1 JL Pianism Seminar 21 March 2013 The Duality of Mechanized Production: Homogenization and Freedom of Choice With the advent

of the cylinder-based phonograph in the late 19 th century to the current day mp3 found on our iPods, recordings have documented the performances of many pianists, liberating the music from the confines of its original context and preserving the sonic content for later listeners to hear at their leisure. 1 However, recordings have also become a controversial topic as performers have adjusted their playing to fit the machine, such as with Godowsky and the Ampico piano rolls, and as recordings have become a text of their own, possibly threatening modern conservatory practices such as in Rachmaninoffs recording of his Mlodie or Debussys recording of his La cathdrale engloutie. Nonetheless, as pianists navigate the tension between robotically reproducing a composers score and allowing their own voices or even improvisations to shine through, they imply that mechanical reproduction has both limited and expanded artistic freedom in the case of piano performance by either emphasizing perfection over creativity or vice-versa. As pianists struggle to balance the competing desires of Werktreue(fidelity to the original work) and their own creative impulses, the notion that the marketability and the technical perfection of a recording must triumph can eclipse other factors during the recording process. One must keep in mind that during a recording session where the pianist is pressured to make a commercially successful record, the

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edcyldr.html [The History of the Edison Cylinder Phonograph]

2 pianist may not feel as free as when he or she is doing a performance that wont be saved in any historical archives. Instead, the recordings purpose is to be fluid while matching the text note-by-note so that its not something that as Levin states, difficult to splice. In effect, the performer must plan pieces ahead of time down to the minutiae so that its less costly to produce. This kind of willingness on the part of the performer to let the piece become spliced together, a kind of mutant Frankenstein performance, seems to take away from what Benjamin refers to as the authenticity or the aura of a performer. In The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Benjamin asserts that recordings have become vehicles of engineered homogenization because they displace the aura of the original context and diminish the value of the original. 2 Adding on to Benjamins point it seems that with the mass proliferation of recordings of the same works, each one seems less special or more commoditized than if it had not been recorded, but a few times. For example, when listening to multiple recordings of the first movement of Beethovens Piano Moonlight Sonata No. 14, Op.27, No.2, I could barely tell the difference between some of the recordings I listened to, whether it was from a generic compilation album celebrating Beethoven (Great Composers-Beethoven) or a celebrated pianist like Arthur Rubensteins rendition on YouTube. 3 Though less standardized versions exist as well such as those by Vladimir Horowitz or Claudio Arrau, which added more pauses in-between phrases or added more dynamic contrasts, most of the generic kind produced for the general compilation CDs
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http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.ht m 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irkraA_KkcQ [Rubeinstiens performance] versus

3 celebrating Beethoven or relaxing classical music reflect that the cultural consumer has been given too much choice and has too little a stake in the artistic freedom of the performer. This commodification devalues each performance and though pianists like Robert Levin exist, crafting improvisations that transform and challenge the standards of the repertoire, its increasingly difficult as more recordings are released to distinguish the aura or the value of one recording over another, or to even know what value system one should be in evaluating that work. As pianists are limited to what works well for the recording machine they become less focused on what works well for the pianist and that extra obstacle can possibly filter out creative spontaneity and leave a pianist pining for non-mechanical reproduction. Though mechanical reproduction has produced a sense of homogenization, there can also be a sense of renewed freedom with the proof that more recent performers can copy the more experimental and creative performances of the past that didnt rely as much on matching the score. Pianists have realized that earlier pianists have experimented with performance practice in ways that contradict what contemporary piano students been taught by modern conservatory methods and that by listening to a nontraditional recording one can support more adventurous leaps away from the standardized practice. For example, with Alfred Cortots version of Chopins Etude in E Major, Opus 10, no.3, his version is rhythmically problematic in a way that more conventional teachers may not like (he speeds up and slows down at variable rates so its not as straightforward), but its refreshing in how the weight is shifted towards certain notes and it feels like the interpretation has been freed from the text. 4 I saw this as well http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIVjN4VIWLE [Cortots Chopin Etude No.3]
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4 in a Lang Lang performance; Lang Lang played with so much rubato that the appropriation of the text, in essence, the tone or the meaning had changed to me. 5 Though Cortot and Lang Lang were perhaps radical in their decision to disregard the more standard way of playing this etude, their openness to being recorded and to add value to the already long list of recordings of this piece suggests that recordings can expand the freedom of performers beyond the standard conventions as well. Though pianists need to make a living, possibly through the sales of their recordings, there is a question of whether the mechanized reproduction of the performance is really honest to the performers intentions. On one hand, its possible that its too confined by commercial recording restraints and that it loses its authenticity and therefore some of its value through mass production; however, sometimes the performer is able to express his or her artistry more freely despite what limitations mechanized reproduction seems to offer, therefore displaying both freedom and a lack of freedom by recording works.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yjnLmv1hHU [Lang Lang, Chopin Etude Op.10, No.3, live dont have the recording on youtube.]
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