpreter would get the impression of what this piece supposed to sound like, and then give it to the listeners and try to "connect" the composer with the listeners by expressing the composer's emotions. The interpreter might keep asking "why" when learning a piece but studying the history, the composer's story and the story of the composition could help him a lot with understanding.
Also if you don't have strong emotions and your expression range is very narrow, then you can't interpret a piece well because you can't truly communicate with the listeners and they wouldn't have the strong, clear impression of the idea of the piece after the performance. Therefore a truly great interpretation must have wide range of expressions.
The standard of a great interpretation must be defined reasonably, it could be either from the composer himself or some very reasonable explanations of what the composer truly wanted to convey if the composer didn't say too much about the piece or based on the story behind the piece when it comes to program music.
Technique - a tool that helps the interpreters to interpret the pieces
Let's say an interpreter might understand what the composer truly wanted to convey, and has a strong, clear impression of it, but he's not able to make it happen or he doesn't truly get what he wants (which is basically what the composer wanted and what this composition supposed to sound like), this problem occurs when the interpreter doesn't have the technique for the piece. Technique is important for the interpreter and it's basically a tool that helps him to interpret the piece, therefore every interpreter must learn and keep mastering the techniques in order to play the pieces more easily. Also the interpreter should keep expanding his technical ability in order to have broader repertoire.
A performance with sheer speed and accuracy does NOT equal great technique, that's just "a performance with speed and accuracy". Technique is about the ability to play certain figures with ease, to make different timbres/colours (including different dynamics and different timbre textures), and most importantly, the purpose of technique is to complete the requirements of the piece. Also one can have very good technical strength (i.e. can play with sheer ease and make a lot of different timbres/colours) but very poor interpretation (because of the poor understanding of the piece), and that's MUCH worse than having student-level technique but perfect understanding of the piece and strong, clear idea, because essence of interpretation is the understanding and the conveying of the idea.
Evaluating interpretations
As mentioned above, the essence of interpretation the understanding and the conveying of the idea, therefore one should put this in the first place when evaluating interpretations, and that includes the wide range of expressions because it's how the interpreter communicate with the listeners. After this, then it would be the technique because it's the ability of the interpreter and the potential of the interpreter to interpret a piece well, but it shouldn't be in the first priority and it's all about the interpreter himself not his interpretation of the piece. And a performance with sheer speed and accuracy but musically monotonous and absolutely no understanding is the worst out of the 3, because it's just plain mechanical and it's not even what real technique truly is.
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