Day Two, the digital reproduction of music
Over the last nine months, the way in which we have experienced and received music has been forcibly altered. With the absence of live concerts, musicians from the individual artist in their front room to the international opera house have taken their art to the digital realm in order to stay connected to their respective audiences. In my first blog post (here), I briefly discussed the unique experience of listening to music in a concert hall. Indeed, there have been pockets of time, dashes of hope over the last nine months whereby live performance has been possible and these moments were nothing short of extraordinary. With the majority of us, however, having to experience the music and artists we love through the digital medium for the foreseeable future, I wanted to explore the question of the “aura” of a work of art. Is something in the essence of a work lost when experienced through the digital medium?
One of the great artists of the twentieth century, Glenn Gould, was a huge advocate of the power of the recording to get to the truth of a work of art, in a way that he felt the concert hall could never achieve. Indeed, he gave up giving live concerts at the age of 32 and dedicated the rest of his life to making recordings. As such, my recommended listening to go with today’s discussion is a short excerpt of Glenn Gould playing J.S Bach’s Goldberg Variations in 1981.
If we consider a piece of music, then what is its authentic, original aura? Is it the printed page, is it the form of the conception in the composer’s mind or is it the coming together of the former in a performance, a singular moment in space in time whereby the conception of composer, as put down on the printed page is played out in an almost sacred environment? If, for the sake of argument, we consider the aura of a piece of music to be its unrepeatable performance in a given space and time, then we must allow for the fact that the aura is malleable. That is to say, the meaning of the music, that which constitutes its essence, will not be the same every time the work of art is “reproduced” in concert. A performance in itself is already a reproduction of the conception of the composer as put down on a piece of manuscript. Unlike a painting, however, the music does not exist in its desired medium until it is taken by a performer and played (presuming, naturally, that that is the intention of the composer, as is the case with all Western Art Music with perhaps a handful of exceptions). The aura will change depending on the social context of the place it is played, the musicians who are playing it and the historical moment. For example, Wagner in Israel today has an incomparable aura to Wagner in Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century. It is difficult, however, to say that one is right and the other wrong. The art exists in itself and independently of how and where it is used. Perhaps then, one should accept the malleability of music’s aura and discuss how best we can find and present the music in its most authentic manner.
It has long been argued that the recording industry; the ability to listen to a piece of music outside of the given space and time it was produced and the fact that one doesn’t even have to listen to the whole work now, is detrimental to the “aura” of the work of art. Whilst there may be truth in the fact that recordings simply cannot recreate the experience of being in a space whereby the music unfolds in front of you in real-time, who is to say that the latter is always the most authentic version of the music? Plato, in book 10 of the Republic, suggests that an artwork is something that imitates something that exists on a higher level of reality; in other words, its form. If we take this idea and apply to it a performance of a piece of music, then it could be said that any performance, be it live or recorded, is simply an imitation, a reproduction of the ideal form of that piece.
Walter Benjamin discusses the abilities of film in relation to art and says that “film furthers insight into the necessities of our lives by its use of close-ups, by its accentuation of hidden details in familiar objects, and its exploration of commonplace milieux through the ingenious guidance of the camera; on the other hand, it manages to assure us of a vast and unsuspected field of action.” This idea of technology helping to bring out finer details, of accentuating what we take for granted and bringing it to the fore and by showing us what we see in daily life through a clearer and sharper lens, has ramifications if brought into parallel with the ideas behind recording music.
If we accept the notion that that a camera can give insight to parts of life that pass by in reality, could we not therefore consider the microphone to do the same for music? That is to say, by going through the process of recording, by submitting to the apparatus and using it to ones advantage, could we not come closer to the truth of a particular work? Glenn Gould would say so. If we take the printed page as the aura of a musical piece, then perhaps, using the technology of editing, the unlimited time for repetition and exploration, we could get closer to the truth of a particular work. It would be possible, in theory, to have every contrapuntal line in perfect balance, every harmonic shift done with the utmost care and precision and to eradicate human error that is inevitable in performance. It may be that the resulting performance is less human but that is not to say that it isn’t closer to the Platonic form of the piece as the composer heard it in his mind.
Thank you for taking the time to read and I hope listen to the suggested recording. I am personally delighted with the exchanges that the blog seems to be initiating. For those joining today, I invite you to explore the last two posts, covering Schumann and Shostakovich, which can be found below:
