Shostakovich, Pletnev, Bernstein - a comment

The post ‘Shostakovich, Pletnev, Bernstein’ relates to key issues discussed in this blog, which is why it was put up as a guest one. http://blogger-ablog.blogspot.com/2008/07/shostakovich-pletnev-bernstein.html
In particular:
1. There is no such thing as the 'spirit' of music as opposed to its 'letter'. All that exists is the notes and what is played. The ‘spirit’ is the arrangement of the notes, their intensity, their articulation, rhythm, dynamics, including the relation between them at different times in the piece etc. The ‘spirit’ is how this is actually carried out - but there exists nothing over and above what is composed and performed.
For that reason, for example, the attempt of Pletnev to alter the sound of Russian orchestras to a more West European style (by reducing the vibrato in the brass, altering bowing etc) alters the music itself. This would not necessarily mean that it is bad, although in this case it is inappropriate, but it does alter the music as does, to one degree or other, every such change. As has already been noted the conductor Celibidache was therefore correct when he stated, for example, that even the acoustics of a hall altered the music. http://blogger-ablog.blogspot.com/2008/06/hegel-and-authentic-instruments.html
This is actually a philosophical principle. There is no separate Kantian realm of ‘noumena’ (‘the thing in itself’) separate from the phenomena. That is the ‘spirit’ of a piece is embodied in what is written and performed and does not exist separately from them.
2. Shostakovich will be a significant subject of this blog – not merely as a great composer but because he raises major theoretical and performance issues. First he is a key example of atheism in music. When most dissidents in the Soviet Union embraced religion Shostakovich refused to do so. This certainly contributed significantly to the death haunted character of his late music – including in the 15th Symphony with its reflections and citations of other composers’ pieces of music.
3. The political interpretation of Shostakovich, on which there is much debate, has now become intertwined with his performance. As ‘Shostakovich, Pletnev, Bernstein’ notes the exaggerated slowing at the end of the 5th Symphony that has become established in many performances is to attempt to indicate that its ‘triumphant’ conclusion is intended ironically or sarcastically. But Shostakovich was, first and foremost, a great musician capable of indicating clearly what he wanted. Performance that violates the musical sense of what he wrote therefore cannot be interpreted as indicating his concept – he was able to express very accurately what he wanted. As there is no tempo indication in the score of the 5th Symphony indicating that an extreme slowing down should take place this alteration in the music, introduced without authorisation by the composer, indicates that something alien is being imposed.
Toscanini once famously remarked to an orchestra when rehearsing Beethoven’s Eroica ‘It is not Napoleon, it is not Hitler, it is allegro con brio.’ This does not mean interpretation does not carry great power but that it was to be carried out by means of the music’s logic. If it is artificially imposed on the music it does not correspond to the composers concept. The violence done to the phrasing in the extreme, unmarked, slowing at the end of some performances of the 5th Symphony indicates this is not Shostakovich’s conception.

NB A note for those not acquainted with philosophical terminology on ‘noumena versus phenomena’/the thing in itself.
Kant held that beyond the realm of what we perceived (phenomena) was ‘the thing in itself’ (noumena) of which we could not have knowledge. The idea that there can be a ‘spirit’ of a piece of music which is not in the notes implies that ‘somewhere else’ is a spirit - which is not contained in the notes and the performance. This is nonsense as all that exists is the notes and the performance. How these are composed and performed, of course, is organised, and that is what is sometimes referred to as the ‘spirit’. But it is in the notes and performance and not somewhere else than in them.