http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv6BZoVHdiw

That is a recording of a piano roll made by Debussy when he played Clair de lune a few years before he died.
It's very interesting to hear just how the composer played his own compositions and to hear just what it should sound like.

Here is a link to Golliwoggs cakewalk also played by Debussy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMrdhgWR9Zk

and another link to Arabesque No. 2 played by Debussy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCgw6d2lPDI...PL&index=52

We're banned from YouTube here at work so I'll have to wait until I get home to savour the above!

Undeniably beautiful, and shows what the "piano without hammers" sounds like.

... but if that is what Debussy wanted it to sound like then why did he not write it like that because hat he plays is not what is in the score - the notes are the same pitch, but he messes about no end with the tempo and with the relative lengths of the notes.



.. and here he completely ignores many of his own very detailed accents, staccatos and hairpins

What is the poor interpreter (i.e. me) supposed to do, if composers will not write what they want?


Incidentally Rachmaninov is just as bad on his piano rolls. He writes p and plays f, writes moderato and plays almost allegro etc.

If the composers could ignore their own scores, perhaps the critics should give us ordinary bods a bit more leeway with what we do with their music?

I quite agree there
I may quote you on that during my next piano lesson Tom!

I've noticed this quite a lot with, for example, Einaudi's stuff... loads of slurs and p/f completely ignored in his own performances. This then results in a bit of debate with my teacher when I ignore them too..

Well, as my lecturers keep reminding me, the score is not the music. Maybe on the day that Debussey or Einaudi recorded their performance, they had a different idea of how it should sound than when they notated it? I do sometimes think that we are trained to be a bit too religiously observant of the score, and sometimes this can get in the way of an individual interperatation of a piece.

Of course, the composer doesn't feel any of this reverence and is not handcuffed in the same way. They are free to play it any way they wish and always be right!

Maybe it's the exam system that encourages this?

Dave.

This is why I'd be scared to touch Debussy in an exam, or let a pupil! Or at least not an exam without copious notes explaining that I did actually see those performance directions on the page, but am just choosing to stay true to the composer's intention that it should be completely wide open to interpretation. Examiners are so academic. But it's that impressionistic vagueness that makes it what it is, which is almost a contradiction in terms of what exams and examiners - and other critics - stand for...being intensely subjective. (The music, that is, not the critics!)