Violin Video Lesson: Playing what’s on the page

What's one of the core blocks of musical expression? Rhythm.

In defining rhythm, we understand that it's the framework of musical time.

It creates order and structure by organizing the pattern of sounds and silences created in the minds of the composers.

Alongside melody, harmony, and texture, rhythm, even though it's definitely a lot of math, creates tension and release by using both silence and sound, and in doing so gives the composition shape and meaning.

Thinking about this makes me wonder what role rhythm plays in the creation of composers' compositions. I mean, the use of rhythm is quite different from Bach to Brahms to Debussy.

So I think it's fair to say that each composer uses rhythm differently, and this helps them define who they are as musicians, as composers.

But sometimes we as performers rearrange the rhythms in a composition under the guise of style.

Take Wieniawski's Polonaise in A major, Op. 21, for example.

In the second beat of the measure, there's a sixteenth note that's often played as though it were a thirty -second note, but Wieniawski wrote it as a sixteenth, not a thirty -second.

Playing it as written completely transforms the spirit of the phrase, as thus changing it to a thirty -second note is many do.

But he wrote a sixteenth.

Did he expect it to be changed? Well, if he didn't, why doesn't everybody play what he wrote? Thinking about it this way leads to a larger question for me. What does it mean to interpret a piece while staying completely true to the composer's manuscript? I mean, as violinists, we have so many ways we can, shall we say, put our two cents into our interpretation of the composer's music.

We can do so through the colors created from the kinds of vibratoes we choose, the bowings, the fingerings. I mean, we do have options.

So with this in mind, why then do we sometimes feel it's okay to alter the rhythm? Is style that important? Is the style more important than the composer's original intent? I mean, if you're building an interpretation of Bach, I guess a lot of your decisions depend on whose treatise you read and decide to implement, with each one providing a different stylistic perspective to explore.

But is that also true for Ravel? I mean, how much rhythmic room do we have when interpreting Zagan? Well, the deeper I get into thinking about it, it seems to me that as classical music performers, maybe it would be better if we didn't think of ourselves as creators but as recreators, as we are recreating what the composer created.

But if we do think of ourselves that way, would it make us less relevant to the process involved in creating the interpretation used in the performance? Well, you know what? I start to believe that the teacher who constantly told me to just play what's on the page wasn't so far off after all.

But that's what I think.

What about you? What do you think?

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